Zedd (BRUCE SPENCE) and his brother, Thaddicus (guest-star JON BRAZIER), embark on a quest to seek revenge for the murder of their father. Meanwhile, a stranger, Horace (guest-star JOHN RHYS-DAVIES), steps into Richard’s (CRAIG HORNER) life to bring up elements from the past. Horace, who befriends Richard, leads him on a collision course with Zedd.

Much of the magician’s plot is well thought out enough that it keeps our heroes guessing. Most surprising is the twist that he isn’t depending on Richard to do the murders after all, there is a plan B in effect the entire time with the introduction of the Nygaax, a monster that is a like an evil combination of the Mummy and Spiderman. It seems for a while as though the magician’s plot is pretty airtight, especially since he is willing to kill himself to ensure the success of the plan.

However, that is where the biggest plot problem presents itself. Why would someone who is willing to die in order for his nefarious plot to succeed leave a map with a big arrow pointing to where Richard can find Kahlan and Cara? It is a lazily written wrap up to what had prior to that point been a pretty good storyline. If Richard had found the map without the arrow that practically spells out “RICHARD, GO HERE” it might have been a little more acceptable.
The theme running through the episode is the question of whether one person’s life is worth more than another. This is most explicit when it is discovered that the more influential families in town have plotted to keep their own sons of out of the army by rigging the lottery that chooses who must serve. The revelation that the duke knowingly cheated the system turns him into the second villain of the episode and there is no sadness when he meets a terrible fate in the end. If the duke had expressed a little bit of remorse it would have made his end more difficult to watch, but his character is fairly one-dimensional and he does not waver from the belief that what he did was acceptable.

The more subtle and difficult examination of the moral quandary takes place between Kahlan and Cara, although the episode fails to look at all angles. Bridget Regan and Tabrett Bethell make the most out of every scene they have together and it is great to see the characters bonding, but the question of whose life is worth more is not as straightforward as the episode makes it seem. Kahlan’s suggestion that she should be the one to die since Cara can bring her back with the breath of life may make sense on the surface. However, there is no mention of the prophecy that ties Kahlan’s survival to preventing the Keeper from being victorious. This should have been mentioned at the very least, but it is ignored so that the theme of equality can be reinforced. Maybe they thought we would be distracted from thinking about the prophecy once Kahlan and Cara get into a knock-down drag-out fight over who gets to be the one to sacrifice their life for the other.

Richard’s determination to save Kahlan and Cara without giving in to the magician’s demand is completely in character. As usual, he does not waver in his convictions. This steadfastness of character, combined with the scenes of Kahlan and Cara working together to save themselves and each other, are what make the episode enjoyable.

Judge Judy was back on top in the battle of daytime supremacy after giving the lead back to Oprah the previous week..  Maybe there is something to the whole Ellen being on “Idol” helping the daytime “Ellen” show after all.  It was in the top 25 for the week, som

Legend of the Seeker Fans:  Seeker was back with a new episode on March 20, and the updated table for Season two’s ratings is still below the normal syndicated top 25 table.

WWE Friday Night Smackdown! Fans:  Smackdown! was back in the top 25, see table below.

Please note that the syndicated weekly results are delayed versus normal reporting.  While we get the broadcast and cable ratings for the prior Monday-Sunday period every Tuesday, there is an extra week of lag time with the syndicated ratings and these numbers are not for last week, but for the week before last (in other words, the WWE Friday Night Smackdown! is for March 19,  not March 26).

Top 25 Syndicated Shows for the week ending March 21, 2010:

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Legend of the Seeker Season Two:

Warning this may contain spoilers!

While Legend of the Seeker’s “Creator” raises the bar for a typical clip show by including Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) as a guest star, it still is in essence a clip show. Much of the episode is spent rehashing what has happened so far this season, in the guise of Richard being put on trial by the Creator.

On the plus side, we learn some interesting new information about the creation of the world and that the Creator and Keeper were lovers at one point in time. Castle-Hughes plays Maia, a young girl claiming to be the Creator born into a mortal body, much like Christ in the Bible. The serene authority Castle-Hughes gives her character makes it easy to believe that Maia’s claims may be true.

A large part of the episode involves doubt, first seen as Cara doubts what Maia claims to be and sets off to disprove her. More doubt presents itself during Richard’s trial. While Richard is unwavering in his assertion that he is working to defeat the Keeper, he starts to wonder whether it is possible that he is really an agent of the Keeper and doesn’t know it. Considering Maia’s way of presenting the events of the season, it is not entirely surprising that he could be led to think this. She has a way of taking the events of past episodes and twisting them to make it seem as though Richard really is working for the Keeper. In addition, Zedd admits to having doubts about Richard’s abilities to control his anger issues.

All of this uncertainty being cast on Richard gives Craig Horner and Bridget Regan a chance to show off their excellent chemistry once again in a scene where Richard spells out his fears. It also adds some depth to Richard to give him this doubt, like a tiny chink in his self-confidence which has been stronger in this second season.

Of course, if Richard had found the Stone of Tears and defeated the Keeper sooner, what would they have done for the rest of the season? One aspect I am glad Maia specifically focused on during Richard’s trial is that he gave away his power to Sister Nicci, someone he knew was working against the Light. No matter what safeguards he believed were in place to keep Nicci imprisoned, it is a move that has continued to haunt him.

If we have to watch a recap episode, at least the way they use the trial as the excuse for doing it gives us some good scenes. In addition, the climactic confrontation when Darken Rahl finds them drops an intriguing tidbit when Rahl mentions that it is not in the Keeper’s plan to kill Richard yet. We are left to wonder: what is it that the Keeper has planned for Richard? And does it tie into the prophecy that Richard will end up aiding the Keeper, even if he doesn’t want to?

Source:  http://tv.ign.com/articles/108/1080378p1.html

Great news, Legend of the Seeker fans! You may have heard rumors that your show had been canceled, but we just talked with an inside source close to the show, and well, the rumors are just not true.

Yes, the Tribune Station Group is dropping Legend of the Seeker in a lot of markets, but that’s not the end of the road for Richard (Craig Horner), Kahlan (Bridget Regan) and Cara (Tabrett Bethell). Here’s the good news that we’ve heard about the future of our favorite cult-hit fantasy series:

Insiders tell us that ABC Studios, which produces Legend of the Seeker, is not letting Tribune’s decision be a show killer. We’re told that ABC has every desire to bring the show back for a third season and studio bosses are “exploring their options” for where and how to air a potential third season.

Long story short, if the ax is falling on LOTS, it’ll be weeks and months before we know for sure, but Tribune’s decision is not a death knell. So don’t panic, kiddos, and how about we channel all that nervous energy into some serious fan activism?

So, what’s our suggestion for an alternate home for Legend of the Seeker? We say ABC should either convince the CW to air it on Fridays at 9 p.m. after Smallville, resulting in a “sexy genre show” two-night block for the network (Vampire Diaries and Supernatural on Thursdays, Smallville and LOTS on Fridays), or it should sell the show to Syfy, not least because Legend’s ratings are at least as good as anything that Caprica and Stargate Universe are putting up.

What’s your suggestion for saving Legend of the Seeker? And why do you love the show so much in the first place? Hit the comments with your take!

When a powerful woman claiming to be the Creator (Guest-Star KEISHA CASTLE-HUGHES) threatens Richard (CRAIG HORNER), unraveling the mystery of her true identity becomes a matter of life and death for the Seeker.

For those who haven’t checked out the show, Seeker is based (more or less) on author Terry Goodkind’s bestselling “Sword of Truth” fantasy series, and serves up a buffet of familiar swords-and-sorcery treats. Look, it ain’t great, but it’s often fun. It has an appealing cast—with hotties Bridget Regan (Kahlan Amnell) and Tabrett Bethell (Cara), plus the legendary Bruce Spense (Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander)—all tramping about in gorgeous New Zealand locations (a la Lord of the Rings). And best of all, it has no TV-typical cops, doctors, or lawyers.

TV.com: New Zealand’s not that big a country—have you seen every square inch by now?
Craig Horner: I’m kind of confined to Auckland, actually. There’s still so much I haven’t seen. Come the weekends, I just need to watch a movie, play the guitar, go swimming at the local swimming hole; you don’t have the urge to drive an hour to go see something. But I have a friend visiting for a couple of weeks, so that will probably get me out there.

So you haven’t even gone bungee jumping?
I did recently do the Sky Jump at the Sky Tower, it’s this massive needle in the city. I did it with Tabrett, who plays Cara. She took me there for my birthday. You’re kind of dangling at first. I didn’t look down much. And they let you go and drop you, first just 10 meters, and they take a photo, and then they let you go. But you have this tension, from the wires, on you the whole time, you feel that safety, so I kind of felt like a bird flying down. It was great.

Legend of the Seeker is a physically grueling series. You must be a helluva swordsman by now. I like that backhanded grip you whip out sometimes.
Well, I keep getting better and better, I hope. I have a great stunt double who’s always challenging me to keep it up. We don’t want to just have Richard doing the same old slice and dice. He started off with the heavy axe swing kind of moves—he was a woodsman, not a swordsman. He was cutting down trees, but now he’s cutting down D’Harans, right?

Let’s play the game where I say a name and you give me the first word that pops into your head. Bridget Regan.
Oh, cute.

Bruce Spense.
Warm.

Tabrett Bethell.
Ooohhh, uhhhh, slithery. That’s not a very nice word. [laughs] Let’s say smooth—it’s just that snake-like suit she wears.

You’re a pretty small cast. It is fun or challenging to work with each other so much?
We get guest actors in every episode, and that really helps to keep us from getting bored, and, you know, getting bored of each other. It can give us new energy, especially when it’s a young, great, interesting actor. It kind of revitalizes us and reminds us of what we’re about.

Is there a lot of humor on the set?
It’s a lot of going, going, going. You want to do bloopers, purposely goof up scenes, but there’s just not the time, and it’s expensive. And there’s so much in these episodes, so much that’s happening all the time, it’s crazy.

So of course fans are all about the unresolved sexual tension between Richard and Kahlan. Can you actually see the show not having it and still being successful?
It’s still critical to the show: You want to see how these two are feeling that while it’s just getting worse and worse around them; I mean, you’ve got this evil dude to deal with, it’s the Keeper who’s basically the Devil, right, so that kind of takes priority over your relationship. So you keep following your destinies, fulfilling your prophecies and then see how you end up.

Looking back over the evolution of the show, it seems it took a real emotional turn with Season 1 episode 8, the debut of Denna and the Mord’Siths.
That was one of my favorite episodes, that and episodes one and two. They had a real journey for Richard; meaty yeah? We really went there, you were just in a dungeon, just two characters playing out scenes—it was powerful wasn’t it? But that’s kind of the question: Do you make a show that’s just a frenzy of fast-moving images…or do you just make solid acts, keep them self contained, sort of. I wish we could do that more.

At the end of Season 1, Kahlan says to Richard, “No one can blame you if you want to go home.” And Richard says, “I am home.” How long do you see Legend of the Seeker being your home? Do you want a third season? A sixth season?
There are so many pros about this job, and a couple of cons—being away from friends and family in Australia to shoot for nine months of the year, and the shooting is grueling. I want to live all aspects of my life, not just acting.

But this is a project that could go on for years. I mean, we’re not just sitting around in a medical room, talking about this or that disease. I get to ride horses, fight with swords, fulfill my Indiana Jones dreams, my Conan and Star Wars fantasies. And it’s always, you know, the end of the world, losing your father, your son, your mother (laughs). So if there’s a character I could keep playing, it’s Richard.

What else would you like to do?
Well, not really acting projects as such. I mean that stuff just kind of happens, doesn’t it? It’s not like I can say, ‘Okay now I want to do my thriller with Scorsese, where is it?’

What I need to do is listen to my body: It needs rest, it needs better food, a bit more meditation, some massages, yeah? Playing music and dancing and hanging out with friends. I’ll get all that back in me, and then we’ll see what the next thing is.

Legend of the Seeker airs Saturdays and Sundays in syndication.

In the mid-90s, fans were wild for fantasy hits Xena and Hercules and producers Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are just adding more fuel to their fire. LOTS, which made its debut in November 2008, follows the story of woodsman Richard Cypher (Craig Horner) who learns of the prophecy made at his birth that reveals he is destined to protect the world from evil. At his side are the confessor Kahlan Amnell (Bridget Regan) and the wise wizard Zedd (Bruce Spence).

Now into its second season, LOTS is a charming window into Goodkind’s magical world, and minus the goofy quips a la Herc or Xena, it’s intense plot lines can really drive you to keep coming back. But despite a growing fan base of dedicated viewers, the show has remained on the bubble of the top 25 shows in syndication. (To make matters worse, last week The Tribune Company announced it will drop LOTS from its stations’ roster next season, which could spell big trouble for the show as far as a renewal is concerned.)

Still, when I talked with executive producer Ken Biller (Star Trek: Voager, Dark Angel) he seemed optimistic about a chance at a third season and let me in on of some of the things we’ll see at the end of season two. (Hint: More monsters and a Lord of the Rings favorite.)

Allie Townsend: So obviously, adapting a book series with a dedicated following can be tricky? How did you approach creating your own version of the show without angering book fans?

Well I’m not quite sure that I didn’t totally piss off at least some of the books’ fans at least at the beginning, which I knew was going to happen. I completely respect the passion of the book fans, I’m a huge admirer of Terry Goodkind and the achievement of the thousands of pages that he wrote, but when I got asked by ABC Disney to do the show and what I was being asked to do was a 22-episode a year season and I read that first book, it was readily apparent to me that there was no way I could do a 22-episode series and stay completely faithful to the book. The book could have been very faithfully adapted if it were done as a movie or as a couple of movies, but the books don’t lend themselves to stand alone story telling. And even though we have worked very hard to create an ongoing story thread both in season one and season two for the quest that our heroes are on because I think that’s very important for this genre, I also had to mandate to try to create episodes that could stand on their own terms that had a beginning middle and end so that viewers could just come in and be able to enjoy a story every week.

There are lots of elements from the books and many characters from the books that appear in the television series and we’ve found the mythology that Terry Goodkind and it’s a rich treasure trove to dive into. We always ask ourselves, well what happened in the book? Is that something we can use in an episode? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. We have kind of riffed on his mythology and expanded on it.

(More on Techland: What We’re Looking Forward To In 2010: Sci-Fi TV)

For example, in Wizard’s First Rule, Kahlan Amnell is already the only confessor left in the world. One thing I quickly realized was that this confessor mythology is really, really compelling. And if we were to say that she was the only confessor in the world right from the get go, we would be missing out on the opportunity to explore that mythology deeply and to tell certain stories. We told a story about a confessor who had gone bad and misused her powers and we were able to tell a story about Kahlan’s sister still being alive and how they tried to protect themselves from Darken Rahl (Craig Parker) so it gave us a lot of rich story material by not limiting ourselves. Now I completely understand why Terry did that in his book, but for us, I wanted to have a bigger palate.

AT: You’re filming in New Zealand, and the beautiful landscape really comes through on screen. Does it help to produce a show that has such an unlimited and amazingly beautiful backdrop?

It is amazingly beautiful, but I wish it were unlimited. It’s a small country in terms of people, but it’s a vast country in terms of landscape. And unfortunately, we’re not able to on our series schedule take advantage of all the really varied typography of New Zealand. We’re limited to what are still some really beautiful locations around Auckland, an area on the North Island.

Read more: http://techland.com/2010/03/09/legend-of-the-seeker-producer-ken-biller-still-hopeful-for-a-third-season/#ixzz0iiitfIsB

Question: Thanks for the Cable Renewal Scorecard, but you forgot to include Legend of the Seeker. Will it be renewed? —David

Ausiello: I think you forgot that Legend is a syndicated show. That list only covered cable shows, hence the words “CABLE EDITION” in the headline. Capiche? But to answer your question, I’d say the cult fave is a safe bet for renewal. In related news, I’ve got more scoop from exec producer Ken Biller! In the episode airing the weekend of March 20, “Kahlan is going to have a very powerful spell put on her, and, in order to save Kahlan’s life, Richard is going to have to protect Kahlan’s greatest enemy, who is the only one who can remove the spell,” he says. “But at the same time, Kahlan is forced to go and confront her father (played by Michael Nouri), who is the man who abused her terribly as a child.” Confession: I have no idea what he just said. Read More …

Thanks to Ausiello!