Blood Ties -- reaction to "Wrapped" -- spoilerishous!

[devohoneybee]

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?

Comments

[hidez.livejournal.com]

That was really well worded. i know that when the episode ended, my thought was, 'wow, how are they going to fix this in such a short period of time', and not having a clue how it was to be done. i hadn't put as much thought into it as you, but everything you said, i have to totally agree with (including the comments on supernatural and highlander).

i think i'll have to spend a little more time thinking on it. *bg*

[teresa-c.livejournal.com]

I completely agree that this is Blood Ties' Comes a Horseman episode. And that arc is exactly when I got sucked in, hard, to Highlander fandom. This episode pushed all the same buttons for me. I don't care if the show isn't as wonderful as Highlander was, I care deeply about these characters so this episode hurt me for them, bad.

I understand your defending Henry's anti-black magic position, particularly if the boards (I don't often read them) are full of "Henry should get over it and forgive her" squeals, but I see Vicki's side like this--Clearly what she did was black magic, but how clear has it been made to her that Henry's position is so absolute? She's seen him participate in magical situations before. He let Maurice hide the chalice with magic (black? I don't know, so likely neither would Vicki). I think his "I can't forgive what you did" speech probably surprised her more because he was upset about the black magic than that he was upset about her stabbing him in the gut (which I would expect Vicki to agree is a little hard to forgive). I respect Henry's position, but I don't think Vicki has seen enough evidence in his behavior to really appreciate it. In the first episode he performs magic himself --albeit with all sorts of caveats-- in order to locate what park Astaroth's servant will show up in. I really think Vicki didn't know he felt this strongly.

And I don't think it matters, anyway. I think she would have betrayed his principles even if she did understand them. (And maybe she did. After all, he *told* her from the floor where he lay that he'd rather die than have her do this.) What's wonderful about this tragedy is the characters are at complete odds with each other because of their own natures. Vicki is incapable of not trying *anything* to save Henry. It's that simple. Regardless of what he wants. If it's true that Henry is incapable of forgiving her for that, well then, it's a hopeless case.

This episode left me feeling exactly like I did after Comes A Horseman. I hope the writers find a way to resolve it better than they did with the second half of The Devil You Know.

[teresa-c.livejournal.com]

And, can I talk about Mike? What exactly is his obligation? He's been trusted with Henry's secret, though he's never been explicitly charged to keep it. (IIRC) But is he under some obligation to hide the existence of the supernatural? I know he didn't want to be too closely associated with the weirder aspects of his (Vicki's) cases, but is there some reason he should have hidden that mummy from Kate? Why not just let her see it too, bring it in for forensic study, etc.? It's not his fault weird things are happening. I didn't quite get his motivation for the whole I-destroyed-evidence-and-lied-to-my-partner thing. Why exactly did he feel he had to do that?

I totally understand why he would "want out." He just wants to be a good homicide detective and deal with normal things he's prepared to deal with. But is telling Vicki "I can't take this anymore" going to stop the weird things from being in his life? Somewhat, yes, since she won't be coming to him with her supernatural problems, but close to half of these monster-of-the-week eps have had an independent existence on the police beat. Does he really think this will all go away because he tells Vicki he can't do this anymore?

[wickedelf.livejournal.com]

That is one of Vicki's great flaws. She's one of those people who thinks HER way will always be better and she's the ONLY one who can handle a situation. Whenever she has to back down and admit Mike or Henry would be better off doing something - you can practically see her teeth grinding.

And she feels it is better to put herself at risk than to put anyone else at risk (some of that may be the cop-side of her), perhaps because then she won't be there to feel bad if things go wrong. If she let Henry go, and he died... she would have to live with his loss. Whereas if she goes and dies... she obviously won't. So I would even go so far as to say she didn't do it to save him, so much as to keep from losing him (fine line, but hopefully you get what I mean *g*). It's selfish, but not uncommon.

So regardless of Henry's logic or feelings on a situation, she plows right through with her own 'save the day' plan.