Highlander season 4: Leader of the Pack

[beccaelizabeth]

"Where's the justice in all this?"
"There is no justice. There's just mercy."

{er, actually I might have flubbed the quote}

that made me want to punch Mac. After last week he can say that?

but ignoring that


The dog-guy plot was twisted but interesting. Was he cheating? Well, using mortals is cheating, using a sword isn't. Are dogs more like mortals or swords?
Personally I think he was cheating. But creatively. So fair enough. On to other ethical issues.
Like, poor doggies! He put them in danger! Made them get shot, made them get run over. They could have been stuck with swords and all sorts! If he really liked dogs like he said he did, he shouldn't ought to do that.

Personally I think dogs are large carnivores with minds of their own, so, scary.


The script stuck together well. Mares and stallions, dogs and bitch. Life insurance, earthquake insurance.

did the Mac plot and the Richie plot stick together?
not so very.
I mean Richie called that guy a son of a bitch a lot, but other than that *shrugs*


New rule of Quickenings - nothing should float. Emphatically including houses. That was just silly.

er, the dogs were still in the house at the time.
I'm trying desperately not to make an 'earth moved' joke...


Richie is a 'touch the electric fence' kind of guy. Mac is the kind of guy who tries to give orders. They're never quite going to mesh.
So, Richie got the 'two wrongs don't make a right' lesson.


So was letting that guy go the right thing to do?
I'm pretty sure the police wouldn't think so.
He did crime, he should do time.

Why does Mac think so? The baby? But he doesn't know anything about this guy. Except that he has killed once. And Richie finds out he did drugs back then. So from these facts they get to 'but he'll be a great father'??? I think they're privileging biology just a teensy bit too much there.
The girl thinks he is a good guy. She thinks he could never kill.
He did kill. She don't know him.
Do they tell her? Or did they let her live with a killer without knowing? Because that would be flat wrong.


lots of thinky stuff in that half.

Richie's bit was an Immortal story solely because he survived, and kept things secret. I don't understand *why* secret. Holes in clothes? Worried he'd tell? But apparently, secret. (Ignorance is poison).

Mac's story was an Immortal story because the dog guy played the game. But it weren't very personal to Mac. It was just another guy he once pissed off.

Dog guy thinks of his dogs as family. Mac killed a dog. Mac killed part of his family. Its just a teensy bit too much for sanity though, to compare that to the Tessa story, so I wouldn't call that a connection.


And the Joe and Duncan fighting bit keeps going. Angst and woe. Eeesh.


all in all, good episode. Solid Richie character moments.

Comments

[macgeorge1.livejournal.com]

The main thing I remember about re-watching this episode was Stan K's comment in the 'extras' that he never understood why Richie was so upset about Tessa's death. Huh? This was ten years after the episode, when even if he was clueless when he was actually doing the scenes, he'd have time to come up with an answer later that made enough sense so as not to embarass himself. Sheesh.

As to why Duncan felt the kid should be let go, that's the crux of the episode. Until he personally saw evidence that the boy had utterly changed and turned his life around, and that now others were dependent on him, he was prepared to wreak vengence himself (which he would have to do since there was no proof that the kid was Tessa's killer and they couldn't produce that proof unless Richie suddenly came forward as a witness, which seemed unwise and impractical). So, given what he saw, he could do a vengeance thing on the kid's head, or let him go, so he chose to let him go. It seemed to me that a significant part of that letting go was Duncan's letting go of his own guilt and grief. Similarly, Richie's decision to let the kid go was a mirror of a release of his own guilt about Tessa's killing (why did I live and she didn't? Why couldn't I have stopped it?, etc.).

Could Richie have gotten the kid to turn himself in? That question wasn't explored, but ultimately that decision would be up to the kid, not to Richie or Duncan.

I agree about the house levitation. That was just... bad. Otherwise, I felt this was a pretty forgettable episode (aside from some purely purient-interest moments of exposed Duncan-flesh).