Contributor: Bronzethumb
After a pair of decent enough pilots, “Lost Girl” dives into what feels like the first proper episode of the series by putting the fun character dynamics front and center amidst an interesting little mystery, new details on the Fae world and tantalising little nuggets of the larger myth-arc at work.
In this episode, Bo and Kenzi’s ad hoc detective agency is hired by the mother of a missing college student to find out what happened to her daughter. When the trail leads to a campus sorority, Bo gets a security job while Kenzi goes undercover as a pledge to investigate further. This very solid A-storyline is where “Lost Girl” comes into its own as a television series by giving sudden-BFFs Bo and Kenzi a chance to breathe, interact, take their own approaches to the case and actually show the audience why they’ve become friends rather than simply telling us continuously. Their personalities click better than ever, the hardboiled stoicism of Bo (while she’s on the case, at least) contrasting well with the cheery, snarky demeanour of Kenzi. And speaking of Kenzi, her humor worked far better in this episode than it did in the previous two, resulting in a few laugh-out-loud moments during her undercover operation.
As for the case itself, there were enough twists, turns, suspects and red herrings to keep things interesting without going overboard – as Crime of the Week goes, “Lost Girl” is never going to be a “Law & Order”, and the writers seem to know this and play to it, letting the mystery of this installment be something relatively simple with a Fae twist. More interesting was seeing Bo and Kenzi tackle the mystery-solving process and really putting the “amateur” in “amateur sleuth”. Between the pair of them, it feels like watching Veronica Mars with leather and training wheels, using their Fae and feminine wiles to investigate but in such a way that we buy them succeeding despite being a bit out of their depth. It’s as much performance as anything else, with Anna Silk and Knesia Solo bringing that touch of nervousness and contrasting well with Kris Holden-Reid’s more self-assured detecting.
Speaking of Holden-Reid, the main B-plot of the episode is a bit tougher to get a handle on, dealing far more with the ongoing character arcs and setting up future drama. It’s easy to get whiplash from Anna Silk going back and forth between the A-plot, where she gets to play the amateur, somewhat-confused but still hardboiled-at-the-core detective, and this, where she bears a greater resemblance to a love-struck teenager. The audience can be forgiven for thinking they’d accidentally flicked over to the CW, but at the same time, as Bo’s backstory comes to light, the very reasons why she’s been a fairly stoic, insular character up to this point are completely in line with why she’d go gooey-at-the-knees at the prospect of being able to have a physical romantic relationship with someone.
By the same token, the “Lost Girl” writers get a lot of kudos for setting up their Official Couple and then coming up with actual reasons to keep them apart, rather than simply having both characters stall pointlessly for the sake of drama. It puts the characters through the wringer, it puts the audience through the wringer, and it sets up the arc of the show going forward – how much is there to know about Bo’s mysterious past, and why does everyone seem to think she’s so important? So all-in-all, what could’ve been a messy will-they-or-won’t-they actually plays into the DNA of the show in an important way.
Mixed into all this were some cool genre moments: Team Bo’s battle with the Fae creature of the week, a bit more about Dyson’s somewhat mysterious abilities, and nugget upon nugget about Trick and his place within the universe of “Lost Girl”. On top of the well-done character work, a fun mystery and hints at the larger arc of the show, it all works to make this episode easily the best of the show so far and a great benchmark for what “Lost Girl” can deliver.
Rating: 8/10