Being a teenager blows. For the first time in your life, you're expected to act responsibly in an adult world you know little about. This, while also coping with a flood of hormones, a total lack of freedom, and an innate desire to find and assert your individual identity. Also, your friends are bitches. The teenage Mary, Queen of Scots deals with all this and more as she's depicted in the CW's newest teen drama, Reign.
We first meet Mary at a convent in the French countryside, where she's been hiding out since childhood. Somehow, Mary's cover has been blown, and the as-yet-unnamed people who want her totally dead attempt to poison her.
But these crafty nuns have employed the clever "have someone else taste Mary's food first" defense, so the plot fails when a nun tastes the food first and it makes her brain bleed out her ears. Mary witnesses this and is upset, but not that upset. She is medium upset.
It's decided Mary would be safer back at the French Royal Court, where her betrothed, Prince Francis, is not at all excited to see her. See, Prince Francis has this total slut bag (I don't even think her character has a name, so we'll just call her Slut Bag) who is totally willing to show him her bare right shoulder any time, day or night.
So he's pretty annoyed by this Mary chick in her super cool head bands being all "ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY ME OR WHAT?" Ladies, I don't care how many Scots you are Queen of or how many headbands you own, if you start pestering him to marry you, you will drive him straight into Slut Bag's bare shoulders.
The situation isn't helped any by Francis's mom, the evil Queen Catherine, who actively disapproves of the union. Catherine is married to the king who apparently hates her, and openly cheats on her, so she is understandably bitter and sick of feeling powerless. She's even less interested in having a daughter-in-law who technically out ranks her, being that Mary is a Queen in her own right.
So Catherine looks to her hot sexy witch dude, Nostradamus, to help her try to predict and control the future. (You may remember Mr. 'damus from real life as "The Guy Who Supposedly Predicted 9/11 About 400 Years Before That Knowledge Was Useful.") When Nostra-D predicts that Mary will be the death of Francis, because he had a dream about a tree menstruating on him and that is what that means, this impels Catherine to start scheming.
Luckily, Mary does have a few people on her side: her four Scottish bffs/ladies-in-waiting. She presumably hasn't seen these girls since she was 5 or so, but the show insists they are best friends she's known all her life, so there you go. There's Lola, who's the Sweet One, Kenna, who is the Slutty One, and Aylee and Greer who are the Concerned Blondes.
Sweet little Lola gets a surprise when her boyfriend from back home shows up while she's in the bathtub. Apparently, he missed her so much he saved up all his earnings from working at the Starbucks in Edinburgh and hopped the first Ryan Air flight to France. Lola is flattered but insists they get permission from Queen Catherine before they start banging in her house.
Catherine thinks this is sweet, but more intriguing to her is Lola's boy toy, a former servant who was granted lands for good service. An obedient, young, hormone-filled lad who needs her permission to get sex? I smell a minion!
Catherine somehow convinces her new minion that date-raping Mary, which would tarnish her reputation and void her engagement, is the path to Lola's vagina.
Luckily for Mary, there's a girl in the castle who wears a burlap sack on her head and sneaks around whispering stuff to her. This doesn't frighten Mary at all, because maybe every 16th century castle comes with a Bag Girl? I could see that. Anyway, Bag Girl warns Mary not to drink the wine at Prince Francis's sister's upcoming wedding. She also leaves some rocks in her room, which is the closest thing you can get to a hug from a Bag Girl.
Oh, did I mention they're all going to a wedding? To prepare for this, Mary and her clique get together and try on some seriously gorgeous strapless prom dresses. Seriously, the dresses on this show are gorgeous. Now I know what Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth was missing: Sequins.
So, they go to the wedding in their awesome Free People dresses and super cool headbands, and the first thing that happens is Lola's boyfriend brings Mary a drink from the bar and asks her if she wants to do shots with him.
Mary, of course, doesn't fall for any of it, thanks to Bag Girl. But Lola sees this happening and is totes jells anyway. Mary realizes Lola is upset, but manages to smooth things over by engaging her gal pals in the time-honored female tradition of removing one's shoes and DANCING IT OUT IN A CIRCLE OF FRIENDSHIP.
Francis sees Mary dancing and is into it, but her friends are like "don't date him, girl!" Instead, they all decide to go watch the newlyweds bone. This is some kind of tradition, apparently. But, just as Rush Limbaugh warned us, the sight of the boning excites the girls so much they lose control of themselves completely and run off to furiously hump the first thing they see.
Slutty ol' Kenna is so worked up she can't even wait to find a guy or a lamppost or anything so she just starts masturbating on the stairs. Luckily the King of France walks in on this, because it's happening on a staircase in his house, and they bone each other. I guess you could do worse in the drunken stair-hookup department.
Mary goes to find Francis and they start having the DTR talk that, as usual, devolves into a drunk couple fight about their responsibilities as rulers. Eventually Mary storms off to bed, where Lola's boyfriend/Catherine's minion jumps her, thinking she'd be passed out from the roofies. She's not, obvi, and her screams attract the guards who up until now I guess hadn't realized they weren't supposed to let random dudes into her room.
Lola is devastated, and like any friend worth having, blames Mary for her own attempted rape. Mary feels bad and tries to intercede on Lola's boyfriend's behalf to the King and Queen, only to find out they already chopped his head off, because attempting to rape a Queen is generally frowned upon.
Lola is furious and promptly declares that none of the girls are really Mary's friends, like they all think she's really stuck up and they talk about her when she's not there. Mary is hurt but accepts this because there's no point arguing with someone who has to empty your chamber pot. Mary goes to stand outside alone for a while, where her final confrontation with Francis has him venting his disgust with her but also hinting that he IS kind of into her, if only because that guy trying to rape her made him totes jealous (that ALWAYS works, ladies!)
And that is where we leave Mary, Queen of Scots this week: Standing alone in the garden, furiously sighing, thinking about her only friend in the world, Bag Girl, and wondering why Francis's hot half-brother has to be named Bash. Is it short for something? Is it sexual innuendo? Is there some cute story behind it? Maybe. But the answers to those questions and more will need to wait until next time, on Reign.
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