Lost Girl – Delinquents
Linda Hamilton guest stars on Lost Girl while Bo and Kenzi go undercover at a summer camp for juvie malefactors to hunt down Man-Thing.
There were two plot lines weaving along this week before the big shippy finale, so let’s tackle them one at a time. First, Tamsin meets up with an old friend, who turns out to be Linda Hamilton. Linda looks pretty cool and badass in a sort of Steven Tyler kind of way. She uses a Xena-esque serrated blade as a weapon, wears henna on her hands, and her name is Acacia, which is derived from the Greek word for “thorn.” She and Tamsin kick back and talk about the glory days, when they hung out with real warriors (Acacia name-drops Tecumseh).
As they knock back Molsons in the back of Tamsin’s pickup truck, Acacia says things like, “Bitch, do I look like a wizard?” and “He knows you found her, now it’s time to finish the job.” She pulls out a Wanderer tarot card to underline her point.
So, look…I don’t know anything about acting. I’ve never acted. But I’ve learned a lot from Lost Girl. If your method of showing emotion in a scene involves jaw clenching, that’s never going to be anything but hilarious. I’m talking “Jeremy Irons in the Dungeons & Dragons movie” levels of overacting.
Anyway, to make it clear, Acacia’s been sent by someone to ensure that Tamsin fulfills her mission of “bringing in” Bo. She gives Tamsin a runeglass bottle, and once you put the magic hair into it, “the druid will do the rest.” Tamsin starts collecting hair from Bo’s friends, but she starts to feel emotiony things about Bo and throws the bottle away. This brings Acacia back for more jaw clenching. Shortly thereafter, the mystery dude who’s after Bo sends Tamsin a message – Acacia’s hand in a box.
It seems this puts the fear in our favorite valkyrie, so she goes about collecting the hair she needs to activate the magic bottle. At the last, Bo seems to realize something’s amiss and does the cool/scary succubus eyes.
The monster of the week is a tikbalang, a creature from the folklore of the Philippines, and I’m not even going to go into the actual tikbalang legends because Lost Girl handles it so dismissively. The creature does some creepy Blair Witchish things by leaving those wooden caltrops all around, but this was seriously the most perfunctory monster of the week ever. For one thing, they only really introduced a single fae character at the camp where the murders were taking place, so the instant she appeared on screen I was like, “Oh, that’s obviously the monster.”
Then the monster itself was this pathetic plant creature that was literally a guy in a ghillie suit, like some kind of zero-budget version of Marvel’s Man-Thing plant monster (or DC’s Swamp Thing I guess). I get that the budget isn’t enormous here, but holy crap that was a joke. Or was it supposed to be a human-shaped fae wearing a plant costume? Because that’s even worse. Defeating the monster involved the delinquents tossing some smoke bombs, Bo fighting it half-heartedly for four seconds, then trimming off a bit of hair. The big twist that the tikbalang had a human boyfriend helping with the murders only kind of helped.
On the upside, Kenzi seemed back to her old self this week, and we got some classic Kenzi one-liners. One of the reasons I became a Lots Girl fan is because the show (mainly Kenzi) could make me laugh out loud regularly. This week, it was, “Are you seriously gonna tell me that wasn’t the funniest shit in the history of both funny and shit?” Calling the tikbalang a ticklebang was low-hanging fruit, but it’s all in the delivery. I loled. Did you notice that Kenzi showed up to summer camp with the most epically fashionable t-shirt ever? Not even counting the bustier, it had shoulder pads and a gathered chest. Do they have some kind of fae tailor hanging around who whips these things together?
That whole Kenzi/Dyson exchange about wolves was also great. “I think you actually love wolves.”
But I guess what everyone will be talking about is the relationship stuff. I get that the show is sort of built around all the love triangles and love dodecahedrons and whatnot, but sometimes it is just godawful boring. Mainly when it involves Lauren. She perpetually looks to be on the verge of weeping, and this week finally wept a few times. And while I also understand that Lost Girl is a soap opera, sometimes it wears the soapiness on its sleeve a little too much.
For example, when Tamsin confesses to her kiss with Bo, she really vamps it up, eliciting a slap from Lauren and a “Get out!” that would not have felt out of place on, say, Dallas or Dynasty. But wow, does Tamsin ever give good bitchface.
Now everyone’s in love with Bo, and you kind of get the feeling they’re all just smugly biding their time until Bo gets bored with Lauren. Because Lauren is boring. So boring. “Oh, you’re going on an adventure? I was hoping we’d have this weekend to talk.” So Lauren finally breaks up with Bo, praise the Ash! Only now I fear they’re going to wallow in angst. Lauren somehow manages to mope even harder post-breakup. How do you mope harder? I can’t do it. But Lauren can.
I’ve been wondering why everyone loves Bo so much. She’s cool and has some good qualities. I’d hang out with her. I just don’t get the undying, fervent, passionate love. After that conversation between Lauren and Dyson, I’m beginning to suspect it really all comes down to Bo’s magic succubutton. They both sort of idly list a few good things about Bo. “Noblehearted. Brave. Sure.” Then Lauren is like “BEST. SEX. EVER.” And Dyson all but high-tens her and yells, “HELL YEAH!”
Please, please tell me I’m not the only one who snickered when Tamsin said, “That is a sad, sad little box.”
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Monday, March 25th, 2013. Filed under Dark TV, Headline.
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Tags: delinquents, linda hamilton, lost girl, lost girl season 3, syfy
