Merlin: 5.13 Commentary
I hadn’t quite intended on commenting on Julian Murphy’s eye-popping commentary on 5:13 because…well I thought it pretty much spoke eloquently for itself. But I reckoned of course without the formidable powers of denial and provocation within the Merlin fandom. And the nagging powers of gatepromise :P So here I am again, dander up once more
Frankly, some of the stuff I’ve read since the finale and the commentary… ayyy, yay yayyy, yay yayyy....
First, the funniest. The Once and Future Queen: OK I’ve been quietly sniggering to myself since arien_elensar and tanoshi_ame in the 5.13 thread said the suggestions might be out there …those desperate references to our old mate Mary Sue as ‘the Once and Future Queen’. I honestly thought it was a joke at first but I’ve now seen for myself in a few places. And it’s just… what??? Apparently Arthur isn’t going to rise again alone to save Albion as in the legends - nope - in the Disney, Terry and June version, Boadicea Barbie is going to pop up alongside him, cleavage to the fore, because we all know he isn’t up to anything at all without her Wise Counsel. She is, after all, her fans claim, ‘the Once and Future Queen’, and the evidence for this is… the fact an episode back in S2 was titled that - the episode in fact, which had Arthur notice her as more than a servant at last, and thus set her on the road to become…yes - the wife of the Once and Future King. Thus… The Once and Future Queen. Geddit? No, actually. It was… a play on words. Morgana could have been The Once and Future Half-Sister but it didn’t quite have the same ring to it did it? Programme titles quite often do that - try to be clever! But at no point - and I mean at no point - in 5 seasons was it ever suggested or even hinted in the palest way that Gwen was a creation of magic, that she was supernatural or immortal or destined to go on beyond death or anything else. She was the maidservant and blacksmith’s daughter who Arthur married and raised to the throne. And that’s it. Nothing more.
Actually I would say that 5.13 made it totally, unequivocally clear how unimportant Gwen was to Arthur’s ultimate destiny beyond Camlann, even without Julian Murphy to confirm it in his commentary. She was given Camelot to look after for as long as she could make it last - she was the guardian of the present and the immediate future, but in no time at all, we all knew, Camelot would be dust.
But Merlin and Arthur - from the point at which Arthur was mortally wounded - they both had other fish to fry. From that point, Arthur belonged to the far future - and to Merlin. Merlin will go on and on and wait for Arthur to rise again - that, we were explicitly told, was their fate. Gwen was left to be queen of Camelot for as long as she could last. With Leon, we can surmise from Julian Murphy’s not at all subtle hints - so we didn’t imagine that either then. :p But, an earthly destiny for Gwen, not a supernatural one… could the show actually have made it much clearer?
The OAFQ fan wank IS truthfully quite funny when its in full messianic flow, though having been on the wrong end of canon myself often enough I do sort of sympathize with the desperate urge to la la la through what we got and just pretend it didn’t happen. But… maybe…accept its just …wishing it could have been, with zero basis in canon?
I totally accept that S5 bit the Arwen fandom in the arse, and that’s a painful experience which Merlin and Arthur fans shared through S3 and the second half of S4. It was a new thing for Arwen fans though and I do understand the urge to pretend it didn't happen. But while it may be a novel feeling to have to accept it, its pretty pointless claiming something is canon when it just …isnt? That’s kind of what AU fanfic is for
Otherwise Julian’s commentary. Like most other fans of the Merlin/Arthur relationship I found it a pretty surreal experience: the emperor finally admitting that he really has been stark bollock naked all the time, despite all assertions to the contrary, and now he doesn’t have to pretend otherwise. Because -yes it was a shock to hear him be so honest, but lets face it it was absolutely bloody obvious to anyone with eyes and an open mind that the show centred on the love between Merlin and Arthur. 5.13 anyone? Even uninvested professional critics could see it (see, for example, the Daily Telegraph review of 5.13). Yet Merthur fans were always told that a slash subtext was all in their (impure, deluded, or even in homophobic circles, perverted) minds.
Now its been confirmed officially, both in an earlier S5 commentary and this one that - no - it really wasn’t. Yet I see fans of the Merlin/Arthur relationship are being urged everywhere - desperately and patronizingly - not to be be so ridiculous.
Because Julian was just sneering at Merlin/Arthur fans. He must have been!
And of course that makes SO much sense. The programme maker uses the whole of his final commentary on his last and most vital episode, solely to mock and mislead a subset of the show’s fans! That’s what we’re meant to believe is it? Because... um… ???? Merthur fans just… drove him over the edge??? Uh huh. With their …their… ? Nope I’ve run out of ideas as to why he’d do that actually. I welcome all believable suggestions.
Which leads to one of the most offensive terms of all Ive seen bandied about in this case with gay (!) abandon - and that was that Julian was ‘queer baiting’ .
Now I don’t know about you, but there are few phrases I read on forums and in discussions that repel me as much as that one. The implication is that the writer of the phrase is simply outraged that these poor, unfortunate gay people would be teased by nasty programme makers with the ludicrous suggestion that their kind of love might be remotely relevant to real mainstream drama.
Right.
The layers of reeking homophobia slathered through that phrase are so obvious and disgusting that it utterly amazes me that anyone uses it openly. But there you go, people do when sneering at slash subtext and seem to imagine its legitimate and somehow makes them seem 'concerned'.
So - NO he was not ‘queer baiting’ because anyone with eyes could see that the powerful, believable, star-crossed love story in ‘Merlin’ was between Merlin and Arthur. And anyone with any knowledge of the industry would be aware that slash/homoerotic undertones aren’t ‘queer baiting’ -they’re feeding into a very active section of the audience hungry for that very subtext- and many of them aren’t even ‘queer’ for that matter. ‘Merlin’, through Bradley and Colin's performances as much as the script to be honest, unusually, brought the subtext as near to the surface as it was possible to go with a UK mainstream family show. And 5.13 came amazingly close to actually openly honouring the relationship as the central love story that kept the show afloat.
As you know I have no admiration for these producers and I’m deeply disappointed with the way they chose to end the story they began, but the courage they showed in that last episode - finally letting loose and allowing the Merlin/Arthur relationship to be what it so very obviously was - and aving the guts to say so in that commentary - well I forgive them…a tiny bit.
It was a joke! But hang on… we’re told, haven’t you any sense of perspective??? The man was joking! Anyone could tell that… how could he possibly have been serious? Because that would suggest the producers always knew about and encouraged an undertone of m/m love and how outrageous would that be?
So… I agree that he was joking. In that he was clearly in a jocular and mischievous mood, teasing Katie about Morgana’s sexually dodgy relationship with Morgause (which would, given Katie’s knowing, though startled, collusion, suggest those shippers weren’t imagining things either). And, as was pointed out constantly and rather anxiously by Katie, Julian was being shockingly and outrageously honest, hinting for example, I thought, at Richard's less than pure mind. P
But although Katie, who’s a bit of a Merthur shipper herself, constantly threw him lifelines to allow him to claw his way out of the pit he was digging for himself with The Outraged, Julian didn’t grasp one of them. He never backed down from what he was hinting at - in fact what he was all but stating.
He never said, ’Actually… I’m just joking guys. This is an episode that centres on the deep friendship of two men. I’ve just been having a bit of a laugh.’
If it was all a joke - wouldn’t he have stopped it before the end? Made it clear what he meant? Its not as if he didn’t know how what he said would be taken, if he didn’t clarify it?
Yet instead, right to the end, with Katie’s rather shocked assistance, he stuck with his message. ALL the way through. This wasn’t, in his words, an episode about the friendship between 2 men; he said very clearly that it was a love story between 2 men. That is a very deliberate and challenging phrase to choose. Julian knows what many people, think of Merlin/Arthur and yet…he chose that exact, incendiary to some, phrase. He didn't call it platonic - and actually Ive been amused to see the confused use of the term 'a platonic love story' while admitting the relationship of Merlin and Arthur was hugely romantic, when what they probably mean is a love story between people who they believe haven't had sex. Romance isn't actually platonic. (Discuss :P) 'The man he loves is dying'. Is that how you normally talk about a friend?
Pure? And this is the one remark of Julian's I’ve seen clung to like a lifebelt of 'platonic friendship' in a hostile ocean - the remark that Merlin and Arthurs bond was ‘purer’ than that between Morgana and Morgause, and yet the context of that - a fresh attempt to wind up Katie about the supposedly pornographic nature of her relationship with her screen sister - is completely ignored. When Julian very clearly WAS joking, suddenly the people who insist it was all a big cruel jape, take him absolutely seriously. Now why would that be? Hmmm... I just cant imagine.
At the end Julian says - I paraphrase - that he’s sorry if he destroyed illusions about the show; Katie says that he actually confirmed suspicions. No backtracking. At all. So - no - he was jocular- but I don’t believe that at heart he was joking. He was being honest in a jokey way, which is a very different thing. The commentary was done before fans saw 5.13 and also saw, independently, a love story. That was what the producers wanted us to see and most certainly what Bradley and Colin played without restraint.
The commentary to me felt like a man saying in effect, ‘at last, I can cut the crap.’ He was admitting to us what many knew anyway - that the show was steeped in homoerotic subtext and the relationship between Merlin and Arthur was by far the most genuinely romantic on the show. Slash isn’t always in the minds of the fans.
No reveal? Having said all of that though I share the general amazement that he claimed the producers actually considered no magic reveal at all (eh????) and only went for it so because they realized that fans would feel cheated if it didn’t happen. Well... full points for insight Julian - I mean the fans didn’t mention wanting it much at all, did they? It’d have been easy to think no one was very bothered. What a load of bollocks! I actually suspect he said that to make us grateful we got a reveal at all- given 5.13 was all about it. I was also left a bit WTF??? by the claim that the producers couldn’t think of another way the show could have ended thanArthurs death (also) without ‘cheating’ the fans. Which if true, suggests they urgently need to find new careers
I do wonder what they’re going to come up with next programme wise, but whatever it is, I doubt they’ll ever land as lucky again as to find a central pairing with chemistry so fantastic that it can rescue them from their many misjudgements. But then I have to concede they were the ones who cast Colin and Bradley and they used the Colin/Bradley chemistry to form the bones of the Merlin/Arthur relationship. And I have also to admit that, though they distorted and hobbled their relationship brutally through the later seasons, in the very end they did honour it and in this commentary and in 5.13 as a whole they did acknowledge what the show was always about. A love story between two men.
I suspect though, that the fact that Colin triumphed at the NTAs and the show didn’t, was a reflection of the continuing resentment of many fans who’d go the extra mile for Colin/the cast, but were still angry as all hell at the producers. Me - I actually voted for Colin AND Merlin purely because of 5.13. Which makes me a sap who forgives at the drop of a hat but… it’d have been nice to see the guys (Bradley, Colin and the knights) up there getting something for the joy they gave us over the years. And yes… even with Capps and Murphy up there with them.
*Dons tin hat and battens down hatches.* :P