Lauren has a show down with the Ash – and she’s not happy. Unsurprisingly, imprisonment and indentured servitude doesn’t win you a whole lot of loyalty and happy funsies from your employees. But the new Ash has a bombshell to drop – the curse on Nadia was placed by the old Ash to lure Lauren into service. Of course, the new Ash knows who did the curse – and he can sort it all out. So long as Lauren returns to work…
Meanwhile, Kenzi is organising a not-very-surprising party for Bo – and it turns out that none of these fae are very good at keeping secrets. But that’s ok, we’ve all seen how observant Bo is. Kenzi continues the elaborate planning though everything is going wrong and I’m kind of eye rolling here because the few times we see Kenzi (and Hale for that matter) doing something independent they end up doing something that revolves around Bo. While planning the party she meets Nate, a man she had a crush on when she was 6 and has apparently obsessed over ever since.
And Dyson is having relationship angst over him and Ciara – or his general emotional angst ever since he came back from the norn when he gave up his love for Bo
Anyway, to actual plot - The Ash tells Bo that he knows who cursed Nadia – a dark fae in the Congo called Chombe but to break the curse she must do so without telling Lauren – proving utter selflessness by not telling them of the amazing thing they’ve done for them. So Bo is off to “Africa.” Yes Africa. They all talk about Africa, even the fae travel agent. Africa’s a big place, you may want to be a trifle more specific. And zing, Bo travels in a blink of an eye to a rough wooden hut in the middle of jungle.
Why why why do I think there is going to be a legendary amount of fail here?
So in the rough, mud floored wooden hut, Bo finds Chombe, the shaman and asks about the cursing nail. Methinks Chombe has anger management issues given the number of nails. We learn about the Light Fae’s end-justifies-the-means philosophy (as if we didn’t know) and Bo asks the Magica- I mean, Shaman what it would take to have him pull out the nail. She has to find a magical healing mask that was stolen by a Preta – and do it before the old shaman dies. And she will find the mask in Madagascar – at least Bo recognises that she can’t just go to the country and look around randomly and Trick knows where to find it.
To sate the Preta they need to offer a trade – so Trick offers a really hideous trinket that once belonged to his wife. And Dyson comes to back Bo up, ignoring that he has to be househunting with Ciara.
Off they zip off via the more than a little eccentric fae travel agent (who has a South Asian name, but goes by “Peggy”) to meet an inscrutable, mysterious and vaguely sinister Asian fae Preta who has stolen the mask. They have to deal with his little tests before leaving with the mask and some destructo-dust that used to be Trick’s bracelet.
Mask is exchange, nail is removed, Nadia wakes up. Yay! Bo being Bo, also starts removing all the other nails – without knowing what they represent and even though she shouldn’t have the power to do so (possibly because she’s super god-fae). Of course there could be unforeseen consequences of this (I mean, it’s not like Bop hasn’t been warned she’ll one day destroy the fae or anything, right?) and messing around with magic you don’t understand isn’t wise – but hey, this is Bo, right? Thankfully the shaman points out that not all of the curse victims were innocent and there was a damn good reason behind some of those curses – who is Bo to decide otherwise. Bo stops pulling out nails – but uses her destructo-dust to destroy his nails so he can never curse more people, robbing him of his power (which she doesn’t trust him with).
Cut to Bo angst over Lauren and Nadia kissing, Bo’s party where she sees Kenzi and Nate and, of course, Ciara and Dyson together (and Dyson calls her friend, some salt on those wounds), Lauren and Nadia and Bo’s looonely, oh-so-lonely. And everyone buys her edged-weapons as well. She also gets a gold bracelet from a complete stranger with a runed inscription. Hmmm more hints of meta? Thankfully Kenzi realises weapons are not very personal and gets her a sketchbook Oh and she’s lonely. Did we mention she’s lonely? Because she totally is.
Finally, Lauren re-dedicates herself to the Ash and debases herself in gratitude for Nadia being uncursed – crafty Ash is crafty
I’ve covered the rather unpleasant depictions of this episode. Very skin crawly, sadly.
We did have meta-plot here – not action meta-plot of course, that plot can never be advanced, but finally some meta-from Lauren and Nadia and that big mountain of angst should be finished.
So, let’s review – Kenzi is hooking up with someone she knew when she was 6 and has obsessed over since then. Lauren now has Nadia. Bo is all alone and saaad –but look, Dyson has had emotional problems ever since the Norn stole his passion for Bo… can we see where this is going? Why yes yes, we can
