seriousfic

So, uhn, this one? Was mostly fan service. Which would've been great if it weren't the second to last episode, especially since you know they're not going to retcon a whole season's worth of development. This really could've used more focus on Cara and less time on how happy the Happyverse is. I mean, the name of the episode is Unbroken, shouldn't it be about what Cara would be like if she hadn't been a Mord'Sith? Isn't that point of an AU? To examine differences from canon? Kahlan and Richard are in love and enjoy having sex. This is not new information. We can infer this from the available data.

I would've liked it more if they had to convince Cara to willingly submit to the spell. That way when she woke up back in 616 verse, she'd have this memory of being a housewife and oh, the woobieness! It would be epic! She wouldn't even show it, but the next time someone threatened a kid, she would put his eye out via Agiel.

Not that I'm saying it's OOC for Kahlan to just say "fuck the discussion, we're sorry, we have to magic your ass for the good of the world," because our heroes can be surprisingly ruthless when you think about it (think about 2x02, where they needed to feed someone to a Baneling for information and everyone went "Well, we do have some prisoners of war just lying around..."). And I do like that more than something like Trigun, where someone does 'OH NOES! I WAS FORCED TO KILL A BAD GUY TO SAVE THE INNOCENT LIVES HE WAS ACTIVELY THREATENING. I AM WORSE THAN HITLER!' But dramatically speaking, it's not very satisfying.

Also, while I wouldn't say it's homophobic that Schoolteacher!Cara gets involved with Leo, since it is part of the AU episode that you have to run into some dead guy being all "look at me! I'm alive!", there are Unfortunate Implications. I feel like if a lot of other shows had awesome bisexual characters who went around all dating boys and girls, no big, then no one would mind, but LotS is so transgressive in presenting a woman who enjoys sex and gets into relationships with both men and women, that when that one character is suddenly dating a guy, it looks bad. Tl;dr, the only reason LotS doesn't come off as awesome here is because the rest of the world doesn't live up to LotS's awesomeness. If every show had a character as progressive as Cara, then we'd just be going "oh, hey, it's Leo. Hi Leo!"

Although I will say that it's a bit tone-deaf for, the episode after introducing Cara's Mord'Sith lover (how many of those does she have, anyway?), to not only focus on the old and busted instead of the new hotness, but to say that Fate ships Cara/Leo. So the love of her life isn't the father of her children, or Dahlia, or Triana, it's that guy she has a one night stand with? Sucks to be Cara in 616verse, then, seeing as he's dead and all. Guess she'll just have to keep on having meaningless sex with whoever catches her fancy, the poor dear.

In other words, Zedd, just say it's crazy random happenstance.

I'm guessing that Dahlia will Breath of Life Cara next week, since they made such a point of how Happyverse!Dahlia still knows and has affection for Cara. And they'd better get all Tony/Priya "no matter what personality I have, I'm tapping that".