Legend of the Seeker – Confessors and their men

Kahlan’s vision from last week’s episode revealed that she would soon be the last confessor. “Touched” followed up on that story line and introduces Annabelle, a “princess in a tower,” who doesn’t know anything about her powers until she starts confessing people left and right, starting with Flynn.

I sometimes wondered why the writers did not make Kahlan the last of her kind from the start of the series. After all, that would be true to the books and make her extra mysterious and special. But this episode is a prime example of how the writers use stories about other confessors to reveal more details about what it means to be a confessor. Kahlan’s conversations with Annabelle explain more fully why confessors don’t marry the men they love and how they choose their mates. Or remember the episode “Sacrifice,” when Kahlan’s sister gives birth to a baby boy? The writers clearly created the story as a way to bring up the fact that male confessors are evil. I guess the extra confessors have served their purpose as a convenient way to convey information to the viewers. With this episode, Kahlan is finally the last of her kind.

Although we probably all saw it coming a mile away, I liked the twist of Annabelle confessing Richard. It gave Bridget Regan a chance to take her character through all kinds of emotions when she realizes what has happened. I love that she immediately attempts to impale Annabelle with a wickedly thrown knife (though she fails thanks to a nice deflection by Richard). Annabelle is really, really lucky that there just happens to be a mysterious device that can drain away all of her powers — because otherwise, between Kahlan, Cara, and Zedd, she would be dead for sure.

Cara featured less prominently this episode, but this week we see her team up with both Zedd and Kahlan. They are beginning to accept her as one of them, though thankfully not so quickly as to be unbelievable.

The hunt for the Stone of Tears is moving right along. Once again, the show has done a good job of balancing the adventure of the week with the larger story arc. The rune on Flynn’s hand opens the tomb, and our heroes discover some sort of glowy sci-fi compass that leads them north (minus Flynn and Annabelle … which is fine by me). I hope in the course of this scavenger hunt we don’t lose sight of the Underworld problem, which seemed extremely urgent when Richard discovered it in the season premiere.

As always, I came away from the episode with a few things to ponder:

• Kahlan tells Annabelle that she can’t marry Flynn because confessors don’t marry men that they love. That rule was meant to protect the men from being confessed by accident. Since Flynn was already confessed at that point, I don’t see why Kahlan objected. Any thoughts?
• Did anyone else think that creepy monk woman was actually a baneling? Maybe there is a deleted scene somewhere that has her going zombie on them.
• Did you enjoy the return of the night wisps? I did. It reminded me of the pilot episode and of reading Wizard’s First Rule for the first time.
• How about that almost love scene between Kahlan and Richard! Do you think Kahlan should have gone through with it? Were you surprised that Zedd encouraged her to do it? That must have been pretty awkward. (I can just imagine the rest of the group, waiting by the campfire. “So, Zedd … uh, when do you think Richard and Kahlan will be done? Do we have enough time for a game of chess?”).

What did you think of “Touched”? Let me know in the comments.

Clacked by Ruby T.
on Nov 29, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT