The one with the convenient amnesia...
The first writer to learn that amnesia was a thing that sometimes happened must have been over the moon at the possibilities it afforded, as Easy Amnesia has been a staple part of storytelling for centuries at this point. You can see why: a person who has no idea who they are is at their most vulnerable, is subject to effortless manipulation, and provides an opportunity to delve into who they are without that which defines them: their memories.
That said, the penultimate episode of season one isn’t providing a case study on Jennsen, who returns for her second appearance, but rather uses her as a plot-point to endanger her brother and get the location of the Boxes of Orden.
As was established when we saw her last, she’s living under the radar with a Resistance family, only for D’Haran soldiers to start house-by-house raids in search of her. The questionable fact that our protagonists have left two of the three Boxes of Orden with an adolescent girl (given the sheer power of these things, they needed to be in three separate locations, and kept in a better hiding place than under a loose stone in the fireplace) is mitigated somewhat by Jennsen being given a stone (or nut...?) that amounts to a suicide pill, just in case they try to take her alive.
After a night’s running, she throws the Boxes into a nearby lake (and this is truly a preternatural throw; she’s seriously miles away from it) and tries to take the nut (or stone) before being tackled and punched in the face. It’s all played pretty seriously, and when she reappears as an amnesiac prisoner in Darken Rahl’s castle, she has a massive blackeye that covers half her face.
On learning that she’s suffering from memory loss, Rahl steps in and effortlessly presents himself as an ally trying to assist her in escaping the clutches of her evil brother Richard. You have to hand it to him – he excels in situations like this. As I’ve said before, he’s certainly not the most complex of evil villains, and this isn’t exactly an elaborate manipulation, yet the writing and the actor at least provide him with a depth and cunning that elevates him from the usual moustache-twirling villain. He is an intelligent man who knows how to play on people’s emotions, and I can believe a confused and vulnerable Jennsen would fall for this ploy.
And man does he commit! As we saw with his impersonation of Anna back in Home, Rahl can ease himself into these roles without a hint of awkwardness, reshaping Jennsen’s memories of Richard commanding the power of Orden to convince her that he’s the bad guy. He even brings in a cute little kitten to soften her up, and later has an actress feign grief over the death of her son within earshot so that she can emerge from her room and comfort him while he’s oh-so-torn-up about the carnage Richard spreads.
I realized at this point that (as we saw with his delight at the children’s puppet show in Puppeteer) this man is such a theatre kid!
And then he drops a bombshell. At least, it’s meant to be a bombshell, only it lands with the same impact that Richard meeting his mother for the first time did – that is, none whatsoever. According to Rahl, he and Richard are brothers. I’m not even sure if we’re meant to believe him. He tells Jennsen that the three of them share the same father, which we know isn’t strictly true, as it’s through their mother Taralynn that Richard and Jennsen are related.
Or is it? In Bloodlines Jennsen told Richard she had no idea if they shared a father, or even who he was, so they might well be more than just half-siblings.
But what does this mean for Richard and Rahl? Absolutely nothing. The fact that they’re (apparently) half-brothers has no bearing on the story whatsoever. I’d honestly forgotten it was even a thing until this latest rewatch. It doesn’t come up in the finale, or effect the narrative in any way. I’m not even sure Richard ever finds out. Is it perhaps a plot-point from the books that they felt obligated to include? Do they go into the identity of Richard’s true father in season two? I’ve no idea, but once again it serves as a strange example of including a staple fantasy trope that in this context is bizarrely superfluous.
Not everyone needs to be secretly related, and this adds nothing to the proceedings.
Of much more interest are Rahl’s moments of self-awareness. He says of Richard that: “like most villains, he believes he’s a hero,” which is an oft-worn statement in these types of stories, but a fascinating one when it comes from the villain. So... does Rahl consider himself the good guy? Does he know what goodness actually looks like? He presents the idea of a magical plague to Jennsen as a bad thing, and the fact that he can’t abandon his people as a good thing, but in his role as a standard "Dark Lord" there’s no telling whether he's taking an “ends justify the means” approach, or whether he’s just doing everything in his power to stop the prophecy that Richard will kill him from happening.
An earlier moment in which Jennsen kisses his cheek after he gives her the kitten results in a rather startled reaction that suggests he’s completely out of his depth when it comes to things like genuine human affection (he later kills said kitten, which puts him firmly back in bad guy territory) and he projects like a champ when he tells her that Richard “just wants to be loved.”
Yet despite minor nuances, we never really get into this guy’s head – he’s much better at doing that to other people, finally realizing that the best way to get through to Jennsen is to first scare her with talk of how much suffering Richard could inflict if they do nothing (he even lets her have the idea that they need to retrieve the Boxes first) and then after Richard gets to them first, talking her into a mission to take the cure to the people, win Richard’s trust, and steal the Boxes back from him. Seeing a flicker of doubt in Jennsen’s eyes, he even points out she’s probably thinking that all this could be an elaborate trick.
So he hinges the entire scheme on truly giving Jennsen the cure, laying out the “logic” that if it works, he’s naturally the brother she must side with...
***
Meanwhile, Richard is reading the newly-acquired Book of Counted Shadows and recapping his conundrum to Zed, who is already well-aware of the issue (standard As You Know syndrome): that in order to defeat Rahl he needs to put together the three Boxes of Orden and harness their power, something that invariably leads to their possessor becoming a corrupt monster. Then he comes up with an idea that’s classic, quintessential Richard. Deciding that the only power greater than Orden is love, he realizes that a way to circumvent the corruption of the Boxes is for Kahlan to confess him at the exact same moment he’s putting them together.
With one magic cancelling out the other, so that he neither loses his free will through the confession or goes deranged with power via the Boxes, he’ll be able to command Darken Rahl. Reverently he says: “of all the magic in the world, there’s none more powerful than love.”
This is why he’s our hero – because he comes up with absolute nonsense like this and believes it with 100% sincerity and conviction. And just to drive the message home, when they approach the house where Jennsen is meant to be staying, he picks a flower to give to her. Why can’t all manly fantasy heroes secretly be a Disney Princess?
He's not too bright though, as he walks into the house with a bright red X on the door, and looks around the trashed interior calling: “Jennsen?” as though she might still be there.
In what seems a bit too soon after the Whisperers, the gang learns that Rahl has unleashed a mystical plague upon the nearby village, telling people it’ll only end when the Seeker is killed. Called the fire-fever, it’s highly infectious and kills slowly, though Zed declares that by a slow process of drawing the illness into himself and then purging his own body, he can start healing the sick. Welcome to this episode’s B-plot.
As Richard and Kahlan go off to try and break into the castle to save Jennsen, Zed grapples with the ethics of who gets cured and in what order. Naturally the townsfolk want their children saved first, though Zed insists on healing essential staff-workers such as the baker and then a D’Haran soldier that they need for information (since he has the fire-fever, he must be cured before Kahlan can touch, and therefore confess him).
Watching all this in the middle of a pandemic certainly throws up a lot of connotations, though I suppose a real-life analogy to current events would have the villagers angrily reject Zed’s offer to heal them, instead of getting furious that he’s bypassing their immediate needs for the bigger picture. Honestly though, Richard's big mistake was in marching out the D’Haran commander right in front of everyone. Take him behind a tree for goodness sake!
But again, the writers commit to the agonizing impossibility of this situation and refuse to take the easy way out. The D’Haran takes the opportunity to announce to the villagers that all they need to do is kill the Seeker in exchange for the cure, while the villagers bay for his blood in return. Zed is nearly torn apart by terrified people who don’t want to die and can’t fathom why he’s saving one of the people responsible for their suffering, and eventually the son of the father that’s been desperately trying to get him medical attention for the duration of the episode dies, leading to further strife. It’s a sad, sorry look at dire circumstances, and there is no happy ending.
Oh, and Kahlan ends up sick after she confesses the grieving father that’s about to stab Zed – just to tweak the stakes that little bit more.
Richard’s next plan is juxtapositioned beautifully against Rahl’s scheming: having found the suicide-stone that Jennsen lost on the forest floor (another nice nod to his tracker skills) he decides to find Rahl, swallow the stone, put the Boxes together and command Rahl to send the cure to the village before killing him... a death that will be followed swiftly by his own due to the stone. Zed is moved to tears, but Richard sees it as the best course of action, one which results in the greatest amount of good.
He looks all sad and noble as he’s saying it, so it comes as little surprise that he almost effortlessly convinces the newly-arrived Jennsen that he’s the good brother (though they throw in a chase scene for a little bit of suspense). Jennsen’s memories return, Zed and Kahlan are given the cure, and all is well. For the most part, presumably a lot of villagers are still dead.
This was probably Darken Rahl’s best episode: we saw his cunning and intelligence, and even the tiniest scrap of a softer side – even if it’s obliterated by the final scene. Going into the finale, he certainly feels like a formidable opponent, not because of any prowess with a sword or by whatever magic he commands, but because of his ability to manipulate others in playing on their good natures (we’ll see this in the finale too, though there’s also a mighty big subversion coming for him as well).
And yet it’s also a great episode for Richard, once again demonstrating why he’s our hero: because he’s simply a good man, with his own brand of intelligence. Without any sanctimony or self-pity, he’s fully prepared to give up his own life to stop Rahl, has absolute faith in the power of love, and picks some flowers for his sister. What a guy.
We end with Jennsen being reunited with the daughter of the Resistance fighter she had been hiding with (aww) and Richard introducing Kahlan to Plan A: merging the magic of Orden with her confessing abilities. That’s our lead-in to the grand finale, and I hope I get a chance to post about it before the end of the year. It’s the reason I started this rewatch in the first place, as I genuinely think it’s one of the best hours of television ever committed to the screen, and every time I see it I’m impressed by what it achieves.
Miscellaneous Observations:
When Jennsen is injured, she’s cared for by a D’Haran nurse. She was a good (if minor) character, and I’m somewhat tickled that Rahl would have medical professionals on his payroll.
At one point Zed turns a rock into an illusion of Richard’s decapitated head to fool the garrison commander... as with many of Zed’s abilities, I feel this trick would have come in handy much earlier in the season’s run.
The episode’s daftest moment has to go to Richard getting shot in the shoulder, sinking beneath the surface of the lake, pulling out the bolt and having a prolonged swordfight sans a shirt. Come on!
How long was Jennsen kept in captivity? I only ask because it was long enough for her blackeye to disappear.
Nice use of continuity with Rahl’s tracer cloud and in utilizing Jennsen’s pristinely ungifted abilities to shield the Boxes from it. Also, General Egremond is here as well, which IMDB tells me is Kevin Wilson’s sixth appearance in this role. I knew he was around, but didn’t realize it was quite that much!
But whatever happened to the guy that Kahlan confessed? These episodes are usually good at wrapping up loose ends, so it’s odd that he wasn’t accounted for.
Rahl mentions one “Mistress Cara” in his final scene, asking Egremond to muster her and the Mord Sith. Aww yeah!
Kahlan says here: “it’s almost over...” but it really, really isn’t - especially not for her. I can’t wait to write about it.
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