Merlin, Fiction verses well Fiction

This post may contain spoilers for anyone who has not yet viewed the first episode of Merlin

Sorry for the late post. The other day, I watched the first episode of BBC's Merlin. As I watched the first episode I found myself comparing the characters to how they are portrayed in the literature.

Uther Pendragon, I had hope for the show when they introduced the King as Uther Pendragon, a name I immediately recognized from the Prose Merlin. I'm not sure what to make of King Uther. I thought he was kind of an idiot  in the Prose Merlin and the show reinforced these beliefs. He just can't take a hint. Really, I could go on talking about Uther for the rest of this post but then we'd never get to Prince Arthur or even Merlin (who is pretty important to the show).

Merlin: In the Prose, Merlin we read for class on Monday, Merlin was old. When I hear the word Merlin I often think of that old guy from Disney's Sword and the Stone, you know, the one with the really long white beard, who speaks in riddles.  However, I was surprised to find that in the show Merlin is young and fairly sane. I found Merlin a lot more likeable in the show than in the Prose, Merlin. Maybe, it's because in Monday's literature Merlin was a creepy old guy trying to as Dr. MB put it deflower a fifteen year old girl. Yeah Merlin has some issues in the show like fighting Prince Arthur (or trying to at least, Merlin was totally cheating not that I felt bad for the prince). Speaking of the Prince...

Prince Arthur: As soon as this jerk entered the scene throwing knives and all in all being a jackass, I found myself silently hoping that it wasn't the King Arthur of legend. Of course, BBC immediately responded by introducing the character as Prince Arthur. I might be a little rusty on my Arthurian stories but isn't King Arthur supposed to be a great guy who is dealt a really bad hand when his wife Guinevere, cheats on his with his best friend Sir Lancelot? Because,  in the show, I'm feeling more bad for Guinevere for eventually having to be married to this jerk. Arthur seems to be this larger than life character who is really just... as Merlin so rightly put it (multiple times)... a prat.

Guinevere: I do not know much about Queen Guinevere as according to legend. However, the show kept implying that she had a thing for Merlin which really confused me. Also, Guinevere more or less came from lower means than what I'd expected of the future Queen of Camelot. It seems to me that the show further implied for Lady Morgana to serve as Prince Arthur's love interest in the show. This whole Guinevere part of the show just has me baffled but she's a likeable enough character.

Lastly, the random witch: At the very being of the episode I felt really bad for the witch, she had just seen her son beheaded. I didn't realize the role she would play in the episode until she vanished in a pile of leaves (?) and then all I could think was shit, she's a witch. Well damn. I still felt bad for her, as creepy as she was. Then she killed that singer and I started getting really really bad vibes from her. At this point I wondered why the show would portray witches in the light that they did. I mean lets face it, Arthur may be the most hated character in the episode but she takes second place pretty easily on creepiness alone. I have spent the whole semester feeling sorry for witches or those accused at least and here is a perfect example of what everyone is so afraid of.

Also, there is a dragon... a talking dragon (wtf?) I felt the dragon kind of came out of no where.

No shit, you're a freaking talking dragon, how could anyone forget you?

Merlin was a cool guy except for when he wasn't

My mental image of Merlin has always been mixed in with how I think of wizards like Gandalf and Dumbledore. I've never really internalized who or what Merlin was, so when I approached this reading I was interested to see what there was to learn. It was the Prose Merlin that I enjoyed more, so that's what I'll write about for this blog post.

First off, I was put off a bit by Merlin's conception. I had absolutely no idea of his origins; I always kind of assumed he was just a normal person who had discovered how to use magic and see the future and all that cool stuff. But here I was introduced to the Enemy, some devils conspiring amongst themselves, to use a woman to conceive a child with their powers. I found it interesting that the power to see the past was given by the Enemy while the power to see the future was given by the Lord. Why is that? Is it because trying to change the past is wrong while thinking about the future is right? I'm not sure of why these powers are given the connotations they are.

When Merlin spoke suddenly using full sentences, I got an almost horror movie kind of feeling from it. Like a haunted baby doll came to life and was suddenly threatening to kill people. He was born as some hairy creature that repulsed people from the start, and then he starts talking about knowing the past and the future. Pretty unsettling stuff, if you ask me. And then Merlin insults the mother of a judge who has a hand in deciding the fate of his own mother. He was one pushy child for sure.

Jumping forward to something that was a little bit more familiar for me, there is the king and the Round Table. The mental image of fifty men who had never met gathering and partying for a week before deciding that they're all brothers and want to stay forever made me happy. There's no devils or demons to talk about here, just good old friendship. These guys got together and had such a good time that they said they wanted to move their families there so that they would never have to leave. And then, after creating this environment, Merlin says he doesn't want to take the credit for himself, so he leaves. All that work and he's pleased to just leave and pursue something else? What a guy.

And then as I'm continuing on thinking, "Yeah good stuff this is great I like these things" I get hit in the face with some grimy love story featuring the king and a married woman. At first it seemed rather innocent, with the king falling head over heels for this beautiful woman (ignoring the fact she was already married I guess). He even realized that he couldn't openly pursue her because she was indeed married, so he tried to woo her on the low. In typical fashion, he responded to rejection by throwing more parties and trying to ignore the pain instead of trying to move on with his life. Now, I'm not popular with the ladies by any stretch, but even I know that harassing them with gifts in an attempt to get with them isn't going to work.

So Ygerne and her husband flee from the king's creepy advances and so on and so forth and I felt like I was reading some kind of wacky romcom or something. As such I wasn't at all surprised when Merlin was brought back and disguised the king as the woman's husband so that he could do husband and wife things with her. I guess Merlin is still kind of a bro in that way because he DID help the king out but the whole situation was dripping with scumminess. Not cool Merlin. Not cool Uther.

(I'm sorry that this post was late, it honestly slipped my mind that I was supposed to post because I skimmed the schedule and didn't see "Water" for today. It didn't register that I was supposed to post. My bad)