It’s been several years since I binged any TV show, and even more since I blogged the binge; the last one was finally watching all (or most) of ST:TNG, completing that waaay back in 2020.
But I’ve felt a hankerin’ for some good Highlander, and since the only good Highlander is (a) the first movie and (b) parts of the TV series…
1:1 The Gathering – Word on the street is that Adrian Paul was originally cast to play a version of Connor MacLeod starring in this series; that was then changed to Duncan MacLeod, another immortal who just happened to come from the same clan as Connor fifty years later (and thus allowing them to keep the title). That also gave the producers the opportunity to include Christopher Lambert in the pilot, thus pulling the TV series into the contradictory canon of the whole franchise. (Remember that, when the TV series began, the only other entries in the franchise were the original movie and Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991), which everyone involved — including the cast — wanted to forget ever happened.)
But signs that Duncan began as an iteration of Connor are still there: I mean, what are the odds that TWO immortals from the clan Macleod would also use Japanese swords and run antique stores? (I was underwhelmed by the antique store set in the series — it looked like it was a front for a cartel operation. If only the gap between Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990) and this show had been smaller, maybe they could have just moved the production to Toronto and straight-up taken over the set for Curious Goods.)
It’s probably good that this character didn’t end up trying to be Connor MacLeod from the movies, as the divergences of character are just too much: This MacLeod has a steady significant other with whom he’s been pretty open about the whole “immortal” thing (aside from that whole “immortals try to cut off each other’s heads” part), and he and said girlfriend Tessa end up effectively adopting the 18-year-old kid from the wrong side of the (very clean) tracks who tried to rob their antiques store and ended up in the middle of a three-way swordfight. Connor was too reclusive, emotionally closed and reactive to have been the main character of an ongoing TV series.
As it is, the unnamed-but-clearly-Vancouver setting, right during the era when Vancouver-shot TV series looked very much like Vancouver-shot TV series, is probably the biggest demerit to the first season or two — the producers obviously wanted a rougher urban look like in the present-day sequences in the movie, but Vancouver just looked too… nice. (And too small-towny.)
1:2 Family Tree – There’s a HUGE chunk of setup that had to occur between the pilot and this episode. When the pilot closed, Richie — the eighteen-year-old juvenile delinquent who tried to rob the antique store — had seen some immortal sword-fighting, then snuck around following Duncan and Connor while they practiced swordplay in an abandoned warehouse (settings like this for sword battles will become the norm for the series), and then snuck along again to see the battle between that episode’s villain, Slan Quince (Richard Moll!) and first Connor, then Duncan — right up to the Quickening when Duncan wins. Connor and Duncan know he’s watching, and Connor remarks that Duncan will need to keep an eye on him.
And now, by the time the second episode starts, Richie is LIVING with Duncan and Tessa with unrestricted access to the antique store (it’s not like they’re ever bothered by customers anyway), AND he knows everything about immortals and the Game. That’s a huge leap of faith with some street kid with a long juvie rap sheet.
Oh, and this episode is all about Richie, too — how he’s trying to find out anything he can about his parents, because he was an orphan. A shady character in deep with a crime lady (that’s the feminine of a crime lord, you philistine) who finds out about Richie’s quest steps into the role to get access to fenceable antiques. Duncan has flashbacks to his own first “death” and his discovery that he was a foundling, but aside from that, there’s no immortal content in the whole episode; Duncan is just some guy there to rescue people.
1:3 The Road Not Taken – ANOTHER Richie episode, or at least one in which he provides the inciting episode. (At this point, the show’s in danger of being retitled Some Punk Kid: The Series.) A nineteen-year-old who Richie knows from “the streets” tires to rob a secure diamond dealership, then collapses and dies from a brain rupture that leaves bruises on his temples — bruises that MacLeod recognizes as the side effect of a mind-control drug that an Immortal acquaintance of his was working on in China centuries ago. So while Richie tries to find some answers on the street [snicker], MacLeod hunts down Kiem Sun, who naturally has relocated to this generic Canadian American city to continue his research.
You’ve got to hand it to the producers, who apparently didn’t want to shoot in any of the seedier parts of Vancouver, so the decided that viewers would accept anything more urban than big box stores as the dangerous side of town (with all-white residents). Double points for the cute girl that Richie knew back in the day and hooks up with to help him with his nose-sticking-in — she’s supposed to be another “street kid,” but she dresses and does her hair like an honor student, and of course she works in a homeless shelter for no reason except that’s just what roses who grew up in the weeds do, right?
I remember from my first viewings that they finally do figure out in later seasons how to shoot in Vancouver without it being the Canadian-polite version of a generic American city.