The trolls bring Kit and Willow to their underground city.

Willow seems to be aiming at Comic Fantasy (Fantasy Comedy?) as opposed to High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy. Alas, it constantly – and completely – misses the mark.

Someone who loves slapstick or lowbrow humor may enjoy this episode – as well as the last few episodes. Nothing against different taste. More power to them. For myself, I dislike humor at the expense of the characters, especially when supposedly intelligent characters repeatedly make the absolute stupidest choices possible.

Our heroes’ quest to rescue Kit leads them to the cave trolls and a set that looks like nothing so much as the mines of Khazad-dûm. I expected Gimli to appear at any moment. The trolls, no doubt intended as humor, totally fail. I understand (or at least believe) they intend to be funny with the pair of brothers: one a smarter-than-he acts brute, and the other erudite and faintly effeminate. The thing is, there is nothing particularly humorous about either of them. Just odd.

In one nice touch, the leader of the Bone Reavers leaves the others to their quest and announces she’ll liberate all the slaves instead. It’s a refreshing change that avoids glossing over what all too often happens (that is, the heroes ignoring everyone else in need).

Oblivious to their peril, Graydon continues to hit on Elora even as they evade trolls and do their best to avoid death either from a blade or from falling from an immense height. He also forgets to stay in character while disguised and nearly gets himself skewered by the troll king. Elora, for her part, drops Cherlindrea’s wand from that selfsame immense height. Worse, she laments that Willow will kill her – as if the trolls won’t easily and gleefully beat him to it.

Kit and Elora also share a heart-to-heart at the most inappropriate time. The show makes a habit of this worse than any other in memory. Perhaps also intended as slapstick humor, but characters repeatedly ignore danger all around them (sometimes literal battles) and stop to have melodramatic discussions full of woe and angst. I despise angst every bit as much as slapstick.

The anachronistic music continues to put off instead of mesh with the show. I’m a huge fan of A Knight’s Tale. The modern music in historical times can be done really well. Perhaps the problem in this instance is that they didn’t start off including it in the first episode, but injected it several episodes in. Like the attempts at humor, it just doesn’t fit.

We get a glimpse of Airk, who does one of the smartest things in the show thus far (in fact, maybe the only smart thing!): when faced with voices in his head and an ominous, looming door, he goes in the opposite direction. Good for him. A welcome break for us. It doesn’t last. At the end, Airk finds himself back where he started. The utter lack of progress remains emblematic of the series itself. This time he can’t resist and goes through the door. He discovers a lovely damsel imprisoned behind bars spaced so far apart she could squeeze out between them. Their eyes meet, romantic music swells, and his intelligence vanishes as he never once considers it’s a trap.

Christian Slater does a great job with iffy material. He comes across as awfully robust for a person locked in a tiny cage for a decade. We learn he squired for Madmartigan and then impersonated him for ten years while imprisoned by the trolls. He also swears Madmartigan is still alive. Kat believe she hears him calling to her through a magical portal before Elora and Jade drag her away from potentially helping him (a trope I find particularly annoying). Oh, and the magical armor Thraxus has been looking for forever might or might not be magical. We’ll have to see. We’ll also need to wait and see if Elora has a magical epiphany at the end of this episode or not.

Verdict: The storyline has potential. The characters (and cast) have great potential. The setting has potential. If only all the parts would meld together in a cohesive whole.  4/10.

Rigel Ailur