Epic Merlin Rewatch: S01E05 His Name Is Lancelot, He Likes To Dance-A-Lot
Had a super busy day today. It was intro day at the university so LOTS of people turned up. I had to prepare and welcome around 100 new postgrad students so my face sort of hurts from smiling welcomingly all day.
Oh, the point of my post...
EPIC MERLIN REWATCH OF MERLIN EPICNESS
Season 1 Episode 5: Lancelot
Has anyone seen Spamalot? I saw it last week. After seeing that, I cannot look at Lancelot in the same way. Its impossible. All I see is this:
Click to viewI couldn't find a good quality video of the Spamalot show (it involves Lancelot ripping his clothes off to reveal sparkly sparkly underwear) so here you get a Merlin!Lancelot vid set to the awesome song from the show.
So basic plot is that Lancelot is awesome, but Lancelot is lower class. Lancelot saves Merlin, and Arthur isn't impressed. Lancelot waves his sword about and Arthur is now impressed. Gwen swoons. Well, actually, Lancelot swoons. The Audience swoons. Lancelot becomes a Knight, Lancelot strips is stripped of his Knighthood. Lancelot saves the day, everyone loves Lancelot.
- So is this like an audition to be a knight? I half expect them to be given pom poms and a very simple chant to do. Surely the guy who first fights Arthur has it much much harder than the guy who’s last on the list since Arthur will be tired by then. What if Arthur wasn't the best knight? Would everyone still pretend that he was?
- Lancelot’s good in a sickening sort of way. I know that I should like him. I do like him. But I also despise him for being so damn nice. Its like he reminds you that you’re not as good a person as him but he does it in a very naive and oblivious way, which makes him even nicer. He’s not rubbing his niceness in at all, but this just makes everything much worse. He’s like that kid at school who is overall wonderful and humble to boot and you just hate him/her. He even genuinely likes Gwen and is instantly smitten, which just goes to show that he has good taste. What all this means is that Santiago Cabrera's Lancelot is actually a really good Lancelot because you want to hate him but you just can’t help but like the guy (or is it the other way around?), which makes the love triangle more interesting (although I’m ALWAYS on Arthur’s side of the A/G/L debate).
- I love how Arthur says “Lance...a-lot?” Yes, Arthur. He lances...a lot.
- Strange strange Arthur/Morgananess is present again. Arthur is looking at Morgana, Morgana is looking at Lancelot, Lancelot is looking at Guinevere, who likes both Merlin and Lancelot and yet we all know she’s going to marry Arthur... I can understand how people shipped and still ship Arthur/Morgana. That is where the show is going at the moment. However, as this season goes on it just sort of fizzles out. The writers must've either grown bored of it, weren't able to shoe horn it in anymore (especially when they decided to go to Arthur/Gwen in season 2), or maybe they just realised that Katie and Bradley don't have enough chemistry to keep it interesting.
- Once again, we see Arthur stand up for what he thinks is right. He argues against Uther and he frees Lancelot. To me, Arthur is already acting like a King, which is impressive when Arthur was a douche in episode 1 and now it feels very natural in his character progression.
- Gwen and Lancelot have a moment. Cue the beautiful ‘future’ theme. She says he’s a wonderful man. He is, Gwen, he is wonderful. But he will also bore you to death. Trust me, you want something a little...blonder.
- Has someone set Buckbeak the griffin on Camelot and its environs? Or is it just an innocent beast, that happens to be magic, and just happens to be roaming the forest of Wales Camelot? Or did I miss something?
- Oh so Arthur only wakes up AFTER Merlin uses magic (he's starting to remind me of Lois Lane in Smallville, its a wonder he hasn't got brain damage yet) and so Lancelot gets all the credit (although, because he's perfect, he is humble and doesn't want to take the credit for something he hasn't done).
- A theme seems to be developing: Merlin gets an idea into his head, bugs Arthur into mentioning it to Uther, Uther opposes it, Arthur argues and fights for what he believes in and shows himself to be a man of honour and we get to see bits of his future kingness. But it ultimately stems from Merlin. Or maybe Merlin just forces Arthur to start to think for himself and to dare to oppose his father.
Best Lines:
Uther: The code bends for no man-
Arthur: Then the code is wrong!
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Merlin (to Gwen): Just for the sake of argument, if you had to- Arthur or Lancelot?