Loathing the Lady: A Review of Merlin 2.05 & 2.06 “The Beauty and the Beast”
Arthur (not dead, only sleeping-and yes, I enjoyed the reference very much). It was great to see Arthur not only having something to do, but acting admirably and consistently so toward his future subjects. He even drinks the potion not to regain his position as heir or even rescue his father, but because “It’s the only way to save Camelot.”
Poor communication kills. The more noble Arthur also led us to a better use of the Arthur-Merlin relationship, which has foundered this season-the writers have pointed out that their current dynamic untenable, but have shied away from further development, apparently because they don’t want to let Arthur in on Merlin’s secret and don’t know what else to do. But this episode struck an interesting middle road. It showed Arthur and Merlin’s affection-Arthur rushing to protect Merlin at the beginning and trusting Merlin with his life near the end, and Merlin spending the intervening minutes (as usual) trying to protect Arthur’s future reign and recognizing Uther’s affection for his son. At the same time communication between Arthur & Merlin is getting worse and worse.
Merlin tries twice to convince Arthur that Catrina is a troll, and fails both times. Surprisingly, both failures rest on Arthur's positive traits rather than his arrogance. In 2.05, Arthur is too noble to believe ill of a woman he doesn't like, too empathetic (due to his own feelings for Gwen) to disrupt his father's happiness, and too fond of Merlin to believe his words come from anything but protectiveness (Arthur's own tendency). The second time Arthur is too distracted by his concern for Merlin to listen.
But almost every time Merlin and Arthur share lines in this two-parter they misunderstand each other. Arthur misinterprets Merlin's spying on Catrina, and mistakenly believes Merlin has been hiding under his bed for days. Merlin omits vital components of the potion plot, and ends the episode by misinterpreting Arthur's back-slap for a hug. (Significantly, it's not only verbal communication that goes awry between them.) A very tense moment ensues.
There are two views of this event-that it's a happy slashy moment all about Arthur's uptightness, and that's it's a homophobic slap in the face for viewers like me who aren't straight. (Guess which column I'm in.) Either way, it ends the episode with distance, physical & emotional, between the two men.
That Merlin cleans Arthur's room during the plotting scene-another example of the writers emphasizing class in series 2 after willfully ignoring it for large sections of series 1-also reinforces the distance between them, both in terms of position and by visually separating them. So despite signs of affection, the episodes point out how far Merlin & Arthur have to go as a team.
The fall woman. But the real focus of this episode is Arthur’s relationship with Uther, and Catrina’s plot function is to highlight the pre-existing tensions in it. As we know from other episodes Arthur and his father genuinely disagree over how to rule; the troll plot neatly displaces the tension between them onto the enchantment of an evil woman. (An absolutely hilarious and brilliantly-acted evil woman, but an evil woman nonetheless.)
It's notable that when Uther tries to apologize to Arthur at the end, Arthur won't let him, and instead purposely misinterprets his words to further humiliate his father. This is largely for comic effect (the episode's priority), and evidence of Arthur's growing confidance vis-a-vis Uther. I also see it as a sign that Arthur hasn't forgiven his father, and that the rift between them is widening. I hope this is a set-up for not only the Morgause episode (2.08), which looks like it might again give a woman the blame for the problems between father and son, but also the witchfinder one next week (2.07).
The wily wizard. Which brings us to the notable uselessness of Merlin’s magic this week. The two most important things Merlin did in 2.06 were swap potions and deliver the antidote to Arthur-neither of which required magic. Everything else he did by spell-such as locking Catrina in the room with the rest of the royal family and pulling the rug out from under her-he could have easily done the old-fashioned way.
Without magic, we got to see Merlin taking more initiative-he's the one who finds the reveal spell, comes up with the plan to switch potions, and hits the books to break Uther's enchantment before Gaius can even suggest it. (I like the way Merlin is outstripping Gaius as a research-hound this season, even though I find it strange that Anthony Stewart Head never breaks out the magical books.)
In other words, this is the first time we've seen Merlin's future as as wise and wily advisor foreshadowed, which is delightful. Even with the Dragon, Merlin for once is the one to focus on the bigger destiny-sized picture.
Delighting the Dragon. What I love about this scene is that for once the Dragon’s motivation makes sense; he honestly believes that Uther can’t feel true remorse and that what he offers won’t help, so Uther will remain happily married to a troll. Instead his assistance is merely an opportunity to remind Merlin of his promise to free him.
And speaking of freedom… Why doesn’t Morgana get more opportunities for comedy? The looks on her face at the coronation were marvelous-as was the contrast between her and Gwen. Though the two women appear to be emotionally in sync during the scene-equally appalled at Arthur’s displacement, and at the discourtesy that erupts during the ceremony- Gwen is obviously not as free to show her emotion. (She also seems less surprised to see Uther acting dumb and disrespecting one of his oldest servants.)
When Morgana, as a mark of her privilege and family position, follows the distraught Catrina and Uther, I thought her magic was finally going to come into play-either in an actual flare-up that Arthur would credit to the troll or metaphorically. Instead, we got comic!Morgana (which I could stand to see more of), and more Arthur/Morgana sibling relationship (increasingly more grounded in their similarities-as it was in 2.04, when they were united by their shared concern for Gwen-than in interaction).
But even though Morgana got only five lines in the entire episode, they all affirmed her delicate white femininity. She worries about Catrina, asks somebody else to help her, and plays back-up as Arthur tries to convince Uther that his wife is a troll.
Gwen gets lines! Obviously Gwen, like me, goes for the good-future-ruler!Arthur. It’s interesting that she seems most drawn to Arthur when he treats other people well (as opposed to herself-which Arthur, um, doesn’t do all that often; it remains Lancelot’s calling card). Her courage has clearly grown along with their familiarity; she doesn’t hesitate to contradict Arthur when he seems to reconsider his opposition to his father. In Gwen, Arthur is finding as sure an ally against his father as he’ll ever need.
Much as I loved the brief glimpses of Gwen we got this episode, I kept asking myself, Why wasn't Gwen the one to swap the potions? As a maid, and as not-Merlin-with-the-shifty-look, she would have had a better cover if discovered. She's clearly worried about Merlin (hooray! Merlin-Gwen friendship returns!), and Gaius could easily have brought her into the plot. But that would have given Gwen something to do besides validate Arthur, and I think the writer's handbook forbids that on page 42.
Personally, I miss the OT4 working together-and even if the writers want to further isolate Morgana (boo hiss), it would still make sense plot-wise to have Gwen, Merlin, and Arthur working together as a proto-team.
Missed opportunities. The theme of this episode was being yourself, as both Catrina’s and Arthur’s lines (and even the wedding vows) made explicit. And in troll!Catrina, who must adopt a gratingly false persona to pursue her goals, there was a potent symbol of the dangers of lying.
But this is also the central conflict of all four main characters. Both Merlin and Morgana have to hide their magic; Arthur struggles to balance his better instincts with his desire for his father's approval; Gwen must conceal her feelings for Arthur. Considering that Part 1 was almost entirely filler, it's astonishing that the script never picked up on any of these conflicts beyond Arthur's. (Angel Coulby did manage to underline her character's conflict with one simple gesture-the speed with which Gwen drops into subservient posture when Leon interrupts her conversation with Arthur-but that's not the script.)
Leaving out the Merlin and Morgana parallels is particularly mystifying, since the hidden magic theme is central to the show. It wouldn't have taken much more than a line to develop Morgana's hint of sympathy for troll!Catrina in the reveal scene into a full-on parallel. Being revealed as a magical creature in front of Uther is probably Morgana's worst nightmare.
Morgana, like Catrina, can't yet be herself, and may even still be struggling with disgust for who she is, which would add heft to her troll reaction. (In other words, there was a way to give the reveal scene a psychological dimension for Morgana that wouldn't at all have interfered with its plot and even humor functions.)
Not bringing up the obvious parallels with either Merlin or Morgana (and in fact downplaying Merlin's magic in favor of his intelligence) has the unfortunate effect of intensifying the link between magical threats and ugliness. This is particularly troubling because attractive on this show has often meant able-bodied. Real!Catrina, our first non-evil disabled character, never appeared on stage, and her disability was only a plot point to signal troll!Catrina's duplicity. (Please someone give me a fic about her.)
Motivation, or lack thereof. Despite a lack of moral coherence, Merlin generally does provide its villains with understandable personal motivations and other signs of their humanity. But not in these episodes. I was disappointed that as soon as Gaius and Merlin knew what Catrina was, they knew why she was acting as she was; her motivation was a species-wide (one might say racial) greed for money and power. (It also doesn't make sense that someone whose greatest joy comes from horse dung needs to rule a kingdom to get it, but...never mind.)
Up to that point I thought Catrina might have a connection to human!Catrina's family or Jonas a real grudge against uther (making the plan for vengeance a sign of Catrina's affection for him). But no. Making him also not human seemed a particularly cheap trick. (But like other Merlin villains-notably Sophia and her father, the other femme fatale & accomplice set-Catrina and Jonas did seem to have real affection for each other.)
Ceremonies, Camelot-style. There is some really hilarious coded religious imagery in both the wedding and coronation scenes, as the show struggles to balance their no-we’re- not-Christian-really-we’re-not sensibility with utterly Christian assumptions and its usual penchant for anachronisms. I’m just going to point out that erasing Christianity while simultaneously continuing its tropes only normalizes Christian experience.
As the writers and much of the audience know, the real Geoffrey of Monmouth was a bishop, and the Merlin character with his name took on the roles a contemporary audience would expect of a churchman-marrying Uther & Catrina, crowning Catrina.
The irony here, of course, is that while medieval coronations were deeply Christian ceremonies (albeit based on a pagan Irish idea of sacred kingship that Christian bishops had eagerly embraced), no churchman anywhere near Merlin’s supposed setting would have even attended a wedding, never mind officiated at one. Marriage, which wasn’t a sacrament until very late in the Middle Ages, was utterly secular, and the Church forbade clergy from attending weddings. (On the anachronism avoided front, they didn’t make the usual error of setting the wedding in a church.)
The vows Uther and Catrina exchanged, however, in which they promise not to change who the other is, were really quite sweet. Sadly, they were undercut by the fact that as soon as she married Uther, the audience knew Catrina was toast. It might as well been a funeral announcement.
Another episode, another evil woman… The misogyny in this double episode is so obvious that it needs no commentary-troll!Catrina practically defines traditional ideas of monstrous femininity. (We even had joke about how fat her hips were to underline the point.)
But the fact that Morgana & Gwen were all but absent from the two-parter, especially the first half, really emphasizes the association of women with evil, because there's no counter-balance. And when our lovely ladies finally do speak in part two they are always subordinate to and supportive of the men around them. I'll also point out that troll!Catrina is the first woman we've seen who had a man under her command (with the possible exception of Nimuë and Tristan, who didn't so much take orders). Women in charge are not only rare in the Merlin-verse, but evil.
And just in case you missed the misogyny theme, troll!Catrina insults Geoffrey by calling him an "old crone." Because there's nothing as rude as comparing a man to a woman.
When does Morgana get to blow out a candle? On the plus side, this episode was full of shots that seemed intended as gifts to vidders. The guards pointing in a certain direction, Merlin touching his tongue, Arthur blowing out the candle (really, all we need is for Morgana to do this now and we’ve got a full set). I look forward to seeing a number of these shots re-purposed…
P.S. The next episode looks excellent! By why, when the press release suggests she’ll have a prominent role, is there only one background shot of Morgana in the preview?