This weeks episode suffers from the fact that it follows on the heels of last week's really fantastic episode, making its faults more glaring.  Also, it not only suffers from "Not How I Think It Should Have Been Done" syndrome, but from "Just Plain Done Poorly" in some rather significant ways.   Don't get me wrong.  There were some fantastic moments this week, and Guy, Isabella, and Prince John are still awesome.  Even Robin managed to redeem himself in my eyes a tiny bit, but I felt like some of the character arcs were shaky and pasted together awkwardly.  


Isabella/Robin

I am torn about what happened in this episode.  On the one hand, one of my major worries about Isabella/Robin was that it had the potential to be a rehash of the "Robin likes someone who is connected to Guy who lives in the castle and gives him information" storyline.  There were the obvious differences - Isabella being Guy's sister, her very interesting motivations, her actual need for Guy's protection from her husband, and the fact that she could actually play John and Guy in a way I don't think Marian could have pulled off - but even those were not enough to keep the whole situation from seeming awfully familiar.  Therefore, I suppose I should be happy that things, for now, do not seem to be going smoothly between the two of them.  Isabella switching sides was certainly unexpected, and I believe I could be convinced to like this new development quite a lot.  However, on the other hand, the Robin/Isabella dynamic in this episode is all over the place.  One moment, he's bringing her anachronistic strawberries in the middle of a drought and they're snuggling right next to Prince John's window like a couple of lovesick idiots, the next he's in The Meadow (capital letters courtesy of the placards at the bottom of the screen) listening to her plan while at the same time accusing her of trying to lure him into a trap.  Then, he's fully ready to believe that she's betrayed him when Guy shackles them together, even though it's completely obvious that Guy is also feeling betrayed by her.  Without any of that getting resolved (unless you call their conversation about Marian and their weird little interaction at the fork in the road resolution), they're in Clun getting their shackles cut off and Robin's telling her, "Don't worry that you have nowhere to go. You have me."   Then, they're clinging to each other in the water, and when they finally get out, Robin's changed his tune to, "Look, I like you and all, but The People are more important to me."  I'm trying to see a pattern here.  I really am.  I'm trying to put together what led from one event to another so that I can make some semblance of a coherent relationship arc out of it.  And I really can't. 

So, here are my conclusions: 

First: Robin/Isabella was sweet, but very uneven.  The development of their relationship and Guy finding out about it were crammed into too few episodes.  They needed two or three more weeks to explore Isabella's character, to let her motivations and her attraction to Robin unfold more slowly.  As it was, it ended up being quite jarring.  It ended up making Robin seem like he was more of a horrible person than usual, kissing her and leading her on without any intention of having a life with her.  (Also, doesn't he yell at her in the forest about how she's made him think they had a future?  And then, when she wants one, not only does he tell her he won't run away with her, but he essentially tells her he can't be with her at all any more if he wants to serve the people.  Who was leading who on now, Robin?  Were the writers even paying attention to what he said earlier? I highly doubt it, and that makes me sad.)  

Second: Isabella is more like her brother than she would like to admit. Like Guy, she has obviously had so little true affection in her life, that once she is given it, she reacts very badly to the prospect of losing it.  As terribly written and contrived as her "I have a dream of us in the country raising our own food and an equal number of boys and girls" speech was, I'll buy that in that moment, facing death, she believed it.  Watching her do this scene reminded me of Guy trying to get Marian to marry him even when they both knew all was lost in "Walkabout" (only not as awesome, because nothing in the history of Robin Hood is as awesome as that episode).  I'll even buy that admitting her dream to Robin was something of a revelation to her.  She has realized that even having lost her brother's protection and the Prince's favor, she still has a chance for happiness, and she's giddy at the possibility of a new start until Robin takes it away from her.  This, as it turns out, was a bad decision on his part, because having her dream of happiness snatched away, Isabella reacts like one would expect a Gisborne to react. She follows power and switches her allegiance to Prince John.  I like to think that if Robin had been kinder to her, if he had told her "It's going to be difficult, but we'll see what happens" instead of "No, not ever, sorry..." then she would have fought at his side against Prince John.  (I must grudgingly admit that being down in the well with her and having her life put in danger for having helped him may have reminded Robin of how much she stood to lose.  He doesn't want another woman he cares for to die for his cause.  Still. He could have broken the news to her more gently.)  

I've pointed out before that both Guy and Isabella seem to place great importance on speech, on Words Said Aloud. This comes out again in Isabella's, "The only thing I ever wanted to hear from him was a plea for forgiveness.  Some admission of guilt that it was his fault I was so unhappy."  This was well-written and well-played, I thought, and quite sad.  An admission is the one thing she'll never get from him.  I'm extremely interested in the possibilities implied by Robin's "What about what he has to say?" question, but I'm sure that line of his was forgotten as soon as it was penned, because by the end of the episode Robin is more than ready to run Guy through once more.

On Robin's side of things, I was surprisingly impressed with the way that his longing for family and normalcy was handled in this episode. He's got a worn out, tired melancholy in the scene with Tuck where he wonders if he can really change things, and even Tuck's pep talk doesn't do much to cheer him up.  This was nice and understated, I thought.  Not too much "poor me," just a quiet exhaustion.  It's understandable that Robin might be feeling a bit low.  Vasey, Robin's enemy for so long, is finally "dead," but the change he thought he would see on the day Vasey died is no closer than it was when he was alive.  Instead, John has stepped into Vasey's shoes, and in many ways, John is worse than the Sheriff ever was.  That has to be disheartening for Robin.  So, in the face of a situation he no longer thinks he can change, he starts to wish for what the people he fights for every day have:  family, a normal life, a home.  Perhaps that's one of the reasons he is starting to fall for Isabella.  Yes, he wants to make himself forget the pain of losing Marian, but some of his reactions indicate to me that she represents, for a little while, at least, the possibility of that normal future he craves. 

Of course, by the end of the episode, he's changed his tune, and he's back to his old, "I'm Robin Hood, I fight for the people" business. If he'd shown some lingering doubt, some hint of sadness over what he's lost with Isabella, I would have given the show a medal.  But he doesn't.  He's the same old Robin with the same old emotional depth of slime mold.   Therefore, I don't feel too bad pausing for a moment to enumerate several things that infuriated me about Robin this episode:

The fact that he comes to Isabella right outside of Locksley, when I'm pretty sure that it's obvious that Prince John is there.  Is he trying to get her caught?

The way that he tells Much, "It's not the same, is it?" When Much reminds him, "You have me..." As nicely played as the rest of this emotional arc was, I could have slapped Robin in that moment.  He didn't even acknowledge that Much was trying to help him, in his own way.  It's not, "Oh, old friend... you know I love you, but I want family, too..." It's just, "It's not the same."  No return of the affection, just blind petulance.  Oh, Robin, did last season teach you nothing?

Why the insistence that the rest of the gang wait for him in the village while he's off with Isabella?  It's like Robin's afraid they'll be useful without him. Couldn't have that... the people might not love him enough. *hmph*

Robin saying "I'm letting you have your own way… now surely you can't get angry at me for letting you have your way, can you?"  YES SHE CAN, Robin, when you are so obviously being condescending.  Again, I struggle with how to read this.  What am I supposed to take away from this interaction?  Because I took that Isabella was right and Robin is a well-meaning by extraordinarily chauvinistic young man who knows less than nothing about women.  Also, an extra dose of FAIL for the show for not making it obvious which way they end up going when they've just argued about it for a good minute of screen time.  It looks like from the way they were standing that Isabella goes behind Robin, off to the right, which was originally "his way,"  but I can't be sure of that.

The EPIC FAIL of Robin's conversation with Isabella about Marian.  I am glad beyond words that Marian got a mention at all, and I even liked that Robin admits that he's trying to forget, with the implication that the pain of remembering is too much.  However, all of those good points are overshadowed for me by the fact that Robin puts on his petulant child act when Isabella points out that Marian had a strong hold over Guy, as well.  (Perceptive of her to have picked that up from what little she heard them say, by the way, unless she and Guy have discussed it off-screen, which I highly doubt.)  When he said that Marian never gave Guy reason or encouraged her, I believe that I paused the episode and screamed, "YOU ARE BLIND AND DUMB, SIR!" at the screen.  Marian DID give him reason.  She kissed him and agreed to marry him and flirted with him, and Robin knew it.  It has just occurred to me that he's rewriting history to make Marian more pure, more his, and in doing so, he's making her less complicated, more easily managed.  It's easier for him to remember a Marian who loved just him than a woman who may have had conflicted feelings for a man he hated.  (And he's erasing what little canon validity my 'ship had, which, while irrelevant, makes me irrationally angry).



Guy of Gisborne did not have a fun episode. 

When I think about Guy this week, I don't so much see new things happening as I do the return of a lot of old things with new faces. What should have been his moment of triumph, his accession to power is instead a repeat of Marian's betrayal and Vasey's manipulation.  And what's more, I think Guy knows it.

Once again, Guy is faced with a woman who is close to him betraying him for Robin.  Like Marian, Isabella spoke prettily and made him feel as if his protection was important to her, and as with Marian, Guy is faced with the fact that those words were not heartfelt, but self-serving.  That being said, I would argue that Guy does not want to kill his sister.  It's more something he agrees to do because he feels he must, and he does his best (which isn't very good...) to get out of it.  Knowing full well what John is capable of, he questions his reasoning about Isabella, and the look on his face when he sees Robin with her in the meadow is more pained than angry.  (Pained is an understatement here. This is another scene where Richard acts without words and my heart breaks for Guy. The fangirl part of me suggests adjectives like crushed, ruined, empty, and devastated, but we'll go with "pained" for now.) Even when he does eventually decide to kill her, he leaves her to drown instead of finishing her off himself.  I don't think he could have handled having the blood of another woman he supposedly cared for literally on his hands.

It's quite telling that the accusations that Guy hurls at Isabella in the forest basically consist of, "He's an OUTLAW! You PROMISED!" That, right there, is Guy of Gisborne's worldview in a nutshell.  Family, relationships, and loyalty (to him) are of supreme importance, there's a right side and a wrong side of the law (legally, not morally, mind you...), and promises mean everything.  There are so many messed up things going on in this scene.  It's fun to watch, actually, as the dynamics between the three of them shift and crackle with tension.  When Guy offers Isabella her "second chance" and Robin spits out his "Don't you wish you'd done that for Marian" line, my heart almost stopped.  (Guy does, by the way.  Wish he'd given Marian another chance.)  I don't think Guy needed Robin to point out the parallel, though.  It was already obvious to him from the moment he offered Isabella the sword.  Guy is certain that Isabella will choose him over Robin, and for once, he wants to SEE someone choose him over Robin in an irreversible way (stabbing is pretty irreversible on this show, except when it's not...).  When Guy says, "Prove to me you understand the terrible error you have made," he's not just talking to Isabella.  He's talking to Marian. 

Because this show is this show, Guy has to fail in the end.  He makes the usual villain's mistake of leaving before his prisoners are dead (though with more reason than most villains usually have... still don't think he wants to see Isabella die), and then he makes the even bigger mistake of lying to Prince John about them being dead.  (If Guy had been Vasey, he would have invited John down to the dungeons so they could taunt drowning Robin together.)  Though Guy does seem to be very entranced and happy in the moment that John names him Sheriff and gives him the keys to Nottingham, the rest of the episode doesn't seem to show him taking the kind of satisfaction one would expect him to.  Sure, he tells Robin that life is sweet and laughs along with Prince John, but in the moments when the camera is on Guy's face and no one else is watching him, that glibness and cruelty are gone, and he looks very alone and very tired. 

Like Robin, Guy is realizing that nothing has changed.   Guy put up with Vasey for years, and all of his hopes were pinned on the idea that one day, he would be free of the Sheriff's influence.  Now, having "killed" Vasey himself, he's no closer to freedom than he was before. He's also no closer to earning the trust of the people he ostensibly cares about.  This is what makes him snap at John in the end.  He can't handle one more woman betraying him, one more insane superior ordering him around and expecting the impossible from him.   So, he tells John all of the things that he's thinking instead of letting them simmer under the surface for months and years, and gets outlawed for his trouble.  I really like that final scene, actually, because as messed up as it is, it's Guy saying, "No.  I'm not going to do this again."  He doesn't have anything resembling a plan, and he'll probably regret it later, but I am so proud of him for the spine he has in that moment that I could burst. (The final fight is really fun, too... mostly because it almost puts Guy and Robin on the same "side" for a moment, against Isabella and Prince John, and it's only when the two of them are dealt with that Robin and Guy face off.  People have pointed out that it's reminiscent of some of the fight scenes in the 2nd and 3rd PotC movies, and I think they're right.  It's a comparison that makes me smile.)

The creators of this show have talked about how similar Guy and Robin are in some ways, how Guy could have been more like Robin if things had been just a little bit different.  I think that this really comes out at the end where Guy yells, "You're a dead man walking, Gisborne!"  And Guy simply responds, "It never seemed to hurt you any."  Guy is now more like Robin than ever - on the wrong side of the law, stripped of title and possessions and everything that gave him status in the world.  We'll see how long this lasts.  I, for one, want to see what Guy's like without the things that define him.



A short note about Prince John.

PJ was more sane this week, less over the top.  As much as I loved the camp in "Do You Love Me?" I also liked this toned down, wily version of the prince. I liked the subdued, quiet anger on his face when he sees Robin and Isabella.  I like the way that he plays Guy like a fine-tuned violin throughout the episode. And I LOVE his plan with the water.  It was quite smart of him, actually, horrible and wrong, but smart.  And if Robin hadn't come along and revealed that John was the one stopping the water in the first place, it might have actually had its intended effect of making the people view him as benevolent.  In the scene where he arrives in Locksley with the water, PJ reminded me of an Old West snake oil salesman, hamming it up and getting the crowd ready for his big reveal.  We already know that John loves theatrics, and so it must have irked him even more to have Robin beating him to the punch, taking the love and affection that were "rightfully his."

Even disappointed and angry, John is still the showman.  Tipping over the barrel of water in the middle of a drought is a classic display of extravagance, and the image of the water pouring out over the dust was quite effective.  (Also, other than the fact that he says "whinging" at the beginning, my favorite line of his this episode is, "Sell something... some grain, a cow, a grandparent...")

It should be interesting to see how John reacts to Isabella next week. He seems to take her back during that fight at the end, and Isabella is a master at backpedaling and telling people what they want to hear.  (I kind of love how she manipulates Guy AND John with her "weak willed woman" act when it's obvious she's anything but.)


 
It is always difficult to tell how much time has passed between episodes, but it doesn't make sense to me that Locksley and the surrounding environs went from lush and green with deep rivers running through gorges (so Robin can fall into them and not die) and nice little ponds like the one that's near where Isabella tries to hide her money to dry as a bone in a couple of weeks' time, or even a couple of months. I'm no geologist or water specialist, but don't things like that take time, even with John blocking the springs? 

This episode features the healthiest dying baby I've ever seen.  Adorable kid and all, but Tuck's adamant "that baby has a few hours to live!" stuff was laughable. 

Why do Robin and Isabella not even THINK of searching for the key that Guy dropped? It's small, yes, but also silver and shiny, and I think it even has a yellow ribbon on it…

The more I see the scene with Robin/Iz in the water, the pissier I get. "Hold me, while we're in water over our heads and it's 9 times harder to tread water and our body heat doesn't help because we're WET." COMMON SENSE FAIL.

Why do the guards recognize Tuck? The guards never recognize anyone… certainly not by NAME. Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn't pulled his hood up in plain view of the guards?

"I miss Djaq" #3952. She would have been able to find plants with hidden water, but she would not have talked about lizard pee.

I HATE IT that Robin gets all cocky in the dungeon and says, "You've forgotten one thing: I'm Robin Hood."  NO, no we haven't, Robin.  Because you won't let us.  That line makes me GLAD he failed here a couple of times before shooting his arrow through the ring.  (With a wet bowstring and wet arrows and a lot of wet dress weighing it down. *facepalm*)

Kate gets caught. Again.  And it's so routine we don't even see it happen... she's just gone. *sigh* Inevitable capture aside, Kate was pretty okay this week.  I kind of actually like that she frees herself while no one else is paying attention, and that she's the one to get Robin out of his "MUST KILL GUY" mode at the end so they can run from the guards.  Still obnoxious, but less so than she could be.

Next week:  Two weeks from now:

Guy's still angry at Isabella, the king is dead (maybe), and John is back to his wonderful camp