Episode 3 - The Death Song of Uther Pendragon 

Now I quickly add that in no way am I not going to enjoy this episode because the dynamics will work for sure. You have the most talented members of the cast on screen, even the one that is probably unconscious, but maybe, when HQ puts up her discussion post we can talk about it afterwards. There is something fundamentally wrong here and it has been consistent thus far this season.

Again as long as we are clear, that seeing the negative as well as the positive does not mean hatred, it does mean critical thinking, many of which are apathetic to. Here is a view I share from another:

It should be a criticism though. There’s so much wrong with this. Merlin and Arthur’s camaraderie has been so stagnant and they’re lacking any compelling material thus far in the 5th season. God forbid that this show try to strive for some mature storytelling with all this talk they’ve been feeding people about how the audience has matured and so have the characters. I’m so sick and tired of the show underusing the female characters and using and abusing them just to give the dudes something to do. Honestly, why doesn’t that bother people? The show likes to throw us a meager vaguely feminist bone every now and then, but it’s so cruel to its women otherwise and I’m so tired of it.

End quote. See you after the episode at HQ's thread.

i enjoyed the episode overall- the interaction between arthur and merlin was amusing, and seemed to have improved since previous episodes, where i personally believe the banter was getting a little stale.
the scene where arthur and merlin are searching for the ghost of uther was slightly protracted ,but over all the suspense was quite good. arwen moments were so limited-just a touch on the shoulder -but i loved the declaration of love from arthur for gwen when he was speaking to uther. gwen seemed to be overly abused -percival just got a chop on the shoulder and gwen was practically annihilated!!!! i love love love overman's writing though.

EPaws thank you for sharing that. I have been very mentally tired these days and inarticulate and your quote from another poster here: (I'm going to re-post it again for all of posterity:

****"It should be a criticism though. There’s so much wrong with this. Merlin and Arthur’s camaraderie has been so stagnant and they’re lacking any compelling material thus far in the 5th season. God forbid that this show try to strive for some mature storytelling with all this talk they’ve been feeding people about how the audience has matured and so have the characters. I’m so sick and tired of the show underusing the female characters and using and abusing them just to give the dudes something to do. Honestly, why doesn’t that bother people? The show likes to throw us a meager vaguely feminist bone every now and then, but it’s so cruel to its women otherwise and I’m so tired of it."*****

The show is vaguely feminist and yet completely mysogynistic at the same time. And I'm saddened some days to see what the reality that Katie and Angel have to put up with in terms of their career prospects. Although I just read an interview by Bradley upon season end and he spoke openly about his very real and reasonable frustrations with his own character, that he was the same idiot, dim Arthur over and over and over and over again throughout the seasons with no development or lessons learned the entire time and it was all about special effects and fighting and shit to cater to an apparently dumber population than some of us here. I guess everywhere needs something.