Legend of the Seeker: Sanctuary

The one with the magical painting...

Could this be the strangest ever episode of Legend of the Seeker?

The objective of the story is easy to discern: to reunite Richard and Kahlan with the Book of Counted Shadows, or at least a copy of it. The original is what Richard deliberately threw into a fire in the very first episode because he felt that choosing his own destiny was more important than following a guidebook. (And for the record, TV Tropes tells me that the “counted shadows” part of its title refers to the fact it’s meant to be an instruction manual for the Boxes of Orden, which each cast a different number of shadows when they’re in direct sunlight. Here, the boxes contain no such quality, which only adds to the half-baked feeling of this particular MacGuffin).

Deciding that yes, perhaps destiny guidebooks are the way to go (or at the very least to keep it out of Darken Rahl’s hands) our trio go in search of this new copy.

Of course, our featured guest star in this episode is a librarian, which does a lot in making me love it despite the inherent oddness of the whole thing. Livia is a librarian working on finding said copy of the Book of Shadows, a single mother with a pre-teen son and a stalker. Yeah, a painter called James is making not-very-subtle moves on her, to which she is but tepidly interested (it’s actually quite funny – he’s dead by the end of the episode and she clearly couldn’t care less).

But one of her co-workers realizes what she’s doing and immediately snitches to Lord Rahl. How did he get there so quickly? And so easily get an audience with the guy known for his elusiveness? We’ll never know, but he informs Rahl that the clues Livia has uncovered points to the second copy of the Book being hidden somewhere in the library. How convenient!

Show's best guest star!

Rahl decides not to leave the retrieval of the book to mere footman (even though the episode neglects to tell us why it’s so important in the first place) and the trio of Richard, Kahlan and Zed don’t have much luck either. On arriving at the library, they learn that Livia hasn’t been at work for days because of troubles with her son Aidan. Yup, this entire episode revolves around the whereabouts of a bratty kid.

On meeting with Livia, Richard promises to go find Aidan (currently hiding out in James’s art studio) while Kahlan and Zed go with her back to the library to figure out the final clues – only for her to disappear into thin air.

The answer to this particular puzzle is that James is painting a magical portrait that transfers anything he depicts into the landscape he’s created... and he’s just painted Livia and Aidan – then himself – onto the canvas. Yeeeeeaaaah... that’s pretty out there even for a fantasy show. Plus I’m pretty sure this was a Charmed episode.

Livia is understandably a little perturbed by all this, but more importantly, wants to go back to the real world so as to help the Seeker find the Book of Counted Shadows. James’s answer to this is to leave her in the painting, remove himself from its surface, and paint the library instead. So now that’s transported into his little pocket-universe, along with all of the D’Harans that commandeered the place.

Honestly, there’s a lot of back and forthing in the episode, with characters rushing from one place to the next like headless chickens, in a plot that would have felt like a comedy of errors (à la Mirror) were it not for the seriousness of the tone. They’re in the painting, they’re out of the painting, there’s a treasure hunt for the Book of Counted Shadows in the library, Darken Rahl is in full Card-Carrying Villain mode, and they introduce a half-hearted philosophical question when establishing that magic doesn’t work for anyone while inside the painting. Suddenly Richard and Kahlan are given the opportunity to live in a world where the latter’s confessing abilities won’t keep them apart.

Will they seize their chance? Of course not, but not because they come to that decision by themselves, but because Darken Rahl finds the painting and sets it on fire. James stays behind to paint the library (and everyone in it) out, and our heroes escape with the second copy of the Book – and no real in-depth commentary on what it would have been like to stay in a paradise like the one of James’s making. Ah well.

As characterization goes, James is definitely an odd duck. He never crosses into full bad guy mode, though he does make a fairly serious attempt to keep everyone inside the painting (and asking the library gatekeeper – yeah, there’s been another character following everyone else around this whole time – to bury it in the forest so Rahl can never find it) and the writers are mercifully aware that Livia doesn’t owe him anything. He’s dead by the credits, heroically sacrificing himself so that everyone else can escape, and – like I said – Livia is rather hilariously blasé about it.

There’s not a lot more to say: Livia is credited with helping bring the war to an end (nice going, one-shot character!) and she relocates with her son to a Resistance settlement. Richard and Kahlan take a moment to think about how a brief visit to James’s world would have been nice under better circumstances, and things end on Richard translating a harrowing passage from the Book: that in order to defeat Rahl, he must reassemble the Boxes of Orden. And we all remember how well that worked last time...

Miscellaneous Observations:

They did their best with a little green screen and CGI, but there’s no hiding the limited set of the library, which consisted of a small reading room and an even smaller hallway stacked with scrolls. Points for trying though.

The snuff-taking crime lord was Lionel from Shortland Street!

At one point Livia hears a knock at her door and says: “Aidan?” before opening it – but why would her son knock at the door of his own house?

I feel like the props person commissioned a painting that was subsequently drawn with Livia wearing a shawl across her shoulders, which then required the actress to wear a similar shawl in a deeply uncomfortable (and pointless) way for the duration of the episode.

When people disappear into the painting there’s an admittedly neat effect when a canvas texture is briefly superimposed over them. Cute detail.

Two Mord Sith flank Darken Rahl throughout this episode, but sadly never get the chance to do anything.

So yeah... a truly bizarre episode, in which the stakes are both too high (finding the Book of Counted Shadows, a MacGuffin that’s already been thrown away once) and too low (the climax is Kahlan trying to convince a Nice Guy™ that trapping a woman in a magical painting against her will is not the quickest way to her heart) and which ends up feeling rather superfluous. I mean, the episode that Jennsen was introduced was also very weird, but in a completely different way than this one – despite treating the appearance of Richard’s mother as no big deal, you still couldn’t skip Bloodlines in the way you could easily skip this one.

Speaking of Jennsen, she’ll be back next episode, and then it’s onto the finale!