Lost Girl Episode Recap #1: "Pilot / It's A Fae, Fae, Fae World"
What do you get when you take a leather-wearing girl who can kill you with sex, a mess of supernatural boogity-boo, some fast-paced dialogue, and a cast of zany, hot, mysterious associates and villains? You get the latest SyFy offering, rated MA for language, nudity, violence and... well, sexy times. Sound like a party to you? Keep reading.
Lost Girl is a Canadian import that takes all the best parts of urban fantasy novels and whips them up in a slick, sexy little package. It stars Anna Silk as Bo, a wanderer with no idea of who she is or how it is she can suck the life out of someone when she kisses them. Safe sex is not really an option for her, so she's been on the run with a string of bodies in her wake. The show starts out with her putting aside those running instincts, however, when she spots a girl getting roofed in a bar. She rescues the girl by sucking the life out of her would-be attacker with a kiss that leaves a hell of a smile on his face. So any good monster would be out of there after that moment of altruism, except Bo decides to rescue the girl too. Enter plucky, slightly spastic, human street sneak Kenzi (Ksenia Solo), a wandering wild child a lot like Bo, and a dynamic black-leather wearing duo is born.
Over milkshakes, Bo explains to Kenzi that she has no idea how she can do what she does. Rather than freaking, Kenzi is grateful for the rescue and offers to tag-team with Bo (no innuendos intended) so the two of them can survive better. Just as the two are about to decide on matching decoder rings, the plot thickens. It seems the cops who were investigating the grinning corpse Bo left behind are actually not just cops at all, but supernatural creatures planted in the police department. Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) is the dishy blond brooding one and his fedora-wearing partner Hale can knock people out by whistling.
They take Bo in their standard-issue kidnap van to meet The Ash, their mysterious growly-voiced leader who interrogates Bo about whether or not she's faking being unaware of her origins. When Bo headbutts the Ash, Dyson gets all toothy- hello, werewolf! They're joined by the hot girl-next-door Doctor Lauren who 'just wants to examine' Bo and The Morrigan, the slinky and icy counterpart to The Ash. Just when Bo (and maybe the audience) are getting a little confused over how many people want to get their hands on one hot girl in leather, Lauren explains the score.
All the 'freaks' as Bo calls them are Fae, non-human creatures living among humanity and Bo is one of them. She's a straight up succubus who should have been born into a clan that would have trained her up how to eat people all sexy-like properly. They also would have given her a membership into either the Light or Dark Fae, which is sort of like the Jedi and Sith of the supernatural world in this show. Since Bo didn't get the memo on any of this growing up, she's a problem for The Ash (representing the Light) and the Morrigan (representing the Dark) because they like all their little followers not to realize that freelance might be an option. Before Bo can seduce the lovely Doctor Lauren (who doesn't really need much seducing when she's got Bo all naked in her exam room), Bo is carted off to be 'tested' by the Fae out in an old glass factory. And by tested, I mean tossed into combat for her life. Because that makes a whole lot of sense.
Meanwhile, it's Kenzi to the rescue with a little cell phone fu as she tracks down where they've taken Bo through some calls to her shady cousin. We're putting implausible out the window here so that Kenzi can join the rest of the party. The Morrigan and Bo get to have a little snark-fest at each other over why Bo should join a Fae side (hey, they've got dental!) and Dyson gives her some tips on how to survive fighting Underfae, Fae so inhuman they can't survive among humans. They instead get to fill the roll of canon fodder for initiating the newb Fae. This two-party system seems less and less fair by the minute. Bo lip-locks Dyson for a little Fae pick-me-up where she discovers that he can survive her lovin' without dying. Yeah, like we didn't see that one coming?
Then it's the test where two Fae enter and only one may leave. The real trick isn't surviving the big ol' Thunderdome Master-Blaster reject, which Bo dispatches with surprising knife-fighting ease. The problem comes when she gets tagged by a creature called a Pain-Eater that can show her an illusion of a kindly old guy who offers to 'take all her pain away'. Kenzi gets herself caught shouting for Bo and kicks her out of the illusion enough for her to pass her test. Score one for human sidekick. The fae get the shock of their lives when Bo rejects both the Light and the Dark (no big audience surprise there) in favor of choosing humans. Can she do that? Well, she just did.
The Ash and the Morrigan still want to kill Bo even after the rather random pit fight for political allegiance until a mysterious third party arrives. Enter Trick (Richard Howland), a well-dressed bar owner who Dyson went to for advice before he kidnapped Bo. Seems the two of them believe Bo was 'expected' in town and he petitions the Light and Dark leaders to give Bo a chance to live. Why? Because that's the meta-plot for the show, that's why! Besides, you can always kill her later. Dyson drops Bo and Kenzi off in the same alley they were taken from with his card to call him at the police station if they run into trouble, and to 'stay out of Fae business', which Bo has no intention of doing. The two girls head off to plan their future escapades, armed with the fresh knowledge that the world is full of the weird Fae wonders around them.
When it comes to a first episode, this one's got it all: the leather-wearing hot main character, the intro of not only a mouthy but fun sidekick but hot potential love interests (and kudos for the same sex option in Lauren opposite the man's man Dyson), and the seeding of political plot for the season. All of this goes under the world of the Fae, which is a catch-all for every possible supernatural thing in the world being thrown in, and why not? Lost Girl is a wish-fulfillment guilty pleasure kind of show, where you watch a leather-jacket wearing heroine emo up her lack of family and dish with her girlfriend, all before facing dire supernatural threats alongside hot love possibilities. It doesn't need to make a lot of sense (ritual combat? werewolves are Fae now?) because it's just there to give us an excuse to put every kind of supernatural thing in one place with a slinky outfit heroine. And for all the steriotypes and over the top hijinks, Anna Silk's Bo manages to be endearing enough to make it work.
Questions abound for the future. Will Bo discover why she was lost in the first place? Who will win her heart, the human doc or the wolf cop? Will Kenzi's hair always look like a succession of funny wigs? Does Trick always dress like he's on his way to a steampunk convention? Does The Ash just really need a cough drop or is he taking lessons from Christian Bale on how to 'I'm Batman' through a scene? All of these questions, and more, will be addressed in upcoming episodes. It's hard to have a bad thing to say about a show that's got such an obviously sci-fi fan-service concept. I for one have to give it some shout-outs for the funny Ksenia Solo and bringing over Brit import Kris Holden-Ried of Tudors fame to growl around as Dyson.
SumOlogy: Lost Girl is tasty, sexy fluff for a little bit of SyFy fun, and that's just fine with me. Check your serious face at the door with this one and just enjoy.
Grade: 7/10
Leftovers:
"Learn to enjoy your **** already! You can control people by touch… and not in a creepy handjob way. That is awesome!" - Kenzi
"For the last time I don't have a clan! Or bagpipes, or haggis - I'm not freaking scottish!" - Bo
"Tell me, was your neutering ceremonial or birth defect?" - The Morrigan
"Listen here, Norma Fae, we have a millenia-old two party system and it works just swell because membership is mandatory." - The Morrigan
"Wow, did you feel that? That was like the fourth of july in my mouth!" -Bo
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