Shadowhunters - 'Parabatai Lost'

The morning after, Shadowhunter style.

We begin as we ended last week's episode, with Jace and Clary free, Gretel the werewolf dead, and no real idea what the fuck is happening with Dot.

At least one oversight comes back to bite our putative heroes on the arse, as Jace washes up on the shores of the East River right next to Gretel's body, and instead of doing anything smart like, say, urging the bystander who finds them to yes, please call the police, he instead tells her not to, acts like a scary person and runs away before Luke and the other werewolf cops show up to reclaim their own and draw unflattering conclusions. Being the best and brightest that the Institute has to offer, he then goes to a werewolf bar to use a phone to call Clary, where he is pegged for Gretel's kidnapper and chased until he collapses and gets taken to hospital.

"Don't make me hex a bitch."

Meanwhile, Alec is fading after a part of him got lost trying to track his Parabatai bond to Captain Insensitive. This being TV, a coma naturally means flashbacks, and Alec relives his training with Jace, who was always a cocky little jerk, although the fact that it was instilled at a young age actually makes him a little more sympathetic, since it is clearly a taught rather than an acquired behaviour. We see them train and become a great team, Alec reluctant to undergo the Parabatai bond because he is in love with Jace, and Jace utterly insensitive to any such nuance.

Jace escapes the werewolves again at the hospital and tries to get to Alec at Magnus's loft, but when Aldertree finds that Alec has been removed from the Institute in, as is now traditional, direct opposition to his orders, Izzy has no choice but to make a deal; to bring Jace in, in exchange for helping him get to Alec in time to save him. It turns out that arresting him is about the only thing that gets him out of being eaten by werewolves, despite Luke's attempts to rein in the pack, so there's that.

"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this..."

This episode, Clary mostly dithers and worries about Jace while lying to Aldertree. For the alleged heroine, she's really a bit of a sideshow this season. Jocelyn is in more of this episode, now apparently keen to protect 'Jonathan', which makes a change from shooting at him, and getting chewed out by Magnus for dragging him into this whole colossal clusterfuck in the first place. Simon has way more going on as his mother, frantic with worry, tries to contact him and he makes contact only to learn that Raphael has smoothed things over so that he can get back to finding Camille and bringing her in to face the music.

There is definitely a degree to which Shadowhunters suffers from old teen syndrome. The characters are supposed to be in their mid-to-late teens, but the actors are all in their twenties, which means that whenever they act like teenagers, I feel like they ought to just grow up and stop being so selfish(1). In particular, it probably does make sense that they would just run when they had the chance, but I still hope that Gretel's death will weigh on them, as well as whatever the hell is happening to Dot, because straight up the Warlocks are the bitches of this particular demimonde and helping out a Fray seems to be the fast-track to getting terminally screwed over. As a result, I don't much care for mother or daughter at this juncture, and am more sympatico with the warlocks and the werewolves, and even Raphael's vampire faction than either the Clave or the protagonists.

(1) Because frankly, they are hella selfish. I know the older Clave members are supposed to be hidebound and hard-hearted, but they make a lot of sense to me(2), and where the young protagonists are right it is frankly by chance more than by intent.

(2) Although a fair few of them are also complete jerks in their own way.

Shadowhunters - 'This Guilty Blood' and 'A Door Into the Dark'

"I know that some of you are concerned by rumours that I might be British..."

Welcome back to Season 2 of well-dressed YA adaptation Shadowhunters. We pick up where we left off, with brooding, troubled Jace on a ship full of proto-Shadowhunters with his father, and his brooding, troubled friends worrying about him; and to a lesser extent about the army of proto-Shadowhunters being created with the aid of the Mortal Cup.

About thirty seconds of in-universe time after choosing to go with his father, Clary turns up and Jace is so out of there. Unfortunately, it turns out that this Clary is actually Valentine in disguise. Remember this trick; we're going to see it a few times.

Back at the Institute, before you can say 'unsanctioned rescue mission' the Clave has stepped in and sent oily Brit Victor Aldertree to take control of the Institute in the name of the forces of Shadowhunter conservatism. His first act is to crack down on unsanctioned rescue missions, put out a dead or alive warrant for Jace and boot Luke, Magnus and Simon out of the Institute. Luke puts Simon up, but the rest of the pack insist that he kip in the storage shed, while Magnus has his first fight with Alec because Alec is being a dick about... well, everything. While giving Clary a hard time because Jace is her sole and blinding priority seems to be a sign of being a bad un, Alex gets no such free pass, and that's good.

"These aren't the druids you're looking for."

Less good is that Clary continues to get that pass. Aldertree, and even Jocelyn, rag on her about not trusting Jace, even - especially - when she tells her mother that Jace is actually Jonathan, her long-thought-dead son, but no-one decent, not even snobby Lydia, has a bad word to say about her and her constant telling people what they can and can't do, and what's right and what's wrong. Actually... Alec does call her on basically being a preachy know-nothing, but that's mostly chalked up to him being a dick.

Incontrovertibly dickish is Valentine, who has his son beaten in an attempt to mend fifteen years of absence and neglect with half an hour of quality abuse. He also explains that he made Jace stronger by means of in vitro injections of demon blood, because that's quality parenting right there. To make his wider point - that the Clave has become a worthless, bureaucratic anachronism - he takes Jace out to roust an unsanctioned, people-eating vampire nest. Noticing his power, the leader of the nest surrenders, but Valentine goads him into executing her.

Well... that seems to be the intended takeaway. Actually what happens is that Valentine goads her into attacking so that Jace can kill her in self-defence and be all conflicted and stuff without actually executing a vampire in cold blood.

And Clary pops up in time to see her mother take a shot at both Valentine and Jace, so... conflict!

"Is the semi-nudity strictly necessary?"
"We're going to say yes."

Moving on to 'A Door Into the Dark', Jocelyn tells Clary the demon blood story and Clary is all poo-poo, soulful eyes, you don't know him. This pisses Alec off, because bitch you don't know him, but Clary takes the moral high road of throwing in the towel and going back to art school.

No, really. Suddenly she's all 'I wanna normal life!'

Alec apologises to Magnus for being a tool, and persuades him to help him track Jace using tasteful nudity, although not before Magnus helps Simon to look for Camille in order to get Raphael off the hook over the illicit vamp nest, which was one of Camille's creations. This entails a trip to Agra and a wonderful sequence in which Simon stumbles about and Magnus reclaims all his stuff that Camille walked off with after their last breakup. Magnus Bane PI is still my fantasy spin off.

"Come on, son; just one little bit of brutal, frontier justice."

While Alec is risking his life with dodgy tracking magic, Dot shows up at Clary's school. Remember Dot? Apparently died, now covered in scary veins? I liked Dot; I'm glad to see her back. I hope she'll be around for a while now. She briefly calls Clary out on never looking for her, then portals her to the ship of fools where Clary unaccountably starts spewing Valentine's propaganda. It turns out Dot has enchanted her, but refuses to do so again, instead helping Clary and Jace to escape the ship, leaving Dot and the white-haired werewolf to face Valentine's idea of fair play.

Seriously; they don't even try and fail to rescue either of them. I'm pretty sure that Clary's plan didn't involve Dot escaping at any point. Not even to the stage of trying to persuade her and 'oh no, I'm too far gone with the creepy, Valentine mind-control mojo.'

The show has a new look for the new season, most notable in the fact that the seraph blades have shining runes along the blades instead of looking like knock-off toy lightsabres. The other visuals remain strong, although I don't really see much of the 'darker edge' that has been talked up a lot. Valentine is more visibly evil, but I wonder if that's just the necessity of creating a gradient between total evil, the garden variety douchebaggery of the Clave, and the 'heroism' of the leads, who would look pretty whiny, useless and self-centred if the grown ups weren't all blinkered, bigoted and/or scenery-chewing evil. It's good fun, but I really, really hope we aren't supposed to cheer unreservedly for our 'heroes'.

Shadowhunters - 'Morning Star'

"Leave me; I would brood."

We jump off last week's touching closing moment, with Jace violently rejecting the notion of Jocelyn's redeeming maternal love - Valentine raised him (in disguise), Valentine is evil (in disguise), therefore he must be evil; or something. Seriously, he seems to have suddenly decided that he's not actually the hottest thing since Pop Tarts, but is in fact intrinsically and inescapably evil; like Pop Tarts. That's why he couldn't stab his father through the heart like a good person would have done.

Alec argues with his parents about his oh-so public Warlock* snog and then goes looking for Lydia, finding her all comatosey but muttering 'Hodge'. Did Hodge attack her? Was Hodge also attacked? Fortunately, the Institute has all kinds of surveillance cameras so they can see that he was the traitor, and that he took a ring from the attack zombie. If any of those background Shadowhunters ever watched those cameras this series would have been much shorter. As it is, Hodge goes straight to Valentine and hands over the Cup, and Valentine wastes no time creating his new army, having apparently put an ad on Craigslist: "Wanted; desperate and powerless to become new army of demon-hunting badasses. Must provide own black coat, minimum 3/4 length."

Jace goes after Hodge and Alec asks Luke to set the pack on his trail as well, all of them desperately overestimating the length of time it will take two men with pressing business and an awareness that the almost literal hounds of Hell are on their heels to meet up and hand over a goblet. The upshot of this is that everyone finds Hodge after he's handed over the Cup and after Valentine has kicked him to the curb for being a dodgy bastard with no loyalty. Jace cuts his hand off and, after Alec and Luke stop him killing Hodge, instead abducts him and forces him to lead him to where Valentine was, before he took his freighter full of Shadowhunter Nouveau on a cruise.

"Klaatu verada nictu!"

Meanwhile, Clary, Simon and Isabelle try to get an interview with Camille, but Raphael is understandably kind of pissed that these whiny teenagers keep showing up at his crib and demanding stuff from him. He lets them look through Camille's stuff, warning that she's got safe houses all over town. Clary and Simon head to the vaults while Isabelle spectacularly fails to delay Raphael, despite which they manage to wake up Camille, have a sass off, make a deal and be half way out before Raph superspeeds in.

They somehow take advantage of the daylight to escape with Camille and Simon, leaving the unification of the Downworld in tatters (for which I totally expect them to blame Raphael next season.) They recover the Book of the White in exchange for a writ confirming that Simon was turned into a vampire of his own free will, and are immediately overcome by a bout of complete suck and captured by Valentine's Shadowhunters without a whisper of effective resistance, allowing Valentine to coerce Jace into joining him to strike down the Emperor, end this pointless rebellion and rule the galaxy as father and son. Clary begs him not to go, assuring him he is a good person, somehow confusing an imperative survival decision with a moral choice.

Magnus wakes Jocelyn and Valentine addresses his Hitler Youth Imperial Stormtroopers Shadowhunters 2.0 from the deck of the freighter with Jace at his side.

End of Season 1.

After a pretty good run and the barnstorming melodrama of 'Malec', Shadowhunters descends into a desperate mess of convenience and bad decision-making for the final episode, 'Morning Star'. Jace's descent into desperation and 'is he evil?' is nothing short of meteoric, while Simon has turned into a sharp suited weasel and much of the plot moves forward by having everyone - and especially Magnus and the Lightwood siblings - unaccountably suck for the sake of timing. It feels as if they really wanted to go full season, and receiving a half-season order desperately tried to shoehorn most of the major plot twists into one episode instead of twelve. It's a shame, because other than being horribly rushed and, as ever, dominated by the unspoken assumption that Clary is always right and all other considerations should be set aside, the beats of the episode are okay; there's just too damned many of them.

The lacklustre finale aside, I will be back for Season 2, which is set to be a full-length series, so hopefully we won't get this kind of rush job again.

* I disapprove of the use of warlock as a generic term for male magic users, or in this case magic users in general. It's from an Anglo-Saxon root meaning 'oath breaker', and while I understand that the neo-Pagan community is keen to own former terms of oppression, reclaiming warlock is kind of like the Norwegian-Americans of Minnesota deciding to reclaim 'quisling'.

Shadowhunters - 'Malec'

"Can we hurry this up? I have a lounge singing gig."

Okay, this episode is seriously called 'Malec', which is not the name of a place, character or event in the episode, it's the name of the Magnus/Alec ship. I appreciate the openness.

This is the wedding episode. Alec and Lydia prepare for their nuptials, while Magnus makes one final play and then helps Clary and Jace to track down the warlock who created Jocelyn's sleep spell.

Jace and Clary are dealing with the fallout of Valentine's bombshell, Jace in particular very badly; perhaps because he is also trying to work out what's up with his much abused parabatai bond to Alec. Ultimately, Isabelle tricks them into talking as the core of Alec's bachelor party and they clear the air considerably. Clary then shows Jace her mother's box of memories of the on she believed dead, convincing him that he was never abandoned.

Simon is still needlessly gleeful about the whole thing. I really don't like him at the moment.

The wedding is officiated by one of the Silent Brothers. If I ever get married, I want an immense celebrant with a booming psychic voice. Round about vow time, Magnus shows up and - as Simon puts it, apparently just in case the audience missed what the writers were trying for - everything goes a bit The Graduate. Lydia is super cool about the whole thing, and even Papa Lightwood is pretty understanding, although Mama is a little bit 'I have no son!'

Lydia opts to head back to Idris with the Cup, but gets coshed on the head by Hodge, who is - dun dun dun! - in league with Valentine (which might be a shocker if you don't know the source material.)

I want to give a reasoned critique here, but I'm still stuck on that 'Malec' thing. I think it pretty much obviates 90% of criticism outright to rock that sort of self-awareness without ever winking at the camera.

Shadowhunters - 'Blood Calls to Blood'

"It's trial time; break out the community theatre set."

With Jocelyn gone but Jace's supposedly dead father - Michael Wayland - found, Jace and Clary head back to New York, where Simon and Clary go to Raphael for blood supplies for the demon-venomed Jace. Impressed by his chutzpah, Raphael takes Simon off werewolf ambassador duties and takes him on as 'special adviser for warning people not to take the piss.'

Back at the Institute, the Clave puts a rush on Isabelle's trial and sends an Inquisitor to act as judge and, apparently, also jury. The law must be upheld, they say, and the kind of rule bending that has been going on is exactly the sort of brouhaha that preceded the Circle's uprising. Isabelle asks Alec to approach Magnus Bane to be her defense attourney, which is of course all kinds of awkward.

Based on information overheard by Michael, Jace, Clary and Luke head off to get Jocelyn back. Surrounded by demons, Clary tries to use the cup to control them. When she has trouble, Michael offers to try, before revealing himself to be Valentine under a glamour. His triumph is short-lived, however, when Clary reveals that she was suspicious all along and has passed him a glamoured mug instead of the cup. Valentine flees, but as a final fuck you tells Jace that he was always Michael Wayland, and Jace's real father, making our nascent supercouple brother and sister.

Irony, motherfucker*!

Magnus basically swans through the trial quoting courtroom movies ("This whole court is out of order!") until Lydia breaks down and refuses to prosecute the case against someone whose 'crime' is showing compassion and not acting exactly the kind of angel supremacist tools who populate the Circle. The Inquisitor declares Isabelle guilty, although honestly I feel that the prosecution recusing herself and dropping all charges is at least grounds for a mistrial. The Inquisitor's immediate announcement that the sentence will be struck if the Mortal Cup is handed over basically makes a mockery of all her claims of upholding the law, and I think a little rebellion may be on the cards here.

With Jocelyn recovered, Clary hands over the cup and Isabelle is freed. Magnus gives Alec a 'why you suck' speech, telling him that he doesn't deserve to be trapped in a loveless marriage and neither does Lydia. Jace and Clary are agonised. Luke tells Simon the news and Simon's gleeful reaction pretty much jettisons my last remaining shred of respect for the character. It's now official: TV series Simon isn't a nice guy; he's a Nice Guy (TM).

So, there it is; the bombshell those of us who know the source material have been waiting for. It's not done badly, but maybe could have had a bit more dramatic punch. It's a scene that calls for a lot of emotional intensity, and Katherine McNamara and Dominic Sherwood don't quite have the range to pull it off. Perhaps it is because of this that Clary and Jace come off as incredibly selfish, but it might also be because they are written as incredibly selfish. Overall, however, Shadowhunters is doing better than could have been expected.

* This is also irony.

Shadowhunters - 'Rise Up' and 'The World Inverted'

"Seriously? Neither of you owns a shirt with sleeves?"

In the wake of the Forsaken attack the Institute goes on lockdown, and the presence of Seelie blood in the attackers leads Lydia to arrest Meliorn with the intention of sending him to the Silent Brothers for brain scranliting, because Lydia Branwell is apparently the poster child for supernatural extraordinary rendition. Alec tells Magnus he's getting married (cue Magnus Bane's kicked puppy face,) Alec and Jace argue about whether Clary is the best thing since sliced bread or a liability and Alec and Izzy argue about what the fuck is he doing getting married to some blonde he's never met when he's gay?

"Well, this isn't awkward at all."

With the Clave after the Cup, Jace has Magnus 'borrow' Alec's stylae to open the safe. Clary, Jace and Isabelle leave the Institute and hole up at the Hotel du Mort for a while, where Simon is locked in a cage with Clary to come to terms with his nature and realise that he is not an uncontrollable monster. Clary's rogue faction then negotiates an alliance with the New York Pack and the vampires to rescue Meliorn from terminal quizzing in the City of Bones. During the rescue, Alec and Jace come to blows, and Jace goads Alec to kill him, telling him he would rather die than be on opposite sides; a touching sentiment only slightly undermined by Jace's repeated choosing of Clary over Alec.

With the Clave getting testy and Isabelle under arrest for aiding Meliorn's escape, Clary and Jace take a gamble. Meliorn leads them into Seelie country, where they can open a portal to another world. From there, Clary's pendant can open a specific portal that will take her to where Valentine is, but she has to be quick because she will inhabit the body of the other world's Clary and quickly become lost.

What is not clear is why Simon is basically just Simon. Or
how Clary met the Lightwoods and came to be living in New
York without the backstory of the primary world.

'The World Inverted' is a lot of fun, with Clary encountering the alternate versions of her friends from a world without demons or Shadowhunters. Her mother is happily married to Valentine, Isabelle is a nerd and in a relationship with cooler nerd Simon, Luke has quit the police to become an antiquarian bookseller, Alec is totally at home with his sexuality and Magnus Bane is semi-retired and giving tarot readings for a living (but still the most fun and awesome thing in the series.)

While the portal is open, Jace and Meliorn have to fight off demons trying to get through to all-you-can-eat-world, which unfortunately goes tits up when the betrayal of Alec's attempt to use their parabatai bond to track Jace causes him excruciating pain. Oops.

Cheesy-awesome in any world.

Clary tries to find the portal with the aid of Magnus, while not losing her mind or letting nice-boyfriend-Jace get a) too jealous, or b) eaten by a demon. Ultimately, Jace follows her through, they kill the demon and find the portal, which takes them to Chernobyl. Here they find, not Clary's mum, but Jace's dad, who is also less dead than advertised.

Shadowhunters - 'Major Arcana' and 'Bad Blood'

Luke's Captain has always seemed unusually competent and sympathetic for
an authority figure. It was really only a matter of time before something bad
happened to her.

Clary has worked out that her mother hid the Mortal Cup using the same special gift that she possesses, flattening it into the Ace of Cups in Dot's tarot deck (ironically, despite the title of the episode being 'Major Arcana', the Ace of Cups is a minor; also, Jocelyn is apparently able to flatten things into complex inked drawings while Clary is still on pencil sketches.) This presents a problem, since Dot was captured and murdered by Valentine, but fortunately her cards were left at the scene and are now in Luke's desk.

Luke goes in to get the deck, but before he can take the cards, IA swoop in and confiscate his stuff on account of those 'witnesses' he shredded when they tried to muscle him. Clary and Jace sneak in under a glamour, but although the IA investigator doesn't see them, Luke warns them that the precinct is basically crawling with downworlders who will see right through it. Thus, Clary plays on her friendship with the Captain, distracting attention by slapping Jace and having him thrown out for being her stalker. Nice.

It doesn't get access to Luke's stuff, but the Captain does explain where it's being kept, before whimsically noting that this job will be the death of her. It therefore comes as no surprise when she turns up murdered by a shapeshifting demon, after which Luke's investigation is basically dropped.

"It just looks like a wine glass."
Seriously, Clary? Where the fuck are you shopping for tablewear?

Alec and Isabelle cut the power to the precinct, allowing Jace and Clary to break into the evidence lockup and steal the tarot cards. They head for the Institute, pursued by critter demons. With everyone else watching her back, Clary is cornered, but musters up the power to pull the cup from the card and drive the demons back with its demon-commandy powers, then stabs fake-Jace through the heart. Back at the Institute, Jace and Clary like, totally make out in the command centre which Alec is a bit not-okay with, but no-one else bats an eyelid. In fact, the command room techs actually look more surprised when Jace asks them to do something, no doubt taken aback that they are expected to be more than silent furniture.

Elsewhere, after seeing Clary cuddling Jace, Simon rebounds onto bestie with a crush Maureen, waking up with her, sans clothes and sans any respect I might have had for him. In his defence, he is going through some stuff: Incipient blood lust, audio-visual hallucinations and a new-found revulsion for garlic. He has an argument with his mother and sister and puts a fist through his desk, keeps seeing Camille everywhere, and eventually breaks into Hotel du Mort to find out what's happening, where Camille straight-up murders him.

Lydia Branwell's standoffishness can perhaps be put down to
insecurity owing to her absence from the book canon.

In case there was any doubt, we open 'Bad Blood' with Raphael bringing Simon's corpse to the Institute and presenting Clary with a choice - a stake through the heart to give Simon a mortal death, or burial to allow him to rise as a vampire. Katherine McNamara goes full traum on this episode, as Clary tries to tell Simon's mother that he won't be coming back and seeks Luke's advice on what to do.

Luke says that whatever she decides, it has to be for Simon and not for her, explaining how Jocelyn kept him from destroying himself after he became a werewolf. He's got his own stuff to deal with however, as a zombie-looking demon called a Forsaken busts into the Chinese restaurant on some sort of steroids and tries to kill him. The pack take it down, but he allows the Institute to analyse the body to find out why it was so tough.

Punch, kick, it's all in the mind.

At this point, the Institute is being run by interim director Lydia Branwell, a nails-tough blonde bombshell who announces her arrival to audit the Institute by walking in disguised as Valentine, catching an arrow shot at her by Alec and criticising the other Shadowhunters' lack of response (unfairly, since I'm pretty sure SAG would close down the show if they did more than walk around.) It's lucky for her that Alec didn't keep shooting; eventually she'd have run out of hands. She determines that the Forsaken are targeting ex-Circle members and promises added security at the Institute to protect Hodge and the senior Lightwoods, which is a bit of a shocker for Alec.

Magnus Bane comes in to consult on the autopsy and flirts with Alec. He advises him to follow his heart, which somehow persuades Alec to head for Narnia and propose to Lydia so that they can run the Institute together. This can only end in hilarity.

Ultimately, Clary opts to bury Simon in his father's tallit (which, if you think about it, she must have stolen from his house.) Camille tries to claim him, but her back up turn on her when Raphael points out that she broke the accords, threatening an unwinnable war with the Shadowhunters. She is surrounded by other vampires and... killed? group hugged into submission? I don't know.

"I'm in blackface!?"

Simon bursts from the grave and consumes several bags of blood, before declaring himself repulsive and racing off into the night. He is especially disturbed to find that he can't say 'God', although 'damnit' is just fine.

As the drama ramps up and the action moves further from the books, Shadowhunters is starting to show a little strain at the seams. In particular, the absolute extraness of the command centre crew is more and more apparent each time anyone talks to them. 'Bad Blood' also suffers from a surfeit of tragic backstory, as Alec learns his parents were in the Circle, Luke recounts the story of his change, Jace tells Clary an Old Yeller of a story about taming a falcon and Lydia explains that she was in love with a guy and in line to run the Lisbon Institute (because apparently the Portugese don't have their own Shadowunters) before he died horribly. It's all a bit fatiguing.

Shadowhunters - 'Of Men and Angels'

I can't help feeling that I've seen this shot composition in oils somewhere...

Clary rushes Luke to Magnus Bane for treatment (because only a Warlock can heal an alpha's bite, remember,) with Jace and Simon in tow to cock-block one another help out. simon is getting increasingly jumpy and keeps staring at blood, although oddly not so much at the huge quantities gushing out of Luke's abdomen as at traces on his fingers.

Alec and Isabelle's father and kid brother show up wearing suits, which basically makes them look like a pair of Mormons in a nightclub. Apparently the Lightwood name is in the crapper thanks to Alec's handling of the Clary affair and Isabelle boinking the fair folk. To restore the family honour, they want Alex to marry a girl from another prominent family. Isabelle begs him not to make this compromise, but after heart to hearts with the folks it is Alec who goes off the res to answer Bane's call for 'virgin Shadowhunter energy' (a freely admitted blag for wanting to see Alec) while Isabelle starts dressing like Mommy.

Jace and Simon go shopping for potion ingredients and Simon jumps Jace with a knife, which weirds them both out a bit. Jace is a dick and Simon is in denial, but in the end of the episode Simon leaves, giving a message for Clary that he 'has things to do'. Meanwhile, Luke fills in some backstory, explaining that he used to be a Shadowhunter, and Valentine's parabati, until Valentine thought he was making moves on Jocelyn and threw him into a pit of werewolves to die.

Apparently this is supposed to 'unlock' Clary, although since her memories have been destroyed it's not clear what they're unlocking until she suddenly turns her mother's 'JC' box (which is apparently a momento of a brother who died in infancy) into a pencil sketch.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Valentine in the books didn't go bad because he was jealous of Luke and Jocelyn's closeness, but because he was a power-crazed xenophobe. This series is just addicted to love triangles or something. Other than that, Jace remains a dick and Magnus Bane is more fun than everyone else combined; in their shared scenes Alec actually seems human. Not sure what's going on with Isabelle, but she seems to have been separated from the rest of the team. Simon... is sort of in search of a purpose for remaining in the series.

As we drift away from the book plot, the series seems ever more wishy washy about its direction. I don't know if it will actually find its own way.

Shadowhunters - 'Dead Man's Party', 'Raising Hell' and 'Moo Shu to Go'

Queen of the vampires, rockin' the stereotype.

Clary and her inordinately amenable posse of Shadowhunter hangers on set out to track down Simon through the tried and tested method of Isabelle getting nekkid with a Vulcan. Okay, actually he's a 'Seelie', or faerie as we might say if the series weren't desperately trying to avoid that word, but the ears man; oh the ears.

Meantime, Clary learns moe about her powers, and that Jace and Alec are parabatai: mystically bonded hunting partners, closer than brothers, although Jace in particular is definitely throwing that whole parabati before totty* doctrine to the winds and generally treating Alec like he's the asshole for occasionally suggesting that maybe there's something to their centuries old creed that could trump, say, doing whatever the hell Clary asks regardless of how incredibly stupid and wrong it is. But don't worry, because Alec will earn this later.

Chief vampire Camille and her number two Raphael play a little sexy vamp/thug vamp with Simon, partly to see if he knows where the all-important Mortal Cup is and partly because Camille is bored/for the fan service (as much as we need that with Isabelle going all out to, erm, pump her contact for information.)

Anyway, the Shadowhunters break in, which is apparently against the treaty which the vampires already broke in some way by scrobbling a mortal in their protection or... Look, I don't know. Camille rails at her minions as they get slaughtered, and Raphael unexpectedly turns (slightly) face, ensuring that Simon gets out alive.

Meanwhile, Valentine is probably monologuing at mercifully unconscious Jocelyn and other werewolf cop probably tells Luke to watch his back. It's been a while since I watched this episode, but both of these things happen more often than not.

My detective spin-off from this series would totally be Magnus Bane PI. He's
way more fun than any of the other characters, and an outrageous liar.

In 'Raising Hell', Clary dreams about someone named Magnus taking her memories. On waking she mentions this to Simon, who wonders if this is the 'Magnus Bane' that Camille mentioned when he told her Clary's memories had been taken. Do ya think?

Clary runs off to tell Jace (apparently the show has some sense of shame, now offering shirtless Jace as equal opportunity fanservice after the boob-heavy 'Dead Man's Party') and Simon decides fuck this noise and swans off out of the Institute like a magnificent and slightly suicidal bastard. With Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn (is that just Brooklyn and there's one for each of the five boroughs? Or is he just a high warlock who is 'of Brooklyn'?) in hiding because of Valentine, there is only one place to find him: At a Downworlder rave.

Baiting a trap, they set off to the same club where they ran into a bunch of vampires last episode. I guess they only have so many club sets, but they hang a lampshade on this by claiming that their last visit was on 'vampire night'. They lure Bane out by offering him a necklace that he once gave to Camille and which now belongs to Alec and Isabelle's family, but he explains that he can't return the memories because he fed them to a Greater Demon for safekeeping.

Just because none of the characters seem to note this, I want to be clear that I'm not missing something: He gave the memories which include the location of the Mortal Cup, the most powerful artefact in the Shadow World and arch-weapon against demonkind to a motherfucking demon to look after. Is that what we're saying? Not that I want to hold this against him. The flamboyantly hedonistic Bane is way more fun than anyone else in the series, with his flirty ways and outrageous bullshit name dropping (he is established as being 'over 300 years old' yet claims to have shagged Michelangelo and been around when the Dead Sea was 'just a lake with a bit of a cold.') I bet he knew Ichabod Crane.

Parabatai tracking: Just add 'the way you look tonight' and we're in fanfic
territory.

Anyway, a Circle assassin pops up. Alec kills him, and although impressed, Bane portals out like a proper magnificent bastard. Clary nabs his shirt button and Jace and Alec do parabatai tracking to find him, which involves holding hands and gazing intensely into each other's eyes. This allows them to turn up at Bane's lair just in time to save him and a warlock girl from more assassins. Bane moves the entire lair - because he fucking can, that's why - and then agrees to help summon the demon, in part because he's way into Alec. He gives Clary a set of chalks and tells her to draw an insanely complex summoning circle, which she does, perfectly, first time, of course. They all hold hands and summon the demon, which demands a memory of the person that they most love in payment for returning Clary's memories. Clary gives up a memory of her mother, Izzy one of Alec. We never learn who Jace or Bane would have recalled, because Alec's memory is of Jace, and when this is displayed to all present he freaks out, because apparently he is Narnia deep in the closet, to the point he would rather fuck up the summoning of an incredibly dangerous Greater Demon than face his feelings. Despite the fact that Izzy has already proven that sibling love is totally applicable.

Go Alec, you consummate professional.

The demon breaks loose and grabs Jace, so Clary has to stab a bitch, killing the demon and with it her memories. The focus of most of the last five episodes of a thirteen part series has been on getting those memories, but fuck that noise apparently.

And then Valentine speaks to Clary through her mother's necklace, because of course he can.

Mother of the year.

In 'Moo Shu to Go', Alec and Isabelle's mother arrives and is a complete bitch to her daughter (apparently schtupping the faeries is frowned upon.) She tasks Jace with making a diplomatic approach to the Seelie, who are pissed about something. They learn that what's got them riled is that Valentine killed the scouts the Clave asked the Seelie to send to locate him with a poisoned exploding Shadowhunter (no, really.)

Grounded for not grounding anyone else, Alec is persuaded to accompany Clary to her mother's apartment to retrieve a box which might contain something important and which hasn't been mentioned until now. Simon joins them, leading them via a secret shortcut and displaying wicked parkour skills and strength (and keeping mum about how last episode he got all cravey over his bandmate's blood while she was asking him out, then stared at the Hotel Du Mort until Raphael ran him off.) Alec then fails to prevent Clary and Simon being kidnapped by werewolves.

The werewolves - who are mostly biker types, plus Luke's colleague - take them to the pack den; a slightly grotty Chinese restaurant at the docks, where the alpha demands the Mortal Cup or Simon will be torn apart by one of his heavy hitters. Simon escapes his bonds thanks to vampire strength and contacts the Shadowhunters by dialing Clary's number, having left her bag behind. This is handy, as the either the presence of water, or the fact that Alec is finding it suddenly uncomfortable to stare into Jace's eyes, or possibly the fact that Jace is being a total dick to Alec, means that even parabatai tracking isn't working.

"He's now the leader of the pack."
Vrmm vrmm.

Luke shows up to rescue Clary, but the shadowhunters snatch her off him. When they are surrounded by werewolves, however, a wolf comes out of nowhere to take down the alpha and claim leadership. Surprise! It's Luke! (Are you surprised? Really?) What surprised me was the degree of glowy, ethereal light involved in the werewolf transformations. I guess it saves on the effect budget compared to popping bones and sprouting fur.

Luke is now alpha and can protect Clary from the pack, but royally fucked up from the fight. In fact, only a warlock's magic can heal an alpha's bite, apparently, so it's back to Magnus Bane.

Shadowhunters continues to deviate ever more from the plot of the novels, mostly for the sake of having shit happen every week, like the demon summoning or a big fight with werewolves. I'm really not convinced that a lot of the changes are for the better. I'm curious to see if the contents of the box ultimately move the plot forward or if we're going to stay hovering at ignorance and guesswork.

* I know; I'm reaching.

Shadowhunters - 'The Descent into Hell Isn't Easy'

"So... are we in the Matrix?"

Faced with the choice of Jace and the Institute or finding Luke with Simon, Clary takes the third option: Institute, but insisting that Simon comes with her, despite the presence of lethal, potentially mundane-killing runes. Inside, only Isabelle and Alec even seem to register Simon's presence, and he stays with the former while Jace takes Clary to quiz weaponmaster and former Circle member Hodge, who reveals that - dun dundun! - Jocelyn Fray was part of the Circle back in the day. It later turns out that so was Jace's dad, although he died trying to get out.

Clary realises that Dot was a warlock and might be able to unlock her memory, but then has a sudden vision of Dot in trouble at the nightclub Pandemonium. Sure enough Dot, who did not die last episode, runs to Magnus Bane - which is only an awesome name if he didn't choose it himself - only to find him and the other warlocks in the city bugging out as Valentine is looking for someone to un-coma Jocelyn. Dot refuses to leave and is scrobbled by the Circle moments before the gang arrive in Simon's van. With no other options, Jace takes Clary into the City of Bones, the catacomb home of the Silent Brothers, who can cut memories free with their Soul Sword.

Luke gets into a fight with one of the Circle members he was talking to before, displays some funky superspeed, and then kills her in an unseen flurry of growling when she pulls a shiv on him. I think we're not supposed to realise he's a werewolf yet, although he appears to be working with a conspiracy of other cops who all know something about Jocelyn. Are all cops werewolves? Are all werewolves cops?

In Chernobyl, Dot refuses to talk, shanks a Shadowhunter in an escape attempt and then is, maybe, killed by Valentine, although she's been beating the odds so far.

"I love what you've done with the place."

The creepy Silent Brothers release just enough memory to tell Clary that her father was Valentine (a secret Jocelyn was so desperate to keep that she discussed it openly with Luke in front of Clary, then had her mind wiped, instead of - you know - not saying it) and then the Soul Sword... I don't know; runs out of charge or something. They return to the surface and find that Isabelle and Alec have between them proven utterly incapable of preventing Simon being scrobbled by vampires, who intend to swap him for the Mortal Cup (which makes Shadowhunters and controls demons.)

The show continues it's process of hot actionification. Not only is Luke a seriously badass cop rather than an unexpectedly badass bookseller, and Dot a hot witch instead of an elderly mundane tarot reader, now Hodge is a wiry swordmaster with a serious six pack, rather than a grizzled, bookish type. By extension, Jace really ought to be a white-hot vortex of inexpressible sexiness, visible only indirectly for fear of blinding. Sadly, he is actually pretty much the blandest thing on the menu.

One of the areas in which Shadowhunters suffers by comparison to the books or even the film is its complete failure - so far at least - to convey the supposedly colossal chemistry between Clary and Jace. It's supposed to be a big part of what draws her fully into the Shadowhunter world, but here it's an informed attribute only. Isabelle tells us it's obvious Clary is into Jace, but it isn't. As a side note, the introduction of pining friend who isn't in this episode means that 'nerd hot' Simon is clearly the natural chick magnet in this adaptation, while Jace is more like everyone's brother.

Shadowhunters - 'The Mortal Cup'

Like, 90% of the images which come up searching for 'Shadowhunters TV
series' are fan-made fantasy casting posters.

This year, Netflix brings us the series based on the movie based on the books! Or possibly just the series based on the books ignoring the movie. Whatever; when the movie version of City of Bones crashed and burned, the planned sequels went into the can, and now Netflix has nabbed the rights (or rather, are funding the original filmmakers to produce this series. Or maybe it's another network entirely, as despite the version I saw calling itself a Netflix original, Wikipedia lists the network as Freeform.)

Clary Fray is an ordinary teenager(TM), just turning 18 and gaining admission to Brooklyn Academy of Arts thanks to her hugely generic monster drawings. She also possesses the ability to turn actual biscotti into pencil drawings of biscotti. Out celebrating her birthday with her love triangle (best bud with a crush Simon and the girl who fancies him,) she almost literally runs into a trio of broody goths that no-one else can see and stumbles on them cutting up a room full of demons.

Now, one of the big changes for the series is that we depart quite a bit from Clary's viewpoint, so we've already seen these three - self-absorbed Jace, moody Alex and exhibitionist Isabelle - tool up to hunt a shapeshifting demon who has been draining blood from humans. They are Shadowhunters, working from a high-tech ops centre with a sizable staff (a big change from the movie,) and Clary's mother explains - badly - that Clary is also a Shadowhunter, gives her a glowy wand thing called a styla, and pushes her through a magic door while she gets captured by 'the Circle'. Clary goes to her mother's friend Luke, but hears him telling a couple of Circle members that he doesn't give a crap about her, he's just been trying to get the Mortal Cup for 'his people' (a loaded phrase, as TV Luke is black, and also a cop rather than a bookshop owner.)

Look again; the bookseller is now a cop.

Clary goes home and is bitten by a demon in the shape of her neighbour, but rescued by Jace and taken to Shadowhunter HQ. Simon traces her with some modern version of Googlestalk and we close with her choosing whether to stick with the weirdoes or go home with Simon.

Meanwhile, archbaddy Valentine is obsessing over Jocelyn Fray and the fact that she has a daughter in his evil lair-type base in Chernobyl.

There are some left-field decisions in this adaptation: Luke Garroway, Werewolf Cop; Chernobyl; the mass of touchscreen technology in the Institute; and a flashback which lets us know that Jocelyn has been having Magnus Bane monkey with Clary's memories right out of the gate. Also Werewolf Cop*.

On the plus side, the characters are a little less self-consciously joyless in this version, even Alex, who is basically made of brood. Overall, the aesthetic is much the same as the movie (unsurprisingly, coming from the same production company,) although Clary's hair is changed from dark red to bright orange. The series has some potential, so long as the budget doesn't start to bite too hard.

* I suspect that this may tie in later to a more episodic style of storytelling once the series is established, with Luke-as-cop able to explain his presence at crime scenes and the like.