Reign "Getaway" Review: A Marked Man
Oh man, isn't it a relief to know Reign has been renewed for Season 3? I feel like before that news came out I was just mentally clinging to the second half of Season 2 like the Childlike Empress holding that single grain of sand and going, "This is allll that's left of Fantasia," and then BAM Bastian said my name and now all of Fantasia is unfolding in front of us like a big gorgeous, glowing horizon and it's just like, such a relief. Hopefully even one person knows what I'm talking about right now.
So Reign opened with a one-two punch of hanging corpses and sensuous love-making, which is just a great way to return from a winter hiatus. The frozen Protestant corpses hanging around the castle all had the dark marks branded into them, and Bash was being very specific about just how related he was to Claude.
Kenna had been saying how ridiculous it was to think he could be attracted to Claude when Claude was his sister, and Bash was like, "She's my half-sister (so I can be half attracted to her)." There was basically an audible record scratch.
Meanwhile Francis was doing little menial chores around Mary's wing of the castle just so he could just be around her. Mary told him to cut it out, and Francis told her she couldn't stop him from caring and doing things for her and posing as a servant and maybe even passing himself off as a lovable washerwoman name of Brumhilda all Mrs. Doubtfire-style if that's what it took to be near to her. To you and me this would be the sweetest thought a man ever expressed out loud, but Mary was just annoyed. Mary was like "Fine, if that's how you want to play it I guess I'll straight-up move to our country chateau."
Catherine, meanwhile, was brewing up poison pastes in between sexytimes with the ghost of King Henry. Considering every supernatural element on Reign thus far has turned out to have a rational explanation, it's more than possible that Catherine is actually experiencing a form of madness right now and all these passionate love scenes with King Henry are actually just marathon masturbation sessions... which, you know, be sure to get all the arsenic off your hands first, girl.
Catherine was slowly poisoning Claude via a rich, garlicky, creamy soup, and all it took was one sniff for Kenna to figure out that something foul was afoot, that something was getting lost in the sauce.
Kenna followed Catherine to Claude's room, saw her spooning disgusting soup into her daughter's mouth and blotting up a bloody nose, and put two and two together: Catherine was poisoning Claude! It was delightfully Miss Marple of Kenna. In her own way, she's doing more police work than her deputy husband.
Meanwhile, a Cardinal with a four-cornered hat had decided that since the corpses of the traitors all had Dark Marks on them, anyone bearing the Mark was therefore a traitor and should be killed immediately without benefit of trial. Bash was like, "Eh, maybe I'll gather some evidence?" and the Cardinal was like, "This is a matter for the Ecclesiastical Courts!" and I did a fist-pump because frankly a teen drama that involves debating theocracy versus civic justice is just something I never dreamed I would see in my lifetime. You guys, 2015 is THE year when TV programming is produced under the assumption that teen girls are smart, intelligent, thoughtful human beings.
Also, this was a great excuse for Conde to abscond with Mary to her chateau, because as we learned a few episodes earlier, he is scarred by the Dark Mark, burned into his flesh by some Dark Riders. Mary offered to give him a ride as far as his brother's place, in her own carriage... his brother being the King of Navarre and a big fan of make-out parties.
This was pretty hilarious. Once Mary and Conde (attended by Greer and Leith) arrived at Antoine's the King of Navarre's vacation home, he invited them to a makeout party like your two eighth-grade best friends the first time their parents left them home alone. He was matchmaking randoms from the crowd who he believed had feelings for each other, and COMMANDING them to play 7 Minutes in Heaven, "Under the Sea"-style. Greer was like, "Leith let's get out of here, some of us are married!" and Leith was like, "And some of us aren't, baby. Find another ride home."
I was actually pretty proud of Leith for showing some spirit and independence. He IS a single dude, and that's because of Greer's choices. If he wants to stay late at a party he is free to do so, and if Greer has a problem with that she needs to really think about why.
Mary also virtuously hightailed it out of the party and later we saw her and Greer basically sitting around in their bathrobes, listening to the throbbing bass of "We Can't Stop" and secretly wishing they hadn't left so early. Being married at 16 can be such a bummer, guys.
The King of Navarre, meanwhile, pulled Conde aside and asked him to seduce Mary; he wants to keep in touch with Protestant sympathizers, and sexy bed fun is certainly one way to do that. Conde pulled out a whole host of excuses for why he wouldn't attempt to seduce Mary—it was rude, he didn't feel like it, she wasn't his type. But deep down we all knew he simply wasn't going to use a woman he loved in that way, and guys, if you aren't sorta 'shipping Conde and Mary by now then you might just have a heart of steel.
Anyway, since Conde was nobly refusing to use the woman he loved, instead some enterprising minx told him to use her—a woman he didn't love—to sort of take the edge off all that unrequited lustiness. Blindfolded love-making ensued.
Guys, once in a while Reign will empty an entire CostCo shelf worth of spice into the mix and this was one of those times.
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Meanwhile, speaking of groceries, Claude threw a giant chunk of brie at Kenna for being nice to her. It was messed up, because Kenna was bringing in food and preparing Claude some nice, non-poisoned snacks.
However the fact that Kenna's efforts were making her well had basically proved that Catherine had been poisoning Claude, and maybe this was just me, but it was as if, on some level, Claude had known all along? Like she had been letting her mother feed her poison rather than face the truth of what her mother was doing? All of a sudden, Claude was this very confused, likable poor-little-rich-girl. But the good vibes only lasted about 20 seconds until she followed up that chunk of brie with a ton of shade and battle lines had to be drawn in my heart. Gonna be #TeamKenna on his one, because it's downright rude to repay someone saving your life by revealing you had all the incest with their husband.
Way to make things weird at every family event from now on!
Still, it was difficult not to feel for Claude as she sought out her mom and confronted her about the whole, "You're slowly poisoning me" thing. Even more sadly, Claude did not remember killing her nasty little twin sisters, so when Catherine explained that she'd felt compelled to kill Claude as retribution, and that she'd been covering up the murder all these years, years during which she thought of her own daughter as nothing less than a monster, well, damn. This whole scene! Catherine obviously slays it at every opportunity, but Claude was keeping up with her, grabbing a goblet of arsenic and offering to end it all right there.
And that sort of snapped Catherine out of it and she was like, "Hey, you know what, you were five. Kids don't know not to murder at five, maybe, who knows, I love you," and they both embraced and cried on the floor. Although really, the possibility is there that baby Claude DIDN'T kill her sisters, and there's another powerful enemy lurking in the wings, framing children and killing babies. You gotta expect the unexpected with Reign.
Like a Cardinal with a live-in lover!
The Cardinal who was hell-bent on roundin' up all the Protestant traitors and Lord Conde had a secret CWB (clerk with benefits.) When that clerk snuck out of his room after sexytimes, Bash pounced on him and branded the Dark Mark onto his shoulder. Yo, Bash, not okay.
Now that his beloved boyfriend had the Dark Mark on his shoulder, the Cardinal would undoubtedly reconsider his "Kill everybody with a Dark Mark, no questions asked" policy.
Meanwhile, Vatican soldiers had come to Antoine's place to shut down his party spot and Conde's life was in imminent peril: If he was discovered with the Dark Mark, he'd be hung. Mary's solution? Burn off the chunk of skin with the Dark Mark with a SIZZLING-HOT SWORD. Mary, WTF.
With true medieval brutality, Leith burned the skin off Conde's shoulder while Mary clasped Conde's hand, and their plan worked! Conde was thrilled.
LOL Conde looked awful after that branding mess. But without an incriminating mark, Mary was able to take him back to court under her protection. And there she learned that Francis had successfully leveraged the Cardinal's love for his clerk so that Conde's life was no longer in any danger. So if Conde had stuck around at court, laid low in a closet for about 24 hours, he wouldn't have had to burn off a four-inch patch of skin, I guess? You live and you learn, Conde.
Francis's speech to the Cardinal on this topic was really something. With all the insight into the human heart of Iyanla from Iyanla Fix My Life, King Francis explained how he'd determined that it was no mere lust but true love that the Cardinal felt for his clerk, and it was in that surety that he'd made his gamble to brand the clerk and use the Cardinal's influence to push back against the Pope. Even the Cardinal was like, "Well you just manipulated me, but damn are you weirdly insightful when it comes to matters of the heart, dude." Then Francis went straight to the Royal Nursery, where Lola had been trying to get their kid to sleep for the past 72 hours, and at one touch his son fell peacefully into a gentle slumber in his father's arms. It was nothing but net for Francis that day, he was totally in Wise King Francis mode.
Mary was so blown away by how Francis had pushed back against the Pope and made the court safe for Conde that she went running to congratulate him (and start rebuilding their marriage) and she ran straight into a touching family scene:
Like a bucket of ice water to the heart! Ah well, Mary. There's always next week.
QUESTIONS:
... Is Bash becoming sort of a bad guy or is unquestionable loyalty to Francis his guiding moral principle?
... How jelly was Greer of Leith, on a scale of 1 to 10?
... Was it an act of impropriety for Mary to tell Conde she knew his feelings for her?
... Do you think Claude definitely killed the twins, or might there be another explanation?
... How would you rather interpret what's up with Catherine: that she has lots of ghost sex, or that she just thinks about ghosts while sexin' it up on her lonesome?
... Bash's half-incest: Even if he thought for like 10 hours they weren't actually related, they did grow up as brother and sister, so uh, still suuuuper questionable, yeah?
