TV

Wow, I have been away from this show for a while! (So long was I gone that the show had an episode about a wine tasting called “Tasting Revenge,” which means this show feels way too safe without me. That’s a Xena title, show.) As it turns out, three at a time is the perfect dose in which to watch the show; the plot machine eddies once or twice and ends up actually moving a step ahead almost by accident! And, while I was gone, turns out the show was trying to woo me back by giving me the two things I have asked for the most! It’s very exciting! Sadly, not everyone is having a good time. In fact, it’s fairly obvious the sort of time everyone’s having Mary is losing her mother to illness, trying to get an heir to secure the throne (politics! Great!), but she’s also still trying to handle the godawful love-triangle rape-recovery plot, which is going more and more poorly for the show, since Conde is about as exciting… Read more »

Reign is one of the plot-churniest shows I have ever regularly watched, but every so often even this show hits an episode that leaves you feeling like you’re watching 42 minutes of Previously On, or possibly four episodes of a regular show. “Banished” was busy by Reign standards – the dog even makes another appearance! – and it was Catherine-heavy, which means I have pictures, because I missed her so much every second she was gone. The thing I want to start with, though, is costumes, because I have noticed that of late, Mary is wearing a lot more costumes courtesy of the Reign costume department rather than designers, which is occasionally fine, but definitely tends to look odd when set beside ladies in designer stuff. Take the Ice Festival outfits: Kenna and Lola look fabulous and true to costume-character – Kenna in floaty layers, Lola in a strong silhouette with some glitz. Greer looks like she’s going to prom, but her look swings so wildly between fabulous and terrible that we’ll just put this… Read more »

Reign is back from winter break, after introducing a very serious rape subplot to its usual camp stew with very uneven effects. It chose to make its winter debut with an episode about Catherine poisoning her daughter while sexing the ghost of her husband, gay priests who orchestrated the branding of Proestants but agree to stop, Kenna solving a mystery, an orgy party, and a moment where Mary learns to touch men again courtesy of Lord Conde, just to solidify the love triangle. I think Greer pretty much covers it. If not, the face of literally anyone in this shot from the orgy would pretty much cover it. Actually, though, despite some top face work from everyone, the MVP of this episode might have been Kenna (I KNOW), who somehow realizes Catherine is slowly poisoning Claude and gets involved to solve this caper and save Claude’s life. At first, this is priceless because Claude would literally rather die than talk to Kenna at all, ever: It’s beautiful. But it gets even better when Claude drops… Read more »

So, most of this week’s Reign was like Catherine’s face, but the last ten minutes were more like Claude’s face, because in the midst of more plot-churning “historical” shenanigans, and without any kind of “graphic content” title, the show decided Mary should get raped in a pretty explicit scene. And then the showrunners suggested it was intended to raise the stakes…for Francis. I had heard rumors this might be coming, but I didn’t realize how bad it would be. Luckily, Caroline was on the case; she’s back recapping Reign at AV Club, and her entire recap, well worth reading, breaks down why the rape scene doesn’t sit well, and her reservations about how it will play out mirror my own. For me, it particularly didn’t sit well because this is the THIRD TIME the show has used rape as a threat to show that the situation’s serious. (In the pilot, Catherine was the one planning the rape, and though they corrected that aspect of her characterization slightly by the second time rape was a threat,… Read more »