Angela Anaconda (1999 - 2001)

in case anybody’s curious

albeit my wings obsession was short lived and verdict’s still out on northern exposure (i figure it’ll last at least a little longer cause it’s a more timeless show but we’ll see haha)

So in addition to re-watching Forever Knight, I'm also watching Highlander: The Series again. They're basically companion shows because they were on TV at about the same time and address many of the same themes, in addition to both being urban fantasies. Their fandoms were also populated by many of the same people.

I was hugely into Highlander for years and wrote fanfic and was in the fandom and was basically crazy for it, mostly because of Methos, the oldest immortal, but I was also watching it in a time pre-You Tube, pre-torrents, pre-everything. We all taped our favourite eps from tv, but most of us didn't tape the complete shows because that just wasn't feasible in terms of time, space, etc. But obviously at least a few people did, because the shows are online now even though they were never released on DVD (edit: FK was released much later, but as far as I know HL was not).

Anyway, one of the peculiar things about watching Highlander in the late nineties was that, although the show had just finished its original run, for some kind of licensing reason that was never entirely clear to me at the time, season one was never played in Canada. It might have originally been, but every replay of the show started with season 2, and I came in right around the time the show was wrapping up or just slightly after, so I never actually saw season one. This was frustrating to me, but since my favourite characters all come in after season 2 starts I didn't get too worked up about it or go to great lengths to view it. But it was a kind of itch that was was never scratched.

Fast-forward to 2022 and I found HL online, the complete series, including season one. I'm actually enjoying it a lot. MacLeod is a lot less of a pain in the ass, quite a bit more relaxed and less sanctimonious, not to mention not quite so 1 BILLION XP INVINCIBLE. Tessa is actually a lovely character. And Richie is very funny in his younger incarnation, with a lot of his rough edges still there.

The show itself still has some rough edges too, as the writers worked out exactly what the mythos was going to be. For example, the Gathering appears to be happening at the beginning of the show, and MacLeod is convinced that no immortal has long left to live, but that convinction appears to have faded even by season two, since it isn't mentioned again, to my recollection.

But my biggest surprise has been Darius, because Darius is a lot like Methos. He's a priest and Methos isn't, but Methos is a researcher hiding in a secret organization, which is quite similar. Darius, like Methos, is a very old man with a young face, not to mention a former warlord who converts to peace (via Light Quickening, which is very interesting, and I do wonder if that's why Duncan is quicker to forgive Darius his past than he was Methos, because Darius is in some ways an entirely different person, while Methos changed the hard way. That actually makes it more commendable, but the blame still belongs to him as well, and you know Duncan...).

Additionally, Darius is a mentor who can predict Duncan's failings before they happen (although less openly cynical than Methos, he clearly understands the way of the world) exactly as happens on multiple occasions with Methos. Both are people that Duncan looks up to and respects intensely. The only thing missing in the Duncan-Darius relationship is the more casual element of friendship (Methos works very hard to dispel Mac's initial awe, which really backfires later), and that homoerotic tension that was always present between MacLeod and Methos, but other than that... I get the feeling that the show was missing a mentor for Duncan and Methos fit the bill. But while he was clearly conceived as a Darius-remix, Methos is a lot more fun, and seemingly far more of a chameleon than Darius was, in terms of how much he changed over the centuries, as well as a kind of fluid gender identity that was never clearly stated but which was easy to perceive. And because of the nature of his own paradigm shift, which was not a supernatural event, you can still see many elements of darkness in Methos that are seemingly absent in Darius.

Some gifs from WMAC Masters episode 1, Meet the Masters. You will pry my niche fandoms out of my cold, dead hands.

Eva Herzigova for Dolce & Gabbana Fall, 1995

THE TRUMAN SHOW 1998, dir. Peter Weir

Fire Walk With Me poem

Dragon Tales (1999 - 2005) 🐉

Yves Saint Laurent - Spring 1990 RTW

And then there's Son of the Boxing Episode, the Irish Episode, which always involves a wayward young Irish immigrant kid caught up in organized crime, and a Catholic Priest, played by an American/Canadian with terrible accent skills, bemoaning the state of the community.

Kind of like the Chinese Episode, come to think of it, which must have been convenient for the writers.

Jean Paul Gaultier Spring/Summer (1990)