Last time: Insults! Underwater adventure! Impending swordplay!
16. The time of the blathering
After the underwater hijinks, Connor finally gets around to asking why there are immortals in the first place. Ramirez…kind of answers!
Thankfully, there’s a YouTube video, and one that also tacks on the later instance where I feel he’s maybe not doing all he could as a life coach. Relevant part is from beginning to 0:18, since I’m pretty sure Connor already knows that people are awful:
Okay, I’ve quit rolling my eyes, probably.
Two things here:
1) Even though I’m not any good at it either, sometimes it’s better to just admit you don’t know something. This was one of those times, and someone 50+ times older than I am should know that.
2) This is our exposition character, and he’s not doing a very good job. I take this seriously, because I’m that weird viewer who adores the part of movies where you find the person who knows what the heck is going on. Jezelle in Jeepers Creepers. Monologuing villains. That one witness in a murder mystery who knows why everybody is mad at everybody else. Even weird presentations of the idea, like the princess’s opening exposition in David Lynch’s Dune or the “…everybody got that?” gag from Dark Helmet in Spaceballs, and of course Basil Exposition from the Austin Powers franchise. I love ’em all.
You can have Connery read the title card all you want: Ramirez is still a sucky exposition character. Though he does redeem this scene a little by telling us about the Gathering, which is what’s going on in the 20th-century part of our plot.
There follows a training montage with duels and drills, in some ways mining the subgenre Peter Jackson would later perfect: Sword & Scenery. At one point, Connor asks if Ramirez would take his head if they were the last two immortals: given that he is teaching him to fight, I would guess no? We also learn that immortals are prohibited from fighting on holy ground, which must make religious wars interesting for everybody.
Connor’s final lesson in this weird Rocky/Iron John mashup is, as far as I can tell, to read/enter the mind of a helpless, bystanding deer. If you’re wondering whether this will clear up any of the questions around immortals sensing each other, etc., that I’ve mentioned before, all I can say is: not much. But the Highlander is at the top of his game…so you just know the next part is going to be a downer.
Next time: * whistles TV theme song*
Next time on TCBOM!: The only sterile condition in 16th-century Scotland turns out to be Connor’s.
