The Musketeers: "The Challenge"
Eight episodes in, and there’s finally been an episode that I’m only lukewarm about. That’s not to say it was bad by any means, but parts of it didn’t quite live up to the quality of its predecessors.
The main gist of the story is the competition that arises between Treville’s Musketeers and the Cardinal’s Red Guards after the delivery of a dangerous prisoner from one group to the other goes terribly wrong. This leads to King Louis (that little shit-stirrer) seizing the opportunity to declare a competition between champions from each group.
Okay, nice premise. Problem is, I’m never that interested in fight scenes. I know, it’s weird. Stuntmen and actors put so much work into learning how to handle their weapons and deliver an authentic looking skirmish, and I just don’t care all that much. If an action sequence is to be interesting, it needs to say something about the characters involved (see The Lord of the Rings, which gets it so, so right), and though The Musketeers has a few nice little details (that Aramis is the best shot, that Porthos loves to fight but hates to kill, that D’artagnan really needs to repeat the “head before heart” mantra a few million times), for the most part I was just watching men yelling and thrashing around.
Which again, might be exactly your cup of tea, but it just carried on a bit too long for my tastes. Furthermore, there were a lot of subplots threaded throughout this episode, and some of them were stretched rather thin as a result. I mean, can we all agree that Zoe Tapper was completely wasted? And that there wasn’t enough focus on the Athos/Milady/D’artagnan scenes? And that once again Queen Anne was absent and that really sucks?
So the boys go out looking for the money to pay for the entry fee, mainly by tracking down a suitable patroness. For D’artagnan the competition is personal since LeBarge (wasn’t that the name of a Monkey Island pirate?) has burnt down his farm - something that probably would have had more resonance had we actually seen the farm, seen it getting burnt down, or simply known that D’artagnan came from a farming village in the first place. Constance does her best to raise the money for him, but D’artagnan ends up accepting the fee from Milady, who pops by unexpectedly.
So the complex love dodecahedron is being to crank into gear, supplemented by Constance’s husband finding out that she’s having an affair with D’artagnan, and Athos taking D’artagnan under his wing in such a way that means shit will well and truly hit the fan when he realizes that Milady has designs on him as well. Worth pondering is what exactly Milady has in store for the two of them: not only did she approach Athos for no other reason but to (presumably) remind him of her existence, but she ensured D’artagnan was able to compete in the tournament. I’m sure her plan is to pit them against each other at some point, and I wonder if the forget-me-not medallion she gave D’artagnan was meant to be seen by Athos in an attempt to catch him off-guard.
If so, I wonder what the writers have in store for it. It was dwelt on for too long to simply be forgotten about, yet the last I saw it was in the hands of Constance’s husband. Did he give it to the Cardinal? And...that’s how he deduced that she’d given the entrance fee to D’artagnan? All this could have been spelt out a little clearer.
Speaking of Bonacieux, I do feel a little sorry for him, even though the fandom seems eager to watch him die. But the fact is the guy is married. Were we expecting him to just give his blessing for an extramarital affair? That said, I rolled my eyes when he started telling Constance: “was I ever cruel to you, did I beat you?” It’s just another way of saying: “I uphold the basic standards of common human decency, why aren’t you happy?” So I’m not sure what the show has in store for him, or whether he’s still of any use to the Cardinal now that D’artagnan has moved out of their house.
Obviously the Break His Heart to Save Him breakup was suitably traumatic for all involved, though played surprisingly straight. I only say that because I’m so use to this show giving familiar storylines little twists and tweaks, yet here everything happened rather predictably. Constance emotionally tells D’artagnan that she doesn’t love him, and D’artagnan falls for it. The only thing about this particular storyline that caught me off-guard was the fact that D’artagnan refused Milady’s offer of a ride (though poor Constance thinks he took it).
And elsewhere, in a completely unrelated train of events, Porthos goes in search of funding from a young widow played by Zoe Tapper and is given a surprising offer to accompany her around Europe. In the quickest seduction of all time (Aramis would be proud) Porthos finds himself in a position to leave the Musketeers, only for Alice to be shocked by the violence in the tournament and Porthos to realize he can’t leave his regiment. It’s not that it wasn’t cute, just that it was all a bit pointless.
And oddly enough, Porthos is never taken to task for lying to a widow about his non-existent relationship to her husband and making off with an expensive snuffer under false pretences. Wouldn’t this have been a more fun subplot if Porthos went to great lengths to deceive her, only for her to tell him that she’d known what he was up to the whole time and was just stringing him along because of how amused she was by him? It would have been just as sweet, and not hinged on the question of whether or not Porthos would take her up on her offer. I mean c’mon, it’s obvious he’s not going anywhere!
Basically, this episode was made up of a few golden scenes strewn throughout a ho-hum story. The best moments included Treville realizing that the Musketeers would be up against LeBarge and so volunteering for the fight himself, Athos recognising himself in D’artagnan and taking him under his wing, Athos's and Milady's confrontation (regardless of what Milady thinks, I believe Athos had the upper hand), and King Louis being assertive for a change and admitting D’artagnan into the Musketeers (after declaring that he’s keeping all the prize money for himself, obviously).
LeBarge was a pretty bland villain (though I suppose he only needed to be a physical threat to the Musketeers) and I still feel that D’artagnan’s role should have been more clearly defined so that we could really feel the difference between what his position was before officially joining the Musketeers and what it is now that he is a Musketeers - but the looks on everyone’s faces when he was knighted were priceless.
Next week: I’M PRETTY SURE THAT PREVIEW WAS WORTH THE ENTIRETY OF THIS EPISODE. If I assume correctly, the Musketeers are out somewhere with Queen Anne, only to get ambushed, forcing them to take sanctuary in a nearby convent, where they call upon the nuns to help them defend the queen against attackers. This is going to be the best episode ever. And I’m going to spend the entire thing angry that a similar plot never occurred on Merlin.