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Home / Recaps & Reviews / Reign 2.11 “Getaway” Recap

Shilo Adams in Recaps & Reviews, Reign Jan 22, 2015 0

For two weeks, French court has been littered with the corpses of the Dark Rider-branded traitors, a warning to those who dare try and inflict harm on the king. But that display hasn\'t done much to deter the rising religious tensions in France; in fact, it facilitates a visit from Cardinal Palazzo, who wants his men to comb France for any and every person with a brand on their chest. He believes that it might be a pledge amongst a Protestant brotherhood rather than anything supernatural and tries to press Bash into giving him the jurisdiction to conduct the necessary searches. While Bash defers to an absent Francis, saying that this is the king\'s area and the Vatican should respect his rule, Palazzo replies that Francis isn\'t in a position to challenge the Vatican at this moment.

Where is Francis, if not embroiled in his latest political and religious chess match? Bringing firewood to Mary\'s chamber, as the castle has been cold lately and he wants her to be comfortable. Mary, however, simply thinks that he\'s finding whatever excuse he can to see her and that desperation, that pressure that she feels to talk, isn\'t doing anything but driving her further from him. As such, Mary decides to go to Chateau de Chambord, although Francis negotiates with her as far as allowing guards to accompany her. As Bash tries to get Palazzo to listen to his latest theory, that the bodies were branded after death in an attempt to fan the flames of religious strife in France, Francis learns that the baby has a colic that\'s been especially trying for Lola and the castle\'s nannies. Meanwhile, Conde gets accused of being in league with the Dark Riders after Josephine, a married woman with whom he had carnal relations with, confesses to Cardinal Palazzo.

If Conde has the brand on his chest, he will hang, but Mary has other plans. She gets word to him quickly and instead of allowing him to leave on his horse, which he intends to ride to his home, she makes him hitch a ride with her to the chateau. It turns out that Conde\'s brother Antoine has a friend about a day away that could house him until he could be smuggled out of the area, so it\'s decided that Mary will take the risk in dropping him off on her way to Chambord. In her chamber, Catherine gets hot and heavy with Henry while concocting a poison meant to kill Claude. Over the past two weeks, she\'s been gradually slipping her daughter a combination of garlic and arsenic, a tonic that has left Claude bedridden. Catherine rationalizes that this approach keeps her from getting caught, yet she\'s feeling guilty over Claude being so young when the murders happened and not really knowing the difference between right and wrong. Henry then assures her that killing Claude will be the most merciful thing she can do, given what the twins have in mind for her, only for Catherine to tip her hand too much when she runs into Kenna. Not only does Kenna overhear Catherine talking to herself (Henry is a ghost, after all), she sneaks to Claude\'s door and watches as the former queen wipes the blood from her daughter\'s nose before anyone can notice.

Kenna then relays this to Bash, insisting that the soup didn\'t smell right and that Catherine has a history of poisoning those she wishes to do away with. Bash encourages her to gather evidence to strengthen or disprove her suspicions, while Mary, Conde, and Greer make it to Antoine, who insists they stay for a party he\'s throwing that evening. However, he\'s upset that Conde is latching himself onto the wrong royal, while back at the castle, Francis is worried about the state of his relationship with Mary. Marveling at her warrior heart, he opens up to Bash about the rape, saying that he blames himself for the decisions that led to the incident and that he only wants to work with his wife, to be the man who she thought she was marrying. His plan? To put pressure on the Vatican by framing an innocent Catholic with the brand of the Dark Riders. At the party, Antoine gives a toast to those who gave him their company that evening and reveals that, in celebration of their company, he will be pairing nobles with ladies; the intention is to provide the party with sexual entertainment, with a bed in the middle of the room and one outside. Uncomfortable, Mary and Greer decide to leave, while Conde confronts his brother on driving away his guests. But Antoine has had a change of heart since the royals descended upon the estate, telling Conde that he\'s going after the right royal after all. Mary is not only a Protestant sympathizer - she has the power and influence necessary to make real change, so Antoine advises his brother to seduce her and put her under the spell that so many women have found themselves bewitched by.

Back at the castle, Kenna begins visiting Claude with a basket of cheese and croissants, while it turns out that Cardinal Palazzo has been sleeping with Randall, a cleric under his tutelage. Once his lover leaves the chamber, though, he gets attacked by a masked man who pins him down and brand the Dark Rider symbol on his chest. That man? Bash, who takes a deep cut to the right forearm in the process. After having knocked over several of the meals that Catherine prepared, Kenna helps Claude get back to her old self, though Claude doesn\'t recognize that the state she was in was a result of her mother, who she\'s chosen to believe the best about for once. Yet the accusation cuts deeply for Claude, as does Kenna\'s sympathy for her having a mother that plots her death, and causes her to lash out; she confesses to being lovers with Bash, completely taking Kenna off-guard. Meanwhile, Cardinal Palazzo confronts Bash about the mark on Randall\'s chest and finds himself feeling helpless when Randall is taken into custody. Francis claims that he wants to show just how loyal France is and how extremism won\'t be tolerated, all in hopes of getting the Cardinal to recant his promise to root out the Protestants hiding in the country. However, Palazzo simply says that he\'ll pray for Randall\'s soul before leaving.

Conde gets selected for the next sexual demonstration, with Antoine going with Lady Apney for his brother\'s partner. Although Conde is initially reluctant to engage with her, given his feelings for Mary, Lady Apney blindfolds him and gets him to role play that she\'s the woman with whom his heart lies. Upstairs, Mary confides in Greer about how distant she feels toward everything and how she hates being touched by men after being raped. All she has as a role model is Catherine, so she\'s still about as lost as ever, and she feels alone despite being surrounded by so many different people. Greer tells her that if she needs to take some time to herself after what happened, she should do it and not feel guilty. The following day, Conde comes to Mary and thanks her for helping him out of court. He inquires whether she would be safer in Scotland, given that Francis inadvertently endangers her, and she snaps at him, saying that Francis is enduring suffering, as well. She then brings up the letter that he wrote her and assures him that he doesn\'t have to apologize for what\'s in his heart. Despite this, the two depart, with Mary wishing him better fortune than what he found in the castle.

Kenna confronts Bash about Claude\'s accusation and he\'s completely straight with her - he and Claude were young and drunk at the time of the incident and she had managed to convince him, even if for a moment, that they

didn\'t share the same father after all. He assures her that what happened is long in the past, but Kenna is more concerned about the cut on her husband\'s arm, laying into him for his continued avoidance of the truth and how emotionally unfulfilled she is after having opened herself up to him. He then tells her the truth about what happened and leaves it with the fact that he kills and lies to get what he wants. Later, Cardinal Palazzo begs Bash to talk to Francis on behalf of Randall after learning that his lover had been given last rites. Bash pressures him to let go of the Protestant witch-hunt, only for Palazzo to touch his wound and cause it to bleed profusely. Over at the estate, Vatican inquisitors arrive looking for Conde and instead of running, he actually wants to surrender. Not willing to go down without a fight, Mary comes up with the idea of cauterizing Conde\'s brand, which presents enough reasonable doubt that, along with her influence, would get him send back to court, where Francis could provide further help. Leith then cauterizes the wound with Conde\'s sword while Conde himself latches onto Mary\'s hand; despite (and arguably because of) the pain, the brand is successfully covered and Conde is allowed to go to French court.

On the carriage ride over, Mary confides in Greer that touching Conde forced her to connect with him and that she felt better having seen that she could be of help to someone. She was so deep in pain that she couldn\'t see beyond herself, so she was ignorant to the fact that Francis suffered as a result of her rape, as well. Despite this, though, she\'s still unsure about whether she wants to be with him, even with how much she misses the ease that used to exist in their relationship. Back at the castle, Cardinal Palazzo confronts Francis about Randall\'s status and threatens to bring the mighty fist of the Vatican down upon France, a threat that Francis sees as empty. He doesn\'t care that the Vatican would have propped his rule up, which they did for his father - he just wants Palazzo to call off the witch-hunt and for the religious tension in France to finally subside. Francis then recounts the way he found out about Randall\'s relationship with the cardinal, as Palazzo\'s servants told him about the cardinal giving up his sole warming tray to Randall. Given that the castle is bitterly cold, Francis takes this gesture of sacrifice to mean that the two love one another, a feeling which helped fuel this entire plan in the first place. Cardinal Palazzo calls off the dogs and saves the life of his love, but he tells Francis that he\'s manipulated the most noble feeling known to man and turned it into a tool of destruction.

While Francis pays the baby another visit, this time getting him to stop crying simply by holding him, Conde arrives at court just as the Vatican officials are on the cusp of leaving and Greer and Leith come to an understanding about jealousy. Given that he participated at Antoine\'s party and she\'s still married to Lord Castleroy, she has no room to be jealous of him, he argues, as that feeling gives him the hope that something could blossom between them in the future. Catherine walks into her chambers and finds Claude digging around in her stuff, hell-bent on finding the poison that she\'d been ingesting. She then hears from her mother about the horrible thing she did to her sisters, though she doesn\'t exactly remember doing it; despite that innocence, Catherine tries to convince herself that the only thing left to do is kill Claude. But right as Claude is about to poison herself, Catherine has second thoughts and saves her daughter, too sympathetic as to the girl\'s age at the time of the incident. As she comforts Claude on the floor of her chambers, Henry takes the twins back into the darkness and Mary peeks in on Francis and Lola taking a nap with the baby.

-"My God, I\'ve missed the way you mix garlic with arsenic."

-"Not everything is about your ass, Kenna."

-"If your heart wants to sleep, let it."

-So, hey, we got a third season, you guys. Honestly, I wasn\'t sure if this show would get renewed in general, so for it to be picked up in January was a pleasant surprise. As far as when/where it airs next season, I have no idea - I could see it staying on Thursdays if The CW wants to focus on other nights/doesn\'t want to throw a new show at

, but a move to Friday or summer (the latter of whichThe CW is going to be particularly aggressive toward come 2016) wouldn\'t be out of the realm of possibility, either.

-Favorite Dress of the Episode: It was a night of pretty red dresses, as Mary and Lady Apney (90% sure that\'s not how you spell her name, but I had no closed captioning and there\'s no information about the character online) both looked lovely at Antoine\'s party. Different approaches (Mary was covered up with a turtle neck and sleeves; the Lady was sparkly), but they worked for me.

-Our first gay storyline! I had been wondering whether

was going to touch on sexuality, especially given that The CW has a fair amount of peripheral gay characters now, and I wasn\'t disappointed by the trials and tribulations of Cardinal Palazzo and Randall. It delved into an aspect of religion that this religion-heavy season had yet to touch upon and it was a nice way of giving a potentially one-dimensional character some heartrending texture, not to mention the storyline being grounds for Francis to find his inner power and Bash to get some much needed screen time.

-My hope is that Mary catching Francis in bed with Lola and the baby isn\'t going to reignite her jealousy toward her friend. If it picks at her insecurity for not bearing Francis a child or for not being ready for intimate contact yet, I think it could be an interesting avenue for the character and an aspect of the aftermath of sexual assault that rarely gets touched on in television; however, if it\'s an excuse for manufactured drama around the castle and the further dissolution of the female friendships that helped to define this show in its early days, no thank you.

-If Claude didn\'t kill the twins, which I\'m thinking this episode points toward (she might be incredibly damaged, but I don\'t think she\'s enough of a sociopath to lie about something like this), who did? Would it be too ridiculous if they made it Catherine, with whatever\'s causing these hallucinations forcing her to remember such a traumatic repressed memory? Because the show wouldn\'t go with somebody random or with one of the boys, so it\'s either Catherine or Henry, but I think that Henry\'s reappearance has to do with Catherine\'s guilt over his death. And her subconscious is using this manifestation of Henry to help unlock another box of guilt buried deep in her psyche, something that\'s influenced her love of her boys over Claude.

-Also, I\'d like an edit of this season without the twins or Henry but with Catherine. Kind of a Garfield Minus Garfield of sexy costume dramas. Just imagine Catherine, all by her lonesome, writhing around over her table mixing poison. Perfection.

-It feels like Catherine is influencing the Henry that she\'s seeing, almost as if she\'s trying to get the husband that she didn\'t have while he was alive. He\'s very sexual with her, he compliments her poison, and he questions why he ever messed around with Kenna, in addition to concerning himself with his children.

lets Catherine be human. Trust me, her quips are a series highlight and something I never want to lose, but stuff like the final scene with Claude, where her maternal instinct showed itself and where she demonstrates that her love for her children goes beyond politics, is what makes her such a dynamic, interesting character. It shows that she\'s been having to play within the confines of the system for decades, that she had to turn off parts of herself in order to keep from being swallowed by power, that being on the throne did not break her of her humanity. I mean, she\'s still ruthless and decidedly poison happy, yet the Catherine that was crowned still exists somewhere within her and it\'s nice to see her now and then.

-No Narcisse this episode, which I\'m fine with. He was such a dominating presence during the first half of the season that we probably needed a week away, especially given that he\'s now a prisoner of Francis and couldn\'t be an active participant in the goings-on at the castle.

-Kenna\'s face when Bash confirmed that he had sex with Claude was just the best. Actually, this was the best use of Kenna the entire season - it made the whole "castle eyes and ears" thing they were trying to do with her in the fall feel less ornamental and more like an active character choice that will benefit the show\'s narrative. Kenna finally had a little purpose here and I think the fracture developing between her and Bash over his unwillingness to be honest with her could make the second half of the season pretty strong. It\'s a couple we haven\'t seen fall apart like Francis and Mary and frankly, I\'d be okay with Kenna and Bash\'s relationship coming under the microscope while Francis and Mary faded into the background for a bit.

-It would be nice if the show kept the emotional distance from Francis and Mary, mostly because I think putting them back together so soon after the rape would feel false. Mary made a nice step in connecting with Conde and recognizing that the rape had a sizeable impact on Francis, as well, but there\'s so much more ground to cover before I would say a reunion would feel natural. Narratively fast forwarding through some of the more rich, complicated material at Mary\'s fingertips right now would be a shame and reduce the rape to a shock value plot point, while too much could be milked from the journey that Mary and Francis take back to one another for a reunion to be feasible right now.

-Greer\'s thing with Leith felt a tiny bit superfluous, almost like an assurance to fans that their issues would be tackled the following week, but the conversation with Mary about letting her heart sleep made the awkward run-ins with the former kitchen boy worth it. To me, that was on par with what Catherine told Mary when she learned about the rape - just the exact right thing that someone in Mary\'s situation needs to hear (that she doesn\'t need to rush to get "better," that she has a right to feel the way she does) while not feeling preachy or too generalized. And the show is much stronger in my eyes when they utilize Kenna, Greer, and Lola in situations like this - this is what helps set

apart from other shows on TV. This is the type of stuff that makes it special.

but a combination of moods/tones/content that I would gladly welcome anytime they want to bring it out.

: Greer\'s honesty about recent rumors send Mary into action, while the rivalry between Francis and Conde intensifies and Claude tries to uncover who was really responsible for her sisters\' deaths.

Getaway Recap recap Reign Reign Getaway Reign Recap The CW 2015-01-22

Tagged with: Getaway Recap recap Reign Reign Getaway Reign Recap The CW

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Shilo Adams is a contributor to KSiteTV who has written for the likes of TVOvermind, ScreenFad, and TVHackr. You can e-mail him at sda2107@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @shilo_adams.

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