Merlin, 2008 -

Merlin is very much a guilty pleasure of mine. The special effects are kind of ridiculous, the writing mediocre at best, and the acting not always great. Katie McGrath makes a lovely Morgana, but her line delivery often feels strange to me. Despite this, I love the characters. Arthur and Merlin have this wonderful banter; Morgana and Gwen have this very touching friendship. I love watching Arthur and Morgana snark at each other, and Gwen and Merlin bond over their lowly place in the scheme of things. And, of course, Anthony Stewart Head as the tyrant Uther, whom I love to hate and hate to love. His complex relationships with his son and his ward Morgana are entrancing to watch. The one character I wish would be killed off at the soonest opportunity is Gaius, who is pompous, irritating, and whose sole purpose in life seems to be to protect the status quo in Camelot, even though the status quo is terrible oppression. The one thing I find really disappointing in the show is its treatment of its female characters, especially its female villains. SPOILERS Nimueh, the villain of the first series, was a gorgeously twisted and complicated character, at once abhorrent and tragically sympathetic. She is also very old and very powerful, yet at the end of the first series, she gets killed off to save Gaius' life (yet another reason I despise Gaius). Defeated, I would have understood -- she is the villain, after all, and Merlin the hero. But to have such a powerful woman killed off by a young man who is much younger and much less powerful... it bothered me greatly. It still bothers me, especially since there was still so much dramatic potential in Nimueh's character. And in the second series, when the writers decided to give Gwen more screentime, they did it at the expense of Morgana's screentime. Rather than getting more scenes of the two women and more insight into their friendship, we simply get more Gwen and Morgana practically fades out of existence. As someone who loves both characters, it's very frustrating to have either one or the other but rarely both. There is a lot that bothers me about Merlin, both as a writer and as a woman. But in the end, I can't help enjoying it and continuing to watch it.

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