The Quest s1e4 "Battle Dome" liveblog roundup

It's really hard to find decent pictures for this show!

Here's what I had to say:

• A drill!
• I love this captain of the guard more every ep.
• I hope Tiny Chick kicks those two big dudes’ asses!
• Hey look! Barefooted, dirty, moppets!
• Oh, look. Christian isn’t as great as he thinks.
• That didn’t look accidental, lady. That looked like you just stepped down.*
• How interesting that the girls were actually using their weapons, while the boys were basically just wrestling.
• Tiny got a good push in! Good girl! Work on surprise and speed, because you can’t match strength!
• The chick won! Yayayayayayay!
• Look how good and genuinely happy they all are! That’s what I love about this sum show.
• Come on, Jasmine! Stay and show them what Tiny Chicks can do!
• "it was almost like a bear and a gorilla punching a baby!"
• Rain for realism!
• All girls at the bottom. I hope this isn’t a trend, but it might be because of the theme…
• Fucking skull trebuchet.
• I didn’t see seven skulls there.**
• I really don’t want this show to wind up being only big brawny dudes. I want the little chicks to surprise everyone with enginuity, and the tougher chicks to stand as equals, and the smaller guys to work around others being bigger. I want a diverse final few!
• If this show gets a second season, I hope there’s either total continuity, or none. Like, the same characters, returning failed heroes, same side characters, etc—or a totally new kingdom with a totally new problem. I hope it’s not a reset, where they just put new people in.
• Andrew is way emotional. He’s loyal to friends, he’s annoyed that someone pointing it out…
• Come on, Jasmine!
• The ghost windows are CGI, so do they even know that their failed hero comrades are looking down at them?
• Yeah Shondo! You support that little awesomeness!
• Nawwwwwwwwwww
• So dumb. I like these guys, but every judging time, they get real stupid.
• What of Andrew wins the Queen’s hand and heart?
• A fuckin ogre.
• I kind of want this show to evolve into an ensemble—like, they stop choosing and they all have to be heroes. Like all the books this is based on, where there’s always four or six or nine people who save everything.

So here's where I am with this series: I like it a whole lot for it's sincerity even in the face of it's own cheesiness, but EVERY SINGLE VOTING TIME, I get annoyed. They're all nice, they're all smart, they're all (mostly) capable and reasonable, and then when it comes time to see who stays, they always pick the wrong one. If it was only me, I'd think I just wasn't getting something, but I seem to be one of hundreds who get mad every week, and that's annoying.

And I want it to start challenging the tropes. Maybe it's too early in the series, what with this only being the first season and all, but I really want them to, like, go off-script and the show have to use it. I want them to interact with the locals, to form attachments that the writers and producers didn't think of, to solve problems with speed and brains instead of just slashing and fighting their ways through. The good news, though, is that someone dropped me a line saying the plan is to have each season be for a different one of the Twelve Kingdoms, so they could, conceivably, start expanding and deviating and getting more thoughtful about the whole Fantasy Kingdom thing. And it's possible that this want is just because of my own personal involvement in Fantasy as a genre, anyway.

I'm still pissed that Jasmine is gone, though. Like, seriously. She was the best, and how can she and Ansgar have a tough but respectful and productive friendship now??

NOTES:
*Actually, when I saw it, I thought she deliberately stepped down to let the other girl win, which would have been awesome.

**I was counting!