This week’s Lost Girl was sort of a monster of the week,
sort of getting the band back together, sort of softcore porn – all of which
has me hoping the show has found its soul again.
In the primary storyline, Bo hops off the magic train and
lands in a dusty old house just as a weird family is entering. They conk her
with a frying pan. Meanwhile, Dyson and Clio are on the train looking Bo, the
mere mention of whom causes a trainquake. Dyson can’t stop doing Batman voice.
Bo gradually uncovers the truth about the family – the writers
did a nice job here of peeling back the layers of this mystery a little bit at
a time. At first it was just a ghost story, but then this terribly dark story
about generations of family members going insane and murdering all their
relatives was revealed. Maybe it’s just hereditary mental problems, and not fae
related at all. All those shots of the burly dad walking around with a shotgun were very reminiscent of The Amityville Horror (whichever version you prefer).
Clio and Dyson trek through some forest, still searching for
Bo. They meet up with Clio’s pal Lazy John, a man who is buried in the ground
and has a foot fetish. I couldn’t find any kind of folklore analog for Lazy
John. Anyone have any ideas? Anyway, there’s more to say about this scene, but
I’ll get to it in due time. I did love John’s reply to Clio’s introduction. “Hello
Clio. Hello Business Associate.”
Dyson and Clio finally find Bo and help her battle whatever
is going on at the old house. Apparently some kind of fae that can jump bodies
has possessed the daughter of the family, but they don’t know what kind of fae
it is yet. There’s a succubus versus possessed teenager showdown. We also get
to see some wonderful gothic imagery when the daughter flees the house at
night. I’m not sure if that was a matte painting in the background or just some
beautifully subtle lighting and composition, but that image of the house in
blues and greens and shadows made me sit up and take notice.
Bo gets all the best lines in this episode, like calling
herself Awesome On Two Legs or just sort of explaining herself: “I always
meddle in things that don’t concern me,” and, “Dealing with weird shit is kind
of what I do.” Threatening to crack your foot off in someone’s ass seems like
an odd threat. Then you’d be missing your foot. Seems bad. In any case, Bo has
the best boobs of the episode too. Top scientists spend years developing bras
for this show. “We. Need. More. Cleavage.”
Eventually Bo falls asleep and dreams about the “witch,” and
young black woman who’d been engaged to one of the family’s ancestors. She was
really an elemental, a Jumbee (a term from Carribbean folklore that essentially
means “bad spirit”). He loved her anyway, but his family murdered them both,
unmarried. She’d been taking her revenge on the family ever since. The movie this brought to mind was the underrated The Skeleton Key, but any number of voodoo horror stories fit the bill.
What follows is a pretty classic “reunite the bones of the
lovers to put the spirit to rest” scenario. Actually this whole episode had
kind of a Scooby-Doo vibe, what with the family being named Jenkins and all
that talk of meddling. Somehow Bo fake marrying Dyson (with no one officiating),
but using the names of the Jumbee and her fiancé, resolves everything.
One of the side plots showed Evony making her return as the
Morrigan, short one eye. She’s clearly amping up her evil, draining/murdering
pretty much every human she encounters. She makes a deal with Mossimo the druid
to regrow her missing eye, and then basically explains that she’s going to be
super evil from now on, specifically targeting Bo. Good! She makes an awesome
villain.
The other side plot was Lauren/Amber, who seems trapped
inside a 90s music video. Something about the whole setup just screams “Lilith Fair.” I
guess the cute blonde waitress isn’t her boss, so the sexual harassment isn’t
as bad, but they eventually meet for pizza and beer and sex.
This is where I
want to bring up the Lazy John scene. I suspect Lost Girl has a lot of female
fans. Maybe even a majority of the fans are women (I have no idea, I’m just guessing). Yet it has
a very male gaze. The camera lingers for quite some time on Lauren and the
waitress grinding on each other, making out, and some naked pillow talk. But
when it’s time for Dyson to indulge Lazy John’s foot fetish, it all happens
coyly off-camera. Now I personally have no desire to see someone licking
someone else’s feet, much less Lazy John licking Dyson’s toes, so maybe we can
chalk that up to a general ew factor. But it’s still an odd dichotomy that this
show continues to deal with romantic or sexual relationships between men with a
giggle (when they happen at all), while we get extended tracking shots and
throbbing music whenever two girls hop into bed together. Which, hey, they’re
playing to my specific tastes perfectly. But I know I’m not the only one
watching.
On the plus side, Lost Girl finally had a sex scene again!
Back in season one, I partly fell for this show because it was just this side of a 2 a.m. Cinemax
movie. They’ve drifted away from that premise the last couple seasons.
In the end there was a bunch of betrayal, Bo turned the
tables on Clio, Lauren fled when someone started calling the diner asking for
her real name, and the waitress double-crossed her. I couldn’t tell who that
was in the back seat that grabbed Lauren. I think it was Vex? That would make
sense.
Oh, remember that whole Wanderer thing involving Bo’s dad
and how that was a super big deal and had something to do with Bo disappearing?
I guess the writers don’t.
