In Horns, we see our LITs and their Guardian working to forge some kind of team, but failing because there is little trust amongst them. Eve doesn’t trust that the LITs will be able to survive without her. Jake no longer trusts Cassandra because of her actions in the previous two episodes. No one is sure they can trust Ezekiel since he’s a thief and is very vocal about only looking out for himself. And then there’s Cassandra, who doesn’t trust herself to be able to do what the team needs her to. If these four people can’t learn to extend some trust to each other, they are never going to be able to work together. And that’s what this episode is all about. Well that and escaping a magical maze and and an angry monster.
The beginning of the episode finds the LITs sneaking through a darkened warehouse, clearing trying to escape a dark figure. The thing that strikes me as interesting about this scene is how, despite supposedly being a team, the three LITs are completely separate in how they react and try to escape the person pursuing them. They each try to deal with the figure on their own, instead of working together. Jake decides to try to fight her (it’s Eve after all) while Ezekiel looks out for himself and just runs. Cassandra, oh dear Cassandra, doesn’t even get that far. She hides and then bumps her head on something, effectively ending any chance she had of getting away.
As the group walks back to the Annex, Eve chastises them for how they handled the situation. They are Librarians (in Training). They should be able to think their way out of the situations, but instead they aren’t doing anything. She decides that they are going to continue to run drills until she’s sure they won’t get themselves killed in the field.
Inside the Annex, Jenkins points out that another page has appeared in the clippings books and Eve gets annoyed, saying that the LITs aren't’ ready yet. And we find out that she isn’t letting them do anything but drill, despite new mysteries appearing each day. She just doesn’t trust that they’ll be able to handle it. And it’s frustrating our LITs to no end.
As Eve leaves to talk to Jenkins, Cassandra calls after her that Flynn told them to help people. And Jake pipes up, saying that Ezekiel is right and they have a job to do. This clearly frustrates Cassandra and gives us another glimpse of the underlying trust issues that exist amongst our team.
In the workroom, Eve has a little chat with Jenkins about the LITs. He points out that she’s going to have to put them in the field eventually. Eve counters by saying that she’s been in the field with trained soldiers and wound up losing them all. The LITs are not trained soldiers. And because of that, she can’t imagine that they’d be able to do anything but get themselves killed. Jenkins points out that the LITs job is to keep magic out of the wrong hands, and this means that they must be in harms way, the very thing Eve is trying so hard to avoid. Eve insists that they aren’t trained enough and Jenkins counters with the point that Librarians used to get no training at all. Eve wonders how many actually came back, and Jenkins’s answer is telling (and chilling): the best ones came back.
Back in the main part of the Annex, the LITs have decided that they don’t care what Eve says, they are going to look at the clippings book. They find that eight people have gone missing in the last year all from different places in the country and all without any active investigation going on. Eve doesn’t want to investigate, but the LITs insist, asking how many more people have to go missing before they step in. Cassandra even points out that the latest victim may still be alive. Eve asks if they are willing to risks their lives for this stranger and they all agree (well, Cassandra and Jake do. Ezekiel insists that he’ll just outrun anything that might kill them). With that, Eve acquiesces, and immediately regrets her decision. She wants a plan, but she still doesn’t trust that the LITs can take care of themselves enough to pull this off.
After a planning session when the LITs go over everything they have learned about the missing people, Eve decides they need to go to Boston (since that’s where all the people disappeared from). Thanks to Jenkins and some magic (literally) they can get there simply by stepping through the backdoor ( again, literally).
In Boston, they meet with the CEO of Golden Axe, the company all the missing people interned at before they disappeared. The CEO (who happens to be the same woman who watched one of her interns disappear in the cold open of the episode) tells them that they had no idea they had missing interns and insists the team talk to someone in HR. Eve clearly knows something is up and decides the team needs to split up. Since she still doesn’t trust the LITs to take care of themselves, she decides they should go to HR and see whatever show the CEO wants to put on while she (Eve) breaks into the server room to find records of the company’s wrongdoing. The LITs object, but Eve insists (read: orders) and sends them on their way. And of course, the LITs wind up in just about the least safe place they can be.
Each half of our team finds something very interesting on their excursions. Eve finds what looks to be a museum with lots of really old art and a large ball of string. The LITs find a room full of human skulls. Their respective discoveries drive them to contact each other and it’s by looking at the art that Jake figures out part of what’s going on. They have somehow stumbled into Theseus’s Labyrinth. While Eve works on a way to get them out, the LITs work on finding their own way out.
It’s during their escape attempt that things come to a head between Jake and Cassie. He comments about that fact that he’s stuck in the maze with two of the least reliable people he knows, making it clear that he doesn’t trust either of the other two LITs. Cassie demands to know what his problem is and they fall into a discussion of her betrayal and how Stone feels about it. It’s the first time the two have really talked about it since they started working together and Cassie feels she has the right to explain herself. She insists that Jake has no right to judge her for her actions, since he doesn’t know what it’s like to be in her position, with her diagnosis hanging over her head. Jake, ever the stubborn person he is, doesn’t think he would have done the same thing.
But their conversation is cut short when Cassandra realizes that there is a pattern to the maze and she can find the way out. Just as she’s finding the pattern, Ezekiel reminds them that they need to get out of there due to the minotaur chasing them. So Cassie and Jake set aside their trust issues for a time and follow Cassie’s “brain grape” to the exit.
The team eventually finds a way out of the Labyrinth thanks to Jenkins. After some discussion, they figure out the best way to stop Golden Axe is to steal the thread that’s powering the maze. The team decides to go back in only to discover that they are back in the Labyrinth. Within minutes they are running for their lives to escape a very angry minotaur.
Thanks to Jenkins, they find a place to hide for a few minutes so they can plan their next moves. And it’s in this place that Eve’s trust issues with the team finally come to a head. She starts to order the LITs around as if they were her soldiers until Cassie reminds her that they aren’t.
Suddenly, Eve realizes that she’s been going about this all wrong. Librarians win with what they know, so she asks the team what they know. After a few minutes, they come up with a plan to get out and get the thread. During the planning session, the LITs realize that they are going to need to split up.
This is where Eve really balks. She refuses to let them out of her sight but all three of the LITs point out that if they all stay together the minotaur will find them and will kill them. Eve and Jake need to distract the monster so Cassie and Ezekiel can get to the center and get the thread. Eve still hesitates, but Cassie tells her that the Guardian can’t protect them all. With a sigh, Eve gives in, asking how much time the thief and the synesthete need.
At this point, I don’t think Eve trusts them to come back, but she realizes that they are right. The best she can do now is hope they are up to the task. It’s the beginning of trust and that’s all she can give at the moment. It won’t be until the two “weakest” members of her team come back that she actually starts trusting them to be able to handle themselves (to a point).
So the team splits up, Eve and Jake to distract the monster and Ezekiel and Cassie to find the thread. In the midst of their journey to the center of the Labyrinth ,we get another discussion of trust, this time between Ezekiel and Cassie.
(Can I just say I find it interesting and telling that Jake and Eve never have to have a real discussion about trust in their partnership. The two had an immediate understanding and that doesn’t change throughout the whole season. I think part of it stems from the two of them being warrior types. But also, Eve has always been honest with Jake, and never given him reason to not trust her. I don’t think that makes their relationship better necessarily, but it’s certainly easier in some ways.)
Cassie begins to have difficulty with the maze when they get to a room that seems to have been designed by M.C. Escher himself. She starts to doubt her abilities, saying that seven dimension is too much and that Jake was right about not being able to trust her. What follows is a lovely conversation between the thief and the synesthete where Ezekiel assures her that he understands why she did what she did with the Brotherhood. He tells her that he probably would have done the same thing if he’d been in her shoes. Only, he would have gone all the way with it, bringing magic back to the world completely and letting Flynn die. The way he sees it, Cassie may have screwed people over but she didn’t let anyone down. He offers to be Cassie other senses so she doesn’t get overwhelmed and she asks if he’s sure he trusts her to guide him through. He laughs at that, and reminds her that he’s the thief who always bails. Really she’s the one trusting him.
I find this whole conversation so interesting mostly, because Cassie is convinced that she is the untrustworthy one yet she is so willing to trust everyone else. Earlier in the episode she watched Ezekiel try to escape on his own, yet here, she hesitates not because she thinks he’ll do it again, but because she doesn’t see herself as trustworthy. She readily trusts everyone on the team, yet the only person on the team who seems to trust her is the person who is actually probably the least trustworthy of the bunch (at the moment). The most trusting of the group is the one everyone treats as the least trustworthy. Interesting, no?
Upon entering the control room, Ezekiel gets to work trying to get the thread, but is stopped when our favorite CEO Karen Willis appears pointing a gun and threatening. Ezekiel tries to be his charming self and talk his way out of the problem, but it doesn’t really work. So Cassie jumps on Willis and tries to hold her off while Ezekiel finishes grabbing the thread. She helps him out by getting Willis to shoot the case and the thief grabs the thread. For a moment, it looks as if he’s going to abandon Cassie when he bolts out the door with the thread, but a second later he’s back. With some quick thinking, they destroy the Labyrinth and get back to the Annex with all the others. With their job done for the day, everyone heads off to do their own thing.
Before the episode ends though, we get one last conversation about trust, this time the one that’s been building the whole episode. Cassie finally confronts Jake about why he is so angry at her. And we, like her, finally learn why he is having such a hard time trusting her again. See Jake hides his gift from his family, from everyone really. And Cassie was one of the first people he shared it with. Then she went and betrayed the team and now, he’s just can’t seem to get back to where they were before. He’ll work with her, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to trust her again.
I think the most important aspect to the issues between Cassie and Jake isn’t that she betrayed him, but that he liked her (I don’t know if he meant that romantically or just in a general way that you like your best friends) before she betrayed him. That’s what made it worse. If he hadn’t liked her, hadn’t connected with her so easily, her betrayal wouldn’t have been so bad (probably). Jake is clearly the type of person who has trouble connecting with people, really connecting with them. So when he opened himself up to Cassie, it was because he felt a connection of some kind. Then she shattered that connection through her actions with the Brotherhood and that hurt him, deeply. Now, he doesn’t want to risk that again. He’ll work with her, but he refuses to trust her again.
The episode ends with a brief conversation amongst the whole team, with Eve admitting she wasn't the best today. She admits that she had been trying to put the LITs into a box, but they don’t fit in one and she doesn’t know how to handle that. Jake suggests she should look at them as partners and Eve accepts this. She’s starting to trust them, and though she still has a bit to go before she does so fully, this is an excellent start.
Other random goodness:
~”I don’t do punchy”
~“I am here to do science and math . . . and occasionally hallucinate.”
~I love the scene where Jenkins has Jake hook up the globe to the door while he’s explaining. Then when Jake stands by him, Jenkins just stares at the cowboy until he walks back over with everyone else. Jenkins is the best.
~”Any door? Like, say, a bank vault door? I’m asking for a friend.”
~John Kim is seriously charming. I think that’s the only reason I can actually stand Ezekiel. Normally I probably wouldn't like his character, but you can’t help but like him a little cause of John.
~”Good luck.” “What?” “Nothing. Go away. I’m working.”
~”How many ways can I mean human skulls?!”
~”I am impressed. We’ve had Guardians lose librarians before but never three in one day. It’ll be quite some time before someone beats that.”
~”We’re not calling it a brain grape!” *Minotaur roars* “Follow the brain grape.”
~”So first time out, how’d it go?” The teams’ reactions to this are perfection. My favorite is Jake dropping the sword. Christian Kane has serious comedic timing. I love that we get to see more of that as the season goes on.
~”Nasty creatures. Hold a grudge.”
~”So annoying or cryptic, those are your two speeds huh?”
~”Back off. I’m doing math.”
~The final scene between Jake and Cassie was great. So emotional. All the kudos to Christian and Lindy for striking just the right emotional chord there. So good.
That’s it for this review. Next week, I’ll be doing Fables (not Santa). I’ll explain why in that post. In the mean time, come back Wednesday for my writing post and Friday for the next question in my 30 Questions series.
Until then.
Cassie begins to have difficulty with the maze when they get to a room that seems to have been designed by M.C. Escher himself. She starts to doubt her abilities, saying that seven dimension is too much and that Jake was right about not being able to trust her. What follows is a lovely conversation between the thief and the synesthete where Ezekiel assures her that he understands why she did what she did with the Brotherhood. He tells her that he probably would have done the same thing if he’d been in her shoes. Only, he would have gone all the way with it, bringing magic back to the world completely and letting Flynn die. The way he sees it, Cassie may have screwed people over but she didn’t let anyone down. He offers to be Cassie other senses so she doesn’t get overwhelmed and she asks if he’s sure he trusts her to guide him through. He laughs at that, and reminds her that he’s the thief who always bails. Really she’s the one trusting him.
I find this whole conversation so interesting mostly, because Cassie is convinced that she is the untrustworthy one yet she is so willing to trust everyone else. Earlier in the episode she watched Ezekiel try to escape on his own, yet here, she hesitates not because she thinks he’ll do it again, but because she doesn’t see herself as trustworthy. She readily trusts everyone on the team, yet the only person on the team who seems to trust her is the person who is actually probably the least trustworthy of the bunch (at the moment). The most trusting of the group is the one everyone treats as the least trustworthy. Interesting, no?
Upon entering the control room, Ezekiel gets to work trying to get the thread, but is stopped when our favorite CEO Karen Willis appears pointing a gun and threatening. Ezekiel tries to be his charming self and talk his way out of the problem, but it doesn’t really work. So Cassie jumps on Willis and tries to hold her off while Ezekiel finishes grabbing the thread. She helps him out by getting Willis to shoot the case and the thief grabs the thread. For a moment, it looks as if he’s going to abandon Cassie when he bolts out the door with the thread, but a second later he’s back. With some quick thinking, they destroy the Labyrinth and get back to the Annex with all the others. With their job done for the day, everyone heads off to do their own thing.
Before the episode ends though, we get one last conversation about trust, this time the one that’s been building the whole episode. Cassie finally confronts Jake about why he is so angry at her. And we, like her, finally learn why he is having such a hard time trusting her again. See Jake hides his gift from his family, from everyone really. And Cassie was one of the first people he shared it with. Then she went and betrayed the team and now, he’s just can’t seem to get back to where they were before. He’ll work with her, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to trust her again.
I think the most important aspect to the issues between Cassie and Jake isn’t that she betrayed him, but that he liked her (I don’t know if he meant that romantically or just in a general way that you like your best friends) before she betrayed him. That’s what made it worse. If he hadn’t liked her, hadn’t connected with her so easily, her betrayal wouldn’t have been so bad (probably). Jake is clearly the type of person who has trouble connecting with people, really connecting with them. So when he opened himself up to Cassie, it was because he felt a connection of some kind. Then she shattered that connection through her actions with the Brotherhood and that hurt him, deeply. Now, he doesn’t want to risk that again. He’ll work with her, but he refuses to trust her again.
The episode ends with a brief conversation amongst the whole team, with Eve admitting she wasn't the best today. She admits that she had been trying to put the LITs into a box, but they don’t fit in one and she doesn’t know how to handle that. Jake suggests she should look at them as partners and Eve accepts this. She’s starting to trust them, and though she still has a bit to go before she does so fully, this is an excellent start.
Other random goodness:
~”I don’t do punchy”
~“I am here to do science and math . . . and occasionally hallucinate.”
~I love the scene where Jenkins has Jake hook up the globe to the door while he’s explaining. Then when Jake stands by him, Jenkins just stares at the cowboy until he walks back over with everyone else. Jenkins is the best.
~”Any door? Like, say, a bank vault door? I’m asking for a friend.”
~John Kim is seriously charming. I think that’s the only reason I can actually stand Ezekiel. Normally I probably wouldn't like his character, but you can’t help but like him a little cause of John.
~”Good luck.” “What?” “Nothing. Go away. I’m working.”
~”How many ways can I mean human skulls?!”
~”I am impressed. We’ve had Guardians lose librarians before but never three in one day. It’ll be quite some time before someone beats that.”
~”We’re not calling it a brain grape!” *Minotaur roars* “Follow the brain grape.”
~”So first time out, how’d it go?” The teams’ reactions to this are perfection. My favorite is Jake dropping the sword. Christian Kane has serious comedic timing. I love that we get to see more of that as the season goes on.
~”Nasty creatures. Hold a grudge.”
~”So annoying or cryptic, those are your two speeds huh?”
~”Back off. I’m doing math.”
~The final scene between Jake and Cassie was great. So emotional. All the kudos to Christian and Lindy for striking just the right emotional chord there. So good.
That’s it for this review. Next week, I’ll be doing Fables (not Santa). I’ll explain why in that post. In the mean time, come back Wednesday for my writing post and Friday for the next question in my 30 Questions series.
Until then.
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