Check out my other season reviews: Season 1 -- Season 2 -- Season 3 -- Season 4 -- Season 5
It's not really a full season, so things can change, but since we're not getting more episodes for a while I'll post my thoughts on the first half of this season.
Overall, there were a few things I enjoyed, but again, this half season was bogged down by a lot of things that were annoying and dragged it down. At a few points during this season I found myself thinking back to season 1, and this show's potential, a little sadly. It's got good moments, like the other seasons, and I was surprised to find that they did do some semi-interesting things with Lagertha, but overall, I think a lot of it was just wasted potential. I especially disliked their focus on certain characters I no longer cared about, particularly Bjorn.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
These ten episodes had a couple of different storylines. We have Bjorn who, instead of ruling Kattegat, decided to go off to save Harald from King Olaf, who inexplicably took over his Kingdom. This whole plotline was extremely random and had so many flaws in its logic. First of all, I can accept that Olaf would want to take over a different Kingdom, this is logical, but then his actions throughout the ten episodes made no sense. After imprisoning Harald and taking over, and then defeating Bjorn when he comes to rescue him, he sits there bemoaning their fighting and saying they need to change their ways, etc. Ok, but like, you maybe could have done that yourself. But fine, his idea to have an election for King of all Norway was interesting, and, honestly, I just wanted Harald to finally get his lifelong dream. I'm not sure who in their right mind would think Bjorn was fit to lead... anything... let alone the entire country, but maybe Olaf was going off Bjorn's fame and hoping that would unite everyone. Fine. Again, not sure why he wanted to unite everyone.
It would have made much more sense for them to find out about the threat of the Rus first, so that the unification had a purpose. It even would have made sense for Olaf to somehow become the new seer, but they never really went there, just had him randomly philosophizing. And THEN, right after setting up this entire election, he acts like a baby because Bjorn didn't win. Seriously? You set up the whole thing, but you won't accept the result? Come on. Completely inconsistent characterization here.
What made Bjorn's story worse (other than terrible acting and his inability to be faithful to any wife for more than 3 milliseconds) was the random insertion of Kjettil Flatnose and that random outlaw dude Erik only to have then hang around for no reason. Kjettil kept being suspicious without that ever paying off or going anywhere interesting. And Erik seemed interesting at first, but then Bjorn just kind of made him his right hand man, ignoring pretty much everyone in Kattegat.
And then there's Kattegat. And poor Hvitserk. I was ok with his drug-addiction storyline, I was fine with the whole fear of Ivar thing, the implication that he was traumatized by what had happened to that girl he liked, etc. But it just dragged on for too long and then, finally, when he had killed Lagertha and was banished he just kind of... magically recovered and was buddies with Ivar in less than two seconds. Again, I don't understand not spending more time developing his arc, they had time. They could have cut out pretty much anything to make time for this since the majority of the season was filler that was going nowhere.
The only thing that kind of kept this season interesting was Ivar being back to being an underdog character with no power. This is where he really shines because you can see he's very smart, you know he doesn't like being ignored or not being in control, and you can be invested in his determination to rise to greatness. It works and the actor honestly did a great job.
Another actor that did a really good job was the Ubbe actor. Honestly, Ubbe is the only competent and interesting one out of all the people in Kattegat. His brief stint at the head of the town while Bjorn was away was great because they showed him actually doing things, taking responsibility, etc. He would have made a much, much better King than Ragnar or Bjorn ever did. And that glint in his eye when he heard about the "golden land" and dreamed of going there. That love for adventure and discovery, that's the aspect of Ragnar's character that made me like this show in season 1. Sad how much they wasted that potential on uselessly fighting over Kattegat fifty million times.
Lagertha's story was kind of set up in a ridiculous way, and the entire thing with Bjorn letting those bandits go was extremely stupid, but I honestly enjoyed the simplicity of that story. I enjoyed seeing Lagertha fighting again, seeing the small-scale battle tactics as they attempted to defend themselves against the bandits, etc. It's another part of what made early seasons work, but the show kind of lost sight of that. In the end, I enjoyed that storyline pretty well despite the many flaws in logic. All I'm going to say is: why not send a messenger to Kattegat to just inform someone - like maybe the parents of the children you're looking after - about the problem with the bandits? Nothing would have changed. Gunhild could have still showed up with some shield maidens and fighters, Lagertha could have still got injured, and if they really wanted it to happen then Hvitserk could have still managed to accidentally kill Lagertha even if someone else accompanied her back to Kattegat. Let's not forget this guy went raiding with Bjorn and fought in the great Heathen army and went berserk pretty much every battle. They didn't have to make Lagertha stupid in order to fulfill the damn prophecy or have the ending they wanted.
Man, this is turning into several rants. Oh well, might as well finish now that we're this far in. LOL
The final thing I really, really hated was the directing on the last episode, episode 10. Not only did they mess with the timelines and have constant flashbacks they also kept cutting to this ridiculous conversation between Bjorn and Ivar on the beach that 1. didn't happen 2. kept focusing unnecessarily on Bjorn's terrible acting and 3. added absolutely nothing to the storyline. And then it seemed like we were going to get Ivar the tactician back again, but this was kind of destroyed - again - by Bjorn and co's stupidity. They waited until their own people were locked in battle with the Rus and everyone was very spread out before rolling the giant spike balls down the hill. Then, they waited until the spike balls were at a complete standstill before burning them. And then somehow, the idiot Rus still managed to run into the flames and get burned.
To try to show us that Bjorn was using his brain they had him anticipate the whole attack from the river thing, so they built a completely ineffective barrier, sent like 20 dudes with Gunhild in the lead to stop all these ships, and then lit their own barriers on fire for some reason and had absolutely no other form of preparation/defense in that area. What was the point?
Gunhild seems semi-competent and intelligent to be honest and I can see a future in which she, along with that redhead outlaw dude Erik, actually salvage the Kingdoms in the wake of this defeat, but it's just... to little at this point.
I'll probably watch part 2 of season 6 when it airs, and as always I'll be hoping they do something interesting with it, but at this point I'm just glad that Bjorn is (hopefully) dead and I don't really care much for anyone left alive except Ubbe and Torvi and their cute little girl - and I really hope they get the hell out of Iceland fast before they get bogged down in whatever Kjettil is up to.
Almost forgot: Why kill off the seer if you're then going to have every single character hallucinate him and talk to him anyway? Why not keep him? Or replace him with a new seer?
Overall Thoughts on the show:
What I really liked:
1. It's unique in that the Vikings haven't ever really got such an in-depth depiction on TV to my knowledge and I liked learning about these mythical characters like Ragnar, Floki, etc.
2. I liked listening to the languages when they allowed us to hear what they sounded like - not the badly done accents in English, but when they actually spoke Old Norse, etc.
3. The sense of exploration and discovery. We got it with Ragnar (&Floki a little bit) in the beginning. We got it with Bjorn for about two episodes when he wanted to go to the Mediterranean (before he got sidetracked in that weird and pointless desert sub-plot). And we got it with Ubbe in his search for the new land - the "Golden" land.
4. The battles. In season 1 when they had their shield walls and when it showed their actual pillaging and tried to accurately depict how they interacted with the Saxons in Northumbria, etc. The Seige of Paris was beautifully done. I don't know a lot about historical battles, but seeing that seige was cool and seeing Rollo's preparations and then Ragnar trying to get around his obstacles by pulling the ships up the cliffside. Cool stuff. We saw it again with Ivar's strategic planning in York and I was really hoping to see more of that side of the show.
5. The shield-maidens. I enjoyed Lagertha in the first few seasons. The brief glimpses of her as Queen of Kattegat when they first took the Kingdom. How she dealt with the plague. Her leaving Ragnar because she couldn't stand to be insulted. The way she ended up with that abusive Earl dude and then eventually killed him. Her take-over of the Earldom, how she manipulated both Kalf and that other guy when they plotted against her and her shockingly cold-blooded revenge on Kalf. How she took back Kattegat from Aslaug. This was a woman who was competent and knew what she wanted. Her actions were often pretty bad, but I mean, they're Vikings, I wasn't expecting them all to be super nice people. She was brutal in a brutal environment. It worked and made her character interesting.
Biggest Regret/Missed Potential:
I really wish we had seen more of the politics and laws of the Norsemen. In the beginning they showed Earl Haraldson's Hall a little bit and showed him settling disputes and giving out punishments and there was a sense that they had really, really specific laws in place. I guess they had to, to keep order otherwise everyone could just attempt to kill some other person and it would never end. (looks over at Kjettil and the others) But they didn't really follow through on this. I was really expecting Ragnar would find some way to legally get out from under Haraldson's stifling rule, some legal way to outsmart or overthrow him. I was expecting to see a Thing and see how their legal system really worked. In the end, though, Ragnar just challenged Haraldson to single combat and won that way and from then on, as the seasons progressed we got less and less actual glimpses into the daily lives of these people and more and more unnecessary detail about who was sleeping with who. Such a waste of that great potential.
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