Forever Knight - Stranger Than Fiction

Discussing Ep. 2.3

*SPOILERS*

So I have to say, it was a weird step down from the previous episode. While I found myself kind of cringing at the beginning of it considering the plot of the episode, in the end I was entertained by the humour in it. That was about the only saving grace of this episode.

So long, long before Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight books that spawned a boom in vampire literature and TV shows came around, there was apparently Emily Weiss and her vampire series, The Denied. It's funny because it was actually around this time that L.J. Smith had penned The Vampire Diaries, which only 20 years later would be turned into the successful TV series. So I do wonder if this was a spoof on her books at the time.

The premise of the episode is that Emily's fictional series on vampires is a little too close to the actual truth in terms of what they can do and how they live. So close, in fact, that Janette, LaCroix and the entire vampire community is suspicious of her and her writings and are worried that she may unwittingly expose them all. That being the case, they all essentially want her killed, and LaCroix, of course, wants it to be Nick who does it.

I'll get to what I actually liked about the episode and what I think made it entertaining, which was the humour in it. Janette went and completely made a fool of me with what I said in the last episode. I made it a point of saying that Janette was so independent and so flippant regarding human laws that she would go and kill anyone she wanted, and not even Nick could stop her. Well, I was sort of right. What made this episode funny for me was Janette trying her best to refrain from killing Emily all because Nick made it a point to say that he trusted her. Nick felt that only a vampire could keep Emily safe from another vampire and he trusted no other vampire as much as Janette. It seems that that trust meant a lot to her.

I loved Deborah Duchene's acting when it comes to Janette. Just the way she looked at Emily, she was able to give her that look that just gave off that blood lust/hunger vibe that really made Janette feel dangerous. I often feel like that's missing in modern vampire characters, that blood lust when they look at a human as though they are indeed their next meal and have to show restraint when it's called for. And I think part of it was that Janette wanted to kill Emily anyway, so she would have satisfied her hunger and gotten rid of a potential threat to the vampire community, all in one go!

But she didn't, and all because she does seem to care about Nick and his trust in her. Even when LaCroix visited them and praised Janette on her restraint because he wanted Nick to kill her, Janette didn't hesitate to let Nick know that LaCroix had paid them a visit. It just spoke to the bond that she and Nick have, that goes beyond lovers, beyond siblings. A bond that only centuries and immortality can bring. But yeah....I thought the scenes with Janette and Emily were gold.

As was Schanke when he envisioned himself as a glorified LaCroix. I loved this spoof if only because I think Schanke would have made a really good bad guy! It started out really funny as Schanke imagined himself as LaSalle, a character in The Denied who is basically a spoof of LaCroix. Schanke is there in his best Dracula Halloween costume, complete with fangs that are too big for his mouth! But when he starts talking to Christien/Nick, he does a good enough job that I really feel like Schanke could have been a good antagonist. He had a flare for the dramatic and delivered his lines just as devilishly as LaCroix ever could!

That was about the only two things that I liked about the episode. The rest was just a big tease and it didn't really make any sense. Emily would write fictional stories about vampires that seemed to mirror too closely the real dynamic between LaCroix and Nick. She was so on-the-mark with her writing that Nick and Janette and even LaCroix were suspicious of her, with Janette and Nick even asking where she got her information from. Turns out, she didn't even believe in vampires and essentially made it all up! Well, that's just an amazing coincidence, isn't it?!? So that was a real let-down in terms of her connection to the vampire community.

Then there was the romantic connection between Nick and Emily. This was stupid because they had literally just met and both Emily and Nick started falling for each other then and there! I get that Nick is a charismatic and attractive guy but you can't tell me that a woman would be falling for him that fast! Mind you, they did that sort of thing in the past so it's nothing new for FK. Still, I didn't like it and thought they greatly exaggerated this budding romance between Nick and Emily, to the point that even Natalie was pushing for Nick to act on his feelings, despite her own feelings for him.

And even the ending was rather weak, with Emily's assistant, Andrew, going around biting people because he thinks he's a vampire and that Emily had been basing her writing off of him. That made little to no sense at all and was just an implausible ending to the mystery of who was going around biting people on the neck.

And then you have Nick coming in at the end, revealing himself to be a real vampire to Andrew and Emily. Emily suddenly wants to become a vampire to be with Nick (like in her books) while LaCroix goes and kills Andrew, and then encourages Nick to kill Emily. Why LaCroix didn't threaten to kill Emily if Nick didn't do it is beyond me. Nick refused and LaCroix slinkered off, calling it luck that Nick could fight his desire to kill Emily. Perhaps it was supposed to be ironic since this seemed to mirror the cheesy vampire love stories that Emily wrote, but it just didn't work.

So aside from the comedy, this episode is a pass for me.