Highlander season 5: Forgive us our trespasses

[beccaelizabeth]

Someone turns up with a legitimate grudge against Duncan
everyone who knows him thinks D will therefore let the other guy kill him
but it turns out he believes in trial by combat.

Which is pretty fucked up really.

I mean he can't rightly believe that, for instance, Kronos won all those fights because he was morally in the right.

So he somehow convinces himself of this thing if and only if it applies to him. What up with that?


The legitimate problem in question is that Mac killed Sean Burns.

Duncan: "It was a mistake. It should never have happened."

Keane: "Sure. What was it this time? You were drunk? Drugged? Temporarily insane? Maybe you thought he was somebody else. Maybe you just didn't care."


Methos and Amanda don't know that part. They think its about after the whole war mess.

And Methos of course is right after the Horsemen mess, so he's got a personal stake in the forgiveness thing.


I'm not saying Mac shouldn't be forgiven. Forgiveness, yaay. Its just, whenever you forgive someone, if you don't do anything to stop them, they have the possibility of repeating past behaviour.


Which is exactly what MacLeod is going to do.


I can read the whole of season 5 as leading up to Archangel, and Mac killing Richie. And I don't think its just because I am (I happily admit) obsessed. I think it was intentional.

The trouble is, I *don't* and *can't* read the season as leading up to a demon.

It was about religious belief sometimes, but it was about being fooled by it. The supernatural as a way of messing with your head. And it was also talking about mental illness, as with this conversation I quoted.

I hate the thing with the demon, because it doesn't fit.
But if it doesn't be real, then Mac went insane (again) started seeing things (again) and killed his student - previously referred to in other cases as the closest thing an Immortal has to a son, and a child in Immortal terms due to being so young.

This is not a hero story.

It turns the whole five seasons of Highlander up to that point into a tragedy of mental decay.

And it removes the element of choice. Mac didn't choose to go insane. He chose to keep on trying to do the right thing, which unfortunately involved killing a lot of people. And those deaths had an impact on his mental health. Plus there were some deliberate psychic attacks, which can't have helped.

So Mac cracked up, started seeing things. Richie, who learned about Immortals from Mac and therefore has accepted outlandish ideas from him before, stands by him. And for his loyalty is rewarded by death.

Just as Sean Burns offered a helping hand and got killed for it.

Those aren't hero stories either.


Why did Mac win the trial-by-combat fight? Because he was morally in the right? Because god was on his side?
Because the writers were on his side, is all.

Mac wasn't being treated by his own standards. He's killed the mentally ill before. I hated it, but he did it.


I'm all for forgiveness. Forgiveness yaay. But leaving people to run around and keep on doing? Unyaay.
Mac needed locking up when he became a danger to himself and others. It didn't happen. Richie died.
Badness. And a kind of badness I don't want to see in my hero story TV.



Concentrating on just this episode, I think it wimps out of answering some of the issues it raises. I don't like the acting from the people not Mac, Methos and Amanda. And I really, really don't like the concept of trial by combat being used to buy off old sins. Very wrong. Combat just proves who is better with a sword. Trying to use it to prove Mac didn't do wrong contradicts everything the series has said so far, because every single bad guy has won similar combats before.

All that fight did was put some of Mac's psychological issues to rest, and its a damn stupid way to do that.


So I don't really like this episode.

Even though I do like Methos, and everything he does in this.
Especially the bits in boxer shorts.