Camelot review: season one (and only)
CAMELOT
This post is full of personal opinions and angry/hopeful/silly ramblings about the series Camelot from Starz. There are also a lot of spoilers too.
The arthurian legends
Camelot is very very good
Camelot is a tv show about arthurian legends and it's something new (because surely Merlin is not about arthurian legends). Watching Camelot you can feel the arthurian legends and not just a bunch of arthurian names in a nice castle.
We have a lot of legend in Camelot. We have the story of Arthur as Kay brother that is one of my favourite and we have less known characters as Gawain, Lot, Brastias and Ulfius. They also mantain the role they had in the legends: Ulfius and Brastias are the first knights with Arthur, Kay is Arthur's half brother and his seneschal, Lot is Arthur's enemy and married to Arthur's half sister, Gawain is Arthur's best knight and a women's protector.
I always liked some of the changing/adaptations they did with Excalibur and the sword.
Camelot is very very bad
I don't have a lot of critics here because my main critic is that the authors always need to "change" arthurian legends when they just could adapt them for a modern public and use all the materials the legends have.
My second (and then it's over) critic is the absence of a treath. Arthur, in the legends, is the king who takes the crown, fights against all those rebellious kings and the against the saxons. He is a warrior king.
In this series the only enemy is Morgan (and Lot in the first two episodes) and some polite and gentle bandits who don't even attempt to robe/kidnap/kill/rape two rich ladies (remember Guinevere and Brigit when they arrived at Camelot?).
Arthur has no enemies but Morgan. The reign is quite peaceful, there are no Saxons or vengeful kings. Arthur doesn't have the necessity to unify a divided kingdom to face an impossible problem (Saxons invasions).
I think this is one of the worst thing of the tv show. In Camelot Arthur just seems one of the other petty kings.
I'd like to add also the absence of main arthurian characters as Morgause and Bedivere but I know Bedivere is never used in media and Morgause is always substitued by Morgan.
The characters
Camelot is very very good
I know I already talked about some positive aspects of Camelot's characters but there is more.
There are some characters that are really interesting. We have Morgan who is a mysterious and complex character with a wonderfully talendet actress. She is just like the Morgan I've always imagined, broken, tormented, angry, manipulative but not omniscient or unnaturally strong. She is a realistic woman with a lot of power but also a lot of issues. I really loved her character because she is the enemy you cannot hate.
Igraine is another splendid character which is often ignored in the legends. Same for Merlin. It was a new kind of Merlin that I didn't dislike at all because I was a bit tired of all that omniscient and powerful Merlins of the legends (also if those Merlins are lovely because I love to hate them).
There is a lot of character development for Igraine, Merlin and Morgan and we slowly discovered their secrets in the first season.
Leontes was another well played and written character because he was a Christian in a world that was still divided by religions and his Faith was always under pressure and doubts.
Camelot is very very bad
Camelot is very bad. I mean, there are a lot of wonderful characters that had not enough screens and a lot of bad characters that had too much screen.
Brastias is a wonderful character. Every group of men (brothers/bromance yay) need a character like him but he was ignored until the 7th episode. I mean, he was always absent and quiet and then, suddenly, we find out he is like that (with a good heart, women-lover, who loves to joke and have fun): it was like the authors decided to change his character in the middle of the season.
It was the same for Kay. He was determined at the beginning of the season and during the series he becomes quiet and absent just to return in the last two episodes to shout at Arthur for messing up with Leontes. And we saw nothing of his pain and grievance for his parents.
Gawain was a character with a lot of potential and I can't complain too much because I think they used him well and we would have find out a lot more about him in a second season.
Vivian instead is the most underused character ever along with Ulfius.
We don't know why Vivian was at Pendragon castle exactly, we don't know why she was so devoted to Morgan, we don't know where she came from, we don't know what she wanted. They gave us a glimpse of her character when she freed Igraine but that's it. She was like a ghost, a very interesting ghost who deserved a lot more screen.
Ulfius was ridicolous. I mean, he was one of the knights and we always could see him in the background discussing with Merlin and Brastis but he talked only once, in the 8th episode. His role was so ridicolous that in the 7th episode the other knights tried to wake him up to fight but he just kept sleeping during the all episode. And then he randomly died.
Now we can talk about the characters who had too much scenes. Morgan and the nun had a lot of scenes but I think they deserved it (maybe not so many but a lot) because their characters actually were doing something.
Arthur and Guinevere had a lot of scenes and they did nothing.
The series told us that Guinevere loved Arthur and that they suffered for they love and they slept together. But they didn't need to use all that scenes to tell us these things. We knew all of them after the third episode!
I think they were both badly written, especially Guinevere. Tamsin is a good actress and I liked how she played the character at the end but Guinevere was always crying or fucking.
I didn't like Jamie Campbell instead. In the last episodes, while he was shouting and torturing, he was ridicolous. He actually made me laugh alound in some scenes. His character was rude, cruel, stupid. I don't know why the authors decided to write him like that but the only thing that makes me feel better is the idea that they decided to write this Arthur to make us sympathize with future!Mordred. Maybe?
The story and the episodes
There were a lot of USELESS episodes and scenes.
Along with the absence of a real important treath (Saxons) I think this was the main problem.
In the 1st episode they needed to show all the characters and that was perfectly fine. In the 2nd episode happened a lot, Lot died, Arthur lost his family and he became king.
The 3rd episode was absurd and useless. They could have used some scenes of it and put it into the 4th episode that had some more plot than the 3rd one.
The 5th episode was interesting also if a bit plotless.
The 6th episode... well, they could have just deleted it all. It was plotless, useless, boring. It didn't happen anything.
The 7th episode was a bit plotless but at least we had more scenes with the secondary characters.
Finally in the 8th episode it happens something but still there is no reason for it because the only thing Morgan accomplishes is... sleeping with Merlin? WTF? But at least we found out more about her, Merlin and Igrain's characters.
The last two episodes was random and ridicolous. They could have united the episodes and delete a lot of scenes. For example I think the Guinevere/Leontes/Arthur scenes were useful and also the final battle but all that part with the knights who abandon Arthur, alone!Arhur fighting and the return of his knights were useless. Why didn't the knights stayed with him in the first place? Why didn't Arthur go with them? We'll never know.
Personally I think they could have made 6 episodes, and not 10. Some scenes and episodes were just filler and for an adult tv show I would have liked more cliffhangers and more plot.
Magic and love: very good and very bad
Magic in Camelot is wonderful. Magic that comes from nature and that really can hurt the others and the magician is very interesting. Complicated magic without sci-fi effects and with a lot of cost. And there is a lot of mistery about it because it seems a lot as if some kinds of magic are too powerful and someone (the wolf!) has to sell them to you. But what was the price? We'll never know. The magic/religion debates was interesting too mostly because, as in Thomas Malory, there is not real separation between the two and so it was perfectly normal that Morgan learnt magic in a nunnery.
The love was very very bad. That thing between Arthur and Guinevere was not love, it was lust. Or a very bad acted love at first sight. It was a teen drama, high school love with a lot of emo and useless angst. I didn't find it heartbreaking or interesting.
The only heartbreaking thing was Leontes and his pain when he found out about it. All the rest was cheesy and boring.
Igraine and Merlin love instead was a lot better, mostly because there was a very interesting reason for Merlin's necessity to avoid Igraine and thei feelings.
I am sorry, I am a slash fan but now I will talk as a tv show fan not a slash fan. I think they should have made Gawain in love with Kay. Or Arthur.
I mean: Gawain goes against everything he believed him because Kay (and then Arthur) asked him. I cannot believe it was just because Kay promised him to teach him how to read (because if this really was an important motivation they at least would have showed us a scene of the two of them reading together... if it was such a fundamental reason for Gawain's decision). I think that a gay Gawain in love with a straight character (as Arthur or Kay) would have been very interesting and heartbreaking, both for the character himself, for the dinamics of the group and all the useful angst.
And it would have been new. I mean, we watched bilions of love triangles with Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot(or in this case: Leontes) but we never watched an arthurian movie with a gay character. (but I read some books XD)
Why they should have made a second season
I still think they should have made a second season and not cancelled it because there were a lot of mysteries we still didn't find out: something about Vivian, a lot about Gawain, the wolf mistery, what really happened and why it happened at the nunnery.
I think they should have made less episodes in the first season and a started with the second season's plot and a big cliffhanger (for example they could have ended the first season with Mordred's murder and the cliffhanger would have been: It's a miracle, Mordred is still alive, he didn't drown and OMG, Morgan knew it!).
I would have loved to watch a second season because there is a lot about arthurian legends they missed and, well, finally Morgan's conceived Mordred.
But I wouldn't have liked another season of desperate angst emo love between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.
This post is full of personal opinions and angry/hopeful/silly ramblings about the series Camelot from Starz. There are also a lot of spoilers too.
The arthurian legends
Camelot is very very good
Camelot is a tv show about arthurian legends and it's something new (because surely Merlin is not about arthurian legends). Watching Camelot you can feel the arthurian legends and not just a bunch of arthurian names in a nice castle.
We have a lot of legend in Camelot. We have the story of Arthur as Kay brother that is one of my favourite and we have less known characters as Gawain, Lot, Brastias and Ulfius. They also mantain the role they had in the legends: Ulfius and Brastias are the first knights with Arthur, Kay is Arthur's half brother and his seneschal, Lot is Arthur's enemy and married to Arthur's half sister, Gawain is Arthur's best knight and a women's protector.
I always liked some of the changing/adaptations they did with Excalibur and the sword.
Camelot is very very bad
I don't have a lot of critics here because my main critic is that the authors always need to "change" arthurian legends when they just could adapt them for a modern public and use all the materials the legends have.
My second (and then it's over) critic is the absence of a treath. Arthur, in the legends, is the king who takes the crown, fights against all those rebellious kings and the against the saxons. He is a warrior king.
In this series the only enemy is Morgan (and Lot in the first two episodes) and some polite and gentle bandits who don't even attempt to robe/kidnap/kill/rape two rich ladies (remember Guinevere and Brigit when they arrived at Camelot?).
Arthur has no enemies but Morgan. The reign is quite peaceful, there are no Saxons or vengeful kings. Arthur doesn't have the necessity to unify a divided kingdom to face an impossible problem (Saxons invasions).
I think this is one of the worst thing of the tv show. In Camelot Arthur just seems one of the other petty kings.
I'd like to add also the absence of main arthurian characters as Morgause and Bedivere but I know Bedivere is never used in media and Morgause is always substitued by Morgan.
The characters
Camelot is very very good
I know I already talked about some positive aspects of Camelot's characters but there is more.
There are some characters that are really interesting. We have Morgan who is a mysterious and complex character with a wonderfully talendet actress. She is just like the Morgan I've always imagined, broken, tormented, angry, manipulative but not omniscient or unnaturally strong. She is a realistic woman with a lot of power but also a lot of issues. I really loved her character because she is the enemy you cannot hate.
Igraine is another splendid character which is often ignored in the legends. Same for Merlin. It was a new kind of Merlin that I didn't dislike at all because I was a bit tired of all that omniscient and powerful Merlins of the legends (also if those Merlins are lovely because I love to hate them).
There is a lot of character development for Igraine, Merlin and Morgan and we slowly discovered their secrets in the first season.
Leontes was another well played and written character because he was a Christian in a world that was still divided by religions and his Faith was always under pressure and doubts.
Camelot is very very bad
Camelot is very bad. I mean, there are a lot of wonderful characters that had not enough screens and a lot of bad characters that had too much screen.
Brastias is a wonderful character. Every group of men (brothers/bromance yay) need a character like him but he was ignored until the 7th episode. I mean, he was always absent and quiet and then, suddenly, we find out he is like that (with a good heart, women-lover, who loves to joke and have fun): it was like the authors decided to change his character in the middle of the season.
It was the same for Kay. He was determined at the beginning of the season and during the series he becomes quiet and absent just to return in the last two episodes to shout at Arthur for messing up with Leontes. And we saw nothing of his pain and grievance for his parents.
Gawain was a character with a lot of potential and I can't complain too much because I think they used him well and we would have find out a lot more about him in a second season.
Vivian instead is the most underused character ever along with Ulfius.
We don't know why Vivian was at Pendragon castle exactly, we don't know why she was so devoted to Morgan, we don't know where she came from, we don't know what she wanted. They gave us a glimpse of her character when she freed Igraine but that's it. She was like a ghost, a very interesting ghost who deserved a lot more screen.
Ulfius was ridicolous. I mean, he was one of the knights and we always could see him in the background discussing with Merlin and Brastis but he talked only once, in the 8th episode. His role was so ridicolous that in the 7th episode the other knights tried to wake him up to fight but he just kept sleeping during the all episode. And then he randomly died.
Now we can talk about the characters who had too much scenes. Morgan and the nun had a lot of scenes but I think they deserved it (maybe not so many but a lot) because their characters actually were doing something.
Arthur and Guinevere had a lot of scenes and they did nothing.
The series told us that Guinevere loved Arthur and that they suffered for they love and they slept together. But they didn't need to use all that scenes to tell us these things. We knew all of them after the third episode!
I think they were both badly written, especially Guinevere. Tamsin is a good actress and I liked how she played the character at the end but Guinevere was always crying or fucking.
I didn't like Jamie Campbell instead. In the last episodes, while he was shouting and torturing, he was ridicolous. He actually made me laugh alound in some scenes. His character was rude, cruel, stupid. I don't know why the authors decided to write him like that but the only thing that makes me feel better is the idea that they decided to write this Arthur to make us sympathize with future!Mordred. Maybe?
The story and the episodes
There were a lot of USELESS episodes and scenes.
Along with the absence of a real important treath (Saxons) I think this was the main problem.
In the 1st episode they needed to show all the characters and that was perfectly fine. In the 2nd episode happened a lot, Lot died, Arthur lost his family and he became king.
The 3rd episode was absurd and useless. They could have used some scenes of it and put it into the 4th episode that had some more plot than the 3rd one.
The 5th episode was interesting also if a bit plotless.
The 6th episode... well, they could have just deleted it all. It was plotless, useless, boring. It didn't happen anything.
The 7th episode was a bit plotless but at least we had more scenes with the secondary characters.
Finally in the 8th episode it happens something but still there is no reason for it because the only thing Morgan accomplishes is... sleeping with Merlin? WTF? But at least we found out more about her, Merlin and Igrain's characters.
The last two episodes was random and ridicolous. They could have united the episodes and delete a lot of scenes. For example I think the Guinevere/Leontes/Arthur scenes were useful and also the final battle but all that part with the knights who abandon Arthur, alone!Arhur fighting and the return of his knights were useless. Why didn't the knights stayed with him in the first place? Why didn't Arthur go with them? We'll never know.
Personally I think they could have made 6 episodes, and not 10. Some scenes and episodes were just filler and for an adult tv show I would have liked more cliffhangers and more plot.
Magic and love: very good and very bad
Magic in Camelot is wonderful. Magic that comes from nature and that really can hurt the others and the magician is very interesting. Complicated magic without sci-fi effects and with a lot of cost. And there is a lot of mistery about it because it seems a lot as if some kinds of magic are too powerful and someone (the wolf!) has to sell them to you. But what was the price? We'll never know. The magic/religion debates was interesting too mostly because, as in Thomas Malory, there is not real separation between the two and so it was perfectly normal that Morgan learnt magic in a nunnery.
The love was very very bad. That thing between Arthur and Guinevere was not love, it was lust. Or a very bad acted love at first sight. It was a teen drama, high school love with a lot of emo and useless angst. I didn't find it heartbreaking or interesting.
The only heartbreaking thing was Leontes and his pain when he found out about it. All the rest was cheesy and boring.
Igraine and Merlin love instead was a lot better, mostly because there was a very interesting reason for Merlin's necessity to avoid Igraine and thei feelings.
I am sorry, I am a slash fan but now I will talk as a tv show fan not a slash fan. I think they should have made Gawain in love with Kay. Or Arthur.
I mean: Gawain goes against everything he believed him because Kay (and then Arthur) asked him. I cannot believe it was just because Kay promised him to teach him how to read (because if this really was an important motivation they at least would have showed us a scene of the two of them reading together... if it was such a fundamental reason for Gawain's decision). I think that a gay Gawain in love with a straight character (as Arthur or Kay) would have been very interesting and heartbreaking, both for the character himself, for the dinamics of the group and all the useful angst.
And it would have been new. I mean, we watched bilions of love triangles with Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot(or in this case: Leontes) but we never watched an arthurian movie with a gay character. (but I read some books XD)
Why they should have made a second season
I still think they should have made a second season and not cancelled it because there were a lot of mysteries we still didn't find out: something about Vivian, a lot about Gawain, the wolf mistery, what really happened and why it happened at the nunnery.
I think they should have made less episodes in the first season and a started with the second season's plot and a big cliffhanger (for example they could have ended the first season with Mordred's murder and the cliffhanger would have been: It's a miracle, Mordred is still alive, he didn't drown and OMG, Morgan knew it!).
I would have loved to watch a second season because there is a lot about arthurian legends they missed and, well, finally Morgan's conceived Mordred.
But I wouldn't have liked another season of desperate angst emo love between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.