Bo can't seem to get over Dyson, but he is having no trouble getting under a few cute waitresses. Bo puts on a brave face, and even declines Kenzi's playful offers to put a hex on the ex's wolf junk. But when the two attempt to drink away the pain, Kenzi's judgment gets soft and she invokes the wicked witch of her childhood nightmares: Baba Yaga. Old wives used to scare their children with tales of Baba Yaga, saying that she would abduct naughty girls to her house of bones, but help those who invoked her, if their feelings were passionate enough.When Bo wakes up after their night of revelry, a nasty headache isn't the only pain she feels: she has a strange mark on her hip, which Trick identifies as the symbol of Baba Yaga.
Kenzi is shocked that the witch actually exists, but when Dyson stumbles in, bearing the same mark as Bo and pursued by women who hate him, she needs no more convincing.Kenzi regrets her actions and begs for Trick's help, but he tells her that Yaga lives in a realm unto herself, and he is unable to tread there. For once, Kenzi might have a resource that the Fae world doesn't: her auntie, Ludmila. Bo knew Kenzi wasn't tight with her family, but when she meets Aunty Mila, she learns that Kenzi's stepfather was a true nightmare.
But enough about family - they have a curse to lift! After some succu-tastic persuasion, Ludmila performs the rite to contact Baba Yaga. The witch agrees to lift the curse, but her price is to haul Kenzi into her realm.Bo panics, thinking that she might lose her best friend. In a desperate move, Bo asks The Ash to get her to Yaga's world - she even offers to freelance for The Light in return. Lachlyn accepts, and Dyson helps usher Bo through Yaga's portal by holding her under ice water until she passes out. The sadomasochism of their relationship continues, even after their relationship is over.
Bo lands in Yaga's house not a moment too soon - Yaga has just feasted on one of the girls she's been keeping in servitude for centuries, and Kenzi made the hit list by trying to escape. Bo's powers don't work under Yaga's sovereignty, and Kenzi only narrowly saves their lives by convincing Yaga that she can tame the unruly beast she keeps to guard an unknown treasure. She demands that Yaga fetch her various rare objects, and with the time she's bought, she unlocks the treasure chest to reveal a small mirror. It's the portal home, and Yaga's way of harvesting young girls.
Yaga is terrified that Kenzi has the mirror and agrees to let her and Bo go free, but Kenzi does her one better. She smashes the mirror on the ground and, handing the shards out to the imprisoned girls, tells them to look in it and think of home. Let’s bitch it out…As I explored last week, the Dyson break-up stuff has consumed a lot of airtime in the first few episodes of season two. I didn’t realize how much I was over it until the start of ‘Mirror, Mirror’ when Kenzi and Bo (Anna Silk) spend five minutes talking about how much of a pig Dyson is because he’s moved on.
Now we’ve all had break-ups and we all go through this hatred stage, so it’s not that this doesn’t happen (caveat: our girls are also plastered), but this feels less like a Lost Girl I want to watch. I tune in each week because Bo kicks ass, and Kenzi is funny and the world they inhabit is filled with creatures and stories that excite the imagination. So it’s nice when Bo acknowledges that Dyson no longer has feelings for her in penance for saving her life. And it’s clear that even as Kenzi is cursing Dyson that she’s really doing it because, by hurting Bo, Dyson also hurt her.
With that said, I’m glad that all of this drama takes a backseat so that we get to know more about Kenzi. I will admit, however, that I never truly feared for Kenzi: even as the other girls are being put to the flame, it is pretty obvious that things would work out for our little babushka. No, what interested me is the suggestion that Kenzi was the victim of physical and emotional abuse from her step-father, who locked her away ‘Harry Potter’ style when she was a child (guess now we know at least one contributing factor in her decision to run away from home).
What ‘Mirror, Mirror’ does (much like last week’s episode) is reiterate that these characters are better off together than they are by themselves. In both episodes, Bo and Kenzi are separated and suddenly faced with the idea that they are alone…and it terrifies them. Suddenly they no longer have their safety net. And that’s why it’s so meaningful that one will do anything to help rescue the other, whether that’s Kenzi using Mumphert to find The Baku, or Bo refusing to listen to the slutty Water Nymph who insists she’ll drown trying to reach Baba Yaga’s ‘alternate universe’ gingerbread house.
There are plenty of metatextual references in this episode. Clearly there’s a homage to Hansel and Gretel with the burning and eating of prisoners in the witch’s house (Kenzi herself even mentions that “This place is Hansel and Gretel meets Hannibal Lecter”).
In addition to this, a girl’s clothes lands her the moniker ‘Fiddler On The Roof reject’ and the ending, when Baba Yaga’s hand emerges from the mirror, is pure-Carrie. As mentioned, the Dyson plotline doesn’t really work for me. The first time we see the effects of the curse, it’s mildly amusing. By the time we get to his informant turning on him in the interrogation room, it’s become repetitive, obvious and just plain silly (but not amusingly so).
At this point, I’ll once again draw on my love of Buffy to relate this back to Xander’s misbegotten love spell in 2×16’s ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’. That similar storyline - women go man-crazy except for one resistant female - works better because it alternates between hilarity and creeping menace as the women become more and more violent. Here the women’s hatred for Dyson never goes beyond verbal abuse and spitting - had the women been a danger to him, it might have added an extra layer of desperation and timeliness to Bo and Kenzi’s interactions with Baba Yaga.
P.S. I really enjoyed Aunt Milla (Catherine Fitch) and her con-artist fortune teller routine. I was less fond of the fact that Kenzi doesn’t truly save herself. Yes, I get it that in a way the man-dog attacked Baba Yaga because Kenzi had earlier befriended him with a piece of Anna (blech), but it felt far too convenient that she merely steps aside and into the oven they both go. There’s more drama with Lachlyn, The Ash (Vincent Walsh). In order to get Chloe’s help crossing over, Bo makes a deal with Lachlyn to be his freelance agent after all (remember she turned him down last week).
If there’s one other element outside of Kenzi’s background that will have long lasting consequences beyond this episode, it’ll be this. Disappointing there was no Lauren after last week’s more prominent role. Since I’m watching in Canada, I missed the big drama that went down last week when edits were made to a key Doccubus (Bo-Lauren shipper) scene.
Kenzi (immediately after waking up in an unfamiliar hell-house): “Baba Yaga? Mrs. Kenzi (to another prison dressed in 60s clothes): “Love your top. You know the drill. I haven’t done a scientific study, but I’m hazarding a guess the awesomeness of any given episode is raised 38% for every minute of screen time Kenzi gets.
She brings the funk and says the irreverent things we’re all thinking. And jump-starts a lot of plots. This one she kicks off because she’s mad at Dyson. Well, mostly Bo is mad at Dyson, and Kenzi is sympathizing the way one does when one’s best friend’s boyfriend has started hanging with waitresses who drink Sex on the Beach. Also, Kenzi’s drunk. This episode again confirms my believe Kris Holden-Ried does better when Dyson is given something funny to do.
His plot with Gloria, down to his lines about ‘just remember how it felt every time Roberto slept with your sister,’ is ripped from a telanovela, and it’s glorious. When Hale shakes his head and says “You could talk a nun into a three-way,” Dyson chirps “Ah, the Crusades, good times.” Like with him snarking about never doing Jane Austin again, (really, the entirety of “School’s Out”), Dyson is best when he’s not constantly brooding in a dark corner. His open jokiness about his sex life makes much more sense, and makes his character much more interesting, as pointed out here. Hale makes a good point about the womanizing: Dyson could not flaunt the lady magnetism around Bo. “It’s called subtlety.”
There’s no reason the whole group can’t hang out without all the drama. HulkWolf comes out after Dyson is cursed (and his perfect obliques are marred), and most of his rage lands on Kenzi. There’s obvious affection in the Kenzi/Dyson dynamic, as well as mutual trust, a fierce desire for Dyson to protect Kenzi even when he rags on her like one would a younger sibling, and of course Kenzi’s appreciation for Dyson’s forms and curiosity about the wolf junk. All this combines in a very comfortable friendship.
To right her wrong, Kenzi goes first to her aunt, a fortune teller who embraces the gaudiest of stereotypes to lure in tourists and who is also “a wee bit racist.” Bo succu-kisses Aunt Gypsy - and grosses Kenzi out - to convince her Baba Yaga is real, and desperate measures are in order. The summons works or backfires depending on how you look at it; most such summons are designed to backfire. Kenzi is key to the plot not only because she would be the character most likely to have heard of/summon Baba Yaga, but because the plight of the girls imprisoned by baba Yaga hints at a life Kenzi has managed to escape.
Kenzi’s darkest timeline surely involves being kept with other women, made to work in a nightmare, and eventually dying and being thrown out on the cobblestones, so to speak. The language Lachlan uses to speak of Kenzi and Lauren to Bo is similar to that used of prostitutes: just get another one, I’m fond of ‘mine,’ etc. And of course Baba Yaga treats her pet much the same way most Fae would see no problem treating a human. The way Kenzi stays alive in Baba Yaga’s house is the same way she managed on the streets: some lying, general strategy, a heavy dose of stubborn, an uncanny ability to snark in the face of death. It’s still heartbreaking when she finds a mirror, yells for it to take her ‘home,’ and goes nowhere.
While Kenzi is yelling at a handmirror, Bo has managed to wrangle her way into a bathtub and gotten herself sent under. She doesn’t actually function as a savior, just as she didn’t really ‘save’ Kenzi in the beginning; Bo and Kenzi did and continue to save each other. Now the mirror is gone, an unconscious Bo slumps in the corner as Kenzi and Baba Yaga dance around the room, and around topics of Kenzi’s childhood she’s tried years to forget. When Baba Yaga’s pet snaps his chain and runs her into her own walk-in furnace, it’s because of the work Kenzi did earlier to befriend him. Her ingenuity and kindness are what save her, as they’ve helped save her before.
To cap the episode, Kenzi does one more thing which is important to Bo: she gives her her blessing. - Bo’s proclamation about ‘probably lost Lauren’ sounds like it would have come after 02.06 “Not Faed Away,” really almost any time after. Other than Dyson having met Ciara in the next episode, this whole ep could have been slotted into anywhere they needed, and I think the plot was sketched to do just that, and then polished as a ‘buffer’ either around Zoie Palmer’s shooting schedule or just to prolong the will they / won’t they.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this hand in the mirror [below] never comes into play again? In the Buffy episode “Teacher’s Pet,” also the fourth of the season, the last shot is of creepy She-Mantis eggs fermenting in the closet, with similar music over the shot. Pro odškrtnutí/hodnocení epizody se přihlas.Země Nezemě: Mr. Gold si vyrve vlastní stín, aby ho Peter Pan nemohl zabít. Emma a ostatní se toulají džunglí a hledají Panův tábor. Začarovaný les: Krasoň zlomí královninu spící kletbu a je rozhodnutý, že spolu se Sněhurkou si vezmou zpátky to, co jim patří.