Legend of the Seeker: Elixir

The one where... actually, there’s not much going on in this episode.

There I was, thinking our protagonists were headed straight to Calabra, only to find out that I had absolutely no memory of this minor detour. And it’s no wonder, as absolutely nothing of note happens here, unless you want to count some insight into Kahlan’s powers, which gets repeated in the next episode anyway. You can skip this one and miss nothing, so I’ll keep this brief...

It starts off with a Luke/Obi Wan-esque training session, in which Richard is forced to attack levitating fruit while wearing a blindfold. But what sets this show apart from Star Wars, and which pretty much encapsulates this show in its entirety, is that Richard does it shirtless and sweaty.

Sure, why not?

It’s definitely the horny episode, as immediately after training wraps up, Richard spots Kahlan in the nude, having just emerged from a lake and drying herself in a way that no woman on earth actually dries herself. But here’s the OTHER reason why Legend of the Seeker is so special: any other show would have Kahlan be furious and Richard silently smirking to himself – instead Richard is embarrassed and tries to apologies, and Kahlan is just faintly amused by the whole thing. Again, it’s all in the performances. The dialogue is sparse enough that it could have easily justified an angry/smug take, but Horner and Regan choose to play it as sweet and flirty instead.

In any case, the stakes of this episode are simply that the gang’s horses are stolen by a young man who trades them for a potion that makes him overwhelmingly attractive to the girl he’s got a crush on... for about two seconds, before she pushes him away in disgust. Yes, it’s the Very Special Love Potion Episode in which youngsters learn that taking away a person’s consent is no way to win their heart. You’d think by 2008 general audiences would have this pretty well drummed into their heads, but hey – why mess with an old favourite?

Richard is also tricked into drinking a spell that allows him to magically see where their horse thief (a teenager imaginatively called Jack) has gone, and the whole thing takes a cue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in using the consumption of magic to solve one’s problems as a drug metaphor.

There’s some running around, a potential wizard foe who isn’t what he seems, and a stringent lesson learnt on why on the addictive qualities of magic. Don’t do spells, kids!

This is also the episode in which Richard learns the full extent of Kahlan’s power, and it’s pretty scary all things considered. Confessing someone means that they fall in love with her (however you want to define “love” in this context) and only desire to do her will, and it’s clearly not something she’s comfortable in doing. Of course it isn’t, she’s stripping away a person’s free will and rendering them a Happy Slave for the rest of their life (or her life, as the spell is broken if she dies first).

Honestly, even though the story itself is entirely forgettable, it at least serves to make an early thematic point. Believe it or not, this show has some genuinely interesting things to say about free will and consent later on in the season’s run, and this episode serves as an early primer on the subject. Even though this was a lighter episode, the magical potions aren’t treated with comedic effect: Jack is clearly wrong for having used one on Miranda, and Richard is deeply ticked off at the bartender for spiking his drink.

It’s clearly a premise that’s born from the concept of Kahlan as a Confessor; a woman who can strip away a person’s free will and turn them into her willing slave, and there’s more to come on this theme, from debates over whether infanticide is justified, to how much Kahlan owes the men that she’s forced to serve and obey her. Heavy stuff.

Also, it does introduce the idea of an inhibitor collar (something they swiped from X-Men) to repress a person’s magical powers, which will also come into play by the season finale.

Miscellaneous Observations:

It’s interesting to note that this early on in the season, Kahlan is still fainting every time she confesses someone. Later in the season, she can do it without breaking her stride, and though you could chalk that up to her simply getting better at it, it’s probably got more to do with the writers realizing it’s not conductive to action sequences.

I’ve just realized that in all of season one, Kahlan never confesses a woman. Huh. In hindsight it’s a glaring omission, though it’s difficult to tell whether it’s on purpose or just the way the chips fell. I can’t imagine that the writers would have blanched at the idea of any woman falling in love with another woman given some of the developments in season two (that I’ve heard of) so either it didn’t come up in the stories they came up with, or they didn’t want to deal with the implications of woman-on-woman mind control.

The requisite tavern brawl is present and accounted for, though it takes place outside the tavern rather than in.

Shout-out to all the guest stars in this episode: Jack, the bartender, the confessed peddler, the storekeeper, the rival wizard... all delightfully hammy. And thankfully Jack’s story-thread ends on a note of “okay, I should probably just leave this girl alone” as opposed to “I’m gonna try a different way of winning her over.”

So, even a fairly inconsequential episode can convey some important insights if you look closely enough: the benefits and downsides to Kahlan’s gift, the existence of inhibitor collars, a discussion on the moral implications of everything they’ve just been through, the revelation that there’s still one more secret to Kahlan’s role as Confessor, and even a callback to the opening scene in which Richard has to fight an invisible assailant.

This show is good at taking the absolute nadir of the fantasy tropes and gently sprucing them up a little – it’s an imminently forgettable episode, but it still has its place.

Now, on to Calabra, for real this time...