Merlin Episode 11: Today is a Good Day to Die
"That's the best unicorn story I've ever seen," my husband said when the credits rolled. This episode examined Arthur in a story rich in Early Western European religious symbolism.
I dithered more over this analysis than any other essay I've written on lj. The episode uses a lot of disparate elements to form a whole story with a mystical subtext in a way that I have previously only seen done by those on the bleeding edge of modern spirituality. Is the mystical subtext I see really there, or simply a product of my over-read imagination? After going back and forth on the matter for days I can't tell. If the writers intended there to be a mystical subtext, then they did a good job overall but messed up a key scene. However, that's normal for these writers. They also ignored traditional interpretations for a mix of older and modern interpretations. Once again, that's normal for these guys. Besides, it's not like the Arthurian Legends themselves aren't a mishmash to begin with, what with their blend of Dark Age plot, Medieval trappings, and contemporary-for-whichever-writer-is-retelling-it-this-time sensibilities. So, what the hell, I'll throw it out there and y'all can tell me what you think of it.
We start with Arthur, Merlin, and two other men in the deep forest. The cinematography is dreamlike, which we haven't seen before in this series, and it stays that way through much of this episode. They are on a hunting trip, putting food on Camelot's table, ridding the area of dangerous beasts, and letting Arthur have some fun in the woods. They come upon something large, unknown, and possibly dangerous. The hunters surround it while the least experienced member of the party, Merlin, gets the job of beater. The creature turns out to be a unicorn, which Arthur kills over Merlin's protests.
We're all familiar with the traditional interpretation of the unicorn as a Christ-like allegorical creature, an untamable innocent that could only be captured by a virgin. But this was not the original interpretation. Before that the unicorn was seen not as a mythological creature but as a real animal from a far-away land, one of the rarest and most ferocious beasts of the wilderness, and just as welcome in the neighborhood as a wolf or a boar would be -- to wit, not at all. The Classical unicorn was considered to be impossible to capture and extremely difficult to kill, a worthy test for any hunter that would rightfully leave the victor glowing with pride. That seems to be the interpretation of the unicorn which Arthur, Uther, and most of the people at Camelot share. But that's not Gaius' interpretation. Interestingly, he does not offer either the traditional interpretation or the common interpretation previously given to anything unusual in this show, i.e. "it's magic". Gaius throws out something we haven't seen before in this series.
Gaius refers to unicorns as mystical creatures, not magical creatures. This could be a major clue to what is really going on in this episode. Mysticism is not sorcery. While many people bandy the word about as a synonym for anything they don't understand, it actually is a very specific term with a very specific meaning. To understand that meaning we need to take a look inside the human brain.
The human mind spends most of it's time in one of two states (according to a neurologist I heard recently, scientists have pinpointed the two clusters of brain cells that control these states). One of them is analytical, dissective, logical, critical. The other is peaceful, unifying, calm, transcendent. The former is characterized by feelings of tension, the latter is characterized by feelings of joy. The human mind can spend so much time in the analytical state if forgets how to reach the transcendent state. The sense of completion that the latter state brings, the feeling of oneness with the universe, can be lost. That loss causes great pain to some people. Throughout human history various techniques have been developed to regain that sense of transcendence. Among these techniques is mysticism.
While the goal of mysticism is to achieve a certain mental state, it's traditionally thought of as a destination, as reaching God or in the subset of mysticism known as shamanism reaching the land of the Gods. A mystical creature is one you encounter along the way, a spirit animal or spirit guide. Is the unicorn supposed to be a spirit guide in this story? I could find no historical reference to a unicorn being used in that way. It would be a modern interpretation. That said, it's a very appealing modern interpretation, at least to me, and the show has used modern interpretations before. Let's see how well it works.
While in some traditions the spirit animal is meant to be hunted, that doesn't seem to be the case with our unicorn. It's death lets loose a plague of magically-induced famine and drought throughout the land. And here we get our first bit of time distortion in this series, because while it seems that only a day has passed at one point, it takes weeks to eat all the livestock, but that gap contributes to the unusual dreamlike quality of this story.
Special mention has to be given to the set designer . I'd noted in the back of my mind the abundant fresh fruit in all the court scenes since the first episode. In that regard the castle set looks like a Dutch Grand Masters' still life. (I swear I can almost recognize some of the paintings of those tables, but I don't know enough to name them.) I didn't realize that they were setting up for the scarcity in this episode way back then. Good work.
This episode marks a turning point in Merlin's relationship with Gaius. When the show first started, Gaius was all over Merlin about keeping his magic a secret. Last episode he told Merlin to do whatever it took to save their home village. Now he comes upon Merlin trying to use magic to alleviate the drought and praises him for it. At this rate he'll be asking Merlin to magic something before the series is over with.
But nothing alleviates the plague. Arthur is told by Anhora the unicorn keeper that nothing will improve until he has atoned for his deed. He doesn't believe it, and why should he? No one had told him previously that unicorns were off-limits, and the Blame Game is a favorite occupation at court. Then he helps a starving villager and the drought lifts. Arthur begins to wonder. He takes Merlin back to the forest to see if they can find Anhora. Instead Arthur loses Merlin and finds the villager, who taunts Arthur about not being good enough for Daddy.
We learned in Episode 9 that this is Arthur's Achilles heel. He is driven to go to all these lengths out of fear that his father doesn't think much of him. His Daddy issues appear to have been the main motivating force in his life until Merlin shows up (and breaking that cycle is reason all by itself he should thank Merlin profusely). It must be said in his defense, though, that everyone around him save for Merlin have helped foster this attitude. He's been reared from birth to fill his Daddy's shoes, with everyone constantly wondering if he'll be good enough. His Daddy both simultaneously harps on it ("One day you'll be King and you'll understand!) and discourages Arthur from taking an objective look at the job. Back in Episode 3, Arthur's inadvertant slip that he wanted to be a more just King than Uther nearly got Gwen burned at the stake. While we have seen Arthur defy his father on occassion since then, with the occassions becoming bigger and more frequent, he's always careful not do so to Daddy's face.
Someone complained that it wasn't fair to attack Arthur on his hot button issue. Baloney. Arthur's too good a fighter not to do something about a weakness once its brought to his attention, but you have to rub his nose in it first.
Arthur forgets that he's supposed to be trying to lift the curse from his people, loses his temper, and calls down a stonger curse upon his people. The one positive thing that comes out of it is that when Daddy tries to push the same button later, Arthur doesn't back down but finally stands up to Uther to his face.
Meanwhile things are going to Hell for the people of Camelot. There's food lines, theft, fights, curfews, and even those in the castle are reduced to eating vermin. (There's a South Pacific island that divides everything into "food", "not-food", and "things you only eat after a hurricane has wiped the island clean." In this episode Camelot makes it to #3.) Under other circumstances I would have objected, but the earthy humor of the rat stew and bug eating scenes provided a welcome contrast to the grim and/or etheral tone of the rest of the episode. And my family laughed harder over the rat stew than anything we've watched in ages.
While the writers have done an excellent job with all the teen aspects of the show so far, I have a problem with Arthur's appetite. Teenage boys that big and that active eat like horses. It might not have been what he was used to, but he would not have turned down food in this or the previous episode. Hunger would have won out.
Merlin begs Anhora for another chance for Arthur. When Anhora hears that Merlin trusts Arthur with his life, he agrees. Arthur rides out to break the curse "or die trying". While Merlin doesn't like that thought, it seems to have taken root in Arthur's imagination. The idea that the ancient Celts sacrificed their kings in times of want is a powerful literary and spiritual symbol with echoes in the Old Testament and Frazier's Golden Bough, even though there is no solid historical evidence to back it up.
Arthur sets off, as per Anhora's instructions, for the Labyrinth of Gedref. sistermu asked "Why a labyrinth?" Because of all the techniques mysticism uses to reach a transcendant state (meditation, trance, drumming, dance, drugs, et al) the easiest safe technique for the novice is walking a labyrinth. (In practice, the harder the work the surer the result, but since this is a fable the easy version suffices.)
Just as the goal of mysticism is often described as an otherworldly location, so the labyrinth is often believed to lead to another world.(Wiki's got a good article on labyrinths, so I won't say more about the general subject.)
There's an old connection between labyrinths and Arhturian folklore. In Tintagel, Cornwall, the most popular location for the ruins of Camelot, there are two labyrinths carved on the cliff faces of Rocky Valley near Tintagel Castle. According to a source I read several years ago (I think it was Crossing to Avalon but don't quote me) local legend says that there is a gateway to the land of the Fairie nearby. Could it be that the gateway to Fairie was supposed to be through the labyrinth? There's not enough evidence to say, but it's an interesting speculation.
But why Fairie? I've seen anthropologists who study shamanism speculate that in ancient times the Celtic Fairie/Elfland/Avalon might have been a mystical or shamanic desination/state of being. There's some evidence to support this conjecture, but not enough to say for sure. The possibility of using a labyrinth to reach such a place in an Arthurian story is thus not as farfetched as it might seem at first glance.
Here is where the production team drop the ball. If that is what they are doing with this story, how does it tie into The Gates of Avalon? Is that supposed to be a different otherworldly location or the same one? This point was not addressed in this story. Then there's the more basic problem that the Labyrinth of Gedref is not a labyrinth. It's a maze. There's a huge difference from a meditative point of view. A maze has mulitple paths branching off. Every time you come to a branch, you have to analyze your choices. A maze forces your analytical mind front-and-center, and never gives you a chance to switch it off. A labryrinth has one path. There's no choices to make. A labyrinth (in theory) lulls your analytical mind to relax and allows your transcendent mind to come forward. As far as states of mind go, a labyrinth and a maze lead in opposite directions.
So, I guess they had a maze to work with and not a labyrinth. That's no excuse. They could have made the maze look like a labyrinth with a little CGI and some careful editing. Maybe they figured Merlin would catch up with Arthur too quickly? Who knows?
Even then, the way they show us it's a maze is an interesting choice. Just inside the labyrinth maze is a three-way turning. Arthur turns right. He's obviously heard the advice on how to analyze a maze by making every right turn until you run into a dead end. It's the logical path. Merlin picks the Middle Path. That's not the correct logical choice, it's the correct mystical choice. The middle path discovered by a Perfect One avoids both these extremes; it gives vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to peace, to direct acquaintance, to discovery, to nibbana. The Middle Path between two extremes is today most associated with Buddhism, but the concept appears as far back as Ancient Egypt. Some people speculate that the Middle Path is what is alluded to as the road to Elfland in the 13th Century ballad Thomas the Rhymer
‘O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.
‘And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.
‘And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.
Arthur travels through the Whatever of Gedref and comes to an otherwordly shore, only to find that Merlin has beaten him there. Arthur doesn't like that. He told Merlin to stay home, which by my count is the first time this series that he's done something to protect Merlin since Episode 4 that didn't have another possible reason for him doing it, like saving Merlin's village last episode or repaying his debt in the fourth episode. Arthur tries to get Anhora to release Merlin, only to be told that Merlin is part of his test. The test consists of two goblets of liquid. One contains a poison, the other a harmless liquid. The boys have to consume both while each can only drink from one goblet. They will be graded on their answer. Note that Anhora refuses to say how many correct outcomes there are. Is just consumption of the poison enough, or does it matter how it is consumed and by whom?
This is the point where things get really, really interesting. The camera pulls in for larger-than-frame pictures of Merlin and Arthur, but not of Anhora. Arthur states the problem as determining which goble is poisoned so that Arthur can drink it. Merlin objects to Arthur drinking it and states he'll drink it himself while working through various scenarios.
Once Arthur realizes that Merlin will figure out the solution and his people will be saved, Prince Arthur does something we've never seen him do before in the entire series. Arthur relaxes. His nervousness visibly leaves him. He starts to tease Merlin and compliment him. Before a battle he's always working on hiding his nervousness. At feasts and in victory Arthur has always been reserved. Even in private we've never seen him truly at ease, but always worrying over something, even if it's nothing more than his dignity. But this is a man who is calmer and less worried than we have ever seen him before. This is a man who has already accepted that he is not getting out of here alive. He has accepted it, and put it behind him. His survival no longer concerns him. For once he can kick back and enjoy himself. And when he brings the goblet to his lips, when he teases Merlin about Arthur never listening to him (even though he just did what Merlin suggested), he is happier than we have ever seen him before. He goes to meet his death in a state of transcendent joy.
And that is enough for the curse. He does not need to die, but to accept his death. In a way this entire episode is a purification ritual for Arthur. It doesn't merely test to see that he is pure of heart, but it purifies him in the testing. It's an old truth that life is so much sweeter after you lose your fear of death, and a very valid one. I'm eager to see what becomes of him now, how much of this experience sinks in and stays with him.
Arthur has also gone from simply trusting and being protective of Merlin to showing confidence in and respect for his abilities. The two boys are still on nothing like a level playing field, but they're getting closer to one.
Two episodes back I said that Arthur had yet to acknowledge his special connection with Merlin in any positive way. That began to change last episode when he helped Merlin's mother and his home village. Much was said by the characters in the story about how Arthur was fighting this battle for Merlin's sake, but Merlin denied it and Arthur refused to say if his interest was general or personal. Again, in this episode Arthur does only one thing solely for Merlin's sake, ordering him to stay behind. Drinking the poison was also to remove the curse, which probably would not have been broken if he had let Merlin die in his place. But it's wise to listen to mystics when they speak plainly, and Anhora plainly says that Arthur did it to save Merlin.
So, there. If the writers are trying to throw in mystical elements, they bungled it a bit. However, they've bungled metaphors before, as we all remember from the opening of the Mordred episode. Still, they get points for trying, and hopefully they'll improve with practice. Or it could be I'm seeing something the writers did not intend to be there. That's happened before. What do y'all think?
I found this picture via a link on the DWF and it's too pretty not to share:
The Prat and the Idiot by ~Draykonis on deviantART
Episodes 1 - 3
Episode 4 Review: Innocence at Camelot
Episode 5: (The Once and Future) Lancelot
Episode 6: (Death Is) A Remedy to Cure All Ills.
Episode 7: Deception for Dummies
Episode 8: Deception for Non-Dummies
Episode 9: What Color is Your Fairy Tale?
Episode 10: The Practical Exam
I dithered more over this analysis than any other essay I've written on lj. The episode uses a lot of disparate elements to form a whole story with a mystical subtext in a way that I have previously only seen done by those on the bleeding edge of modern spirituality. Is the mystical subtext I see really there, or simply a product of my over-read imagination? After going back and forth on the matter for days I can't tell. If the writers intended there to be a mystical subtext, then they did a good job overall but messed up a key scene. However, that's normal for these writers. They also ignored traditional interpretations for a mix of older and modern interpretations. Once again, that's normal for these guys. Besides, it's not like the Arthurian Legends themselves aren't a mishmash to begin with, what with their blend of Dark Age plot, Medieval trappings, and contemporary-for-whichever-writer-is-retelling-it-this-time sensibilities. So, what the hell, I'll throw it out there and y'all can tell me what you think of it.
We start with Arthur, Merlin, and two other men in the deep forest. The cinematography is dreamlike, which we haven't seen before in this series, and it stays that way through much of this episode. They are on a hunting trip, putting food on Camelot's table, ridding the area of dangerous beasts, and letting Arthur have some fun in the woods. They come upon something large, unknown, and possibly dangerous. The hunters surround it while the least experienced member of the party, Merlin, gets the job of beater. The creature turns out to be a unicorn, which Arthur kills over Merlin's protests.
We're all familiar with the traditional interpretation of the unicorn as a Christ-like allegorical creature, an untamable innocent that could only be captured by a virgin. But this was not the original interpretation. Before that the unicorn was seen not as a mythological creature but as a real animal from a far-away land, one of the rarest and most ferocious beasts of the wilderness, and just as welcome in the neighborhood as a wolf or a boar would be -- to wit, not at all. The Classical unicorn was considered to be impossible to capture and extremely difficult to kill, a worthy test for any hunter that would rightfully leave the victor glowing with pride. That seems to be the interpretation of the unicorn which Arthur, Uther, and most of the people at Camelot share. But that's not Gaius' interpretation. Interestingly, he does not offer either the traditional interpretation or the common interpretation previously given to anything unusual in this show, i.e. "it's magic". Gaius throws out something we haven't seen before in this series.
Gaius refers to unicorns as mystical creatures, not magical creatures. This could be a major clue to what is really going on in this episode. Mysticism is not sorcery. While many people bandy the word about as a synonym for anything they don't understand, it actually is a very specific term with a very specific meaning. To understand that meaning we need to take a look inside the human brain.
The human mind spends most of it's time in one of two states (according to a neurologist I heard recently, scientists have pinpointed the two clusters of brain cells that control these states). One of them is analytical, dissective, logical, critical. The other is peaceful, unifying, calm, transcendent. The former is characterized by feelings of tension, the latter is characterized by feelings of joy. The human mind can spend so much time in the analytical state if forgets how to reach the transcendent state. The sense of completion that the latter state brings, the feeling of oneness with the universe, can be lost. That loss causes great pain to some people. Throughout human history various techniques have been developed to regain that sense of transcendence. Among these techniques is mysticism.
While the goal of mysticism is to achieve a certain mental state, it's traditionally thought of as a destination, as reaching God or in the subset of mysticism known as shamanism reaching the land of the Gods. A mystical creature is one you encounter along the way, a spirit animal or spirit guide. Is the unicorn supposed to be a spirit guide in this story? I could find no historical reference to a unicorn being used in that way. It would be a modern interpretation. That said, it's a very appealing modern interpretation, at least to me, and the show has used modern interpretations before. Let's see how well it works.
While in some traditions the spirit animal is meant to be hunted, that doesn't seem to be the case with our unicorn. It's death lets loose a plague of magically-induced famine and drought throughout the land. And here we get our first bit of time distortion in this series, because while it seems that only a day has passed at one point, it takes weeks to eat all the livestock, but that gap contributes to the unusual dreamlike quality of this story.
Special mention has to be given to the set designer . I'd noted in the back of my mind the abundant fresh fruit in all the court scenes since the first episode. In that regard the castle set looks like a Dutch Grand Masters' still life. (I swear I can almost recognize some of the paintings of those tables, but I don't know enough to name them.) I didn't realize that they were setting up for the scarcity in this episode way back then. Good work.
This episode marks a turning point in Merlin's relationship with Gaius. When the show first started, Gaius was all over Merlin about keeping his magic a secret. Last episode he told Merlin to do whatever it took to save their home village. Now he comes upon Merlin trying to use magic to alleviate the drought and praises him for it. At this rate he'll be asking Merlin to magic something before the series is over with.
But nothing alleviates the plague. Arthur is told by Anhora the unicorn keeper that nothing will improve until he has atoned for his deed. He doesn't believe it, and why should he? No one had told him previously that unicorns were off-limits, and the Blame Game is a favorite occupation at court. Then he helps a starving villager and the drought lifts. Arthur begins to wonder. He takes Merlin back to the forest to see if they can find Anhora. Instead Arthur loses Merlin and finds the villager, who taunts Arthur about not being good enough for Daddy.
We learned in Episode 9 that this is Arthur's Achilles heel. He is driven to go to all these lengths out of fear that his father doesn't think much of him. His Daddy issues appear to have been the main motivating force in his life until Merlin shows up (and breaking that cycle is reason all by itself he should thank Merlin profusely). It must be said in his defense, though, that everyone around him save for Merlin have helped foster this attitude. He's been reared from birth to fill his Daddy's shoes, with everyone constantly wondering if he'll be good enough. His Daddy both simultaneously harps on it ("One day you'll be King and you'll understand!) and discourages Arthur from taking an objective look at the job. Back in Episode 3, Arthur's inadvertant slip that he wanted to be a more just King than Uther nearly got Gwen burned at the stake. While we have seen Arthur defy his father on occassion since then, with the occassions becoming bigger and more frequent, he's always careful not do so to Daddy's face.
Someone complained that it wasn't fair to attack Arthur on his hot button issue. Baloney. Arthur's too good a fighter not to do something about a weakness once its brought to his attention, but you have to rub his nose in it first.
Arthur forgets that he's supposed to be trying to lift the curse from his people, loses his temper, and calls down a stonger curse upon his people. The one positive thing that comes out of it is that when Daddy tries to push the same button later, Arthur doesn't back down but finally stands up to Uther to his face.
Meanwhile things are going to Hell for the people of Camelot. There's food lines, theft, fights, curfews, and even those in the castle are reduced to eating vermin. (There's a South Pacific island that divides everything into "food", "not-food", and "things you only eat after a hurricane has wiped the island clean." In this episode Camelot makes it to #3.) Under other circumstances I would have objected, but the earthy humor of the rat stew and bug eating scenes provided a welcome contrast to the grim and/or etheral tone of the rest of the episode. And my family laughed harder over the rat stew than anything we've watched in ages.
While the writers have done an excellent job with all the teen aspects of the show so far, I have a problem with Arthur's appetite. Teenage boys that big and that active eat like horses. It might not have been what he was used to, but he would not have turned down food in this or the previous episode. Hunger would have won out.
Merlin begs Anhora for another chance for Arthur. When Anhora hears that Merlin trusts Arthur with his life, he agrees. Arthur rides out to break the curse "or die trying". While Merlin doesn't like that thought, it seems to have taken root in Arthur's imagination. The idea that the ancient Celts sacrificed their kings in times of want is a powerful literary and spiritual symbol with echoes in the Old Testament and Frazier's Golden Bough, even though there is no solid historical evidence to back it up.
Arthur sets off, as per Anhora's instructions, for the Labyrinth of Gedref. sistermu asked "Why a labyrinth?" Because of all the techniques mysticism uses to reach a transcendant state (meditation, trance, drumming, dance, drugs, et al) the easiest safe technique for the novice is walking a labyrinth. (In practice, the harder the work the surer the result, but since this is a fable the easy version suffices.)
Just as the goal of mysticism is often described as an otherworldly location, so the labyrinth is often believed to lead to another world.(Wiki's got a good article on labyrinths, so I won't say more about the general subject.)
There's an old connection between labyrinths and Arhturian folklore. In Tintagel, Cornwall, the most popular location for the ruins of Camelot, there are two labyrinths carved on the cliff faces of Rocky Valley near Tintagel Castle. According to a source I read several years ago (I think it was Crossing to Avalon but don't quote me) local legend says that there is a gateway to the land of the Fairie nearby. Could it be that the gateway to Fairie was supposed to be through the labyrinth? There's not enough evidence to say, but it's an interesting speculation.
But why Fairie? I've seen anthropologists who study shamanism speculate that in ancient times the Celtic Fairie/Elfland/Avalon might have been a mystical or shamanic desination/state of being. There's some evidence to support this conjecture, but not enough to say for sure. The possibility of using a labyrinth to reach such a place in an Arthurian story is thus not as farfetched as it might seem at first glance.
Here is where the production team drop the ball. If that is what they are doing with this story, how does it tie into The Gates of Avalon? Is that supposed to be a different otherworldly location or the same one? This point was not addressed in this story. Then there's the more basic problem that the Labyrinth of Gedref is not a labyrinth. It's a maze. There's a huge difference from a meditative point of view. A maze has mulitple paths branching off. Every time you come to a branch, you have to analyze your choices. A maze forces your analytical mind front-and-center, and never gives you a chance to switch it off. A labryrinth has one path. There's no choices to make. A labyrinth (in theory) lulls your analytical mind to relax and allows your transcendent mind to come forward. As far as states of mind go, a labyrinth and a maze lead in opposite directions.
So, I guess they had a maze to work with and not a labyrinth. That's no excuse. They could have made the maze look like a labyrinth with a little CGI and some careful editing. Maybe they figured Merlin would catch up with Arthur too quickly? Who knows?
Even then, the way they show us it's a maze is an interesting choice. Just inside the labyrinth maze is a three-way turning. Arthur turns right. He's obviously heard the advice on how to analyze a maze by making every right turn until you run into a dead end. It's the logical path. Merlin picks the Middle Path. That's not the correct logical choice, it's the correct mystical choice. The middle path discovered by a Perfect One avoids both these extremes; it gives vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to peace, to direct acquaintance, to discovery, to nibbana. The Middle Path between two extremes is today most associated with Buddhism, but the concept appears as far back as Ancient Egypt. Some people speculate that the Middle Path is what is alluded to as the road to Elfland in the 13th Century ballad Thomas the Rhymer
‘O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.
‘And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.
‘And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.
Arthur travels through the Whatever of Gedref and comes to an otherwordly shore, only to find that Merlin has beaten him there. Arthur doesn't like that. He told Merlin to stay home, which by my count is the first time this series that he's done something to protect Merlin since Episode 4 that didn't have another possible reason for him doing it, like saving Merlin's village last episode or repaying his debt in the fourth episode. Arthur tries to get Anhora to release Merlin, only to be told that Merlin is part of his test. The test consists of two goblets of liquid. One contains a poison, the other a harmless liquid. The boys have to consume both while each can only drink from one goblet. They will be graded on their answer. Note that Anhora refuses to say how many correct outcomes there are. Is just consumption of the poison enough, or does it matter how it is consumed and by whom?
This is the point where things get really, really interesting. The camera pulls in for larger-than-frame pictures of Merlin and Arthur, but not of Anhora. Arthur states the problem as determining which goble is poisoned so that Arthur can drink it. Merlin objects to Arthur drinking it and states he'll drink it himself while working through various scenarios.
Once Arthur realizes that Merlin will figure out the solution and his people will be saved, Prince Arthur does something we've never seen him do before in the entire series. Arthur relaxes. His nervousness visibly leaves him. He starts to tease Merlin and compliment him. Before a battle he's always working on hiding his nervousness. At feasts and in victory Arthur has always been reserved. Even in private we've never seen him truly at ease, but always worrying over something, even if it's nothing more than his dignity. But this is a man who is calmer and less worried than we have ever seen him before. This is a man who has already accepted that he is not getting out of here alive. He has accepted it, and put it behind him. His survival no longer concerns him. For once he can kick back and enjoy himself. And when he brings the goblet to his lips, when he teases Merlin about Arthur never listening to him (even though he just did what Merlin suggested), he is happier than we have ever seen him before. He goes to meet his death in a state of transcendent joy.
And that is enough for the curse. He does not need to die, but to accept his death. In a way this entire episode is a purification ritual for Arthur. It doesn't merely test to see that he is pure of heart, but it purifies him in the testing. It's an old truth that life is so much sweeter after you lose your fear of death, and a very valid one. I'm eager to see what becomes of him now, how much of this experience sinks in and stays with him.
Arthur has also gone from simply trusting and being protective of Merlin to showing confidence in and respect for his abilities. The two boys are still on nothing like a level playing field, but they're getting closer to one.
Two episodes back I said that Arthur had yet to acknowledge his special connection with Merlin in any positive way. That began to change last episode when he helped Merlin's mother and his home village. Much was said by the characters in the story about how Arthur was fighting this battle for Merlin's sake, but Merlin denied it and Arthur refused to say if his interest was general or personal. Again, in this episode Arthur does only one thing solely for Merlin's sake, ordering him to stay behind. Drinking the poison was also to remove the curse, which probably would not have been broken if he had let Merlin die in his place. But it's wise to listen to mystics when they speak plainly, and Anhora plainly says that Arthur did it to save Merlin.
So, there. If the writers are trying to throw in mystical elements, they bungled it a bit. However, they've bungled metaphors before, as we all remember from the opening of the Mordred episode. Still, they get points for trying, and hopefully they'll improve with practice. Or it could be I'm seeing something the writers did not intend to be there. That's happened before. What do y'all think?
I found this picture via a link on the DWF and it's too pretty not to share:
The Prat and the Idiot by ~Draykonis on deviantART
Episodes 1 - 3
Episode 4 Review: Innocence at Camelot
Episode 5: (The Once and Future) Lancelot
Episode 6: (Death Is) A Remedy to Cure All Ills.
Episode 7: Deception for Dummies
Episode 8: Deception for Non-Dummies
Episode 9: What Color is Your Fairy Tale?
Episode 10: The Practical Exam