Review: Merlin 3.2: The Tears of Uther Pendragon (Part Two)

It's very often the case, with Saturday entertainment shows like this and Doctor Who, that a terrible first part is followed up by a much better second. And this is the case here, with Tears Part Two being far more enjoyable than last week's narrative casuality. While some of the aspects I was disappointed at last week still remained, it managed to pull itself together enough for me to overlook them.  
     Merlin has been carried off by The Dragon after he's been poisoned by Morgause in the woods; back in Camelot, the armies of Cenred apporach and Arthur feels the need to stand and fight while his father lies ill and enchanted in bed. Meanwhile, Morgana begins to work of taking the castle down from the inside. As the battle commences, Merlin and Arthur must help each other to defeat the enemy.
    There were some quite good scenes between Merlin and Arthur, which harkened back to their Series Two characterisations as good colleagues. Uther's hauntings in both episodes served to take the show another notch down the route of it being a darker and more adult programme. To help this, we also get some CGI undead and less of the horribly clownish evil-acting from Morgana and Morgause. Still some melodrama, yeah, but that's Merlin's bread and butter.
    Overall, a vast improvement on last week. Tears Part Two managed to make scrambled eggs into an ommelette, take a stumbling set of story ideas and fashion them into an entertaining piece of work. It seems now that the dynamic for this series will have the evil Morgana attempt to destroy the kingdom once-per episode, and Merlin has to fix things without anyone noticing his magic. It's a shame that once again it adheres to a formula, and thatthe formula is so predictable, but I think that the show will try to vary where its going this year.
     A look ahead to the next episode and... oh my. Oh god no. This is horrible. Horrible.

Thanks.