The Tears of Uther Pendragon
A short summary of the episode might go like this. The end of season two saw Morgana taken away by her sister Morgause. The Tears of Uther Pendragon opens a year later. After an exhaustive search for Morgana, Arthur and his knights find her, bedraggled and downtrodden, ready to be rescued. Morgana returns to Camelot, where Merlin worries that she will tell someone about his previous attempt to poison her, but she tells him she understands why he did it. He believes her, but begins to have doubts about her loyalty to Camelot and must take action to discover her real purpose for returning to Camelot.
I use the term review loosely here, because I don’t have a special way of reviewing an episode once I’ve watched it, and I also don’t tend to look beneath the surface for deep meanings, allegory, or metaphors.
What I do look for is enjoyment, excitement, continuity, drama, character development, and, just, STORY. Good story.
High story. The kind that pulls me in, holds me tight, and doesn’t let me go until days later, when I finally quit going over and over it in my head.
Merlin’s The Tears of Uther Pendragon Parts 1 and 2 are just such a pair of episodes. Click the link for Syfy’s summary, but beware of spoilers.
I enjoyed the interaction between Merlin and Arthur, Merlin and Morgana, and Morgause and Cenred. I also like to see Uther suffer a little for his bloodlust and this pair of episodes gave me some of that. I did think Morgana’s creepy evil smiles were a bit overdone, although I liked the first few. After a while though, they seemed to come a little too frequently and even seemed a bit cliché.
Still, I waited all week for the second part of The Tears of Uther Pendragon and I loved it! What did you think?
Buy Merlin Season 1 DVD box set or Merlin Season 2 DVD box set at Amazon
If you’ve missing any episodes of either season, you should catch up before too many episodes of the new season air because the show is more enjoyable when you’re clear on what’s gone before. Otherwise, you might end up confused about what’s happening now. Most episodes are stand-alone with a few exceptions, but like any good series, new material often builds on old!
You can’t catch up on Amazon’s Video on Demand, because Merlin isn’t available there (likely because of licensing issues, Merlin isn’t available on most U.S. based sites where you would normally purchase episodes to watch online or download to your computer or TV to watch).