honey and sting

Reaction to the most recent Blood Ties ep here:

The last Blood Ties brings up a fascinating twist on the vampire trope: Unlike other literary and film vampires who either embraced "the dark road" or struggled with it with varying degrees of angst (Ann Rice's Louis, Nicolas de Brabant from Forever Knight), Henry is SECURE in his religious faith, and in his commitment to the values he derives from it. Vicki, a moral relativist, completely misreads the importance of Henry's faith to him. He really would rather have died than be used by Vicki to do dark magic, no matter how good her "intentions" were. Vicki betrays him on two levels -- she betrays the trust he has given her in letting her inside his guard, and she betrays his profound commitment to the demands of his faith. As he says, his hatred of dark magic is not an affectation. It is part, a very important part, of what defines him, of how he finds his balance between beast and man. As he tells Alexander in the previous episode, the vampire retains his conscience.

I find it very difficult to believe that in the short time remaining (just a few more episodes), Henry will (or SHOULD) trust Vicki again with his vulnerability. She won't be getting near him with a sword any time soon. It's not simply a matter, as lots of the message board discussion I'm seeing on the Lifetime site, of him getting over it and forgiving her, of softening towards her because she did it out of "love" for him. As long as she misses the difference between her moral relativism and his moral absolutism (yes, a wider one, embracing many life choices and conditions that a traditional "church" would condemn, but absolute within his own boundaries nonetheless), he can't ever trust that she won't override his choices again when she thinks it's warranted.

The only way I can imagine this might go is that, cut off as she is at the end of the episode from both Mike's and Henry's support, Vicki will either come to an understanding of where her blindness about the issue of dark magic and the morality Henry represents has led her, or she will be endangered in some way, and Henry and Mike, either separately or together, will need to save her. Turnaround would be fair play of course, if either men, or Henry in particular, must make some choice that VICKI abhors in order to save HER.

In Supernatural fandom, I've heard discussion *waves to Luminosity* about the choices the brothers make to save each other, the devil's deals they make, and how the point of the show may be that their deeper intentions, which are born of love, trump the classical structure of "sell soul, go to hell and be damned." In Henry's world, however, I think the point is not JUST that Vicki did a terrible thing in fouling her spirit to save him, but that she did it, in part, out of arrogance, out of disregard for the seriousness of his committment to his faith.

At this point, it's up to Vicki to transform her understanding if she is to be able to cleanse herself of the taint she has taken on, and redeem her relationship with Henry (and in a related way, with Mike, whose distancing from Vicki is also about integrity, in his case, his integrity as a cop).

For the Highlander fans, I think this ep is this show's "Jimmy scene." Same sense of betrayal. Same sense of misread, missed understanding of the other character's moral center. Same sense of betrayed and bewildered abandonment. Um, less knocking about, but then again, a sharp weapon was involved in a prior scene.

Discuss?