After 1800 years, you’d think he’d have it all figured out.
He certainly thinks he does.
MERLYN’S MISTAKE
The limited series
Episode SIX
In Which We See Faerie Boobs
Threatening gunplay, the Agency soldiers demand, in traditionally authoritarian tones, access to the crashed plane and immediate peaceful surrender by Merlyn and his group of any clever radar-fooling device that allowed them to apparently vanish from the air 150 miles out, on course for Heathrow and suddenly show up crashing into a lake in Wales seconds later. Before they become so enraged by Merlyn’s insouciantly charming and non-confrontational that they begin gunning down the suspect, belligerent civilians in the cameraless wilderness, the moon begins to rise and the world freezes. Around them, silence and stillness grips the wilds of Wales and all focus turns to the spectacle of the sword emerging from the water, sensual, ritual, wholly revealed now as utterly phallic to Merlyn who sees the layers as all those around him remain mesmerized the beauty of what he created. PERHAPS FLASHBACKS CAN GIVE US THE BOND GIRL MOMENTS, THE TEEN HORNSPLOITATION MOMENTS, ALL THE ICONIC WOMAN-EMERGES-FROM THE WATER MOMENTS IN MERLYN’S HORRIFIED MIND. WE MAY NOT NEED THEM…MIGHT NOT PLAY. The Agency Men immediately lose themselves in the slow spectacle of her slow, liquid striptease, hilt huge in her small hands as she emerges, one step at a time in the dimming moonlight. She does not pause, but looks up as the pommel releases a single droplet toward her face and, knowing it is as he choreographed it, knowing it to be his own, unself-conscious grotesquery of times gone by he promises Sofia she will never need to do the safety speech again.
PARALLEL FLASHES through the ceremony give us this ceremony watched by Merlyn from the tree line when it awed Arthur and his small, dirty, armored retinue.
FLASHBACKS give us the intro the war of the trees, the crows that brought Merlyn back to Arden in the dark days, Nimue protecting him on the way into Arden from Roman soldiers who camp beyond the fringe, sending in scouting parties. Some of her cryptic language at that time about who he is as the hero who returns from the dead to set things right makes more sense now than it did then. He begins to realize that she knew then that his constructs, left in her care, held the magic he needed to release to the world. Flashes give hints of the flames to come. They give us hints of the wonders to come.
Her grand ritual comes to be interrupted by the re-awakening of the soldiers. Despite her attempts to get things back on track, they prove unruly stupid children, and when she becomes enraged, it does not matter how many guns they have. She can destroy them.
At the intersection of Roger Zelazny and Jim Butcher stands a small monument to individual agency, This magical, funny book that calls not for accountability but responsibility. As painful truths come to light, Merlyn’s conscience compels him to redress old wrongs only to realize that he has endangered all the people he loves. Still, despite machine gun fire, plane crashes and giant spiders, they will stand by him.. When he needs them, even his old Faerie ally Nimmue will be there to do her part. Still, if he can’t unravel the last riddles woven into the Arthurian Excalibur construct they may be too late to save themselves or the world.
“Brody’s writing is brilliant.”
Robin Williams
In the words of the wise, ancient magician himself, “If I see a way that I might save the world and I don’t at least try, then I’m sort of dick.”
