The Spring Court - episode guide & facts
Mar. 5th, 2010 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ayascythe
Coming up with various episodes was harder than I thought it would be. A lot harder. I'm still not sure, if I'm content with what I wrote, but I don't think I can or want to meddle with this any more than I already did. At least the show has a nice header graphic now, plus an opening and ending theme. YAY.
Episode guide - season 1
General concept
The show follows an overall plot about a contract the Court family made over sixty years ago to protect themselves from the upcoming economic crisis during WW2. Recurring elements in all the episodes are:
- flashbacks about how the contract came to happen and various times when a debt needed to be paid.
- Alexis either observing the happenings at the circus or paying a visit to David or Ethan (to whom he has taken a special interest).
- Alexis protecting the circus by any means
- scenes at the fairy woman's residence where Alexis reports to her about the circus.
A distinctive feature of the show is that all circus members are aware of weird happenings and supernatural aspects in their world, but don't actively search for them and more or less stumble upon them from time to time. Amusingly, this still keeps surprising them. It is rarely revealed what they were actually dealing with.
1x01 – Enter the Circus Ring
The first episode shows Darcie's and Vicky's first days at a new school and their troubles at blending in, at the same time introducing the Spring Court, its characters and their everyday life. It is made very soon very clear that this is not a normal circus by any means, dealing also with supernatural events as Darcie runs into a ghost during the episode.
1x02 – Big Bad Wolf
After a short foreboding scene at the end of episode 1, Alexis finally makes his first appearance. The episode is mainly about Alexis stirring confusion and suspicion among the circus members (and fear in case of Ethan) and various flashbacks that explain some parts about the contract although not everything is explained (yet).
1x03 – Toil and Trouble
Despite her concerns and Ethan's objections, Darcie wants to bring home a boy she met at school and show him around at the circus. Everyone tries to be at their best to not embarrass her, but no later than Rick's knives and Zoe's magic get involved everything goes downhill. This is also the first episode revealing that Zoe is a witch.
1x04 – Succubus
The circus gets a new member: Genevieve, an extraordinarily beautiful woman who is supposed to support Zoe in her animal show. The female members grow an irrational dislike to her, whereas alle the male members lie at her feet. At Zoe's and Diamond's request, Andrew starts to investigate about Genevieve and discovers some very interesting facts ...
1x05 – Memory Lane
Vicky wants to find out more about her mother's death and convinces Rick to help her investigate. Together, they question Andrew and other circus members who can remember Catherine Court. The episode is filled with flashbacks about Catherine Court, revealing that she probably didn't die all those years ago.
1x06 – Trading
Rick talks Ethan and Alain into going out on a men's night and get spectacularly drunk. What first starts out as a successful night turns into an involuntary adventure when the three of them come across a weird underground market that doesn't seem to trade with usual goods.
1x07 – Lost
Once the circus enters a new town, Ethan becomes increasingly nervous and refuses to leave the circus area for the time of their stay. It is eventually revealed that this used to be Ethan's hometown where his father and sister still live. It is also shown how he got captured by a fairy and spent many years in captivity. The episode ends with Ethan visiting his own grave, because his family believes him to be dead.
1x08 – Until Death Do Us Apart
Rick's former fiancé appears and tries to convince him to return to the US with her. The circus members learn that Rick is, for a fact, filthy rich and ran away from an even more profitable engagement. While Zoe is Not Amused, Rick is still a jerk and Vicky tries to intermediate, chaos and jealousy ensue.
1x09 – Survival of the Fittest
Due to a planning mistake, the routes of the Spring Court and another circus cross and both stay at the same town for the upcoming weeks. Since the other circus is the bigger one by far, David expects them to draw all the attention and customers to them, but it is quite the opposite. After various weird coincidences and accidents, the Spring Court is accused of sabotage. Alexis later reveals to David that the contract protects the circus by any means, even if this may cause harm to others.
1x10 – Contracts
The circus arrives in a town where several girls have gone missing. Darcie meets a little girl offering her the "normal life" she wishes for so badly, being shown a different reality in which her family leads a normal life outside the circus and her mother is still alive. Darcie almost accepts the offer, but soon realises that the girl is the reason for all the abductions. The girl claims that she "only wanted to play a bit" and, surprisingly, releases all the girls after Darcie asks her to. It is later hinted at that the girl probably was a fairy.
1x11 – Grim
Weird events and accidents increase to happen in and around the circus. When Diamond almost gets severly injured during a show, everybody starts thinking it is the doing of a big black dog that keeps straying around the circus – supposedly a Grim. Alexis explains that the contract is elapsing and with it the Spring Court's luck. This attracts magical beings much more than before, which is why the Grim has been following them.
1x12 – Everything Ends in a Circle
Alexis finally wants to claim the circus' Teind, a debt the circus family has to pay every couple of years to the fairy woman (since time passes differently for fairies, it's unclear how many years exactly). Ethan volunteers to accompany him and become the woman's new captive, because he doesn't want anyone else to suffer the same fate as he already did once. The season ends with Alexis taking him away into the fairy woman's realm.
Facts
Response
Opinions about the show vary: it has many enthusiastic fans who love the setting and the characters, others dislike the concept and find that fairies are not the in-thing. All in all, the show remained an underdog on TV. Season 2 is currently airing with an increasing rating from episode to episode, but it's still not clear, if the show will make it to another season.
Fandom
Fandom loves to ship Ethan/Alexis and each fic is more angst-ridden than the last. However, there are also many other popular ships, such as Zoe/Rick or Ethan/Darcie. Rick in particular has become a fan favourite and is paired up with literally everyone in the show. There is also an interesting amount of genfic about the mysterious fairy woman and Alexis in which fans try to interpret their personalities and give them more depth. This decreases in season two when they both get more screentime.
Opening theme
Touched by Vast
the razors and the dying roses
plead i don't leave you alone
the demi-gods and hungry ghosts
oh god, god knows i'm not at home
Ending theme
Thrown Away by Vast
There's a sun, there's a ground under my feet
There is almost nothing in between
Now I'm left like a flag atop a moon
Precious one, you have abandoned me
Comparisons with other works
Critics compare the show's content and atmosphere with various literary works, such as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Neverwhere and Coraline by Neil Gaiman and the Grimm's Fairytales.
The show's creators stated that they tried to create a show „as magical and charming as The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus“ and „as eery and mystical as Guillermo del Torro's Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth“. Script writer XY also said, „Vampires and werewolves have always been present in pop-culture, but this is something we haven't seen being done before. Not like this, not on TV. We wanted to create a world in which fairies aren't a mere myth, but actually real. A world that can be cruel and beautiful at the same time.“
Legal and copyright issues
A few episodes after the series started, copyright issues arose: White Wolf, a US company for roleplaying games claimed that main elements of the show were stolen from their game Changeling: The Lost. The show's creators admitted that whereas the title was in fact inspired by White Wolf's Changeling, the show's fairy mythology and mysteries were taken from various sources, with folklore and popular British myths being the main source. For a while it was unclear whether there would be a second season or if there had to be made major changes. In the end, White Wolf dropped their charges and The Spring Court was allowed to keep its title.
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Date: 2010-03-05 11:09 am (UTC)I am really admiring your creativity right now. You wanna share?
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Date: 2010-03-05 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 01:26 pm (UTC)And I'm loving the green theme by the way. Such a pretty colour.
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Date: 2010-03-05 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-06 03:55 pm (UTC)I totally second this and the fact that it's a mess. You have think about facts you didn't even consider before and it all has to make sense somehow ... it's mind-boggling.
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Date: 2010-03-05 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-06 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-06 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 08:56 am (UTC)Das is immer noch mehr als ich hab :P
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Date: 2010-03-05 06:33 pm (UTC)YAY.
I've been reading and enjoying everything you've written about this show so far (more fairy mythology on TV, please!), but I felt I needed to comment on that.
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Date: 2010-03-06 04:00 pm (UTC)Because Black Dogs are awesome and shouldn't only be in Harry Potter. ;)
Thank you for liking this and I agree: I'd love to have a fairy mythology show on TV.
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Date: 2010-03-05 11:15 pm (UTC)Also, still in love with the thought of this show. I am particularly excited about 5,7, and 10. Yay for a show that incorporates flashbacks!
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Date: 2010-03-06 04:04 pm (UTC)I don't think the show would even work without the flashbacks. There's just so much stuff that happened before the actual plot. XD