Posted by Jeanne Rose, the ever *overly* analytical on Monday, 10 May 1998 at 10:46 a.m.
 

Sunday, 9 May

As it turns out, I liked this episode a whole lot better this time around than I did watching it at the convention, even though it was a lot of fun to see it that way, surrounded by other fans.  I was so strung out on adrenaline and emotional exhaustion from stuff that happened the preceding week that it sort of washed over me, without really sinking in.  But now, after watching and rewatching it a few times, I am ready to agree with Big John - this rivals the best of any Highlander episode yet.

When Avatar/Armadeggon aired, my primary complaint was that after such a huge thing like Richie's death, the rest of the story needed to be ABOUT validating that event, and it wasn't.  Duncan spent a year grieving, and came back to defeat the demon as the only way he knew to give Richie's death meaning, but it didn't really work.  He defeated Ahriman, but it didn't bring Richie back.  After a while he accepted that he was still immortal, and started carrying his sword.  He tried to stop killing, quit judging, get out of the game, but ultimately that didn't really work either.  He can't really avoid it.  He was raised to protect others, and in order to do that, he has to evaluate (judge) and destroy threats against them.  All through season six he's been lonely and vulnerable, searching for a reason to go on, mostly without anybody else who knows or loves him around to help.

But this story is about Richie.  It wasn't obvious to me at first, but after watching it a few times, it's clear that Duncan still hasn't forgiven himself or come to terms with Richie's death.  He's tried to go on, to put it aside, since there's no longer anything he can do, but the truth is he's let it build and grow in the back of his mind and probably through sleepless nights into a monstrous idea that he's to blame for all the deaths of his friends.  Heaping blame on himself seems to be the only relief he can find.

And so O'Rourke, somehow knowing his self-sacrificing nature, sets up the perfect trap.  Amanda and Joe are bait, and only Methos is left to try to help him break out of his determination to do "whatever it takes" - and this obviously consciously includes laying down his life - to keep them from dying because of their friendship with him.  Remember when he said, "I couldn't handle another Tessa"?  Now it's "I couldn't handle another Richie."  Even if he doesn't pull the trigger or hold the blade himself, because his guilt has swollen to include Tessa, and Fitz, and Darius, and Charlie, and Sean Burnes - everyone who died even at someone else's hand because of their association with him.

Methos sees it clear as day - after all, he's the one Duncan begged to take his head right after it happened.  He tries to reason with our stubborn Scot, but he really doesn't stand a chance against the weight of all that accumulated guilt, and the fact that Duncan literally could not bear to have it happen again.  "It stops here."  He was tempted at playing martyr to save everyone else in Finale, but found a way out.  This time he doesn't see one, and he's not even looking that hard.  No, he's not playing hero.  He's playing martyr.  Knowingly.  Willingly.

The almost-death scene gave me - ooo, still gives me - serious chills.  Duncan doesn't just walk like a lamb to the slaughter - he doesn't really want to die - he makes an effort to save them without sacrificing himself.  But it's almost a token gesture, like he knows in the end it won't work.  If he really had some hope for that option, he would have asked for Methos' help.  Although of course he wouldn't have wanted Methos risking his head as well.  Though if he'd pulled his head out for a minute he would have seen that Methos wasn't going to leave well enough alone.  He didn't in Chivalry, he didn't in Deliverance, he didn't in Valkyrie, or FUOT, or Archangel.  This is classic Methos, totally and wonderfully in character.  Say what you will about him - he does stick out his neck for his friends.  If he left after Archangel, it was only because Peter Wingfield couldn't be there.  Methos would never have left Duncan to his own devices after that.

But unlike Trollheart, I didn't see it coming.  I was too swept away by Duncan's willingness to lay down his sword.  You can see it in his eyes - in a way he actually welcomes the chance to make the ultimate sacrifice, to atone for what happened with Richie.  I think I can prophecy with confidence that Duncan MacLeod will never live to be 5000 years old.  The price would be too high.   There are too many things he would rather die than do, or allow to happen.  (Although, I begin to wonder if Methos hasn't just had a lion's share of luck.  Yeah, he's a survivor, but he offered Duncan his head rather than let Kalas have it - instead of running away - and was willing to die and almost did trying to save Alexa.)

But anyway, if I hadn't known about the movie, I would have been seriously worried that this was for Duncan.  From the moment Amanda was taken, he pretty much put his feet on the path to self-sacrifice. "It's my fight, not hers. I've got to get her out."  I think that accounts for his edginess at the bar.  He knows neither Methos nor Joe really understands yet the depth to which this is affecting him, and the lengths to which he is prepared go to resolve it.

When drops his sword and walks over to Joe - "what's the plan??" Joe asks frantically - he shakes his head and shrugs a little - no plan.  The plan is, I'm about to lose my head.  Joe can't believe it.  He's lived in Duncan's back pocket for almost 20 years.  He probably expected Duncan to outlive him, despite all odds - "may it be Duncan MacLeod, the Highlander."  And to lose to this, this - cold, self-righteous fanatic.  Joe reflects our anguish at the thought of losing our hero.  Interesting that we don't get to see Amanda's reaction - maybe because we already did, in FUOT?  I can't believe she would have stood by and allowed this to happen any more than Methos did.

"No one else dies because of me, Joe."  And he smiles the strangest smile and says, "I'll see you around."  Does Duncan believe in life after death?  Hard to say, based on everything we've seen, but I chose to believe so.  But that didn't make death less real.  I loved the slow motion as he was walking back to O'Roarke.  And that second when his tongue comes up a little as he takes that breath - kind of a primal choking sensation at the realization that he's about to let someone cut his head off.  "Do you think it's easy after thousands [hundreds] of years?"  But he kneels down anyway, and stares straight ahead.  He's no novice.  He's cut off enough heads himself.  But he doesn't falter.  O'Rourke starts to swing -

And the rest is history.  Methos pops up and starts shooting, Duncan runs to protect Joe, O'Rourke thinks Duncan has planned the whole thing, Duncan gets shot and killed, and falls on that train, and slowly the thing starts moving into light.

I was fascinated by the choice of little clips we see as the light flashes over Duncan's still face.  Tessa.  "I love you."  Tessa's death.  Coltec.  Sean Burnes.  Fighting in a Scottish battle (Culloden?).  Darius.  His friendship with Joe.  Horton.  Joe fallen to Jacob Galati's revenge.  Demon Richie.  Kalas.  Fitz's death.  And was that the nightmare of his own death from "Shadows"?  I would like to have seen Richie there - the moment when he hugs him in "Eye of the Beholder", then the moment he swings and Richie falls.  That's really the demon that's haunting him.

"Over here, MacLeod."  Fitzy, an angel.  What a stroke of genius.  Who would ever have thought?  Darius, sure. (Although, of course, a filming impossibility.)  Even Richie.  He was as dead as Fitzcairn.  (We'll talk about Richie next week.)  But Fitzcairn, the playboy.  Someone who Duncan never considered a teacher, certainly never a moral advisor - but - a friend, someone he trusts.  "Am *I* dead?  Well?"  I love his cluelessness.  And the golf thing.  "You've definitely left the tee, but you're not yet on the green." "Rolling down the fairway."  "Now you're getting it." "I'm not even close to getting it, Fitz."

And Duncan may finally be ready to listen, finally broken out of that single-minded path to death and atonement.  And it seems - God doesn't want his head.  "It seemed to us up there that you were about to give up your life."  He turns away.  "It was my life or theirs."  Yes, that was how he had defined it.  Fitz calls him on it. "I've seen you get out of many a tight spot that seemed well-nigh impossible. What made this one so different?"  Duncan can't even say it.  But Fitz knows.  Such compassion in his voice as he says, "Been a tough few years, hasn't it."  I personally would have cut the part about "fighting, always fighting, trying to save the world" - I don't think that's the problem.  The problem is Richie.

And then the gift.  I think probably all of us would benefit from such a gift - to have the chance to see where we've made a difference in the lives of others.  I am inclined to think that they went just a bit overboard - I mean, without Duncan the world went to hell in a handbasket.  But then that was mostly because the show is about him and we've put him in a lot of situations where a lot was on the line and what he did mattered a great deal.

The whole Amanda as a black widow spider thing worked pretty well - it was nice to have a break from such heavy-duty drama and have a few laughs - "THAT'S her husband."  "You're kidding."  Fitz playing silent movie type accompaniment to the drama playing out below. "Does Amanda know?" "Is the pope a catholic?"  "Uh, spider."  Good one, MacLeod.  I'm not sure I liked the phrasing "one day she slipped, and you weren't there to catch her."  I don't think there was any one particular incident in which Duncan's influence saved Amanda.  In fact, I think his influence has been most profound in the last few years, since they have built a real, trusting relationship.  But it's been there for a long time, building quietly.  But the whole sequence worked pretty well.  I love how his face lights up (did someone else say this?) when she asks "do you really want to help me?" and he says yes.  Of course she throws it back in his face.  And then the business with the watchers-turned-hunters is introduced quite neatly.

Joe - ah, Joe.  "Stand by me" will never be the same.  (Can anybody tell me who sings it and what CD to buy? So I'm pop culture- challenged - who's Chubby Checker in the grand scheme of things anyway?)  Now I really wish I'd stayed up late enough to hear Roger Daltrey sing it.  Horton - ooooo.  Spares Joe's life because he's no one, even gives him some money.  Boy, talk about rubbing his nose in it.  Once again, Duncan tries to help, too little, too late.  Isn't it just like him to jump in and try to solve the problem, and only when he can't beginning to grasp what Fitz is trying to show him?  Stubborn, exasperating, wonderful Duncan.  He should listen to himself once in a while.  "You did what you could." "Don't let Horton take that."  Joe also asks "You really want to help me?" and then throws it back with "Buy me a bottle."  And says the very same thing he said to Duncan just before he went and offered up his head - "It's all crap, MacLeod.  The whole damn thing."  Is this foreshadowing?  Some variation of what could happen to Joe in the real world, as a result of Duncan's sacrifice?

Duncan finally starts to get a clue and asks about Richie.  But Fitz doesn't tell him just yet.

Tessa.  Oh, my goodness.  If you want to go straight to Duncan's heart, that's the way to do it.  The look on his face when he sees her.  It made my heart pound.  I can hardly wait for next week.  I remember some of the basics, but not details.  And Methos.  I do remember, um, melting, in a certain, um, scene, but we'll get back to that.  For now, this one gave me plenty to chew on.  All just my humble opinion, of course.  I may have over emphasized Duncan's guilt in his willingness to lay down his life.  Some of it was love.  "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."  But anyway - oh my.  What an episode.  And more to come.

Peace!

JR