Plot. Little do readers and viewers know, plot is a writer's worst enemy. It's this big, unwieldy thing that looms over a story and needs to be addressed, though it's so often difficult to integrate with all the other bits and pieces. The best writers know how to fuse their characters and style points with a logical series of events, though most resort to hopelessly artificial devices to get the job done. Fantasy, more than any other genre, is prone to gimmicks and devices rather than more organic developments. The most popular fantasy series of all time is basically one, big Magic McGuffin Quest, made unique only because Tolkien's Ring had to be destroyed rather than obtained. In this sense, I was fairly satisfied with the premise of Legend of the Seeker. Darken Rahl is a brutal dictator, our hero is destined to kill him. That's good enough for me. Then the Boxes of Orden come into the picture.

I'm conflicted about the whole Boxes thread. On the one hand, I realize that Seeker's central plot could use a sense of urgency. After all, the prophecy merely says that the Seeker will kill Rahl one day, not necessarily soon. Without a big, game-changing Magical Thing, Richard doesn't really have a reason to rush right in with his snazzy sword as opposed to, say, carefully constructing an elaborate resistance movement over the course of years.

On the other hand, did the driving force of this urgency have to be a vague magical item? To go back to Tolkien, the Ring wasn't the one and only thing that made the villains scary, it was just the end-all to an already brutal war. The Ring is the A-Bomb. If the enemy gets it, we're all screwed, but that enemy could still destroy everything the old-fashioned way. The Boxes of Orden aren't that poignant and I really don't look forward to several episodes of chasing a prop around at the expense of human stories.

"Identity" only introduces the Boxes, though. Most of the episode is a classic place-trading adventure. A sorceress with a bone to pick with Darken Rahl gets a vision of Richard's death, so she casts an illusion on him to make everyone think he's a young man named Gryff, while Gryff is made to look like Richard. Gryff is the son of a wealthy merchant who does some anti-Rahl work on the side, so he grew up learning about the Seeker. This has given Gryff a lust for adventure, but he's being forced into an arranged marriage to a girl he's never met so his father can continue his double-dealings in safety.

This disguise plot is just unpredictable enough to be entertaining, plus it affords an opportunity to advance the Richard/Kahlan romance without forcing a resolution too quickly. Kahlan admits to Gryff (in Richard form) that Confessors can't act on their desires because their magic will overwhelm whomever they love. It's an interesting development that, unlike a lot of magic whatsit, actually makes a lot of sense.

After an awkward but strangely moving marriage thread, Richard escapes with Gryff's intended bride and meets up with the rest of the team to disrupt a D'Haran excavation. It's not until later when they escape (with no unfortunate deaths) that they discover the D'Harans have gotten their hands on one of the three Boxes of Orden. Cue foreboding music.

All in all, "Identity" was a pretty good episode. There was plenty of variety, some good action and tension, plus some meaningful progress in the iffy romance plot. It wasn't quite as good as next week's episode, but it does the job just fine.