Last time: Eye of the tiger, or whatever similar carnivore is to be found in Scotland.
17. To market, to market, for some heartfelt bad news. And no doughnuts.
Connor, his wife Heather, and Ramirez go to market, and I am full of questions. Where is this market? It must serve a big area: we see a lot of different clan tartans. How far do Connor and Heather live from a village generally? From this village in particular? Is it possible someone from the old village might see Connor there, and what would happen if they did, given that they think he is a demon? And wouldn’t a crowd like this be likely to make fun of a guy in a red velvet suit?
These questions (other than an apparent “no” to the last one) go unanswered. As they walk past the vendors and other buyers, we see what looks like doughnuts. I don’t know if kettle doughnuts would be historically accurate, but having tasted a fresh-glazed one at a farmer’s market, I don’t care. If I were making Highlander, they’d be the focus of the scene: Connor and Ramirez would be eating them while all the emotionally heavy talk happens.
“But what I want is a family!” Connor tells Ramirez. Had there been vampire novels in the sixteenth century, he might already have been aware that immortality occasionally comes at a reproductive price—although the, er, rise of supernatural romance has sort of put paid to that idea in the last 15 years.
Ramirez, to his credit, doesn’t do what my father would have done (i.e., say something about people in hell wanting ice water). He just breaks the bad news that immortals can’t have children. Connor points out that that will disappoint his wife—who at the moment seems to be buying the only live chicken at the poultry stand. As she shops, Ramirez lays down the immortal version of the Sex Talk, telling Connor he should leave his wife and sharing that over his 2,437 years, he’s had his heart broken repeatedly by marrying mortal women.
“I would save you that pain,” Ramirez says, and you don’t have to be 2 millennia old to know this advice is going to go totally unheeded. It does make Connor mopey(-er than usual), though. He should go get a doughnut.
Later, Ramirez asks Connor about his death on the battlefield and gives him a brief rundown on the Kurgan, which can be summarized as: ancient, powerful, really really dangerous. (As a side note, since I saw the movie late, I first encountered Kurgans in this book, which I heartily recommend.) Connor asks how one fights something like that, and is rewarded with the scoutmasterly speech at the end of the video I included last week. But hey, it gives Connery what I assume is a contractually promised opportunity to say “There can be only one.”
Next time: It’s a different sort of musical interlude as I look at my Valentine’s Day tradition.
Next time on TCBOM!: And now we can start the party.
