By: Ben Vanstone
**Spoilers**
If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.
Oh, Merlin, you deliciously campy little thing, you! This episode is an example of Merlin done right. A little bit of romance, a little bit of banter, a little bit of magic, and a LOT of cheesiness makes for the best episodes the show has produced. It's not a particularly deep show and generally makes a fool of itself whenever it tries to go too intense or dark.
What do we learn this episode? Well we learn that Arthur is more oblivious than usual while he's in love and that Merlin is an idiot. Oh...and Morgana is having premonitions through dreams that could put her head on the chopping block. Cheerful stuff.
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- Arthur floating asleep in the Lake of Avalon...foreshadowing, perhaps?
- He actually looks kind of comical whenever his hair is floating in the current like that. Also if the water was really so shallow that creepy-girl-of-the-week can stand in it to triumphantly watch him drown, well, let's just say that a man of Arthur's stature shouldn't be floating underwater like that. The logistics just don't work.
- Why does Arthur keep bringing Merlin on hunting trips if the servant keeps being clumsy and scaring off the deer and bunnies?
- Arthur has this habit of twirling his sword before charging in and starting a skirmish. It serves no purpose whatsoever. He just thinks it looks cool.
- For more on the above fact, be sure to check out the audio commentary with Bradley James. It is HILARIOUS!
- Merlin makes a ginormous, sturdy branch break and crush thug that is chasing Arthur with sword drawn. Arthur's reaction: "Stroke of luck..." I don't know whether to laugh to rip out my hair and scream. Could he BE more oblivious? (Though, to be fair, no one else noticed either...except for the poor sod who got crushed.)
- Fun Fact: 'Tir-Mor' is Gaelic for 'Mainland'. Guess we know where that kingdom is located...
- Merlin finds Arthur's (fascination? crush? infatuation?) attraction to Sophia to be quite funny. I find his smirk to be funny.
- Whenever Aulfric kills that thug, he dies with a Loony Tunes scream. Or maybe it sounds more like something off of Tom & Jerry...
- Really, seriously, you need to watch the DVD commentary for every single episode of Merlin. For instance, we get a reason for why Merlin is always doing chores whenever he's in a scene with Arthur:
- It makes sense, after all. This show gets so few other historical and societal things right about Camelot that the actors have had to take things into their own hands. It makes for some very funny moments too.
- Arthur asking Merlin to lie to Uther for him is a very cute scene. Awww! He even promises to be Merlin's friend for life!
- And Merlin's lie to Uther? Makes me laugh every time...even if Uther's response has a certain amount of delayed-realization horror to it. He threatened Merlin with a flogging and I fully believe that it was only that brilliant smile that saved our warlock.
- Poor Morgana! "He hates magic more than he loves me."
- It kind of hurts to see how Merlin is so giddy about Arthur and Sophia considering how in later series' he will become so worn down and paranoid about everyone...even their closest friends.
- "Goodnight, Arthur." But...but...wha? It's not even afternoon yet, going by the light! What on earth are you telling him 'goodnight' for?!
- What I would really like to know is why Uther isn't suspicious of those rather hard-to-miss staffs that Aulfric and Sophia carry everywhere with them.
- Arthur and Morgana's conversation always makes me chuckle:
Arthur: "Come on! It's obvious you like me!"
Morgana: "Less and less by the second."
- How many times does Merlin end up in the stocks in this episode? Two? Three?
- Although...why did he say they were throwing potatoes at him? Tomatoes I can forgive, that's an easy historical mistake to make...but potatoes? And banana peels?!
- Speaking of historically messed-up things that make no sense, it is TOTALLY unrealistic that Arthur and Sophia would be allowed to go anywhere alone together. Aside from the fact that it was dishonorable, they are a prince and a princess. They would not be allowed out in the bandit-infested woods without a guard of some sort. No way, no how.
- I will say this for the episode, the special effects used for the Lake of Avalon look absolutely beautiful. Guess they didn't use up their entire budget on making Merlin's eyes flash after all.
- Why couldn't we see more of this in later episodes? It's not like they got a big CGI budget cut or something. The money really should have gone towards what a show called Merlin is all about - the magic.
- How doesn't Arthur notice Sophia getting right up in his face and doing her little sidhe chant to put him under a spell? I mean...I know he's an oblivious prat and all that, but this is just ridiculous.
- All of the soppy, cheesy romantic dialogue in that particular scene makes me gag and look for a barf bucket. I'll forgive Arthur, though, because he was enchanted. Sophia on the other hand...
- Till Death Do Us Part has never sounded so...grim.
- So Aulfric just wanted his daughter to be given back her immortality. I'll say this for the show, for all its other faults it does do a good job of creating villains that are complex and three-dimensional. The morals are a bit grey in places. Not enough to make things confusing or totally moral-less, but enough that it feels a bit more like the complicated mess that is real life than it otherwise would. Yes they are unconditionally wrong to be murdering and stealing souls and all that other stuff...but they all have pretty solid motivations. Great characters, hokey stories
- I love Uther's nonplussed expression when Arthur asks to marry Sophia. Guess Arthur hadn't been particularly interested in the whole courtship scene before or something.
- He does make the threat of execution (especially on a presumed fellow nobleman) awful quickly, though.
- If Morgana wanted Uther and Arthur to listen to her feeling about Sophia, she really should have considered pulling the women's intuition card. It might not have worked, but at least she wouldn't have come off as jealous.
- I squeaked whenever Aulfric threw Merlin against the wall. Poor guy can't afford to have his brains further scrambled!
- Where were the guards when Arthur and Sophia strolled out through the front gate of the castle hand in hand? Surely they must have gotten the notice about Uther's disapproval of the match by now. If not through an official order, at least through the castle gossip grapevine. I know Camelot's guards are more useless than Star Trek's redshirts...but still!
- I love the way Aulfric and Sophia have an entire tearful goodbye while Arthur just stands there with a blank expression on his face. It's like something out of a cartoon!
- Of course Sophia had to kiss him before drowning him and stealing his soul. Is she secretly a crossroads demon or something?
- My mother and I were laughing so hard whenever Merlin blasted the sidhe (guess now you see where I get my sense of humor from...) and she jokingly said, "I'm MELTING!" Now that I think about it, yeah. That reference totally fits. If this was a video review I would be splicing in a clip from The Wizard of Oz right here.
- Merlin totally looks like Spock whenever he pulls Arthur out of the water.
- Also, I'm curious to find out how he (with a rather severe concussion and all) dragged Arthur's dead-weight, bulkier, armor-clad, wet self all the way back to Camelot and got him into bed without anyone else noticing. Again, the guards are rather useless, but surely they'd notice that!
- The scene where Arthur wakes up in bed and Merlin and Gaius concoct a story (one of their better lies, really) to explain what on earth happened to him never fails to make me laugh. Poor guy looks so confused! Well...more than usual.
- And the episode ends on a surprisingly foreboding note with a bit of foreshadowing concerning Morgana's seer abilities and the possibility that she may have magic like Merlin does too. Of course anyone who knows anything about Arthurian legends knows where that is going...
This episode is just good fun, despite the occasional inaccuracy like a night-scene being filmed with light clearly shining through the windows, and contains just the right combination of witty humor and theatrics that all good episodes of Merlin hit the sweet spot of. The story is fairly solid too and contains plenty of foreshadowing for events later in the legend and the show. Merlin also gains his first staff in this episode as he steals Sophia's and never returns it. The Gates of Avalon is a fun episode and warrants a 4/5.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?
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