Forever Knight - Bad Blood

Discussing Ep. 2.4

*SPOILERS*

This was one of my favourite episodes and one of the more memorable ones. As a person who takes a passing interest in serial killers and as someone who likes adding to a mythology, this episode took care of both interests.

It was interesting because the episode took a unique vampire hunter and pitted him against a 'famous' and brutal vampire, in a showdown that was somewhat less action-heavy than a Blade film. Inspector Liam O'Neal was brought in to help with an investigation about a brutal killing in Toronto, a kind of killing that he had investigated before. Of course, Liam had ulterior motives for coming because the recent killing seem to follow a pattern that goes back...too far back for the killer to be human. And Liam would know all about being more than just human.

Before there was Blade, there was Liam, a quasi-vampire who hunted other vampires. I'll get my biggest gripe of this episode out of the way here. I hated the explanation they gave for Liam's unique nature. He wasn't a complete vampire because when he was attacked as a young child, he was partially drained of his blood. And according to the explanation that Janette gave, he "did not taste  enough vampire blood" and therefore did not come fully across, leaving him a half vampire. That explanation is bullshit! This is what I mean when the show inserts little changes to the canon that are never visited again or fly in the face of what they've already established. The thing with FK is, they never established, in definitive terms, what someone had to do to become a vampire. At most, all that they showed was that a vampire needed only to bite someone and not drain them of their blood for that person to turn. In S1, Nick and Janette and LaCroix all fed on people and those people, if they didn't die, would eventually turn into a vampire. And it would also happen in this episode. The victims were NEVER shown drinking or tasting vampire blood as a means to become a vampire.

I actually would have written it that it was the priest's intervention at the time that Liam was bitten is what stopped Liam's complete transformation. That would have made more sense and given more weight to Liam devoting his life to hunting vampires, as well as give credence to the power of the Divine to stop someone into turning into an unholy creature. It's not really clear what powers Liam had though. According to Janette, he could 'sense' other vampires, although they would contradict that ability in this episode. Though it was clear that Liam had a hunch about Nick's true nature, asking questions about his past and doing a background check on him, it seemed like all he was going on instincts and experience rather than a 'sense' that was akin to Nick's vampire sense.

Plus, he seemed to be taking wild shots in the dark, almost literally, as to who was a vampire and who was not when he went to The Raven. I give Liam credit for having the brass to go to that club alone. But it was almost comical the way he would flash a Celtic cross at the various wait staff, believing them to be vampires, only for it to have no effect. I actually thought that was a really interesting detail in regard to Janette and her staff. I thought for sure that Milos, the bartender, was a vampire, but it turns out that he wasn't. He just looks like one! Neither were some of the waitresses. It's intriguing that Janette would actually hire humans for various positions on The Raven staff considering her clientele are made up partially of vampires. For all her talk of seeing herself and vampires as being better than humans, it seems she has a soft spot for some of them after all.

But as far as Liam's ability to detect vampires, that was shown to be untrue the minute he flashed the cross at Raven staff members who weren't vampires at all! So I don't get how he got a sense of there being vampires around. Then there was Liam's ability to endure sunlight. LaCroix made a passing remark that Liam had the ability to endure sunlight better than a regular vampire. But then that was proven untrue the minute Liam opened the curtains in his hotel and saw the fading sunlight and backed away in pain. So, I don't get how he endures the sunlight better when it was shown that he couldn't. Not exactly a Daywalker, is he? Still, he was an interesting character and I would have liked to have known if he did possess some other vampire powers or weaknesses, like increased strength or better healing abilities. He could have been somewhat like the Brotherhood of the Five Hunters in TVD.

But Liam's reputation was good enough that LaCroix wanted him gone. So what better way to do that than to pit him against a vampire that even LaCroix was afraid to face? A person whose evil and insanity scared LaCroix so much that he dreaded him joining the ranks of the undead. A fiend who actually laughed while LaCroix fed on him and ended up poisoning LaCroix into submission. While he was given no name other than the Barber (the Demon Barber of Fleet Street perhaps?), he had gone under a variety of different names throughout the centuries: Bela Kish of Hungary; El Muerte de la Noche of Spain; and most famously of all....Jack The Ripper of England. 

It would be a rare occurrence when LaCroix himself would show fear or admit that he had met someone whose level of depravity exceeded his own, though it would happen more than once in the series. It would actually speak to LaCroix's ability to measure evil and recognize it when he saw it, and that he himself was not as depraved as others, like Nick, had thought or perhaps even he himself would think. For as much as LaCroix himself could revel in the killing and feeding of humans, it was apparent that he had his limits. There was a line that he was not willing to cross and it would be an ominous sign of the evil that existed in another who was willing to cross those lines. One of those others would be the Barber. 

But it would be a rather ironic fear that LaCroix would express, for it wasn't the for sake of humanity that he feared the Barber crossing over. He feared that the Barber, as a vampire, would be uncontrollable and would go off on insane feeding frenzies without discretion or discipline. Janette expressed how his high tally of victims in short periods throughout history drew unnecessary attention from the local authorities, which put the exposure of the vampire community at risk. Other than the Jack the Ripper persona, I felt like the other serial killer profiles mentioned could actually belong to that of a vampire. The Bela Kish one, in particular. In real life, authorities had found that with some of the corpses of the women that Bela Kish had killed (embalmed and well preserved by the killer), that the necks of some of them were damaged, leading authorities to question if the killer had actually drank their blood! And since Bela Kish had never been found and arrested, it was actually one real life serial killer that fit quite well with this episode.  

It would also be a somewhat unflattering commentary on Nick, who could have prevented all those deaths if he had killed the Barber before he had turned. Nick was right there, saw the Barber's corpse and had the opportunity to end it, but chose not to as he valued human life. You could tell the struggle that Nick was having, seeing that LaCroix had been so unnerved by the sheer darkness that existed in the Barber that Nick felt compelled enough to at least find his corpse and see if what LaCroix had been saying was true. When he touched him, did Nick feel a pulse? Did he recognize that the Barber was not completely dead? It was true that the blood of those victims were on Nick's hands as well, but his disgust for LaCroix and his desire to live a more righteous life blinded him, ironically, to the danger of one of the greatest serial killers being born. 

There would be no setting right what had once gone wrong for Nick. Ultimately, LaCroix would imprison him in The Raven and allow Liam and the Barber to fulfil their destiny. I think that my only complaint about the Barber was that he seemed more feral than intelligent. As a personality who could best LaCroix and kill so many people without getting caught would seemingly warrant being able to speak in complete sentences rather than grunt and roar like a caveman. I think the writers just equated insane with bestial and it didn't have to be that way. But it seemed like being unintelligent was somewhat contagious with the guest characters in this episode.

There wasn't much to say about Bridget other than she was a complete Red Shirt in this episode, inserted in there as a sort of muse for Liam and a victim for the Barber. What I couldn't understand was after seeing the Barber in his vampiric form, she was able to barricade him in a room and seal the steel doors shut. At that point, she could have run away. Instead, she just stands there and watches the doors as the Barber bangs against them until he eventually breaks them down. Only then does she run and scream for help. Idiot! 

I think her only saving grace was that she looked really good as a vampire! The green eyes really played off well with her skin. And note, the Barber only bit her....he didn't feed her any of his blood! So how she became a vampire if she did not do it the way Janette explained....who knows? It was a bit sad that her vampire life was so short lived as Liam had been waiting for her and killed her as soon as she came back. I think she could have been a rather interesting character as a vampire.

I think that a spin off show about Liam might have worked too. It'd be interesting to see him on his vampire hunting adventures in Ireland and around the world. See what kind of powers he has and if he has any kind of temptation of either completing the transition (if possible) and if he ever had a hard time killing a vampire because he developed feelings for them, as he seemingly did for Bridget. I would have loved to have seen a scene between Liam and LaCroix, seeing them argue back and forth, maybe even have Liam hunting LaCroix for a time. If FK had gone on for more seasons, I think they should have done a spinoff of Liam and his adventures. Celtic Crossing or some other name like that!

Aside from those issues, this was definitely one of my favourite FK episodes.