Legacies - One Day You Will Understand

 

Discussing Ep. 3.13 - So we're back to our usual mixed bag. There were some elements in this episode that I liked and some that I definitely didn't like. Like, good grief, it was all about the couples, wasn't it? Hope and Landon. Cleo and Kaleb. Josie and Finch. I knew the good run of episodes couldn't last. 

The new Landon. I don't know about this. It's hard for me to put into words what my issue is with Landon now (though I will try). He is what I expected him to be and perhaps that's the problem. In some ways, this storyline reminded me of Angel, when his son, Connor, is taken into some Hell dimension upon being born and raised there, fighting monsters on a daily basis. He comes back to Angel all messed up and with a severe chip on his shoulder and it took a while for Angel to finally get through to him. I was hoping for something similar to happen to Landon, that he'd come back with an edge. And he did....but he didn't. It was more like he had PTSD (which would be understandable) which isn't the same.

I think my issue is that I wasn't surprised by anything he did. With Fake Landon, he surprised me in regards to his attitude. Real Landon didn't. He behaved pretty much as I figured he would behave given what he had been through. He was skittish, anxious, uneasy. It's what you'd expect. But he wasn't so transformed that you were shocked by what he became. Him breaking up with Hope wasn't shocking. Him beating up that jock wasn't shocking. Him attacking Malivore was fucking hilarious because he got owned, but it wasn't shocking. I suppose that me being genuinely surprised by various developments in the previous two episodes kind of got me used to that and so I had hoped that they would go in a more innovative direction with Landon.

Actually, I'll take some of that last statement back. They did, and that's having Landon and Cleo team up! I like that development (and I'll get to Cleo in a minute). And to be fair, he did what he was supposed to do with Hope. He broke up with her. But did he really have a choice? She's literally toxic to him so it's not like they had much of a future together anyway. I give him credit for having the Spaldings to walk away. But I think the one thing that bothered me was that he said that he got angry when he saw Hope with Fake Landon but then he accepted it. Again, it was something that you'd expect from him and though I'm glad that he backed off rather than try and fight for her love, so to speak, I was just looking for a different reaction.

I guess at the end of the day, I was hoping for Landon to turn into the big bad. When I think about it, that's primarily where my disappointment is coming from. We got a glimpse of what Aria could do when he channeled a bit of evilness in Landon and I liked it. If Landon had come back all messed up from his time in that prison world, surviving all the various fairytale monsters, and maybe becoming almost the opposite of what he had been before, that would have been distinct and perhaps captivating. Before he was the proverbial damsel-in-distress, always needing to be rescued by Hope and never engaging in a fight on his own. If he came back as having tasted violence and death and coming to like it, perhaps as an unexpected side effect of being Malivore's son, to the point where he's unstable and sees Hope and the rest of the school as a threat....that would have been different. Still, I'll hold any further judgement to see where they take Cleo and Landon.

Speaking of Cleo, this was disappointing. Before I get to that, I'll give credit where credit is due. They explained quite nicely all the different 'why's' that I had brought up from the previous episode. Why didn't she kill Hope before? Because she was trying to find another way to NOT turn Hope into a tribrid. Why did she want to kill Hope? She felt it was her only way to free herself of being hunted down by Malivore. Why or how did she know DaVinci? She dated him (and I could hang with the concept that all his brilliant ideas were inspired by her presence....it's clever). Though I do wonder what happened to DaVinci. He just seemed to disappear and there was no explanation as to how or why.     

They pulled the pieces all together and made it all make sense, so I have to give credit for that. My issue is that, again, it was somewhat predictable. I guess because I'm just looking for someone other than Malivore to be the threat at some point because we're in the third season and it's still all about Malivore, Malivore, Malivore!!! And with Cleo able to make her own creatures just by moulding them out of clay and bringing them to life...they could have done something amazing with that! I was hoping she'd be a bad guy because that would have been different. But instead, they had this sob story of her sacrificing herself to save her family and being stuck with Malivore for who knows how long and doing everything she did because she felt forced to. Is there no one truly evil other than Malivore on this show?

And then we get to the third storyline with Finch meeting the wolf pack. I don't know if it's just the way they believe that werewolf packs have to operate in that all the werewolves HAVE TO act the same way, but this was annoying. Of course Jed and the other werewolves are just a bunch of jocks! It was sort of the same on TO, with all the Crescent werewolves being just a bunch of bayou folk so it's nothing new. But still, it was rather comical if not off-putting. And of course street tough Finch fits in like a glove. Was there a little bit of eye action going on between her and Jed? That'd be just hilarious if Jed were responsible for yet ANOTHER break up if he hooked up with Finch!

Though I'm hardly invested in their relationship, I will question what they are doing with Josie as a result of it. I ask that because it some ways, she's sort of becoming like Landon. Though she always had a visible lady-hard-on for Finch that was just embarrassing, if not inappropriate, she seems to be losing her self respect now too. She's so worried about upsetting Finch and losing her that she essentially agrees with everything Finch says. She doesn't argue anything, at least not with authority. She's so meek when it comes to Finch that I'm just shaking my head at her. The part that took the cake for me was how Finch, all high and righteous, points out how Josie isn't like the other students because she's the Headmaster's daughter, implying that she gets special treatment. Then at the end, Josie is all apologies, essentially saying "OMG! You're so right! I'm such a princess and so disgusted with myself. Forgive me!" Like...what?

This was never an issue before (and if it was, I don't recall it) but in this episode, it suddenly became one. It created drama for Cleo and I suppose it was a flaw in Alaric's character that needed to be pointed out, that being that he wasn't giving Cleo a chance and he was clearly playing favourites with the students. Well...d'uh! He's only human! And I'll argue that him wanting to lock up Cleo and not trusting her was justified. Josie making the comparison between her and Cleo wasn't fair. He KNOWS Josie and raised her and therefore was practically required to give her a chance. He doesn't know Cleo. All he knows of Cleo is that she's been lying ever since she got there and was the reason why Malivore was sending monsters and she tried to kill Hope. Now I do agree that Cleo deserved to have her side of the story told but I don't blame Alaric for not trusting her. And yes, Alaric has made questionable judgements (not on his own though) on past students and sending them to the prison world. He's not perfect. How that suddenly translated into Josie being the school princess that got special treatment and she had to apologize for it doesn't make a lot of sense. 

I'm going to trust the writers on this because the show has been rather self-aware when it came to Hope being obsessed with Landon and they made it part of the storyline, so perhaps they are going somewhere with this too. Perhaps Josie is subconsciously over-compensating for her misdeeds as Dark Josie and that's why she's being such a doormat. I hope so because I can't stand Josie pandering to Finch, trying to impress her and not make her upset. The darker side of me just doesn't want them as a couple because I can't stand those lovey-dovey scenes but that's beside the point. I don't see what Finch brings to the table if she's always so judgmental and sensitive about things and willing to walk away from Josie at the drop of a hat. Nobody needs someone like that in their lives, especially Josie.

So it wasn't much of a cliffhanger that we were left with for the next three weeks. Though I will say, if Landon and Cleo do end up being an item, that would be fucking crazy! I can't imagine Hope would EVER see Cleo as a friend again. And why should she? I would support Hope being antagonistic towards Cleo if Cleo did that, since she's done nothing but lie to Hope, create a Fake Landon for Hope and then tried to kill Hope, only to steal Hope's love as a final kicker! It'd be so chaotic, it'd be brilliant!

So some questions that I'm left with: where is Lizzie? I miss her. Where is MG? He just disappeared. Why didn't Landon recognize Malivore? How did Malivore get out? I thought he was stuck in a prison world, not in some cave. Why did that doo-hickey break so easily? I thought that it was indestructible.

I guess we won't find any of that out for another three weeks.