Lost Girl Rewatch Week 1: Sexual healing

I was going to begin writing these last Monday, but decided to keep to my schedule and just… basically… not do anything for a week. The semester was cruel on me (B plusses are the worst; am I right?) and I just needed some time from not staring into a computer screen. I wrote a write-up of my thoughts on the Lost Girl pilot and then immediately watched another three episodes afterwards. I’ve basically just been sitting on my thoughts for more than a week.

As far as the pilot’s concerned, I still think that the writers could have moved things a bit forward. People in the comments section mentioned that Lost Girl has more of an Angel vibe than it does a Buffy one, and I have to agree for the most obvious element: Bo and Kenzi open up a private investigator business of sorts. That happened in the Angel pilot, by the way. As the credits rolled at the end of Lost Girl episode one, the audience couldn’t have had a concrete idea of where the series was headed. It’s not until the second (and more entertaining) episode where this finally comes together onscreen. I was also pleased, and do not hate me, that the so obviously sinister leaders of the Dark and Light fae were not present in the following episodes. That’s probably just me since I seem to have a problem with villains in supernatural series. In the case of Lost Girl, the characters were particularly… well, I don’t want to say cheesy but something close to it. Pasteurized? I’m sure they pop up in the future, but that’s okay because I don’t dislike them; they just are the least buyable of the entire ensemble. Though, I am hoping there’s a bit of an overhaul in that department. We’ll see. Hopefully, if they must stay their same, mustache-twirling ways, the series at least is a bit self-aware about it going forward.

From these first four episodes, the only flaws in the series thus far are that it has yet to make me truly care about the gravitas… and its very not-subtle ways to highlight what’s currently going on with Bo’s story. For the former, I mean that I’ve yet to be compelled to guess and wonder what’s going to be happening next and whether or not Bo will find her parents. And I’m finding myself, at most, shrugging whenever Trick is all “if she ever finds out, she can destroy us!!!” Okay. I’m just not all that excited to find out Bo’s history, but I’m hoping that it changes in the future once I’m more attached to the characters. For the latter, the series is quite blatant with its paralleling stories. Bo was abandoned by her parents; let’s have a fae who abandoned his child. Bo feels like she’s been dumped; let’s have the case of the week be about a girl who was dumped. You get what I’m saying. It’s almost too obvious. It happens with most shows that cases of the weeks along with overall story arcs, like Lost Girl is doing here, but somehow I find myself really noticing it here.

However, I do think that the dynamics are quite good, with respect to Dyson, Kenzie, and Bo in particular. The series could really put the three of them in several, vastly different situations and reap the entertainment from it effortlessly. The dialogue is thankfully cheeky, even if sometimes too on-the-nose, which certainly helps with the twists you saw coming. Plus, and I know some people think that it gets too much attention for this but you can’t not mention it, Lost Girl‘s portrayal of sexuality is refreshing. Or at least it is for an American viewer. This comparison might not fly, but when it comes to representation of minorities, there seem to be two schools of thought: (1) Your execution of these issues must accurately reflect the current trying times; (2) Just add it in like it’s not a big deal and it won’t be. I tend to fall in the latter camp. I just think that television has such a huge say in how our culture is shaped, and that if we can have a show with a lead character like Bo where she’s just Bo without anyone really making it a big deal, it can pave the way for real life society seeing it that way, too. As a Hispanic person, I’m never asking for more stereotypical Hispanic problems and representations of our struggles. And where I think people get confused, too, is that I also never ask to portray Hispanics in some sort of perfectionist light or something. I don’t think any minority group asks for those things out of pop culture. We can be just as entitled as the white characters on Girls. So why not just make one of them Hispanic? Maybe the same is true for sexually-free characters, as well.

Anyway, let’s get to each, individual episode. Finding caps for season one is like finding [something that’s really difficult to find]. Instead, I’ll try to do a short blurb for each. Perhaps I should have written this when my ideas were still fresh?

1×02 “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Fae”

Also known as the episode where Bo and Dyson do the nasty. When people kept saying that Lost Girl is pretty casual about sex, I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” But no, like Lost Girl is really casual about sex. You guys should have added the “really” (and in italics, to boot). The final scene of “…There’s a Fae” is one of those So-This-Is-The-Kind-Of-Show-I’m-Watching moments. All series have them, and this one is Lost Girl‘s. We’ll get to that in just a second.

During this episode, some fae comes to Bo and asks that she retrieve his pot o’ gold, to which Bo is like “no thanks” and Kenzi’s like “did you not hear the gold part?” So basically, Kenzi is like our Cordelia, except with more heart and an actual cushion to her blows. When they go to retrieve this fae’s riches, they find out that the man who stole it is actually the fae’s son. Dun dun dun, am I right? What happens next is a bit predictable, but it is what it is. In exchange for getting his jewels, the fae tells Bo a bit about her parents. But in a last-minute battle, Bo gets sliced on the neck and literally needs sexual healing. God, it must be so awful to be Bo and get to actually use that phrase and seriously mean it.

Which brings us to the final dirty seconds — ahem, I mean thirty seconds: Bo and Dyson get it on. Well, that didn’t take long, now did it? In a way, it’s a relief that the series decided to get that out of the way so that it’s not unbearably dragged out until season seven. But what I love most about this scene (and later ones in episode three), in relation to a long term idea, is that it doesn’t put so much emphasis on sex. The issue with will-they/won’t-theys is that there’s always the fairytale love-making ending, and those endings are juvenile. I apologize if this gets weird but it’s only a good thing when a series treats sex for what it is. Sex is sex. As someone once said, fairytale love-making is for middle school daydreams. Sometimes people just get it in. Most importantly, it maintains the validity of actually being together as the goal for any will-they/won’t-they, which is quite rare. Nothing but laudations to Lost Girl for this.

Grade: It was okay.

1×03 “Oh Kappa, My Kappa (aka Sorority)”

“Oh Kappa, My Kappa (aka Sorority)” is the first episode where Lost Girl seems to begin getting into some sort of groove. We begin with Bo and Dyson and their morning after, where Kenzi basically claims she sees the two of them sitting in a tree. But, and this was the other scene(s) I was talking about above, Bo clarifies that it was sex, that sex doesn’t have to mean anything. Of course, this is a story-slash-television-show, so Bo is kind of kidding herself, but still the fact that she said it still counts.

I will say that I wasn’t the biggest fan of having Bo be completely humiliated that Dyson was making out with some random girl. I can understand it, however. Dyson is the first person Bo has actually been able to be completely affectionate with without that person dying, and it’s exciting for her. In her mind, she must be seeing how that future could work itself out — and for the first time, it’s bright and can actually be real. So I get it, I just thought it was a bit of a grab at straws only three episodes in. The reason the hooking up worked was because it was just that. It’s hard for Bo’s pain to translate through the screen. The same is true for Dyson’s side of the story, who appears to be a bit smitten with Bo. We don’t know much about Dyson’s backstory (I guess we don’t know much of Bo’s, but we at least know some things), so I can’t comment on how his character might be instantly attracted to Bo. Though I can speculate that perhaps the whole Succubus thing is giving Dyson “vibes.” The show hasn’t talked about how much fae, and particularly Dyson, are affected by Bo’s tendency to have others be attracted to her. I hope that struggle is presented later on in the series. However, in this episode, Dyson at least seems to be sharing a kindredness with her and is asked by Trick — who is ominous and decidedly pithy — to stop leading her on. Regardless, it did make for a great fourth episode, so whatever.

Anyway, during this episode, Bo and Kenzi are asked to find a missing daughter. Kenzi has to go undercover in her worst nightmare: a sorority. Unlike the Bo and Dyson storyline, somehow this one already works. In just a couple of episodes, I think the audience has understood a lot about Kenzi just by her disposition. She’s certainly not some melancholy wanderer, and she even uses terms like “lurve,” but we know that she would hate to have to fit in with this kind of peppy and preppy. So I have to say that, for me, it was firing on all cylinders.

Though, it needs mentioning, this also continues the television tradition of making sororities and fraternities out to be evil or something. It’s like a television agenda to do this. I’m not greek, so I’m not offended.

Bo and Co. find the missing daughter, trapped in an underground dungeon of sorts, where there’s a hungry fae that comes from even further underground and is hungry. It still reminds me of the fraternity episode of Buffy, but let’s be honest this episode is actually entertaining, whereas that episode of Buffy was… oof, let’s forget about it. As far as the fae go, I think the ones that remove their heads are coolest. Speaking of which, we find out that Dyson can transform into a werewolf. Awesome!

Most reminded me of: That Buffy episode which shall not be named. Please tell me it also reminded you of that episode which we shall all forget. Because it was very much like that to me. And also, a bit of the Veronica Mars one as well.

Grade: Funny!

1×04 “Faetal Attraction”

And we’re at what might be the most entertaining of the first four episodes. Again, the case-of-the-week has some obvious “twists,” but something about this episode felt even more in control than the previous one. I definitely think we’re headed towards Lost Girl finding its true groove soon. That’s all that really matters.

Of course, it needs to be mentioned: there’s a threesome in this episode. There are also no complaints in that department. Thankfully, unlike Gossip Girl, Lost Girl actually showed us (parts of) the threesome. Gossip Girl was timid. Once again, snaps for Lost Girl.

In this episode, Bo is feeling hurt that she was kind-of-dumped, kind-of-used-by-Dyson-as-she-used-him. Of course, we know that Dyson’s intentions were better meaning than he’s putting off, but for Bo, it’s the first time she’s been rejected. And while she was planning to just sit this one out quietly, Kenzi convinces her to smash cars! drink a lot of liquor! have sex with not one but two strangers at the same time! So they go to the fae bar, and there encounter Lauren, who Kenzi is all “take her home right now!” but unfortunately, that’s not happening soon. Instead, Bo takes home a married couple.

But as per usual, the morning after is when things get tricky. The wife wants her to murder her husband’s mistress. Long story short: the mistress has a screw or two loose, and now she’s attracted to Bo. It all ends in an explosion that leave the mistress and the wife’s two sisters dead. There wasn’t much to tie in here in the Who Is Bo storyline, but I was pleasantly surprised with this episode. Besides, we find out that Hale is a siren.

Again, the best part is the final 30 seconds, where Bo and Dyson decide to be friends… with benefits. Well, we know that’s going to get those two into trouble a lot, especially Dyson with Trick. And I’m okay with that.

Surprising best character award: The therapist! How annoyed were you at the whole “shot in the dark” thing? Quite, right? But then the therapist was all, “let me psychoanalyze you to a tee, BIATCH!” She was awesome. You go, therapist!

Grade: Quite fun!

The first four episodes of Lost Girl set up some intriguing mythology without, thankfully, ever feeling claustrophobic. The show knows when it doesn’t need certain characters and is okay with trimming them out, without it ever feeling like “Um, shouldn’t so-and-so be here?” Again, I’m not entirely compelled to figure out who Bo is, but I think the cases of the week are fun and I certainly am currently entertained by the relationships the characters have and how they’re progressing or shaping. Up next, I get to watch the “true” pilot (well, after three episodes). I’m kind of excited to see how that episode plays out, actually. Until then!

And speaking of “then,” I will be posting these on Mondays, unless for some reason I have to write about an episode I just watched. Also, it might change if/when certain shows I want to recap begin airing this summer. For now, every Monday until August!