Reign

Okay, fine, Reign, FINE, I will finish Season 2 before the next season starts. It besmirches Catherine, but we all know that even besmirched she’s the best thing on this show by a factor of ten. And why not? In these two episodes alone Kenna almost married the general who then got caught and blackmailed into treason by Conde and then kidnapped the Queen and then got caught by Francis and turned AGAIN and then got hanged while Kenna and Bash made up but only because Kenna was PREGNANT whoops, which Bash’s pagan woods girlfriend knew all along, but didn’t take seriously as a threat to their relationship because she’s a very secure woman and was already using black magic to bind Bash to her anyway. Reminder: this is a single subplot. How does Catherine feel about all this? Sublime. Fuckin’ dark witches try to imitate her and can BARELY get there. Little Delphine and her bonding spell WISH. Sure, wine across your chest as you bang a stranger on Bash’s bloody shirt. Fine. Did… Read more »

Going three episodes at a time turns out to be a great way to watch Reign; you get all the bursts of action and a sense of an arc – in this case, Francis’ illness and Mary’s conflict as Conde slowly becomes the bad guy – and you can just ignore all the Leiths you don’t care about! And don’t even look at me like that, because it’s not like I am alone in wanting Leith out of the picture. You know who else does? Yup. He proposed to Greer and she literally sat him down for a discussion about how having a booming 18th-century brothel was incredibly awesome and being his wife did not sound like it would be awesome at all, thanks for coming, bye. It was personally very satisfying, but also narratively smart; she is definitely happier now than she was when she was desperate to preserve her reputation, plus now she can afford to comb her hair, so you know things are looking up! She even fulfilled my dream and became… Read more »

Wow, I have been away from this show for a while! (So long was I gone that the show had an episode about a wine tasting called “Tasting Revenge,” which means this show feels way too safe without me. That’s a Xena title, show.) As it turns out, three at a time is the perfect dose in which to watch the show; the plot machine eddies once or twice and ends up actually moving a step ahead almost by accident! And, while I was gone, turns out the show was trying to woo me back by giving me the two things I have asked for the most! It’s very exciting! Sadly, not everyone is having a good time. In fact, it’s fairly obvious the sort of time everyone’s having Mary is losing her mother to illness, trying to get an heir to secure the throne (politics! Great!), but she’s also still trying to handle the godawful love-triangle rape-recovery plot, which is going more and more poorly for the show, since Conde is about as exciting… Read more »

Reign is one of the plot-churniest shows I have ever regularly watched, but every so often even this show hits an episode that leaves you feeling like you’re watching 42 minutes of Previously On, or possibly four episodes of a regular show. “Banished” was busy by Reign standards – the dog even makes another appearance! – and it was Catherine-heavy, which means I have pictures, because I missed her so much every second she was gone. The thing I want to start with, though, is costumes, because I have noticed that of late, Mary is wearing a lot more costumes courtesy of the Reign costume department rather than designers, which is occasionally fine, but definitely tends to look odd when set beside ladies in designer stuff. Take the Ice Festival outfits: Kenna and Lola look fabulous and true to costume-character – Kenna in floaty layers, Lola in a strong silhouette with some glitz. Greer looks like she’s going to prom, but her look swings so wildly between fabulous and terrible that we’ll just put this… Read more »