KINGS: First Night

Everyone do a happy dance that KINGS hasn’t been canceled yet! I’ll try not to sound too gloom-and-doomy about it every week, although I do hope the ratings get an uptick sometime.

Now that that’s out of the way, lets get down to it. This week’s episode of KINGS steps back on the epicness that the past two weeks have had, and instead focuses more on the nature of royalty. The show opens with the first night of the Shiloh ballet, which has all been organized by Queen Rose. David gets uninvited from the show because he is drawing more attention than the King, and Prince Jack takes him out on the town instead. Meanwhile, the King’s illegitimate heir is very, very sick.

One of my favorite scenes in “First Night” was when Queen Rose explains to Princess Puppy that their role as royalty is not to necessarily be happy, but to be figures that the kingdom looks up to. Again the Queen is shown to be incredibly savvy to matters of image and perception. She has crafted the monarchy so that they may maintain power, and she will continue to take any steps necessary to insure that that doesn’t change. She’s just so regal, it’s awesome. I would bet good money that it was the Queen that leaked the pictures of David kissing random-princess-clone, since it’s clear she does not approve of the princess and the hero shacking up. One thing I could not decide is how much the Queen knows about the king’s mistress. Her facial expressions were hard to read, but I feel like she can’t be blind to this given how aware of everything else she is.

I’ve also decided that I really like Prince Jack. Above and beyond the fact that he’s handsome, I am fascinated by his tortured nature. The scenes with his boyfriend were kind of heartbreaking, especially the last look the two of them shared when the boyfriend gets thrown out of the club. You can tell the boyfriend was willing to jump through all of those hoops just to be with Jack, and not because Jack was the Prince but because Jack was Jack. And the last scene of Jack watching David walk away because “he’s in love and doesn’t know how to let go,” where you could see a mix of resentment, anger, envy, and most importantly hurt play across the prince’s face was also very heartbreaking. Sebastian Stan does a good job of showing many emotions in his face, which gives his character a lot of depth. I like to think that Jack didn’t release the photos because on some level he respects David for being a good (if boring) person. I’m sure we’ll find out who really released them next week.

By this point I’d say it goes without saying that Silas’ scenes were well-done, although I think the sick child storyline faltered a little bit. I never really understood what the child was sick with, and I wasn’t sure I cared as I had only seen the child once for two seconds. The scenes had the feel of plot device, which I didn’t really care for. I really liked the theme that power comes with a price, however. I didn’t quite get why he felt he had to leave his mistress (wasn’t that why he killed the deer?), but I found his decision to be moving. Silas is happy with his mistress, but being happy is a luxury he doesn’t have as king. This whole theme of the cost of power is also reflected in the Queen’s and Jack’s storylines, and to me it’s one of the most fascinating things about this series. There’s so much more than just “Watch the King rule things,” and I want to see how these things play out.

Unfortunately, David somehow managed to bore me just like he did last week. He’s just too good, which makes him cliche. I was intrigued when I thought he was going to sleep with Random-princess-clone, but of course he didn’t. He’s very one-note to me, and it gets boring week after week. Let’s give him a real moral dilemma to deal with, and lets have him make the BAD decision, and then see the fall-out. I could probably predict where that would go too, but at least it would be a change. I’m also bored with Princess Puppy. She seems a bit too one-dimensional as well. Why can’t she be more sassy? She showed some moments of it last night, but it was weak. I’ve read interviews that say more depth will be added to these characters, so I’ll wait it out a bit longer.

Overall I liked the episode, but I think it was the weakest so far. The dialogue is fantastic, but I’d like a bit more humor sometimes. I’m going to break from the crowd and say I do not care for the palace guards at all; I prefer my humor to be quick-witted, snappy comments over bumbling. I also realized this episode how cool Thomasina is. Hopefully the ratings will be up since Housewives was a repeat and there was no Obama on 60 minutes, but I learned long ago not to make any assumptions about the taste of the American people.

So what did you think of “First Night”? Did you like the focus on the family? Would you rather sit with the King or David? Who do you think released the photos? What would you like to see change in the future? Leave a comment below!