Camelot (2011) - Episode 1.2

With the official television premiere of Camelot I've read quite a few mild to mediocre reactions to the series premiere thus far.  Again I'll echo my sentiments from my review of Episode 1 from about a month back, my experience with Starz programing is it usually takes a while to build up to a nice consistent sizzle.

Episode 2 resumes the quest of making Arthur a well known name among the people and their new and accepted King.  Merlin states:

"A King exists primarily as an idea, we persuade the people to believe in the idea of you, we can make it a reality."  

To succeed in this Merlin purposes that Arthur accomplish a feat most believe impossible, the removable of The Mars Sword aka The Sword of the Gods (not to be confused with Excalibur) wedged high atop a mountain of a gushing waterfall.  Once Arthur accomplishes this he's able to win over the confidence of the people, but can he win against the opposition that is certain to befall him once he's crowned King?

Arthur's main competition is his half sister Morgan (Eva Green) and her new ally, her father's long time nemesis, King Lot who are set on usurping him of his place as King of Britain.  But Morgan is beginning to have second thoughts regarding her alliance with Lot, she doesn't entirely approve of his methods, and begins to see that he's not going to be an easy pawn to maneuver in her plan to take over the throne.  She realizes she'll have to take matters into her own hands which involves long walks in the woods, talking to fog and flashing her assets at wolves... well supposedly she's making some deal with a powerful evil force that will undoubtedly be revealed to us later on.

Aside from all that the last main character is officially introduced, she was seen for a brief moment in a dream Arthur had in Episode 1, and that is the lovely Guinevere (Tasmin Egerton) the famed love interest of Arthur.  Only the writers don't appear to be making their relationship so cut and dry, while there's obviously a strong connection Arthur later learns Guinevere is set to marry one of his new and trusted friends, love triangle anyone?

For me Episode 2 continues to build and progress upon some character developments established in the first episode but still doesn't improve upon it.  I was impressed with the performance of James Purefoy as King Lot the most in this episode as he played an excellent unyielding force as a villain, unfortunately this was undoubtedly the last we'll see of his character.  Eva Green is the runner up in terms of performance and still holds strong as one of the better actors in the series in terms of her ability to really get into the role without making it look corny, something I can't say this time around for the followup performance of Joseph Fiennes.  

Fiennes seemed to be delivering his lines with a little more corny intensity than was needed or required for a majority of his scenes.  When every line seemed to be delivered as if the end of the world was upon them Merlin became more of a caricature and less of a character, making it a little difficult to take him very seriously.  Overall, I still have strong hopes for Camelot.  Episode 2 was no worse or better than the first, and personally I think we'll see some improvement in the story in the following episodes.  These two episodes were obviously aired together for a reason as they both setup the basis of the characters and the story.  With only eight episodes to go it's bound to start really picking up speed... at least one would hope.

7/10 

Review of Episode 3