How a "Lost Girl" Helped Find So Many

Some of us know the feeling. It's a Saturday night and you don’t have any plans. Nobody to hang out with nor a smoking hot date to take home and have some… fun. Oh the agony of it all! But never fret, you look at the positive. You can just sit on your comfy couch or lay on your bed, grab your favorite brand of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and proceed to go and watch the latest episode of your favorite new show on Hulu, Netflix or whatever streaming platform you choose only to realize one thing. Your show didn’t come out with a new episode this week, oh god the horror!

You think back a second, wonder what might have happened, and after a few moments, give up as you resign yourself to the fact that this night just became even crummier than originally anticipated. As you stroll the myriad of shows that populate your home screen based on genre, you don’t expect to come across anything worthwhile. But occasionally something pops up on the titles, usually based on a genre that you regularly frequent, that makes you go “Hmm… what the heck.”

That’s what I and many people do when you come across a show that marginally piques your interest and figure, “I was going to spend 45 minutes watching my show. Guess I can spare 15 minutes and see what this is about.” Lo and behold; this show grabs you, puts you in a rear naked choke MMA style, and proceeds to strap you in for a binge-watching marathon you had no idea you were gearing up for.

That’s what the show that I came across one random Saturday evening called “Lost Girl” did to me. For a little background, “Lost Girl” was a Canadian supernatural drama that follows the main character, Bo Dennis, who is a Succubus but doesn’t quite know it to open the show. As the viewer comes to realize; the world of fairies, vampires, werewolves and everything else considered mythical or supernatural exists in this world. What also exists in this world is a bipartisan relationship, albeit a tenuous one, between the two clans known simply as the Light and the Dark where the one thing that the both can agree on is that the existence of their species, known as Fae, is to remain a secret at all costs.

Needless to say, the status quo gets thrown into upheaval when our heroine, Bo, uses her ability to drain the life force or “chi” out of a creep who spiked the drink of a girl name Kenzi, who we will later learn to be Bo’s best friend, confidant, comedic relief and first human to be accepted into Fae Society. No big deal one would think, but as we learn, the Fae want to keep their existence a secret and leaving behind a body that was “fed” upon doesn’t help in the keeping a secret department. However, we learn that this was more involuntarily above all else.

Bo doesn’t want to drain a guy, or girl, dry of all their chi and leave them dead, but as for why she can’t do it leads to the primary driving force of “Lost Girl,” Bo’s origin story. Bo was a simple girl growing up in rural town who, when making out with her boyfriend, discovered her ability and drained her boyfriend dry of all his chi. Anyone who is into sci-fi or the supernatural most likely loves Marvel and is having some serious Rogue vibes here and just like Rogue, Bo freaks out at what just happened and believes, correctly, that she did it and proceeds to drift from place to place trying to learn how to “cure” herself. The difference between our two vixens is, it’s not just touch that initiates Bo’s ability.

This transitions into another driving force of the show, and one of the primary reasons as to why this show is a guilty pleasure of mines that I binged watch and have no qualms about it because it’s completely natural: Sex. Shocker considering that the heroine is a Succubus, but the driving reason for sex, aside from pleasure, is that this is the way that a Succubus “feeds.” All the different genus, for lack of a better word, that exist of the Fae World require some sort of sustenance in order to survive or, like all living things, will die. It just so happens that for a Succubus, transferal of chi through intimacy is how Bo sustains her health and her strength. How she goes about having sex at times leads us to tilt our heads as we try to get a better view of what’s going as if we don’t already know what’s going on. Other times, you will sit there going “WTF” as the combination of shame you might feel being in her shoes and then realizing that what she is doing is as natural as sitting down with a plate of two eggs sunny side up and sausage links for breakfast and helping yourself.

The primary reason that a first time viewer might cringe at this though, is that once they get past the fact that Bo needs sex in order to maintain her overall health is the fact that since sex is means of survival for her that the aforementioned “WTF” moments are accompanied with many taboo topics that a traditional viewer will find inappropriate. Threesomes, gay and lesbian relationships and a slew of other possible numerical combinations that we will leave to the imagination but can probably bet have happened behind the close doors of Bo’s bedroom are what fill our screens as we are watching. Bo isn’t the only Fae getting her rocks in this world. Her friends, and enemies, all have their moments under the covers that just adds to the primal essence that exudes from this show.

However, this is where there needs to be a point made about “Lost Girl” and how they tackle sexual orientation and gender relationships. Whether a relationship does or does not involve our heroine, viewers need to remember that our views of “man” and “woman” in the Human World and the views of “man” and “woman” in the Fae World aren’t parallel. One character in the show is a Wolf-Shifter named Dyson. People may interpret him as a werewolf but unlike werewolves who shift when exposed to a full moon involuntarily, Dyson can shift as easily as he can put on a pair of pants, which is quite often in this show due to shifting and, well… shifting. However, Dyson identifies just as much with being a wolf, an animal that walks on all fours, as much as he is a bipedal man; which is the primary difference between Fae and Humans. Fae come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, literally. From shifters like Dyson, to Hydras, creatures with nine heads both above and below the equator, and Amphisbaena or snake man that have the body of a 30-foot snake, our limited conceptualization of sex needs to be checked at the door because in the world of Fae, freaky or not normal is just another Friday night at The Dal, our local watering hole here in “Lost Girl.”

Yet this all comes back to one very important concept in the Fae World: Feeding. The primary divide between Light and Dark is the way they choose to feed on their primary source of sustenance, Humans. For the Dark, they can care less about humans and will gladly kill a human as long as they are able to dispose of all evidence of the supernatural. The Light on the other hand, will feed on humans, but will not kill humans if it can be helped. That’s why, when you look at a vampire who drinks blood in order to survive, the show attempts to almost humanize the action. Yes, a vampire ripping out someone’s throat is savage and cannot be related to, but a vampire getting blood from a Blood Bank seems much more palatable and if anything, very human in reality. The equivalent of going to McDonald’s and placing an order.

One thing that the astute viewer needs to remember is, it’s not like Fae chose to feed the way they do. It’s a part of the primal makeup: Eat or Die. Let’s not forget that just like a vampire needs blood or a Succubus needs chi that there are many different types of Fae that exists in this expansive world that we dove head first into that require an assortment of different things from humans in order to survive. Blood, chi and even emotions can be fed upon by the Fae that live in this world; “Lost Girl” does a great job of incorporating the many different types of Fae that come across our screen. They include mythical beings from fables and folklore across the world; such as Scottish Will-o’-Wisps, Japanese Kappa and the Slavic Witch Baba Yaga; “Lost Girl” does a great job incorporating these beings into the world that Bo has to navigate through, all in hopes of discovering who she is and fighting off threats to herself, the people she loves and eventually the Fae and Human Worlds.

For the less mature audience, they will come across “Lost Girl” and come to the conclusion that this show is nothing more than an unadulterated attempt to get some viewers to tune in by flashing some skin and being happy with the results. For those who choose to accept the skin for what it is; a necessary component of the story since in the end, we are following the adventures of a Succubus after all, they will be brought into a world that parallels the real one we live in with the mythos and majesty of the Fae world and all that characters that inhabit it. “Lost Girl” is that guilty pleasure for me that will throw you into the bed and teach you how being naughty can be so wrong and yet so right in ways you never thought. As a matter of fact, I’m going to go sit down and watch it again. Love Unconditionally.