Episode 8: Vexed
With this episode, we get a little bit of everything that makes Lost Girl great: some hot sex scenes, secrets and lies, a couple of good fights, and Bo trying to discover who she really is without compromising her principles. In fact, this was the original pilot episode that sold the series. It was produced over a year and a half before the series aired. I guess the previous seven episodes were made after this one, to catch the story up (or fill in some background).
This one starts (as many episodes do) with some sex. Bo shows up at Dyson’s place (which looks like an old gym) and she’s half-dead: beaten, bleeding, and barely able to walk. Dyson heals her with some sexin’, but he tells her this is absolutely the last time … probably … definitely … almost certainly this is the last time. It’s obvious he’s jealous of Bo’s feelings for Lauren. Later, we see Bo and Kenzi at some abandoned theatre or auditorium, looking for a guy they’re supposed to meet. Bo complains to Kenzi about Dyson’s jealousy and Kenzi tells her the whole back and forth thing isn’t working and it’s time to pick a team. Bo says “teams are stupid”, which pretty much encapsulates her best and worst quality. Not choosing a side with the Light/Dark Fae is gutsy, not to mention prudent. But not being able (or refusing) to pick which person she wants to be in a relationship with just comes off as wishy-washy … at best. At worst, it seems like she doesn’t give a shit about Dyson or Lauren’s feelings, which I guess makes sense for a succubus, but it’s not the best way to deal with romantic attachments. Anyway, they find the guy they’re there to meet … hanging from the rafters by a noose.
Turns out the guy is a vampire named Siegfried, so the hanging didn’t hurt him at all. Bo gives him a bunch of blood packs in exchange for info about her mom. He gives her a newspaper article about a woman named Lou Ann Heidinger, who’s going to be executed in three days for drowning her step-kids and burning down the house. Siegfried claims Lou Ann knows something about Bo’s mom. At the lab, Lauren examines Bo (and vice versa) and asks if she’s tried having sex with a human yet. They flirt up a storm and Bo says she wants to take things slow. Lauren says succubi need healthy sex lives, so Bo mentions Dyson and now it’s Lauren’s turn to be jealous. Kenzi expresses the wishes of all the Bo/Lauren shippers out there and tells them to get a room already.
Bo and Kenzi infiltrate the prison with fake IDs to see Lou Ann. Bo has to use a little mojo on the guard, but they get in. Lou Ann turns out to be Dark Fae and says she knows nothing about Bo’s mom. When Bo mentions Siegfried, Lou Ann says she doesn’t know him either. (Kenzi: “Well, that was rude and anticlimactic.”) Bo figures Siegfried wasn’t lying (because he knew she’d go back and pound him if he was), so something else must be going on. We then see Siegfried in his kitchen about to have a little blood banquet, but he’s interrupted. Here’s where we get our first introduction to
Vex, who’ll play a pretty big part in the rest of the series. He’s played by Paul Amos (Dr. Roberts on Murdoch Mysteries and the voice of Jacob Frye in the Assasssin’s Creed video games). Vex is a Mesmer, which means he can control other people’s actions; that’s kinda creepy to begin with, but Paul Amos plays him with a weird Johnny Rotten sort of vibe, so he comes off as amoral but also kinda charming. I think it’s the accent. Anyway, Vex takes great relish in controlling Siegfried, making him stick his own hand down the garbage disposal.
He obviously did a lot more than that, because we next see Siegfried dead on the kitchen floor (one hand missing) and he’s pretty beat up. Dyson is there investigating and isn’t happy when Bo shows up looking for Siegfried. She asks about Lou Ann and Dyson says it’s a Dark Fae matter 
and she should drop it. She asks if he can get her Lou Ann’s file and Siegfried’s autopsy report. Dyson says okay, but this is absolutely, positively, no doubt whatsoever the last favour he’ll do for her. At home, Kenzi’s looking through the autopsy photos (and apparently has a strong stomach, since she’s eating chips and salsa). She says it looks like someone was toying with Siegfried before he was killed. Lou Ann’s file says she drowned her step-kids then set the house on fire, but Siegfried wasn’t drowned—his heart was torn out while he was still alive. Bo notices there were no defensive wounds, nor any drugs in his system or restraint marks, so someone with Fae powers must have been controlling him and probably controlled Lou Ann too when she killed the kids. Bo goes back to the prison to talk to Lou Ann, who tells her she fell in love with a human but never told her husband she was Fae. She figures killing the kids and blaming it on her was the Dark Fae’s way of punishing her for turning her back on them and choosing a human—certainly something Bo can relate to. Bo says she’ll try to talk the Ash into helping.
Lauren arranges a meeting with the Ash, but she’s really nervous about it. The Ash thinks Bo’s there to join the Light Fae, but she kills that notion pretty quick. The Ash says Lou Ann is a matter for the Dark Fae, even 
though they’re the ones who set her up in the first place. Bo gives him shit and walks out, followed by Lauren, who’s pretty worked up. Bo gives her shit too saying the Ash is just as bad as the Dark Fae. Lauren says if Bo gets in trouble, she can’t help since she has no sway with the Dark. Bo goes to see Mayer, who owes her one, but he tells her to drop it too. He says it’s too high profile to start messing around with and that it’s okay for Fae to kill each other as long as they’re not exposed to the humans. Bo asks if he can find who the real killer is and he says he’ll look into it.
At home, Bo goes for a bath while Kenzi plays a video game which seems to entail shooting a lot of robot hookers … I don’t think that’s a real game, but I kinda wish it was. Unfortunately, she’s so into it that she doesn’t see the sinister figure rise from behind the counter and sneak upstairs. The figure creeps up on Bo and she must’ve heard something, because she grabs a dagger. But when she spins around, there’s no one there. Of course, she’s jumped from behind the shower curtain two seconds later. Her 
attacker tries to drown her, but she fights loose and they beat the crap out of each other. Kenzi finally notices something’s happening (when plaster dust falls from the ceiling) and heads upstairs with a sword. Kenzi distracts the killer (who’s a feral-looking woman with freaky teeth) and Bo rips a pipe loose from the wall and impales her. That’s still not enough, as the freaky killer starts pulling the pipe back out through her abdomen, but Bo finishes her by ripping some wiring from the wall and electrocuting her. (Kenzi: “Smells like fried bitch.”)
Dyson shows up and says the assassin (a Morragh) wasn’t officially sanctioned because they’d have sent more than one. He says regular Fae rules don’t apply to Bo since she refuses to pick a side. (Bo: “So I have to be owned to be free?” Dyson: “No, just to stay breathin’” Bo: “Well, I don’t accept that.”) Despite what he said (numerous times), he offers to
heal her, but she gets mad and says she wanted his help not his pity. Bo goes to ask trick about the Morragh. Meanwhile, the Ash tells Lauren he knows she’s been helping Bo, but he’s not upset; he wants her to use the relationship. He tells her the guy who controlled Lou Ann and killed Siegfried was Vex and figures if Bo kills him, the Dark Fae will kill her in retaliation. The Ash says he’s not ready for Bo to die until he knows more about her. He says he’ll try to get the Morrigan to send Vex into hiding, then basically tells Lauren she should bang Bo to distract her while Vex gets out of town.
At the Dal, Bo learns that Lauren is actually the Ash’s property—I thought she already knew that, but maybe she thought Lauren just worked for him. Trick brings out his Monster Manual so she can learn about the Morragh that attacked her. As a slight digression here, the book is written in Tolkien/Futhark runes. I looked at some close up shots of the pages and tried to translate them (’cause that’s just the kind of nerd I am) and the text doesn’t seem to match the drawings. There’s one monster per page
(Halforn, Basilisk, Morragh, etc.), but when you translate the runes, they all seem to be talking about book collecting or something along those lines. For instance, the text on the Morragh page has stuff like “Truly a book of old it is fashioned … rough codex style with spine … reach around to the front (tee-hee) … and three arrow designs on the … cover it also has a tassel which … choose based on the color of the book … which hangs from the spine top it is …” and so on. I was kinda hoping it’d be a bunch of cool monster descriptions, but it just sounds like some sort of weird lorem ipsum thing for book collectors. Some of it is repeated on the other pages. Not really germane to the review, I just thought I’d mention it. Okay, digression over, back to the show.
Trick tells Bo the Morragh feeds on rage, so whoever sent it to kill her must’ve been pretty pissed off. He says she should use her succubus power to fight, but she’s worried about losing control. Trick says it isn’t about losing control, it’s about taking control. He gives Bo the siracon, a kick-ass gauntlet/sword combination that he says can harm all Fae and will protect her from corruption.
She’s grateful (though she thinks he’s kidding when he says it’s made from unicorn horn). Lauren shows up at Bo’s place later and asks why she’s so worked up about Lou Ann. Bo says she’d always hoped for a normal life for herself, even when she was running from place to place with a trail of bodies behind her. Lauren wonders if Bo would be happy with a normal, boring life, but Bo says she wants it to be her choice, no one else’s. Lou Ann made her choice and was punished for it and Bo figures if she just lets that go she has no shot at a normal life herself.
Lauren then commences “distracting” Bo and they bang like crazy. Bo’s still worried about hurting her and Lauren says she trusts her—rather ironic considering what’s coming up. In an even more ironic moment, Bo tosses Lauren’s Ash necklace aside and says “Tonight, nobody owns you.” Lauren’s distraction didn’t work too well, because after they bang, Bo gets up to go look for Siegfried’s killer. Lauren tries to convince her to forget it and Bo realizes the sex was meant to distract her. She gets really pissed off—obviously she had some pretty deep feelings for Lauren—and throws the necklace back at her. Lauren lets Vex’s name slip and Bo goes to find him.
Mayer tells Bo where Vex is, but asks her not to go after him. We get some cool intercut shots of Lou Ann getting prepped for her lethal injection and Bo getting tooled up for her fight with Vex. For some reason, Trick is at the execution—he obviously knows more than he’s let on. Bo gets to Vex’s strip club and he starts controlling her, making her stab herself. Dyson and Kenzi are playing pool at the Dal when Lauren shows up and tells them Bo went after Vex. At the strip club, Bo uses the siracon to break Vex’s hold on her and she punches him across the room. 
She’s about to kill him, but he says while he was torturing Siegfried, the vampire told him some stuff about Bo’s mother. Dyson shows up and says if she kills Vex the Dark Fae won’t stop until she’s dead. She actually threatens Dyson after he lets Vex go; I’m not sure if that’s an early
indicator of her dark side, or just her being really pissed off about everything. Dyson says Vex (and everyone else) was lying about her mom … nobody knows anything. But Bo thinks somebody knows something. And she’s right, because we see Lou Ann waking up in the morgue after her “execution” and Trick is there, saying they need to talk.