Highlander season 4: The Innocent

[beccaelizabeth]

I really shouldn't have rewatched this one
I really hate it
what they did this episode was just wrong

so now I'm crying and really annoyed

So, the situation is, special needs Immortal. Train obsessed, sits and rocks, stronger than he knows how to deal with. Richie finds him, tries to look after him. Tyler King (played by Callum Keith Rennie) finds him and decides since he is damaged goods anyway he might as well be the one to kill him. Richie takes him to Mac for help and advice. And what does Mac do?
Talk Richie into killing him.

Yeah, okay, I skipped a few steps.

Special Needs guy accidentally kills the woman that was taking care of him, then accidentally kills a cop. This is, obviously, very bad.

But here we have a comparison within the Highlander series, a really straightforward one. "The Beast Below", Ursa the nearly mute. He wasn't up to speed in the brains department either. He killed someone. But Mac was the one that found him. So Mac found a monastery to look after him.

When Mac and Tyler are talking TK argues that the special needs guy has no life anyway, because so dumb. Mac says he has as much right to live as anyone.

What changed that?

He killed a cop. Is that crossing a moral line? Not the way Mac presents it. No, the objection Mac has now is that *they'll never stop looking for him*.

And he can't live in a cell forever.

First of all, why the bloody hell not? Nice quiet cell. Food. Stuff to read. They'd look after him.

But oh yes, there's the Immortality to consider. The *secret* Immortality. They can't have an Immortal in a cell, someone might figure it out.

So, is Mac saying they've got to kill him to keep Immortality secret?

He doesn't say that out loud.

He just says the cops wont stop looking.

And, again, the hell? In other episodes Immortals have got away from the police a bunch of times, by faking their own deaths. Mac can't have the poor guy declared dead? Stage something?

If not, why not?

See what it looks like it boils down to from where I'm sitting is Mac talked Richie into letting this guy die *because he was too much trouble to look after*. Because he was bloody *inconvenient*. Mac didn't even try alternatives! Just decided to kill him.

And yeah, Richie said he'd do it himself. Richie takes responsibility seriously. But it was Mac who decided and Mac who talked him into it and *Mac who should bloody know better because he's done better before*.

One rule for Mac and his friends, another for Richie and pals.



There was another difference with Ursa. He chose to kill. He understood well enough to know he was killing someone, and he understood well enough to decide not to.

Mikey didn't choose to kill anyone.
But he couldn't choose not to.

Is that reason to kill him?


Reason to warn anyone who volunteers to look after him. Not reason to kill him.


The one part I've been ignoring is the Game. And that least favourite bit of all the rules, There Can Be Only One. Is this guy ever going to be the One? Probably not. But is that reason enough, here and now, to let him die? Well no one seemed to think so half way through the episode. Tyler King got killed pretty much for thinking so, playing the Game and not thinking beyond that. So how could it be that it counts as a reason?


This one was just wrong. The guy could have lived on Holy Ground. But instead they let him kill himself.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.


I know its 'only' a story but its a stupid upsetting one.

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

I agree there are issues in this story that are troublesome. I don't remember the whole thing all that well, but I didn't get the impression that Duncan was unwilling to find a place for Mikey to stay on holy ground, but that he found Richie's determination that he was going to somehow take responsibility for Mikey for the rest of their Immortal lives problematic and unwise. Duncan's first responsibility was to Richie and to advise him that to try to protect Mikey in perpetuity was not a well-thought-out decision.

As to Mikey himself, he had taken two (three?) mortal lives because he had no concept of consequences, or control over his own actions, making him a danger to himself and others (mostly others, given his Immortality). As for the difference between Ursa and Mikey, I believe Ursa only killed mortals when he felt he was protecting others' lives, and had enough understanding of the consequences of his actions and of his general situation, to stay hidden and undiscovered for a few hundred years, at least.

It seems to me that you are right, though. It was within the realm of possibility to stage his death (and keep him dead, then steal his body, then get him to someplace on holy ground where he could somehow be made to understand enough to know he couldn't leave, ever, for ever and ever). Not easy, not simple, not a particularly neat or reliable dramatic conclusion to work into a 48-minute program, but certainly more humane.

It seems to me the writers used some ill-advised shortcuts to reach some kind of conclusion on this (suddenly Mikey understands that his death is for the best and offers up his head), and went for the dramatic and simple and let's-give-a-dramatic-moment-to-Stan copout. "It's too hard" is never a good excuse for bad storytelling. If they couldn't tell it right, they shouldn't have told it at all (but there are probably a half-dozen HL episodes I could say that about.)