The Witcher, Episode 1: Welcome to Confusion
Your first thought will be, “Why is Legolas fighting Shelob?”
Then, “Why didn’t the deer run when Legolas and Shelob erupted from the pond?”
Then, “Why does everyone think the Witcher needs new clothes?”
None of these questions will be answered.
There will be a confusing conversation in a bar where it’s not clear whether Cute Plot Element #1 is married to the barkeep, or is just a customer. There will be a random gang of tough, unwashed men in brown. The barkeep will tell the Witcher to leave town peacefully, then immediately encourage the gang to attack him. Accept it. Allow the mysteries to flow through your mind and out, leaving only the flavor of long-ago nights playing D&D in your friend’s basement. You are in the mandatory Looking for Work in the Local Tavern scene. The DM isn’t entirely sure what she’s doing. The necessary pieces of information will be imparted and you will be moved on to the next scene. All is well.
BTW, Cute Plot Element #1 just arrived in town with her band of unwashed toughs.
Now you know.
Next will come boobs.
So many boobs.
Eventually you will wonder which side of this story is telling the truth. You won’t know whether it’s because the writers wanted it to be ambiguous, or whether it’s because the writers’ characterization gun arrived in the mail yesterday, they’re still working out which bit is the trigger and which bit the character detail comes out of, and they accidentally shot Random Village Girl with the load of personality intended for Cute Plot Element #1.
Don’t worry. None of it will ever be relevant.
The final credits will roll, and you will sit there feeling like you ordered Merlot and got a Diet Coke with a Dragon Magazine cover pasted on the side of the can. You will remember that your friends promised you it gets good around episode 4. You will count the number of hours you must invest before it gets good.
When my friend Vered and I sat down to watch The Witcher, we immediately dubbed it “WTF TV.” As in, “Wanna come over tonight and watch more WTF TV?” Because the first, second, third, fourth, and eight-thousand-ninety-seventh things you say as you watch this series are, “WTF?”
It’s not that it’s weird and twisted. (It’s not.) It’s not that it challenges your understanding of the world or the genre. (It doesn’t.) It’s not that intrigue and history layer over one another in such complex, ever-deepening patterns that your mind bends. (They don’t. They really, really don’t.)
The problem is that the team behind The Witcher played either too much D&D, or not enough. I can’t tell which.
Now you’re thinking, “Ah. Issendai loathes this series so much that she reemerged from dormancy to savage it.”
But here’s the thing. Vered and I have watched it two times through so far, she shares Witcher memes with me and goes around singing “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,”1 and I’m seriously considering ordering the novels and maybe, mmmmaybe, buying whichever Witcher game makes the main character look most like Henry Cavill. What makes me angriest in life is knowing there won’t be more episodes until 2021. I love this series. It’s dreadful and unsatisfying and hilarious and hot and too much like following up the red wine of Game of Thrones with a Kool-Aid chaser, but somebody spiked the Kool-Aid with Everclear and it really, really works.
So, for as long as my patience lasts, I will recap the episodes and tell you how godawful this wonderful series is while dropping as few spoilers as possible. That won’t be confusing at all.
Up next: Of course there’s a fucking bard.
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It’s been MORE THAN A YEAR since you’ve posted and I still check your site all the time because it’s incredibly thoughtful in a unique way. Too bad I don’t watch TV or movies!
I’d rather interact here than any of the other site on similar subjects. Good posts and good comment culture.
I do watch shows like Witcher, but I haven’t started it yet or read anything related to it (or played the game).
Thank you! I got eaten by the SCA. Hopefully there will be more thoughtful stuff coming. Or maybe just musings on the hotness of Geralt of Rivia, written in big words so they sound deep. One of those.
The SCA can do that. My barony is still a hot mess, though a fairly decent guy I know is rising to the top (he just double-peered) and I’ve been super candid about the issues, which are the same issues every other ex-member has but doesn’t feel the energy to communicate. I know him through gaming circles and he was kind of an SCA nobody when I first met him but now you’ll see his name on some of the corporate lists. I’m watching to see if he’s able to change how the game is played here, which I know is what he intends.
I’ve started reading the books & there are by far less WTF moments than in the show. I think things get fleshed out so much more in the books that they can’t waste money on for the show. So we get all these WTF is happening moments that didn’t happen for me in the earlier novels. I’m about a quarter of the way through Blood of Elves.
Yay! Issendai is back! I got so bored waiting I even tried Stardew Valley and then had to go cold Turkey on it and delete my save bc turns out there is nothing more compelling to me than picking digital coffee
The novels are pretty damn good, in my opinion. (And reviewers have been ragging on the tv show for both sticking too close to them and not sticking close enough). Granted, I read them in a not-English translation and I couldn’t tell you if the English one is any good. And, the novels are also an it-gets-better affair.
Sapkowski started out the series as a “let’s parody fairy tales” affair until a geniune plot emerged, and then – it’s not much of a spoiler alert to say it – it became an affair of titular witcher trying to survive in a war-torn world, a whole lot of politics, the worst humanity has to offer, the incredible rift between the common peasantry who thinks any writing is magic and the elite (mages) who’re familiar with the concept of genetics (in a medieval world).
The games… I’ve only played the first one (been replaying it recently) because my pc can’t handle anything from the last decade. It’s a good one, though; it was the one that brought Witcher over to the west and a small Polish studio out of obscurity. I hear the second one was flawed but good, and a third a right masterpiece (with the Hot Geralt we all know, love, and want). There’s a ton of choices and themes, and some damn good writing. The lit major in me is pleased.
oh, and the soundtrack in W3 – played by the Polish band Percival Schuttenbach, named after a char in the books – is *amazing*.
Golly I’m so glad you’re back. I don’t care what you write about. I just so enjoy reading you.
What SallyTaffy said. Miss your musings.
COME BACK, ISSENDAI!! YOU PROMISED!
I know all of this is ancient in intertubes time, but I’ve been wandering around your site and you, I like (you even have excellent taste in Stardew Valley bachelors!). Given your interests, you’re probably already a fan, but I have to make sure: you know about Mononoke, right? (The horror series, not Princess.) If not, it seems like it would be *extremely* relevant to said interests. 🙂