Isn't it Bromantic? Or, Finally, a LOTS Post

As you can probably tell from my blog banner, I am a Legend of the Seeker fan. Because anyone who can pout while chopping wood has my respect. Don't laugh, wood chopping is hard!

The last time I chopped kindling was in Wells, BC in the Rockies (4000m elevation and 80km from the nearest bank or grocery store). I worked in an art galley/school heated with a wood-burning stove. As the gallery dogsbody, it was my job to chop the day's wood. Of course, I was a down-south city girl with noodle arms. The only way to get the axe through the kindling was to balance the piece of wood vertically and use the momentum of the axe to get through the wood in the direction of the grain. Every time I raised the axe, the piece of wood would fall over and I'd swear. The Buckley Pub's tabby cat stalked out into the backyard and would watch me chop. Yes, the pub is named after Buckley's cough syrup. Then the pub owner, who looked like a descendent of Rasputin, came out to watch, laughing helplessly at me. Even the cat was laughing. So, dear readers, when I say that looking good while chopping wood is hard, you can fully appreciate my private joke banner.

Oh yeah, LOTS. OK we're back in TV land now. I have an affection for popcorn fantasy/sci-fi. I own all but the last season of Stargate, for example. In tone/mood and level of writing Legend of the Seeker reminds me of Stargate. LOTS is popcorn high fantasy, and Stargate was popcorn sci-fi.

By popcorn, I mean that something is reminscient of the classic adventure serials from the first half of the 20th century — lots of action, a evil guy in a funny costume who is evil just because they are essentially evil, with emphasis on fun over content. I like popcorn, for the record.

What Legend of the Seeker (LOTS) has in its favour over Stargate is that the big baddie of LOTS, Darken Rahl, (the antagonist for my fellow English majors out there) is actually kinda smarter than the hero, and the hero doesn't always win. Most of the time Rahl uses his wits, brawn and magic to outwit the Seeker. I'm really enjoying this.

Off the top of my head, there haven't been a lot of high fantasy shows out in the past few years other than Merlin (BBC), Robin Hood (BBC) and, of course, Xena. I'm counting The Tudors as creative history more than fantasy. LOTS was created by the same people as Xena, and is based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. So I was pretty stoked about Legend of the Seeker, although the book is so porny I wasn't sure how they could make a TV show out of it, outside of HBO.

The first season has been up and down, but overall I quite like that the writers are creating their own universe and not strictly following the books. Up until this past week, I rated the quality of the episode on how porny it was. Hey, I'm just being honest here. Legend of the Seeker is a guilty pleasure for me. It's a show with an oddly inconsistent tone. Episode 8 had some rather kinky scenes I would never allow a child to see, but I quite enjoyed. The next episode lurches into the middle of YA-child-special-guest land, but again, I still liked it. That's actually part of LOTS's charm. You never know what you're getting when you tune in.

Episode #17 broke this trend. It was a good episode without bare chests! We were given a great fist fight, which wooed a D'Haran captain into a pretty great bromance with our Seeker. I have to say, that guest star can come back any time! Also, we had a former McLeod's Daugther's alumni as second guest star — it's always nice to see a familiar face. There were some really good character development scenes that complicated the Seeker's mission. No longer are the rebels wholly good and the D'Harans wholly evil. By the end of the episode the Seeker really is down the rabbit hole. He goes undercover in a D'Haran fort and ends up fighting both the rebels and the D'Harans and rescuing a D'Haran village.

I was quite happy about the quasi-political-lite plot twist about land mines. In the Terry Goodkind books, some of the anti-communist tone seems a bit dated. I felt that this episode's topic nicely updated the series for today's viewers without being too heavy-handed in the didactic department. I really enjoy fantasy that mixes magic and technology. The magical sonic land mines in this episode were a clever touch.

If you liked Merlin, you'll love LOTS. If you don't like popcorn genre TV, you probably won't get into it. But Craig Horner is my current workout inspiration, so I'll be tuning in each week!