“Til Death”

“Til Death” really struggles. At it’s heart it really wants to go back to the sub-mediocre crap of the first part of the season although there is just enough to elevate it to some forward moving sub-mediocre crap. It may sound damning, but there is some good to the episode.

Not enough to save a series in danger unfortunately or even the episode.

The main problem of the episode is that it depends far too much on Aura, who put plainly is horrible…as usual.

Aura hates the idea of bonding to Barin and makes life a living hell. It was crap to be honest. It was Beverly Hills 90210 on Mongo.

And honestly, that’s most of the episode. Aura goes to such length to break off the ceremony that she goes to the Omadrians to get a poison potion to kill Barin. The leader of the Omadrians, Vestra convinces her that it’s a stupid idea. And it is. Aura should be intelligent enough to figure that out, but she doesn’t. Vestra instead concocts a love potion so that Aura can entice Flash into bed with her, thus shaming Barin out of the relationship.

We see on Earth that it’s time for an appearance of Nick. Nick has gone the way of Pete in Smallville, the black friend who has gotten marginalized by the female leads in our heroes lives. It just happened quicker in Flash.

Flash and Nick work on cars when Aura shows up and doses Flash in his house. Suddenly Flash is in love…and the bad part is his acting doesn’t change at all when he was dosed. He just becomes lovesick boy and it’s annoying.

Dale shows up and sees them together and of course she freaks. She freaks even more, when Flash decides to go to Mongo with Aura.

Dale goes to Baylin and Zarkov looking for help and while they think she may be acting on jealousy, Baylin agrees to go to Mongo with her to find Flash. \

On Mongo, Aura and Flash are in bed together and Aura is trying to time it right so that Barin will walk in on them. But first Dale and Aura do and they discover the vial of potion that Aura dosed Flash with. Flash isn’t affected by it at all though and even thinks it’s cute that she went to such lengths.

Dale realizes that they can’t stop him now, so she goes with Baylin to the Omadrians to secure an antidote for the love potion. At first they refuse as they are wont to do, but once Vestra hears that Flash is the man she will be curing, she changes her mind in reparations for how badly they treated him prior and the fact that he restored their sacred urn to them. But she still makes Dale give her a blood oath to be fulfilled at a later time.

Meanwhile, Barin does walk in on Flash and Aura and while he doesn’t care with his heart, he does realize how badly it will look on his honor. Ming follows Barin in and declares that the only thing that can be done is have a duel to the death between Barin and Flash. I think I saw that before in the 1980 flick…

Aura now sees that her stupidity has major repercussions — ya think?

God it’s hard to watch her. Everyone arrives in time for the duel and Dale does her best. She puts the cure on her lips and goes to kiss Flash full on the lips but it doesn’t seem to have an effect at first.

Flash vs. Barin…and it is the 1980 flick just minus the rolling platform and spikes coming out of the floor.

Now somehow, Flash gets the drop on this supremely trained warrior. Then he sees Aura and the antidote takes effect. Flash throws his weapon down saying he won’t kill for Aura. He tells Barin to make it quick. Barin decides instead to strike out at MIng and he hits him in the chest with his poison-dipped weapon. Ming collapses.

Aura is named Queen, but we discover that Aura had switched out the poison with a sleeping potion. Ming is to wake up soon.

They all run, including Barin who will have to hide to protect his people.

Aura is left in her tears…but she’s a brat who deserves it.

Meh. The fight was cool. The political maneuverings were cool. But the 90210 crap ruins it.

D+

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