Legend of the Seeker - Season 2

Unless something happens to save it, Legend of the Seeker is dead and buried. I'm not too broken up about it, although I can't say I won't miss it a little. The second season improved slightly on the first, with an additional main cast member that made the general episode-to-episode dynamic a bit more interesting and a better sense of continuity and purpose over the course of the year. It's a well produced show that's kind of hard to hate, and while I'm not dying to know what happens next, I'm a bit disappointed to see a capable fantasy show bite the dust.

Like I said, regular episodes are integrated into the plot a bit better, with events leading into each other more naturally and an obvious goal from the outset. Not everything's great such as the continued existence of last season's villain, Darken Rahl. There are few things more annoying to me in genre fiction these days than a bad guy who won't go away, and despite being killed in the first season's finale he seems to show up even more often in this go around. I still like Richard and Kahlan, although the magical forces keeping them separated were really starting to drag at a certain point, although luckily that was resolved just in time for it not to matter since the show's over. The new main character is Cara, a reformed villain. Not much about her is terribly original, but her addition to the show led to some new situations and she was nice enough to look at anyway. I might miss Zedd most of all - he wasn't always as smart as you might expect the wizened mentor to be, but he was really good at killing things with fire. Like the first season, the second ended with everything turning out just fine without even a hook for the future, which at least allows me to pretend that's the end of the story and close the book on a fun if less than amazing show.

Legend of the Seeker - Season 1

I didn't know this, but apparently cult favorite horror and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has been involved with production of first-run syndicated fantasy series like Xena: Warrior Princess, and this is his latest project. I don't think it airs on any channels near me, but I found it on Hulu (where the entire first season can still be watched) when I was bored, and ended up enjoying it a reasonable amount. It's based on Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth book series, and while from what I've read that doesn't seem to be a particularly good property, it makes for entertaining escapism at the least.

The first season more or less covers the basic events of the first book, and has a fairly obvious story arc and conclusion to it despite the very episodic nature of it from week to week. It's a pretty basic fantasy tale, a young man turns out to be a chosen warrior who will wield the magic sword to defeat an evil king that has taken over a land beyond the humble home where he was raised in secret. I was glad to see them actually follow through on this instead of dragging it out as a main conflict behind the whole series, with no real resolution at any point. At least one more season is coming, so it will be interesting to see what direction they take it and what the new problem is. By the end of the season, they were reusing magical plot devices at an alarming rate, so I hope there's enough fresh ideas to mine from the books to keep it from total stagnation.

The show works week to week thanks to a pretty likable main cast of three and pretty darn good visuals for a syndicated show. It's filmed in New Zealand (just like The Lord of the Rings! (I love how this is mentioned every time the country is named on TV now, like it's a law or something)), and the nice looking vistas combine with decent computer work make it always pleasant to look at. The action scenes use a little too much Zack Snyder-esque speed ramping, but are pretty well done for TV, and most episodes have an enjoyable, unique hook. The two leads are adequate fantasy heroes, and have a nice chemistry together, although I hope they get over milking the "they love each other but can't be together" thing sometime soon. The crazy old wizard who accompanies them is pretty fun, played by that guy who kept popping up in the third installment of various major film series a few years ago, and keeps the other focused on the quest. Nothing in the show is particularly brilliant, just watchable enough to help me prevent any single moment in my life from feeling bereft of action. I like it.