Merlin – It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life (and I’m feeling good)

I am not a very fast TV reviewer. I need at least six hours to fully process any show I’ve seen. I need to read other people’s reactions to see if I agree or disagree with them, re-watch it a few times, and let my brain digest all my thoughts and feelings before I can come up with anything coherent.

I suspect more writers are like me in this regard than you would think, but it’s hard to tell because, as a writer, you learn very quickly how to write about a show in a quick and easy formula. Shows tend to hit the same character and plot points over and over, so you form an unbreakable opinion on those points and stick to it. In a sick way, you kind of look forward to lackluster episodes, because it gives you a week off. If Merlin sucks, my column is pretty easy to write — blah blah the writing on this show is looser than [crude joke about your mother here], blah blah why do you hate on Merlin and Arthur’s relationship, blah blah that is not how you write female characters, blah blah lack of character continuity and plot coherency, blah blah but everyone on this show is really stupidly pretty anyway and I’ll be back next week to complain more because that’s just the kind of relationship this show and I have, blah blah blah.

We are three episodes into this season and by now I usually have at least partially written out some version of this column. In fact, usually the third episode is the first time I break it out, because the two-part openers tend to be good and the third episode tends to devolve into monster-of-the-week silliness. But this season, just as I’m cracking my knuckles and readying myself for another long column on how constantly teasing about super high stakes (a main character’s mortality, a magical reveal) and then pressing the reset button every damn time makes the high stakes completely irrelevant, and then they did something totally out of left field — Uther actually died.

As a fan I was — well, I don’t think ecstatic is the word, because how can you ever be ecstatic about Anthony Head leaving a show — but I thoroughly enjoyed what doing that set into motion. But the reviewer inside me could not help but go “oh, crapbuckets,” because now I have so much to talk about, and absolutely none of it is formulaic.

First of all, major props should be given to every one of the actors this episode — they rocked the hell out of it. And while I was extremely proud of and pleased by Katie McGrath‘s scene where she displayed some pain over causing Uther to die and subtly reminding you that oh yeah, Morgana does have some character continuity after all (shocker!), this episode belongs heart and soul to Bradley James and Colin Morgan. In an episode where they both easily could have strayed into exaggerated expressions of anguish and over-use of histrionics, they instead turned out performances that were contained, mature, and spoke volumes about their characters and their relationship far beyond what the very sparse text explicitly stated. To be fair, both of them were in their element — Bradley is best when he’s playing Arthur as wise and noble at face value and fundamentally broken little boy at his core. Colin’s played this version of Merlin before — reckless and torn between his selfish desire for Arthur to see him and admire him for who he is and what he’s done, and his unwavering affection and devotion to Arthur and his well-being, which always wins, in the end. When you pair these two incarnations of already strong characters together, you tend to get the very best episodes of the series. (“Sins of the Father” is probably the best example and remains one of my favorite episodes to date.)

In a lot of ways, this episode was Sins of the Father Volume Two: The Maturity Remix. But what makes this episode infinitely more interesting is the fact that unlike “Sins of the Father,” there is no possible reset button. You can’t undo Uther being dead and Arthur becoming king. It’s a new day, the day the entire series has arguably been building towards, which brings us to the inevitable question of what the series is really building towards — when Merlin is going to reveal his magic to Arthur.

Merlin and Arthur are the Sam and Diane of this show. Oh, I know what you’re thinking — shut up, Julia, they’re never going to sleep together, get over it — I know. And I do not mean that they are the Sam and Diane in that sense (though I could argue that they are, but that is for another day). What I mean is, like all Sam and Diane relationships, the tension between their characters comes from a will they, won’t they dynamic. Only instead of doing it being what they will or won’t do, it’s the magic reveal. Think about it. Think about every single one of your favorite perpetual tease couples. Think about all the plot contrivances that are constantly stuffed in there to keep the two of them apart, the detours that make you roll your eyes because you know they’re just time killers (think of Arthur’s perpetual head injuries as always dating that new random person), the teasing interviews where everyone involved insists that really, it’s not time yet! Now think about Merlin and Arthur. Yeah. Yeah. Did I just blow your mind? You’re welcome. That’s what I’m here for.

Now the issue with any Sam and Diane relationship all comes down to timing. You don’t want to blow your payload too soon, but you can’t string it along too far, either. Unlike most fans, I actually haven’t objected to the lack of magic reveal. In fact, I like it a lot because of what it does for Arthur’s character. It’s easy to be frustrated with him as a viewer, because why is he such a dick? Doesn’t he know how much Merlin does for him? But the answer, you have to remember, is no. We as viewers know everything that goes on. Arthur knows next to nothing. Purely from his point of view, Merlin should have been gone a long time ago. Without his magic, as we have recently seen, Merlin is fairly useless as anything except someone who tends to recklessly throw themselves in mortal peril a lot. When Arthur says that Merlin is the worst manservant of all time, he isn’t kidding. He really is the worst manservant of all time. And as a prince, Arthur really shouldn’t see Merlin as useful for anything other than serving him, and since Merlin’s bad at that, he should dismiss him. But he doesn’t. In fact, he does exactly the opposite of that — the more Merlin seems to suck at his job, the closer Arthur brings him in on a personal level or relies on his counsel. The more Merlin sasses Arthur, the more Arthur trusts him. Why? Because Arthur likes Merlin — not for his power or magic or usefulness, but because of who he is. And he needed time to do that, because the Arthur we first met would absolutely have used Merlin’s magic as a handy toy instead of ever bothering to get to know the person behind it. It’s the same function Merlin serves to Arthur as a friend. Both of them are extremely powerful and could easily have a friend who only likes them because of that, but instead both of them like each other in spite of their greatest assets. And frankly, if they didn’t like each other for reasons less superficial than “he’s a prince” or “he can make things blow up with a wave of his hand”, it would be a pretty shitty friendship and none of us would want to watch that.

It took us a long time to textually reach that point. You could argue the necessity of it taking so long (I personally think it could have skipped a few of the backslides, but was fairly well-paced), but here we are. The hurdle of initial bonding is passed, as is the hurdle that Uther always presented. The only hurdle we have left is Arthur himself. But assuming that this show is running on a five-season plan (which I have always read is the case, so I’m going to assume that), it has always been my belief that the magic reveal should happen around the season 4 finale/season 5 premiere. The worst thing you can do in any Sam and Diane situation is make the audience work for payoff and then cut it short. We need to see Arthur’s reaction. We need to see him and Merlin rebuild their relationship. We need resolution. And if the final frames of the series is Arthur’s wide eyes after Merlin shows him he’s magic, I am going to feel extremely cheated.

The decision of when to break this dynamic and make the payoff always comes down to trust. The show writers have to trust a lot of things — the actors being able to convincingly pull of resolved tension as they played the unresolved, the fans to not lose interest, and themselves to be able to write something  completely different than they’d been writing before. I did not have that trust before, but I’m starting to get it now. Bradley and Colin demonstrated this episode that they have all the acting chops required to sell this storyline and then some, and for once, Merlin writers, you are proving yourselves capable of doing the storyline justice. The fans have been ready since day one. So take that leap. We’ll catch you, we promise.

Clacked by Julia Hass
on Oct 16, 2011 @ 17:01 EST5EDT