Four Torches (Out of Five)
Warning: The following review contains spoilers for the “Broken” episode of Legend of the Seeker.
All right, a Mord’sith episode!
In “Broken,” we learn a whole lot about one of the most intriguing characters in Seeker, Cara: where she comes from, who her family was, how she became one of the Mord’sith. Sure, it was a lot of exposition, but it was plenty fun.
In the opening scene, Kahlan learns that Cara killed her sister, and immediately goes all Galadriel-tempted-by-the-ring on her: her eyes go black and she starts freaking out, screaming and lunging for Cara with murder written all over her face.
It was pretty cool.
Richard holds Kahlan down and yells for Cara to skedaddle, which she does. Once Kahlan chills out, they realize that Flynn, who has to be the most useless character around, has also ran off, so Kahlan, Zed, and Richard go in pursuit of him. Cara, meanwhile, heads to the house she grew up in which her sister and her family currently occupy. There’s an awkward reunion, and her sister, overjoyed to see her, asks her to wear a dress, lest her Mord’sith leathers frighten the children.
Let this be a testament to the acting chops of Tabrett Bethell, who plays Cara: though she is in fact a shapely and beautiful woman, when she first appears in the dress it seems as natural as a linebacker wearing a tutu.
The townspeople eventually capture Cara and send a rider to find Kahlan, whom they want to confess Cara…to death! Kahlan seems kind of into the idea. Richard, on the other hand, believes that people can change and she should be showed mercy.
Which once again proves a point that our editor Brent Hartinger made in his review of the last episode: Richard is not a particularly interesting hero, because his high moral standing is never really challenged with an ethical dilemma. For every situation, the right thing to do is clear, even if he (and we, as the audience) are the only ones to see it.
Needless to say, Kahlan realizes Richard is right after a neat little plot twist involving a teacher, and then looking into Cara’s eyes and seeing remorse. There’s an all-too-brief fight scene, which just felt obligatory, a conclusion to a needless sub-plot with Zed finding Flynn, and the episode ends wrapped up in a nice bow.
Except for that whole demons from the Underworld thing, which this episode seemed to mostly forget about.
One more thing: am I the only ones who find the Mord’siths’ appearance a little comical? Every time a lot of them are on screen, I’m always reminded of the Fembots from Austin Powers. Maybe it’s that their outfits are so different from the rest of the world created for the show. At any rate, they never cease to make me chuckle.
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But how come the teacher’s no longer a mord sith? Theycan’t just becomegood people out of the sudden. But other than that; great episode. Cara’s the best!
The teacher was still a Mord-Sith, she just had this alternate identity, so she could pick the best candidates for training.
“In the opening scene, Kahlan learns that Cara killed her sister, and immediately goes all Galadriel-tempted-by-the-ring on her: her eyes go black and she starts freaking out, screaming and lunging for Cara with murder written all over her face.” …
Con Dar was the word we were looking for. Con Dar. That’s what ‘happened’ to Kahlan when told Cara killed her sister:
Con Dar is the Mother Confessor powers on steroids. It is a greatly amplified version of her ‘capture’ power … which she also doesn’t have to physically ‘grip’ them according to the books. It takes specific events (in the books she only went into it when Richard was in dire straits and it was explained that it’s built into the Mother Confessor Magic as a means to protect the Seeker at all costs.
Which, in my long winded explanation, is why what we were shown was an aberration from the books. She went all Con Dar on Cara (ooh, alliteration points, score!) was technically NOT POSSIBLE in the Books universe. She can’t just go into a hissy-fit rage (Con Dar) at Will - only when Richard’s life is in jeopardy. But, by now, any resemblance to the Books and Rami-vision has long since departed ways.
It is a cool look, though. Bam!
In the books Kahlan’s sister was dead before she met Richard. We don’t know if she could’ve gone into Con Dar if Dennee was still alive there.
She didn’t go into the Con Dar here at will, her attachment to her sister was just as strong as her attachment to Richard, so it’s not really against the books, I think.
Cool episode.
I must admit that after the dark ending from episode 2 (with cute kid murdering peaceful monk), I was expecting the depiction of Cara’s childhood training to be a little more violent and more explicit. While I don’t really want to see bad things happening to little Cara on-screen, we could have perhaps seen the change happen in Cara and they could have tastefully shown little Cara doing bad things to others (or at least the rats, if not her father).
Perhaps it was just me, but I thought the ending was kind of brave for this kind of show. To me, Kahlan and Richard were plenty “wrong” in deciding that because Cara was now killing for them, instead of killing for Darken Rahl, she somehow deserved to live. I found it particularly interesting that in defending Cara, Richard ended up slaughtering most of the town’s soldiers/police force. They’re pretty screwed now that they won’t have anyone to help protect the town (especially since they have also lost the “protection” afforded by the Mord Sith). Of course that same moral quandry was at the very heart of Xena (she used to kill good guys, but decides to start killing bad guys and suddenly she’s a hero irrespective of the thousands upon thousands of innocents that she once slaughtered), so I do find it interesting, particularly when contrasted with Richard’s overly goody-two-shoes type attitude.
Still, quite a few plot devices that seemed to go one step too far. I had the impression that Kahlan had already been told that her sister was dead. Didn’t Richard learn that in the finale of season 1? It seems like something he should have told Kahlan. And Cara just happens to have been the Mord Sith who killed Kahlan’s sister? Really? Out of hundreds of Mord Sith it was Cara. The stuff with Cara’s “teacher” was a little far-fetched as well. While it was a cool idea to have the friendly school teacher actually be a Mord Sith recruiter in disguise, something about the actress just didn’t translate that well on screen. I think it was the beehive hair-do.
And to bring the rambling to a close, Flynn is incredibly boring. The character isn’t written well and while I’m sure a lot of the blame resides with the script, the actor doesn’t seem to be doing that well with the material either. I hope they provide Flynn with some decent character development, but at the moment the character feels like an incredibly forced addition to an already full group of characters.
Richard didn’t know that Kahlan found out in the alternate future that her sister was killed, he only knew that Kahlan died, along with every other female confessor.
I thought this was a decent episode. Just the fact of it exploring Caras’ backstory made the episode watchable. I sincerely hope they develop this character a bit more. I feel that her being what she is adds alot of the “darkness” that is present in this season. She wants to be good and helpful, in her own way at least, but she wasn’t raised and trained to do so. There’s alot of conflict in the character. She sure doesn’t seem the type to do much crying but the tear rolling down her cheek was a nice touch.
Actually, the Mord’Sith’s outfits fit exactly into this world as that was how they were written in the books. One thing they haven’t shown with the outfits (if I remember correctly since its been a while since I read the books) is that the Mord’Sith have two sets of leathers: black when they are not training (torturing) and red when they are so that blood won’t show up as much. I’m sure they haven’t done the two colors because of the budget.
Actually, they don’t. It may be true to the book, but this is a different animal - a television show, and has to be judged as only that. Apparently Mordsith technology allows them to have zippers when everyone else is still in the bronze age.