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СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASApenny-anna:penny-anna:penny-anna:this is not an original observation but i really do think so many of BBC Merlin’s problems stemmed not from bad politics but from the fact that it was trying to be Arthurian SmallvilleSO i confess i have not seen Smallville but the consensus seems to be that it’s a solid, competently written television show. BBC Merlin is, um. Not That.here is the first of the show’s major Smallvillisms:okay so in Smallville the fact that Clark Kent has superpowers is a secret. I cannot speak for Smallville in particular but Clark Kent keeping his powers a secret generally works for audiences bcos 1) it is a core element of the Superman narrative. if he was just publicly Superman that would feel weird and jarring. 2) Clark Kent is a nice and good boy and we understand that he is keeping his secret with the best of intentionsthe secret superpowers angle is completely foreign to the Arthurian mythos however; in fact it’s kind of the opposite of the usual deal with Merlin as a character? but they wanted to do Young Merlin with a Clark Kent thing going on. OK. now they need a reason why his magic is a secret. uhh it’s bcos they made magic illegal. who made magic illegal? the king. not Arthur obviously. different king. we want to keep the whole Camelot/royal court aspect tho so instead of doing the usual King Arthur backstory he’s just uhh normal prince. and magic is illegal bcos it killed his mother. okay now we’re cooking with gas. but obviously we want the villains to mostly be other magic users for Merlin to fight. why are these other magic users trying to Get Arthur? well they are mad that his father banned magic. and Merlin has to protect Arthur bcos he’s going to be King Arthur one day and save the land. so Merlin’s gotta explode all the other magic users. he gotta!!it never really works partly bcos it’s just not an established Arthurian Thing and also bcos it renders basically everything Merlin does extremely sketchy? I don’t think it’s inherently a problem that he’s a morally dubious protagonist (if anything Merlin is kind of traditionally a little bit evil) but the show wants him to be a Good Boy like Clark Kent and frames him as such even though he keeps blowing up other magic users with legitimate grievances. its very strange!!which brings me to the second big Smallvillism:Morgana has THAT arc bcos Smallville has a whole thing where Lex Luthor and Clark Kent are childhood friends.i re-iterate that I haven’t seen Smallville but I imagine Lex being the guy in the friend group who is going to turn out evil works bcos Lex Luthor’s whole thing is that he’s an asshole rich white man. definitely possible to do a character like that who’s sympathetic whilst still having it ring true for the audience that they’re just gonna be a bad guy.and like they maybe COULD have made this work with Morgana? but here i suppose we do get into the straight up just bad politics, doing Morgan Le Fay but she’s Lex Luthor would maybe involve leaning into the privilege she has as a noblewoman (effectively a princess) but instead they just u know victimised her over and over and then when she snaps and starts exploding people it’s like wow Morgana i can’t believe you’re evil now. stop exploding people Morgana. only Merlin is allowed to explode people.it’s like, i don’t know. they didn’t realise they couldn’t just go directly from s1-2 Morgana (was end of s2 the switch? I forget) to ‘oh she’s just evil now’ without it being really weird and jarring? they didn’t realise that a female character could have motives for being evil that didn’t revolve around all the men in her life abusing her?but like im hesitant to even come down on it too hard for being sexist (even tho it was) bcos first and foremost its just stupid. wym she’s just evil now. you didn’t earn that at all. what are you DOING.