Lost Girl – Caged Fae
Lost Girl, season three has finally arrived! The show that single-handedly keeps the Canadian eye liner and mascara industry in business. And why waste any time? Let’s start right off with an homage to “girls in prison” exploitation films.
When last season ended, there were a few plot lines left dangling. Bo used her grandma’s magic soul essence to bring Trick (who is her grandfather) back to life instead of eradicating the darkness within herself. Now you know Bad Bo is in town when her eyes light up all electric blue. Kenzi got some weird magical infection when she went to town on the Norn with a chainsaw (the Norn had taken Dyson’s love for Bo, which he reclaimed). The old Ash died so his venom could be used to destroy the garuda. Dyson suggested to Lauren, the human doctor who is sort of an indentured servant to the Ash, that it was a good time for her to escape, but she declined and also sort of knew he was trying to send her away so he could have Bo to himself.
The episode begins with Bo robbing a bank and throwing the money around, literally. No glowy blue eyes though. She has a confrontation in Trick’s bar with Dyson, who arrests her, but the whole thing feels forced. Turns out it’s a scam to get Bo into a fae prison, where Lauren is investigating the disappearance of the former prison doctor, who was her mentor.
The prison is run by amazons, a fae breed that despises males. This is a great example of how Lost Girl blends supernatural mythologies into a big, goofy hodge podge (and not dumb-goofy, but fun-goofy). The word “fae” implies a fairly specific set of vaguely Celtic mythology, but amazons are most certainly not part of it (their Greek origin is played through in the name of the prison, Hecuba). Neither, for that matter, are skunk-apes, which are North American cryptids. Why let any of that get in the way of great lines like, “Oh, I coated myself in the secretions of a skunk ape.”?
The whole set up is a big play on movies like Caged Heat and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Women behind bars, sadistic guards, hypersexual warden. Good stuff.
There’s a bunch of plot which ends when Bo discovers the warden’s plan – she’s been using her fae superpowers to breed rare fae and sell the babies for adoption on the fae baby black market. Of course. Along the way, we do get a good example of Bo’s ethical core – she puts herself at serious risk and even jeopardizes the entire mission (Operation: Chained Cooch, in Kenzi’s words) to save her innocent cellmate with the achingly Dickensian backstory from a beating. We get another example of Bo’s personality when she checks into prison (and gets the world’s most flattering prison jumpsuit) – the guards go through all her stolen goods, then find Bo’s vibrator. She assures them it was not stolen.
Back at the Dal (Trick’s fae gin joint), we learn that Dyson’s partner Hale has been named acting Ash of the light side. This makes some sense, as he is the eldest son of one of the major light fae noble houses. There’s this weird thing where he’s hiding out in a vault under the Dal, and it reminds everyone of an old-timey speakeasy, so they occasionally drop into odd 1920s slang. The result is so awkward and terrible I can’t even…
The best thing about this episode is the continued presence of Vex. Vex is a gothy dark fae mesmer – he can control people like a puppet master pulling strings. Having him around serves a lot of purposes – for one thing, it adds weight to Bo’s neutrality. Most of the time she’s light fae in all but name, since she hangs out almost exclusively with lights and humans. But he also acts as a sort of Greek chorus for the show, explicitly pointing out some of the more absurd goings on and mocking the angsty relationship drama the way we all do from our couches. I thought his campy glam-goth antics and Middlesex accent would get old, but he’s actually a perfect balance for the sometimes overly saccharine Scooby gang. Watching him vamp around in pleather hot pants while Dyson smolders…well, it just makes the smoldering all that much more smoldery, doesn’t it?
Kenzi gets precious little screen time, but makes the most of it. She shows up to the prison disguised as Bo’s redneck lover, and believes so strongly in method acting that she’s wearing a monster truck thong. She slips Bo a device to fool the warden’s retinal scanners via a sloppy kiss, and if you’re a Bo/Kenzi shipper like me, you’ve been waiting a long time for that one, eh? Actually, there was plenty of tongue to go around in this episode, with Bo locking lips with a guard, the warden (twice) and Lauren.
In the end, they save Bo’s cellmate, who turns out to be a nearly extinct fae called a wombley. The wombley’s baby will explode if it smells Lauren’s skunk ape secretions, and Lost Girl never shies away from an excuse to get a cast member naked. The final confrontation with the warden and her guards ends strangely – Bo reveals that the warden is a man, baby. The amazons are displeased.
Hale shuts down the Hecuba prison and everyone lives happily ever after. Oh, except Dyson. Now that he has his love for Bo back, he wants her. So of course Bo decides to have a real relationship with Lauren, who we learn already has baby names picked out. If there’s one thing I don’t like so much about Lost Girl, it’s that this love triangle has gone on far too long without even a hint of a threesome.
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Monday, January 14th, 2013. Filed under Dark TV, Headline.
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Tags: caged fae, fae, lost girl, supernatural crime, syfy
