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]

continuing commentary post...

Methos couldn’t be positive of either outcome, but you combine all those urges, needs and motivations, and instinct has him grabbing MacLeod and slamming against the truck and forcing Duncan to understand just how alien, how ugly, how very, very different he was so long ago, and watching Duncan’s face as it moves from cold anger to disgust and dismay, with a very strong dose of betrayal thrown in for good measure. Methos is both relieved and horribly grieved when Duncan says their friendship is over and walks away. On the one had, that Duncan *hadn’t* challenged him, knowing that Methos had pushed virtually every one of Duncan’s hot buttons, must’ve been a revelation about just how much Duncan had treasured their friendship, and how much Methos had just lost. On the other hand, now Methos had to deal with Kronos, having not killed MacLeod, so he had to come up with a whole new survival strategy – ergo, the re-grouping of the Horsemen.

As for Duncan’s reactions, he is being pushed from so many different directions, he can hardly tell where he stands from moment to moment. For all that he had his own dark past, Duncan had never killed strictly for pleasure, and never deliberately killed innocents. His own village had been devastated and his father killed by marauders. And Cassandra was an icon from his past, a woman who had appealed to him for protection, further confusing his own sense of where his duties and responsibilities lay. So Methos reveling in his tale of killing ten thousand innocents just because he enjoyed the killing, and that Cassandra and her village were “nothing” to him, was appalling, especially coming from someone he considered a good and trusted friend, someone he could lean on, someone he could go to for advice, even if it was usually couched in sometimes-unpleasant cynicism and sarcasm. So he walked away, brimming with anger and a sense of betrayal, knowing that Methos had lied to him about Cassandra, wondering how many other things Methos had said were lies, filled with horror at Methos’ words, and with his gleeful attitude about all that death.

#3: Duncan was unfair in judging Methos’ actions harshly, when he knew Darius was also had a killing past, but considered Darius practically a saint.

My view: This assertion ends up on my ‘gimme a break’ list. Geez. You can argue that Darius was also a general, and that a conqueror isn’t doing so for the personal pleasure of killing individuals. But that argument is frequently met with philosophical discourse on the evils of war, etc., which I find tiresome – as though somehow because I don’t consider killing in war as evil an act as personal murder, I am de facto approving war, or that I don’t think that war itself is evil, which is absurd.

But the most compelling difference between Darius and Methos is the simple fact that Darius never hid his past – and actually frequently used it as an object lesson for how *not* to live, and lived a life that was a polar opposite of what he had been.

#4: At one point on various lists, someone who shall be nameless strongly argued, and there were even a few who purported to be persuaded (I think. I have blessedly forgotten most of that ‘conversation’) that Methos was the actual leader of the Horsemen and that some (unknown) momentous event occurred to elevate Kronos to the dominant member of that group. We don’t know what the momentous event was, but, according to the proponent of the theory, the evidence is clear and obvious that Methos was the original leader of the Horsemen.

My view: I can’t recall all the minutiae from which this scenario was inferred, but it is patently absurd. All you have to do is watch that first scene, where the instant Kronos inquires what is going on all three men defer to Kronos, who unhesitatingly acts as Solomon, splitting the robe and declaring the rule that they all share everything.


...even more in next post

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

At one point on various lists, someone who shall be nameless strongly argued, and there were even a few who purported to be persuaded (I think. I have blessedly forgotten most of that ‘conversation’) that Methos was the actual leader of the Horsemen and that some (unknown) momentous event occurred to elevate Kronos to the dominant member of that group.

I vaguely remember that. My basic reaction would be 'that's nuts!':)