HLS5: 'Comes a Horseman'

[ithildin]

I haven't posted one of these in a while since interest seemed to have been waning. But I thought there had been enough of a break that we could pick up the discussions again.

Highlander Season Five

Comes a Horseman
Air Date: Feb. 1997

MacLeod knew him as Melvin Koren, a desperado who left a trail of death and fire across the Old West, but Cassandra remembers him as an evil far older. He is Kronos, leader of the Four Horsemen, mounted Bronze Age raiders who murdered, raped, and pillaged their way across two continents. Never was a band of Immortals more cruel or more feared. He destroyed Cassandra's people and she's been hunting him across the millenia. But Kronos has a different target now -- Methos.
~ recap via TV.com

Next week: Revelation 6:8

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

As usual, I will recap my summary comments here, but the entire description, TPTB comments, screen caps, outtakes, etc. can be found at:
http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/episodes/Season5/CAH.htm

My comments were very lengthy, so this may take several posts. Sorry about that. Post #1 - controversies and various interpretations of events:

So much has been said over the years about this and the following episode, there is little new insight to be brought to it, I think. I can only express my own interpretations and opinions about what internal monologue may have been going on with the characters, and address some of the disagreements in interpretation of events or emotions or motivations that always seem to surface.

#1: Did Methos recognize Cassandra when she first attacked him, or was he telling what he thought was the truth when he insisted he wasn’t the person she was after?

My view: This one isn’t even a close call, for me. He knew her instantly. In the first place, he knew Caspian and Silas were alive, so he has obviously been tracking Immortals from the “old days” over the years. For him not to have similarly tracked Cassandra, who has good reason to wish him dead, is nonsensical. Second, he has all-too-recently been reminded of those events of so long ago, so they would be fresh on his mind. Methos is a quick thinker, the consummate survivor, and he instantly did the one thing that would guarantee his survival at that moment – he appealed to MacLeod to protect him. Yes, it was a lie, and in the long run it would deeply damage MacLeod’s trust in him and make the ultimate revelation about his past much, much more problematic, but rational discourse and truth-telling didn’t seem like an option at that particular moment.

#2: Why did Methos reveal his past to MacLeod in a way virtually guaranteed to generate the worst possible reaction? Was he trying to push MacLeod away to protect him, or was it just a defensive response to an old, painful accusation?

My view: I don’t think there is one, straightforward reason Methos reacted the way he did, or that Duncan reacted the way *he* did. These are two complex men in a complex relationship that has, as its foundation, the general notion that they are destined to possibly meet someday in combat to the death, and that their friendship is in defiance of that destiny. I refuse to make any broad generalizations about either character because that denigrates the wonderful subtleties that make this scene such great, great drama. I *do* think Methos is a manipulator, but that most of his manipulations are done on the fly, because they amuse him, and especially amuse him when his manipulations have unexpected results as they sometimes do with MacLeod. In my opinion, Methos gave up trying to formulate large-scale schemes when he walked away from the Horsemen, but he certainly still has all the instincts for it.

As a result, when Methos physically grabs Duncan, refusing to let him walk away after the first confirmation that Methos was who Cassandra had said he was, I think it was fraught with multiple motivations. One was that he didn’t want to let Duncan go, that his friendship was something Methos truly treasured. Another was that he was angry that Duncan believed he understood when he didn’t understand at all. A third was the knowledge that he was still under an edict to kill MacLeod. If he succeeded in *really* pissing Duncan off, one of two things could happen: Duncan could challenge him, and Methos could kill him (assuming he could win that battle, but Methos isn’t known as an ‘honorable’ fighter), thereby fulfilling his promise to Kronos; or, Duncan would hate him so much that he would walk away and never speak to him again, which would also get him away from Kronos. Then, of course, Methos would have a different problem, but he could only deal with one crisis at a time.


...continued in next post