Thursday 25 September 2008

Allison to Lillia - Episode 18

Just how many episode of Allison to Lilliacan one man take over a short period of time? Well, two episodes in two days hasn't killed me, so that's a start at least.

After rather unfortunately landing their sea plan full of orphans on some rocks at the end of last episode, it's literally sink or swim for all involved at the start of this episode, which soon translates into swim for everyone apart from Treize, who doesn't know how to. Of course, if there's one thing Allison to Lilliahas taught us it's that life is precious for all of the main characters, and so Lillia decides to simply throw Treize in the water and let him fend for himself, before acting rather surprised when he starts to drown. By the way, why didn't the seaplane have any life jackets? It's a seaplane, these kind of things would come in handy.


Anyway, Lillia rescues Treize after almost killing him, then spends so long prevaricating over giving him CPR that by rights he shouldn't have ended up brain damaged if not dead anyhow, but amazingly it all ends up okay in the end, and the rescue planes soon land to provide tables and chairs to the orphans so they can have a beach picnic. I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall at that emergency briefing; "Right lads, we've got dozens of orphans to go and save from a sinking plane, so make sure the aircraft are loaded with all the normal essential gear for such a rescue. Frank, go get the wooden tables and chairs, and Benny, you'd better find our best cutlery and china. Bill, you're in charge of condiments this time, don't let those children down!".

Before the orphans are packed up and sent on their way, we're dealt an entirely pointless bit of exposition when we find out that the young lad Carlo isn't actually a young lad at all, but a girl named Carla. I can understand wanting to hide this from the other orphans to get along in life, but why hide it from Lillia too? Oops sorry, I forgot, this is Allison to Lillia and therefore the plot is legally bound to make no sense whatsoever.

Speaking of nonsense, after Lillia and Treize get returned to their hotel, the latter gets invited out to a dark secluded spot by a strange man. Oh, it's Wil/Travas, never mind. Anyway, what Wil wants to tell Treize is that the real mastermind of the plot to kill the orphans is actually the seemingly kind man who was in charge of the orphanage, who has apparently been engaged in human trafficking for profit for many years now. While this is fine in and of itself, it adds a whole new level of insanity to the plot to down the plane full of orphans - These weren't just defenceless orphans who nobody would miss, these were this guys cash cow, why would he want to kill them all? Given that rather odd way of handling your valuable assets, I can only imagine that (despite Wil hinting that he'd been killed) he managed to escape and find himself a job on Wall Street.

After all that has gone on, Treize decides to cut his holiday with Lillia short and make his way home alone. At this point, I assumed that this was building towards a whole new arc where Treize goes off on some adventure of his own, but no, it appears that he's abandoned a holiday with the girl of his dreams to go and buy a book on how to swim. That's right, the morning after Lillia hints to him that she'd rather like to share a room with him, he leaves her to buy a swimming book. Even Wil wasn't this daft in the Allison arc - Oh wait, he was, wasn't he?

Speaking of Wil, he's clearly learned well from Allison's father, as we learn that he was quite happy to let the plane full of orphans be crashed, killing them all, and it was only the prescence of Lillia on the plane that forced him to change his plans. What a lovely guy.

So, that's another arc over, and judging by the ever greater number of plot holes appearing in each episode, I'll be looking forward to picking up an official Allison to Lillia colander as a Christmas gift for someone in a couple of months.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd love to see the producers swimming fully clothed in the ocean. By the way, I think the protagonists and side-characters are quite aware that they will always be saved by some deus ex machinae. So they can't be bothered to panic or look worried no matter what happens.