The Witcher, Season 1by Wolfen MoonsgetReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Network
Credits Grade: 9 Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavil), a monster-hunting mutant known as a "witcher", makes his way in the world, touching the lives of peasants and royals alike -- and those he helps aren't always grateful especially at times when he determines that the humans involved are more monstrous than the beasts he's hunting at the time. Meanwhile, Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), a girl who suffers abuse for her bodily irregularities, learns she has a propensity for magic -- and questions whether the Brotherhood, a guild of sorts for those who can do magic, is where she wants to be. And young teen princess Cirilla (Freya Allen) finds herself on the run when her castle is attacked by the army of Nilfgaard, a kingdom intent on conquering the continent.This Netflix series is based on a textual franchise by Andrzej Sapkowski, which has been further popularised by a series of video games (and which has had other film and TV adaptations). I have not experiences any other version, not even the source material, so I can't speak as to how this one stands up to the others. I did indeed really enjoy this series, though -- save for some problematic things, which I'll get to in a bit. I will warn here that the show includes sexual situations (thankfully with no depicted rape), includes an incest storyline in one episode, and is fairly violent, with some gore, as well as injured and murdered children. Also, just know that for a long while, Yenna's story starts in the far-ish past, Geralt's is in the more recent past, and Cirilla's is in the present -- I've seen a lot of people get confused and struggle with keeping the timelines straight. While the leads still include a white man and a white girl, I appreciate how racially diverse the cast is overall -- including third lead Yeneffer's portrayer being of Indian descent! And there are a great many other powerful people of colour in the series -- most of them women, some of them warriors! Queen Calanthe (Cirilla's grandmother), too, while white, is a great warrior. And the Brotherhood seems a pretty even split between powerful men and women -- maybe even slightly more women! And it helps that the white man, Geralt, is "othered", with inhuman eyes and talk of being a mutant. (I wonder if that's why he also talks with an American accent, despite his portrayer, Cavill, actually being British? I mean, even the child playing him in the far past, before he's made into a witcher, has a British accent, along with most of the cast!) Cirrilla, too, is othered at least a little, due to her heritage. There's also diversity in that there are actors with dwarfism in the cast -- but I find it concerning that the dwarves are (as is typical of the genre) treated as another race of beings (rather being the result of genetics or environmental factors on humans). It would be one thing if it turns out they really are human, and Geralt takes average-sized people to task for treating them as monsters, but we see a whole clan of them, so I'm not holding much hope for that. At least this series doesn't use people without dwarfism for these roles (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit and Snow White and the Huntsman) -- although the dwarf character with the biggest speaking role is played by a man who is taller than all the rest. The dwarfs aren't treated comedically, exactly (there's a difference between being funny in a moment and being treated like a clown), but they do teeter on the edge at times, especially during the last scene of the group led by the one with the big speaking role. I've seen far worse use of actors with dwarfism, but it could still stand to be better -- there's no Tyrion Lannister here .... The effects are high-quality, the costumes cool, and the fight choreography can get downright astonishing (at least to not-an-expert me), particularly when Geralt is involved (which makes me concerned to hear that the fight choreographer won't be returning next season). The series starts out kind of disjointed, but little by little, as more is revealed, the disparate elements surrounding the three leads start to weave together, revealing a complex tale told across decades -- possibly even centuries (doable when some of your characters are long-lived, or even immortal). It's really captivating watching it all coalesce into a whole, and getting to know the parts in the meantime! I appreciate that every faction is depicted with good and bad qualities, so you can understand how other factions (or, in some cases, people amongst them) see them as an enemy, and vice versa; even the side that's pretty evil (committing brutal slayings) preaches things that make it understandable (even if not relatable) why some people would join them despite the atrocities. The individual characters and moral quagmires they find themselves in are all wonderfully complex and nuanced. They all have moments where they are compassionate, and ones where they are stubborn, and ones where they are even cruel; whatever they do, it (usually) makes sense for them to think / behave that way in that moment. Yennefer in particular aptly describes herself as "an inconvenient arsehole" -- she makes some extremely poor decisions (including committing betrayals), and can get very cruel, yet has powerfully sympathetic moments (and not just because of her condition). Womanizing bard Jaskier (source of the wonderfully-catchy "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher") leans strongly towards being a fool and a coward, and his tendency towards being self-serving (coupled poorly with an extreme lack of foresight) causes Geralt a lot of grief. Still, even though he is clearly using Geralt for his own ends, you can also tell that he cares about Geralt beyond what the man can do for him. (They have great chemistry, and I see some great potential -- I just wish the story had developed that relationship better. The actors did gangbusters with what short time they had together. Really, I loved Geralt and Yennefer's interactions, too, and Yennefer and Tissaia's mother / daughter relationship, and that of Calanthe, Eist, and Crirlla.) Geralt has a strong, admirable moral compass! Unlike the Winchester brothers of Supernatural (whom I'm fond of, but still), he never assumes the non-human creatures are always the ones at fault when humans complain of them. I'm loving seeing monsters so often being sympathised with, even protected -- it's a nice change of pace! But while Geralt is probably one of the kindest characters in the series, he's also extremely cantankerous -- Cavill portrays a very compelling and appealing dichotomy! Strong (leaning towards burly) and gruffly silent isn't normally my type, but he's fully won me over, enough to ultimately overlook the problem areas in order to continue following his story. So what are the problems? For one, there are a lot of gratuitous bare breasts. Granted, I do believe that we need to remove the stigma around bare female chests, but much of the way they're shown here isn't a particularly great way to go about it. The first time we see female nipples, there are several nude women in a sort of garden of delights. Yes, okay, it's meant to let us know right off the bat that a certain person is a jerk who sees others as existing only for his whims. Still, the camera lingers on them for a rather long bit of time in the first place, and then they are in the shot wherever possible for the duration of a conversation. Hitchcock taught us that you don't actually need to show something happening to have impact -- you can just suggest it. There are ways to suggest nudity (the show does it several times, usually with male characters) without putting the actors fully on display. Besides, it doesn't suit to treat the audience as being as pervy as the person we're supposed to be looking down upon for that behavior. In another episode, a great many people are having an orgy -- meaning there are men in the scene as well, at least, but they don't seem quite as exposed or numerous as the woman. And there's a woman who is receiving cunnilingus whilst being held aloft, so that this can be seen directly behind one of the speaking characters, rather in-your-face and pretty in-focus, to the point where the motion is quite distracting. We already got the point with the establishing shot, thanks; I'd like to focus on the words being spoken! There are some other semi-nude men throughout the series, as well, but again, they are vastly outnumbered by the women. Considering how strong the female characters otherwise are, I can't help but feel like the bare-chested women are there to appease the less feminist of the gamers in the audience, keep them hooked enough to stay through the parts about Cirilla -- and her bad-ass grandmother, who sometimes even wears full-body plate armour (without boob-pockets!). One of the strong women of the series is even shown nude for two separate situations in the same episode! Now, one is a bath, where a man she's with is at least bare as well. But the other sequence where she's topless in involves her using magic. Sure, being "skyclad" is perfectly valid thing in magical practices, but given the other depictions of toplessness in this series, or the fact that this character is otherwise clothed when using magic in other instances, I doubt she's nude here in order to prevent anything from coming between her and external powers. To be fair, on another instance, a woman is nude just before undergoing a massive physical transformation, a sort of rebirth -- there it makes a bit more sense, and so doesn't come off as so titillating. I need to get spoilery now to say anything more. Still with me? Okay, And there's a love scene where Yennefer and her lover Istredd have an audience, conjured by Yennefer -- one that cheers when they climax. I'm not sure how to feel about that scene. I'm guessing Yennefer wishes she could let the world to know she's got a boyfriend? Or is it just that she's an exhibitionist, plain and simple? Is the audience supposed to be a commentary on us -- either telling us to cheer for her, or else mocking us for watching and / or for maybe being pleased that she was able to land a guy "despite" her condition? It could have been empowering, if the audience had been real, and if the scene were part of a ritual, showing that she'd come to love herself and see herself as equal to anyone without her condition. Instead, her irregularities are later healed, so a marginalized group (I've seen so many people excited to see a disabled character as a lead) loses representation in media in favour of traditional beauty (she isn't paired off with Geralt until after she's "fixed"). I mean, I get it -- I have glasses, and have had a surgery to restore lost vision, and I have contributed to funds to fix cleft palates, and I feel cosmetic surgery is the choice of the person who would undergo it. Also, one would think one would be able to alter one's body with magic, so it probably wouldn't make much sense to retain any issues that might be painful or a hinderance to one's quality of life. But not all deformities in real life can be repaired (and it wasn't like hers was repaired easily), and so it would have been nice to have a character with physical issues who lives a powerful and impactful life all the same. Now, Yennefer's change is not for nothing, and not just to make her more socially pleasing; she finds afterwards that she is still unsatisfied with her life, feels she has no legacy, and comes to regret that her alteration involved becoming barren. But that in turn brings us to another problematic aspect: the idea that being barren is a tragedy (which I have written about at length regarding the harm the perpetuation of that sentiment causes women in real life). Thus, I became vastly disappointed with the narrative taking this turn. It's not even just frustrating to see a powerful women become desperate to have a child; it's frustrating to see Yennefer deny her own agency. She was warned that what she wanted to do would make her barren; she chose to go through with it anyway -- and yet later she screams about how it was forced on her, and how she basically wants to have a child to reclaim her agency. Or does she just mean that being a mage in general was forced on her? Even then, she sure seemed to me to choose that path! Geralt gives an excellent speech about how not everyone is fit to be a parent. I mean, really, if your reason is to spit in Destiny's eye, that's a really bad reason. Sure, we get insight that Geralt doesn't, insight that suggests Yennefer wants a child in order to make up for a child she failed to save -- but really, that's not much better of a reason. And Geralt's great message, which suggests that he doesn't want a child himself, as he doesn't feel it would be the right path for him, is undercut by the fact that he already knew he was, by law, "father" to Cirilla (through an archaic tradition he scoffed at), and eventually even becomes gung-ho to accept that responsibility. I mean, he has good reason to do so, sure (honestly, he seems to be the only one who has the knowledge base to protect her, and he did basically make himself responsible by asking for "the Law of Surprise" as a reward), but this can too easily be read as saying that those of us who don't want to be parents are being stubborn about the inevitable, and don't know ourselves well enough to know if we would be good parents or not. (But plenty of veritable strangers seem to think they know us better than us, by golly!) I'm frustrated that Geralt was dumb enough to ask for the Law of Surprise in the first place. Yes, he had every reason to doubt he would get a child, but there was still a possibility. And he knew that, however much he doubted that Destiny controlled them, the people he'd asked it of believed in it, and so it would cause issues for them. Still, he's not perfect, and this made for a good example of how even he can be wrong (in a series where he's usually right), so I can't say it doesn't make sense -- not every decision we make is well thought-out. It's odd how strongly this series is leaning towards the idea of Destiny being sentient and directing their actions, and that they're punished when they struggle against it, while at the same time showing (and telling) us how unshaking belief in a higher power can lend itself to the believer doing terrible things in the name of that power. As I understand it, the games are supposed to be about being careful about your choices -- there is no one true ending, the game having been plotted so that every choice you make could affect your particular ending. So why does the series seem to preach that there's only one real choice in a circumstance, all other paths leading to terrible ends? Well, it can, at least, be also seen to some degree as maybe being a matter of self-fulfilling prophecies (how a notion influences our choices in such a way as to being about what we were struggling against, like in the story of Oedipus) -- I hope they lean harder on that possibility next season. And I hope they make the next season a little longer. I think we could have used another two episodes of monster-fighting, demonstrating Geralt's abilities and knowledge-base more thoroughly, and giving us more time for his and Jaskier's relationship to develop. I also think we could have used more scenes of Yennefer's time after her initiation but before meeting Geralt. Hopefully we'll get more stand-alone stories as Geralt and Cirilla travel together next season. (And I hope Jaskier doesn't become an enemy next we see him!) Written: January 5, 2020
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