Season 22: Seeing is Believing

Remember the Apology Impossible review where I laser focused on the theme since the episode itself had little else to talk about?

Ding ding. Round two.

The theme they’re going for here is that “playing make believe is fun”. Fine, that’s their intention. And if the episode ended that way, it would be alright... even if that’s all Merlin’s character amounts to.

The message I got, however, is that it’s OK to believe something exists, and insist that’s the case, and not be challenged about it. And that is incredibly harmful to a child, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m not saying that kids shouldn’t be imaginative, have imaginary friends or believe in fairy tales, unicorns or something like the Easter Bunny. But what do parents do when their child comes up against a tactless arsehole who crushes their dreams by telling them those things don’t exist?

This episode should have gone down that route. Make it a two parter, make James the antagonist again and have him show Percy that Merlin is a real engine. Because he is. This whole thing falls apart because we’re talking about an engine that’s pretending to be invisible. It must be why the ending segment tried to highlight the episode it did, because they knew they messed up after the episode was finished.

Also, consider all the damage that people have done over the years in the name of fictional deities. All the innocent people (mostly black people and women) they’ve killed and abused. All the children they’ve raped. All the children they’ve refused to vaccinate because they’d rather believe bullshit conspiracies over health professionals. All the LGBT people they’ve killed/thrown out of home/refuted service to/whipped and brutalised. Excuse me while I don’t treat lessons like this with utter, utter contempt.

Stubborn people with backwards lessons in the name of these fictional deities need a smack or ten with reality. And the thought of lessons like these emboldening them makes me sick. Absolutely, it should be a nice, charming lesson. But when applied to real life by real people..!

Remember Ghost Train where Percy was bragging about a story his driver told him and his driver laughed and put him in his place? That was the way to handle it. Quickly and efficiently. Sure, Percy felt disappointed. But he dusted himself off because he (and kids in general) are resilient when dealt with in the right way. It also helped that he ended up using the story to get his own back on the bully that I imagined earlier.

Back to this, and the story is poorly paced. It takes so long to set up the conflict that they only have two minutes to work with after that. It’s telling that an episode that was 4:30 in length had better pacing than this. Sure, you could put it down to them being used to the 8:45 time length, but... well, these are supposed to be paid professionals. Working to a time frame is an important writing skill.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, that whole lesson and how it was dealt with leaves an awful taste in my mouth. I know there are good people who believe in imaginary things and people. But knowing this could embolden the bad ones (especially since they’re gaining so much attention in the media recently) is horrifying to me.

Other than that, the poor pacing really detracts from what should be a fun episode. I just feel bad that Trevor is always being dragged into the bad ones. He (and Merlin, for that matter) deserve better...

At least Hugh Bonneville is still voicing Merlin.

Rating: Atrocious (-10/10)