Lost Girl is squarely in the camp of cheesy fun sci-fi badassery. A kindred spirit to the kickass gals from Buffy to La Femme Nikita to Painkiller Jane, the ladies of Mutant X, and Highlander’s immortal Amanda, the show’s lead character, Bo is a preternaturally gifted woman who’s not particularly interested in embracing that gift until her actions put her on the supernatural radar. She lives like a grifter, hustling entry into each new city via her supernaturally seductive touch and then exiting when she kills accidentally. Bo finds out about halfway through the pilot that she is a fae, and more precisely, a succubus (both covered on TV recently in True Blood and The Gates). She’s drawn kicking and screaming into the larger supernatural fold when she can’t get out of town as quickly as she intended after she kills a guy who tried to roofie a young pickpocket, Kenzi (after he failed to roofie her while she was tending bar).
Bo thinks her biggest issue is that Kenzi saw the kill and recorded it on her phone, but the girl quickly moves from “please don’t kill me” to “you rock” when she realizes what Bo can do. While Kenzi is making the case that she should definitely be the Robin to her Batman, Bo is kidnapped by Dyson and Hale, two “good” fae who work as human police and who saw her on a security tape leaving the murder scene. She’s taken to the sprawling estate of the head good fae, “The Ash” (Cle Bennett—who’s a regular on Shattered) for evaluation. It’s there that she learns what she is from in-house doctor Lauren (The Guard’s Zoie Palmer). She’s interrogated about her clan, to which she responds, “I’m not frickin Scottish!”
It would seem that Bo is quite the anomaly, a rogue fae without an affiliation. The head of the bad fae is “The Morrigan,” played absolutely to the hilt by Emmanuelle Vaugier, complete with slick ponytail, feather boa, and stilettos. She suggests they just kill Bo, but is shot down by The Ash, who decides Bo will be submitted to two tests and if she survives, she can choose her clan (good or bad). So Bo heads off to battle, but not before Dyson tells her to kiss him and draw from his power. She protests a teensy and then they share a pretty smoking hot kiss that supercharges her but doesn’t wipe him out, which is a new phenomenon in her world.
The test involves two contests inside a thunderdome-esque warehouse while folks stand around above them and watch. The first opponent is a big, bad fae with mallets and a helmet, whose throat she cuts pretty quickly. The next is a pain eater who literally feels around her brain but presents himself to her psyche as a kindly old saint-looking fellow. While his dialogue with her inner psyche grows increasingly nasty, outside Kenzi is breaking into the warehouse to try to find her. She tracked down the van that abducted Bo via her less-than-reputable cousin (with a threat to tell his mother he was mean if he didn’t help her). She also adeptly rattles off a serious Eastern European dialect.
Once Kenzi gets inside, she spots Bo and starts screaming bloody murder for her to wake up. Bo pulls herself out of the dream state and the pain eater’s hands start to burn and he tears away from her. The Ash pronounces that she has passed her test and may choose a side. She Kelly Taylor’s it and tells him she chooses neither, she chooses humans instead. They opt not to kill her and instead release her, with Kenzi, back onto the street with a warning to not draw attention to herself. Dyson leaves her his card for when she needs help. She says she won’t; he’s sure she will. While they make their way up the street home, Kenzi rattles on about what’s next and Bo looks at the faces around her, wondering who’s like her, and letting it sink in that this place can actually be home for a while—she doesn’t have to run again.
The only people in the cast I knew previously were Vaugier, Palmer, and Kristen Holden-Ried (from The Bridge and a couple of Lifetime flicks), who plays Dyson. Anna Silk is Bo, and she came to this from an arc on Being Erica. I like that she’s not a kid, and that there’s a back story to be told about a woman who’s lived on the run because of a genetic issue that she never could put a name to. Kenzi (played by Ksenia Solo, who appeared last season on Life Unexpected) is a nice balance to her, and her “embrace your weird” mantra is a breath of fresh air to Bo. They have an immediate shared experience because Bo saved her from what could have been a terrifying turn of events, and now as a result, both are entering a brand new world. The assumption is that Bo will begin to use her abilities for good to support humans, but the fae still have something she needs—lessons in how to control her ability so she’s not a danger to anybody unless she means to be.
Shot in Toronto (as Highlander: The Raven, LFN, Mutant X and The Dresden Files, another supernatural gem, were), the show shares not only a similar look and feel, but also a sort of “Go with us here; it’ll be fun!” energy that I found very endearing. I’m happy to take the ride.
Photo Courtesy of Showcase
I really wish that this series aired in the U.S. It sounds right up my alley. I’ll have to catch it when it comes to dvd or iTunes.