HLS5: 'The Messenger'

[ithildin]

Let's see if this episode generates more interest than 'Glory Days' did!

Highlander Season Five

The Messenger
Air Date: Nov. 1996

Richie's found a new teacher: an Immortal who preaches a message of peace. An Immortal who believes that all Immortals can lay down their swords and live together as brothers. An Immortal who claims to be the oldest of their kind still alive -- Methos. Will laying down his sword in the name of peace mean Richie will lose his head? And what does this mean for the friend MacLeod already calls Methos?
~ recap via TV.com

Next week: The Valkyrie

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

I thought it would also be amusing to post the descriptions of the outtakes for this particular episode:

OUTTAKES: We see the scene in the dojo office, where Methos tells Joe and Duncan about the guy who gets tortured by the Inquisition. At the end of the scene, Joe says, “Well have one on me,” and pours a drink over Methos’ head. He jumps up and yells, “What the hell was that for!?” Joe tells him it was a demonstration of an “unforeseen di-lemma.” Peter wipes his hands over his head, glares at Joe/Jim, and mouths “f**k you.” The director yells (loudly) “CUT!” as the crew laughs. Then we see a second take of the same set of lines, but this time w/o the obscenity.

Gillian tells us that a longer version of the scene where Richie learns Methos’ real identity contains definitive answers to some issues that they later chose to leave ambiguous, and that the scene never ended the same way twice. What I guess she is talking about was that in the outtake, Methos says he “used to be Adam Pierson” but that he gave up that identity. (In the aired episodes, it isn’t quite clear when (or if) Methos gave up the “Adam Pierson” identity.) A number of amusing lines demonstrating Richie’s dubiousness that “Adam Pierson” was the real Methos were cut from the aired scene, but then at the end of the scene, when first Richie, then Duncan, then Joe depart, leaving Methos alone at the bar, first he sighs and says maybe he’ll go buy some socks (that’s the one that got aired); then in the second take he looks around at the empty bar and mutters, “Can I get credit in this bar, still?” then leans over the bar like he’s reaching for a drink; and the third time he leans his head on his hand and smiles and says, “I guess it just leaves me and the crew,” which breaks everybody up.

After a completely meaningless outtake about Richie’s fight with Culbraith, they show how Richie’s Quickening was put together by him acting out the Q, waving his arms and bobbing around against a blue screen with the sound and background effects of scenes from Andersonville added later. In my opinion, this was the most awkward Q in the series. Stan just didn’t have the technique down and looked very uncomfortable with the whole thing. In further demonstration of that fact, an alternate version with the same arm flapping, grimacing Stan Kirsch is shown (and Gillian and Donna L. have shown the alternate version at cons to give everyone a chuckle), but the background is ocean surf, and the song “Wipe Out” is playing. Pretty silly and just a tad cruel, but funny.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I need to watch the outtakes again.