The Shannara Chronicles - 'Reaper'

"For identification purposes, I am not an elf."

We open with a flashback to establish... oh, everything.

Elves have talked a lot of shit about the death of Prince Perfect and the war with those bastard gnomes we've never seen. Well, now we get to find out that a) Prince Perfect was killed by a team of gnomish ninjas (gnomjas) who broke into the palace, and b) while Eretria proved that breaking into the palace is a piece of piss, in this instance they snuck in through a secret door while Prince Smugchops was copping some illicit nookie with Captain Twofer (whom we later discover is now hooking up with Prince Grumpy.) The gnomes were all killed except for their leader, who was captured. You may wonder why they bring this up now, but I'm sure it will be important later.

Amberle and Wil's mission continues to be hampered by stupidity. Amberle ignores Wil's advice on the grounds that, eww, he put his dick in a Rover, while military escort leader Captain Dipshit's approach to prisoner relations runs like an audition piece for 'Nazi commandant.' Because no-one listens to Wil the one time he's right, they get ambushed by Rovers. Eretria is freed and Amberle pretty explicitly threatened with a whole lot of raping before Eretria finds her inner face, drugs the entire camp and rescues her, taking Cephalo as a hostage.

Captain Dipshit then sends one of his scouts into what turns out to be 'poisoned land', contaminated by toxic waste dumping pre-apocalypse which melts elf-flesh from the bones and is entirely harmless to horses. It's lucky they sent a scout though, since they doubtless wouldn't have identified the problem from the rusting barrels, pools of evil-looking liquid and general healthy red glow of the area.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Prince Smugchops has a PLAN. He's going to scout out the location of the rising demon army in the Breakline mountains, and since he need a local guide will trust his fate to Slanter, the gnome leader who has been hanging in shackles for a decade. I guess this is why Prince Grumpy is the heir presumptive. Unable to talk him out of it, Grumpy allows Captain Twofer to accompany Smugchops, because clearly the captain of... whatever she's captain of doesn't have any other pressing duties like, perhaps, ensuring the proper disposal of a shapeshifting demon.

"Can I axe you a question?"

Amberlie's party make their way to the fort where they are to meet Johnnie Went to the Wilderun One Time, only to have severed heads thrown at them by a huge demon who has slaughtered the entire garrison and their guide. Whee!

Wil tries to Elfstone the bastard, but suffers from some major performance anxiety. He and Daddy Cephalo lead the demon away from Amberle and into the poison patch, which Cephalo ignites, blowing up the demon. The series appears intent on pitching him as a lovable rogue again, despite that attempted rape; I'm not buying it.

Allanon has Bandon try to use his gift to contact Amberle. Instead he sees the Dagda Mor, gets locked in some sort of prison and goes all black eyes of badness. He probably would have been better off in the army.

Prince Grumpy confronts the King one more time and, after an emotional confrontation turns a hug all homicidal. No great surprise, except that oh SNAP, it's not Prince Grumpy, it's the Changeling, which immediately turns into the King and hops onto the throne, presumably figuring that if someone happens in they'll be all 'Hi your Maj; do you need us to remove this corpse that looks exactly like you?'

The Shannara Chronicles continues to be pretty but disposable television. It wants to be cool and sexy and edgy, but elves using slang isn't cool, the bland prettiness of the leads isn't actually all that sexy and rape - even threatened rape - isn't edgy, it's just unpleasant. Game of Thrones is pushing its luck vis a vis the quantity of, shall we say, sex of arguable consensuality, and Game of Thrones has a lot more substance to weigh in its favour when asking 'but is this valid?'