Monday, March 5, 2012

Lost Girl Recap: Vexed: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Lost Girl Season 1 Episode 8: Vexed


Welcome to the hottest two-minute opening still fit for basic cable. Rewind if you need to. I’ll wait. Ready? Okay. The opening splits between shots of an injured Bo making her way to Dyson’s loft and Dyson working out on a heavy bag. Any opening that features Dyson hitting something is a winner in my book. Her shoes are hotness made manifest. He’s not wearing a shirt until he strides across the loft and throws one on. I could watch this man dress and undress for a week straight. Oh, sorry, distracted. If we remember from last episode, Dyson had laid down an ultimatum: if Bo needed to heal, she was to go to Lauren. We know that time seems to pass between episodes, but we don’t know how much or what’s gone down until Dyson opens the door and tells the bleeding Bo, “I’m busy.” And it is cold. Well, as cold as his furry hotness can be, because man does he look tormented. She pleads, “Last time, I promise.” She kisses his neck. “Please?” He gives in. I’ll let you play the rest in your head, but “conflicted” would be the nice way to describe the rest of the scene. Bo is taking and Dyson seems to be at the limit of what he is willing to give. These aren’t the same friends with benefits from the earlier episodes—something dark has come between them.

Dyson is looking pensive when Bo wakes and goes to leave. He puts on a smile and makes small talk in softened voice, but the tension is still there, especially, when she mentions Lauren. It feels like they’ve had this conversation before and both are weary of it. “Leave it already.” “She’s just leading you on. She’s never gonna love you.” Like you do, Dyson? The subtext is so heavy it could bring down the Titanic, but Bo doesn’t acknowledge it. Maybe because Dyson is still unwilling to vocalize that he cares or maybe she can’t see it the way she could never see how much she hurt him with their previous arrangement. Either way it doesn’t matter, Bo picked who she wanted to trust. Dyson gives her the final ultimatum. This is the last time. “I meant what I said.” All the gentleness is gone, he is ice cold again.

I’m still reeling from sadness of the previous scene, as Bo and Kenzi enter an abandoned building. Bo complains that Dyson is being a girl. “What because wolf-boy is tired of you life sucking him whenever the mood hits?” Kenzi replies for a bit of perspective. She tells Bo that she needs to choose a team, but Bo refuses. Before they come to a resolution, they find the contact they were looking for—hanging from the ceiling. “We really need to start hanging out with a better class of people.”

Meet Siegfried: dark fae vampire (really?) and a little lynching can’t kill him. Bo trades some blood for a rumor that a death row inmate has information about her mother. Kenzi is skeptical, but Bo is desperate, and desperation wins out over street smarts. Bo and Kenzi are headed to the US to learn something from a woman who allegedly killed her children. Before she goes though, she has time for a quick doctor’s appointment. Lauren continues her long tradition of not telling Bo anything that might make her look bad, when Bo compliments her necklace and Lauren fails to identify it as the Ash’s mark. They flirt for a bit and Lauren questions Bo about her sex life. While Lauren is happy to know Bo is taking it slow, she is less happy to hear that Bo has a buddy for sexual healing. Bo gets hurt all the time, how did Lauren think she was still alive if she didn’t have a fae partner? Or is she that out of touch that she isn’t aware of just how often Bo injures herself? I vote for the latter, but maybe she never considered it. In the Bo-Lauren dynamic, Bo is the strong one, the protector. Lauren isn’t conscious of the danger Bo puts herself in the way children never realize the difficulties their parents go through. As “her doctor,” Lauren would be happier with someone less “well travelled.” Really? You want to pull out the medical professional card right before you snark about your patient’s sexual partners for your own ends? Worst doctor ever.

Lamenting Lauren showing her fangs, Bo and Kenzi (is that her real hair!?!) go all Criminal Minds in their search for Luanne, our death row inmate. At the jail, Bo instantly recognizes her as fae, but Luanne is pretty cagey. Bo leaves pissed off and determined to figure out why Siegfried sent her on this wild fae chase. Before she can get closure though, Siegfried meets the episode’s titular character: Vex. Turns out Vex can make people do what he wants (awesome power!) and he wants to make Siegfried suffer for spilling “family secrets.” He’s wearing a lot leather and a wicked baby-faced grin and sporting a couple of star tattoos, making him a whimsical psychopath puppet master. You know what happens when Siegfried is forced to go after the knife in the garbage disposal, but they aren’t giving you the graphic details here. What Lost Girl does really well is play off of the genre knowledge of its audience, like in the basement initiation in the sorority house. In this case, we know how it is going to end right from the beginning so the gruesome emotional turmoil sets in long before the noise of the garbage disposal does. Nicely played LG, nicely played.

Apparently, Siegfried can withstand a lynching, but having his heart ripped out was the death of him. No vampire dusting mythology here though. There’s a plenty bloody body left behind for Dyson and the cops to examine. Bo shows up at the crime scene where she is quickly whisked out of earshot by Dyson. He is not happy to see her, and he is not happy to hear she’s chasing another lead about her mother. Bo says she is “entitled to some answers.” Dyson relents and asks what the tip was. Bo tells him about little miss death row, and he tells her she’s dark fae and that Bo needs to back off. Bo thinks that someone killing Siegfried before she could get to him means something and asks for the police files to prove it. “Ask nice,” Dyson growls. I wouldn’t exactly call Bo’s tone “nice,” but there is a “pretty, pretty please” buried in there somewhere. Dyson warns her it is her last favor, and from the look on Bo’s face, I’m inclined to believe him. My heart breaks a little bit further. But when we fast forward to the clubhouse, the sight of Kenzi with blond curly hair is enough to get me to the next commercial break without crying.  Kenzi and Bo go through the police files and conjecture that Luanne and Siegfried were somehow forced into doing things: Luanne drowning her kids and Siegfried cutting out his own heart. All together now: fae.

Bo circles back to Luanne filled with righteous indignation. Luanne tells her story: falling in love with a human, pulling away from her clan, the dark punishing her to send a message. It’s touching how she keeps humanizing the children she lost. “Lucas, Jacob, and Cody! They have names.” Poor, Luanne. The dark don’t like coming in second. Bo thinks she and Luanne are connected somehow, so she is going to go to the Ash to try and get him to intercede.

Lauren is worried that Bo won’t be polite enough to the Ash. What a silly concern. Of course, she isn’t going to be charming or polite or brief. Well, she might be brief, assuming he doesn’t throw her in the dungeon.  The meeting goes about as well as expected: the Ash refuses to intercede and Bo doesn’t keep her cool. Except Bo gets a subtle little threat in at the end. She’s off to try the dark fae. Welcome back, Myer. My favorite elderly kingpin of a “middle management” mob family. He’s so familiar he could be my blankie from 1982. He tells Bo that he doesn’t have enough reach to touch death row before she even asks, and then, informs the startled Bo that she’s “not so good with subtlety.” Apparently, people are watching our little succubus. Dun, dun, duh. Time to start being careful, Bo. Myer explains the politics of the situation and how the fae felt slighted when Luanne chose humans. Bo asks for Myer to let her know who set up little miss death row, and he promises to look into it, but not before being the third or fourth person to warn Bo off of this little crusade.

It’s been a long day for Bo, and what better way to unwind than to take a bath while Kenzi saves the world from robot hookers—you’re welcome. With the world safe, Bo’s bath is looking really relaxing up until the original slayer shows up to make her put cheese on her head. No, wait, no cheese slices and she is a Morragh who wants to kill Bo—that’s not nearly so charming. After nearly drowning and generally getting her ass kicked for a while, Bo narrowly avoids death and manages to electrocute the original slayer Morragh. Kenzi issues her greatest line of the night, “it smells like fried bi----.” Bo is pretty beat up and she’s got Kentucky fried bad buy in her bath water, so she calls Dyson. I’m a little surprised that he comes, but there’s his inner wolf again not saying no even when the rest of him is screaming to get out of the path of self-destruction. He tells her it wasn’t an elder-sanctioned hit, “If that’d been an official hit they would’ve have sent more than just one. Your powers are too unknown for them to risk anything but a major assault.” Ruh, roh. I’m listening to Dyson and the no nonsense lecture is chilling. Kenzi even looks freaked out. Bo wonders why it is okay for someone to just try to kill her, “Isn’t there some general fae rule about not knocking each other off? Dyson tells her that that doesn’t apply if she doesn’t pick a side, she’s fair game for anyone she pisses off. And let’s face it, Bo isn’t a tread softly kind of girl. “So I have to be owned to be free?” “No, just to stay breathin’.” Which Bo obviously refuses to accept in a mad self-deluded way. She lashes back at Dyson that maybe he hasn’t tried to have it any other way. Dyson is dead-eyed serious, “I’ve tried.” I feel like this is one series theme that has been barely touched, and there is a goldmine of opportunity here. It’s more than petulance on Bo’s side. It’s about having the freedom to make your own decisions, to love who you want to love, and to live your life for yourself. Dyson relents and offers to let Bo stay with him—she needs more healing than Lauren can provide. Bo isn’t taking it though, “I needed your help tonight, not your pity.”

The next morning she heads to Trick for advice. Once she mentions her bathtub buddy, Trick takes her in back.

Meanwhile, the “I’m Batman” Ash tells Lauren that he knows about her unsanctioned activities, but assumes they were in the light fae’s best interests. Lauren is stammering and walking after him with a kicked-dog kind of posture that almost makes you feel sorry for her, but since we still don’t know how she got here in the first place, I’m not seeing a lot of reason she couldn’t just leave or at least assert herself in a less cringing manner. Especially after the last scene with Dyson, when Bo accused him of not trying hard enough to be free. After some plot explication, the Ash tells Lauren that Vex is the one Bo is looking for, but he’s going to negotiate to get him out of town. He wants Lauren to use the relationship she’s built up on his behalf and go “entertain” Bo until he can get it done. “She’s a succubus…I’m sure you can think of some way to distract her.” Nice, are you local government or a pimp?

Back at the Dal, Bo is asking the Trick-o-pedia all her questions. Starting with the necklace that Lauren wears. It’s the Ash’s mark. “Fae elders don’t employ humans, they own them.” Again we see the push and pull between freedom and protection. And apparently Lauren has lost the tug-of-war. Turns out of Trick-o-pedia has real encyclopedias also, as he drops a heavy book of fae mythology in response to Bo’s request. “I’d also like a pony,” she teases back. He tells her that Morraghs feed off of rage and that Bo has upset someone, unfortunately Bo has her “I’m rubber and you’re glue” ears on and she ignores Trick as well. Luckily, Trick has something better than unheaded advice to give: a siracon. One handed sword. Fully automatic. Made of unicorn horn. And happy to see Bo. Yeah, it’s BADASS.

Bo takes her new toy and heads back to the clubhouse, where Lauren has stopped by for a drink. And wooboy Lauren really dolled herself up for her big seduction scene. Okay, she didn’t. Maybe we can chip in and get the poor girl a hair dryer and some volumizer? Lauren asks why Bo is identifying so much with Luanne. We’re back to the big themes boys and girls: the right to choose your life.  Bo is adamant about going after the fae responsible, so Lauren switches in to good prostitute mode and proceeds to distract Bo. It’s a success and she doesn’t die, and Bo sweetly pulls off the necklace and tells her that “no one owns you.” But, Bo is still determined to go. Lauren begs her to stay and says she’s doing what she can politically, but she needs more time. Bo is heartbroken when she realizes that Lauren is in her bed as a diversion sent by the Ash. I’m feeling bad for Lauren—she obviously is trying to protect Bo in the only way she knows how, ie, relying on the Ash—right up until she says “I haven’t done anything wrong!” Seriously!! B—tch. Before the damage is fully done, Lauren accidentally gives Bo the missing piece to her revenge on a unicorn sword puzzle by telling her Vex’s name. Bo is ready for a fight. All she’s got left to do is arm up and call in a dark fae debt to get Vex’s location.

Enter deadly dark fae dance club, with kinky puppet master MCing. After a little banter, Bo is prepped a knife fight, but Vex twists it around on her.

Kenzi and Dyson are playing pool at the Dal. Dyson is winning. “What the balls, man. Are you cheating?” “Nope. Just genetically superior.” Lauren runs in all freaked out and nowhere to go but Dyson. “It’s a Mesmer named Vex. He’s too strong for her, Dyson.” “Where.” Nothing else, well save a very expressive snear. Too strong for a very well armed Bo, and Dyson puts down his pool cue and walks headfirst into it. How genetically superior is he exactly?

As Bo is stabbing herself in hopefully a non-vital organ, Vex suffers from a sudden attack of Bond Villan Syndrome. He starts baiting Bo, who reaches behind her and grabs hold of the siracon. “Uh oh. Puppet cut her strings,” coos Bo as she knocks Vex back into the scenery. He hasn’t lost the sense that he could care less what Bo threatens, but he has resorted to buying time with lies. He knows about her mother, apparently Siegfried spilled more than blood. The lie isn’t very convincing to anyone who isn’t ten shades of crazy desperate, but Vex doesn’t need to buy much with it. Dyson arrives and pulls her off Vex and holds her back. I mean he just picks her up and moves her. Efficient.

“If you kill him, they won’t stop until you’re dead.” Vex’s cockiness makes sense, no one would dare touch him not with the entirety of the dark fae elders behind him. She’s way out on the jagged edge now. She pushes the point of the siracon into Dyson’s chin. “I don’t care.” “I do.” He lowers his chin and stares her down. He never flinches, he never blinks, and Bo finally backs down. “He was the only lead that I had left to her.” “He was lying to you, Bo.” And as much I was loving Dyson right then and how he marched straight into serious danger without hesitation and finally said that he cared, he erased almost all of it when he lied and said no one knows anything about her mother. He got a little bit back when he walked out. Usually at this point the protector guy wants to melodrama all over everything and drive home that the rebellious main character was being reckless and prove his original point that she should listen to him, like he’s going to get a calm rational response or a thank you or something. Dyson just walks away and leaves Bo to deal with her shit however she needs to. Kenzi takes her home.

And just so we don’t end the episode liking any of Bo’s allies, we cut to Trick who has apparently interceded in Luanne’s execution. “We need to talk,” he tells the woman climbing out of the body bag. Bam!

1.       Who should Bo forgive first: Trick, Dyson, or Lauren?
2.       Which would you rather fight robot hookers or a morragh?
3.       Would you want to spend time at Vex’s club?

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