Reign "Banished" Review: I Was Walking With the Ghost
Reign S02E12: "Banished"
A royal shovel fight. Yes, I'm starting right with the shocking ending of "Banished," sorry, but after we learned that Catherine has absolutely been talking to/making sweet love with nothin' but ghosts for the past couple weeks, she healed herself of her crazy by braining a woman over the head with a garden tool. At first when Diane was like, formally disowned by Bash I was like, "Are they writing Diane off for good?" and then when that shovel came into play I was like, "Uh, that would be a 'yes.'"
But let's go back to happier times, the top of the episode, when Diane walked in on Bash and Kenna undressing each other and broke the news that she'd simply absorbed the first money and title Bash had been able to wrangle in his many months as Royal Deputy. Kenna stayed pretty polite, all things considered.
Francis was just straight-up giving away Lord Narcisse's lands to whoever asked him first. "You ever think about raising some sheep?" Francis was nonchalantly saying to crowds of nobles. "Y'all like waterfalls?" So now we know what happened to sexy Lord Narcisse: He got leveraged into confessing to embezzlement, and now his vast lands are at the Crown's disposal and being used to buy his allies' loyalty, and Mary was like, "Also let's throw some of that Conde's way, he's been extremely thoughtful, I get strong ride-or-die vibes from him."
Then Mary pulled Greer aside and was like, "Heads up, we're investigating your husband, someone said he gave money to the Protestant radicals, if so you better let me know now so I can do damage control."
As we all know, Greer's hubby fled the land because he basically gave a giant Publisher's Clearinghouse-style check to the Protestant radicals, but Greer was like, "Huh that's weird huh someone said that? That he gave money? Wow so odd that totally never happened, who told you that and by the way how can I get my hands on them?" Then she sprinted to her room to tear up her diary and otherwise freak out.
Meanwhile Claude approached Bash about figuring out who REALLY killed the twin babies, because it was not her. She had been framed! Royal children are never left alone. Why wouldn't her nannies have stopped her? Or her sister's nannies? And what about her current hairdresser, what was SHE plotting? All great questions.
Elsewhere, Catherine was having a loud conversation in the middle of a public hall with her ghost family. Ghost King Henry kept lovingly suggesting that she join him on the other side by killing herself—which, given that this was all going on in Catherine's head, was extremely, extremely dark. And then they saw that Diane was back, and I was like, "Cool! Diane's return will snap Catherine out of her funk, they'll be throwing shade at each other and competing for Claude's affection and slowly becoming friends! Fantastic!" Little did I realize, as of that moment, that the COUNTDOWN TO THE SHOVEL MASSACRE HAD BEGUN.
Meanwhile Conde was acting like he was too cool for wealth and lands.
Mary was like, "Are you serious right now? Narcisse is going down harder than Blockbuster two years ago. Take the damn DVD sets and Cookie Dough Bites and run." And Conde made it all weird by explaining that he was refusing the holdings because they were from Francis, basically, and Mary grabbed his wrist like, "Don't make it weird," and Francis saw and he was FURIOUS.
Meanwhile, Greer was making terrible professional choices. She agreed to give Castleroy's business partner her half of the business in exchange for him not telling her where her husband's ledger was. Good deal!
And somewhere else in the castle, Claude's old nanny showed up for tea with Bash and Claude and told a startling tale.
She was clearly a victim of circumstance. Turkish smoke! Frozen babies. Framing a 5-year-old. The age-old tale. Claude was like, "WELCOME TO MY WRATH," and frankly this lady deserved everything that was coming to her. Who frames a 5-year-old for killing their own sisters?! How very dare she.
Next: Page 2
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And then came the most gorgeous and haunting scene ever.
Catherine, chasing her daughters through the snow as Henry followed, all, "Faster, faster!" They went further and further out into the dark woods. This sequence gave me chills; the shots were gorgeously, gorgeously filmed, but what made it truly haunting was Catherine's semi-consciousness that she was slipping into madness. Part of her definitely understood that this familial happiness was not only illusory but possibly malignant, yet she was fully embracing it. Going crazy was her best option. We've all been there.
Meanwhile, at the Court of Fronce's Winter Formal, Conde and Francis finally had words. Conde told off Francis for hiding behind Mary and told him to take off his little fur cape and let his fists do the talking for once, and and suddenly Francis had pulled two walking sticks out of nowhere and suddenly I was witnessing the most passionate staff fight since two Gandalf cos-players at Comic-Con went for the same jalapeno pretzel.
Conde managed to absorb several of Francis's blows directly with his abs, which was an interesting defense, and then broke Francis's wizard staff, but the damage had been done. Not to his abs, but to Mary's reputation!
Poor Mary.
Meanwhile Bash of all people stumbled across Catherine making sweet love to a ghost while half frozen. I don't know why he was out in the woods (Wiccan Winter Solstice?) but thank goodness he found her, because Bash does not judge. He carried her back to the castle and explained that her scheming nanny and King Henry were to blame for the twins' murder, not Claude. Since her ghost family hadn't realized any of that despite being apparently omniscient, the news sort of clinched it for Catherine that she was slowly going insane.
Megan Follows had a speech here about what her bad marriage and self-deception had cost her children, and it was truly masterful. Of course, just knowing she was crazy didn't make her hallucinations any less real; she had to send her little girls into the dark and scream at King Henry that she DOESN'T WANT YOU, BABY! SHE DOESN'T WANT YOU BACK! It had all the catharsis of a triumphant Taylor Swift break-up song. In fact, may I suggest to Ms. Swift Catherine's last line, "Return to your hell and leave me to mine" for her next chart-topping toe-tapping single?
Seriously though this scene is why Megan Follows is an international treasure and why we are all living the dream getting her award-worthy performances beamed into our homes for free. We are living in the most golden age for entertainment since the Renaissance.
Anyway, Bash was putting all this together in his head and had realized that his mom actually killed the babies. That window didn't just unlatch itself. Diane was angry that Henry had gotten Catherine double-pregnant. So Bash gave his mom the old heave-ho because Bash may kill innocents and throw guys off cliffs and brand innocent church clerics, but he draws the line at killing babies. We all have our boundaries. And then Diane spilled the tea on Kenna.
Who did you help here, Diane? Sigh.
Then, in a shocking twist, we learned that Winter Formal was STILL HAPPENING. Also there were fake icicles. Mary and Francis sat on their thrones projecting a unified front, and Lola sidled up to Conde and said Mary wanted them to get hitched now. If that's true, then Mary officially has self-sabotage issues: You take the one guy you trust and pair him up with the girl who stabbed you in the back the hardest? No, girl. Don't do it.
Lola really got on my nerves with her, "I'm Mary's oldest friend, I will protect her from any threat." You mean like you did the first time she and Francis were broken up for five minutes and you slept with him?! And then YELLED at Mary about it?! Shady.
It was at this exact moment that some dude held up a ledger and announced that Greer was a liar and her husband had bankrolled the Protestant Radicals. Good work making that deal earlier, Greer! It literally couldn't have worked out worse.
So Greer has gone from super-rich single fox to despised, penniless traitor. YOUR MOVE, LEITH.
Bash, meanwhile, confronted Kenna about his mother's accusations regarding Kenna telling Catherine that Diane had gone to the Pope to legitimize Bash. Kenna did not even try to deny it. If Bash hates deception then he's going to have to love Kenna, because she keeps things almost too real.
To be fair, Bash has now killed HOW many innocents to appease the Wiccans/save Mary/help Nostradamus/help Francis/just blow off some steam? Bash was all, "Putting people's lives at risk to further your petty aims is despicable!" and it was like "IDK, Bash, methinks this is a case of the quesadilla calling the nachos cheesy."
Meanwhile, Mary and Francis made a small repair to the giant gaping hole in their lives where their relationship used to be: Mary admitted they were trapped in the context of their time, and like every time before it wasn't super lady-friendly, and Francis was like, "All I ask is that I can stand here and watch you sleep Edward Cullen-style," and Mary was like, "Deal." So there's hope, guys. There's hope these crazy kids will work things out after all, for at least a couple episodes.
And that brings us back to the shovel fight of the century: Catherine confronting Diane and beating her head in with a shovel. I love that Catherine is a subtle and skilled poisoner, but that for this particular kill she reached straight for the blunt object. Whether this means old Catherine is back or crazy new Catherine is about to carve out a whole new niche for herself in court is something I cannot wait to see.
QUESTIONS:
... Shovel murder: Reign's craziest kill yet?
... What's going to happen to Greer now?
... Condé and Lola: What the hell was Mary thinking?
... Bash and Kenna: Is Bash being a hypocrite or what?
