It wasn't until this week's episode of Legend of the Seeker that I really came to terms with the second season's apparent phobia of its main plot. The quest for the Stone of Tears is ostensibly more straightforward than Season 1's mission to kill Darken Rahl, which presents the show's writers with a unique problem. The quest could conceivably take just a single episode, but stretching it out with various road blocks seems increasingly artificial. Instead, they've decided to fill the episode order with surprisingly deep discussions of the main philosophical issues of the series. In a story that is chiefly concerned with the nature of capital letter Good and Evil, this format works rather well. In "Vengeance" our protagonists explore the nebulous nature of culpability and how concepts like right and wrong change over time.

This week's episode probably has Sword of Truth purists up in arms. Seeker's writers decided to completely diverge from Terry Goodkind's original take on Panis Rahl, the tyrant father of Darken Rahl and Richard the Seeker. In short, the version of Panis depicted in the novel Debt of Bones was a garden-variety villain who served as a murderous foil to a young Zedd and he died at the end of the book as all proper bad guys do. The Panis we get in "Vengeance" (played by guest star John Rhys-Davies) is an altogether different creation, a decent man who was driven to extremes for sympathetic reasons and has been spending the better part of the past two decades hiding from the many people who have a reason to kill him. Chief among those people is his deceased-but-active son Darken Rahl.

Upon receiving news that Panis is still alive, the Zorander brothers team up for some family revenge since Panis killed their father all those years ago. The back story is complicated enough that I'd rather not go into details, but suffice it to say that it was a tragedy of partial information for all parties involved. What's important to note is that Zedd used his magic to make the birth of Darken Rahl possible and that Panis leads Richard to a well-hidden scroll that is more or less an instruction manual for the Stone of Tears. Of course, Richard loses the scroll within the first thirty seconds of holding it, but that was all part of Darken Rahl's plan. Maybe it's just his gentle nature, but if I were Richard I would be the most paranoid guy in the world. I would assume that everything is a complex scheme hatched by my enemies. Field trip to a Great Wall replica for a magic scroll? Evil scheme. Detour on the road? Totally a scheme. Souffle for dinner? Just to be safe, let's call it a scheme.

This episode filled in a lot of interesting back story and it put a fine point on the complexity of Seeker's moral tone. Also, I'm always happy to see scenes with Young Zedd. Seriously, I would watch the ever-living hell out of a show devoted to the exploits of a cocky, lustful Zorander youth.

Best Moment: Cara making fun of Richard for being a magical Dudley Do-Right. It's nice to have a character who says what all us viewers are thinking.

Notes: The casting on this show is sometimes uncanny. The actors they got to play the young Zorander brothers both looked and sounded like their older counterparts and I wouldn't be surprised if the young and old (true-face) Panis were played by two different people.

Episode Rating: 4.9/5- I'm taking a little bit off because the fight scene at the end was a bit sloppy, especially the obvious wire-fu. Otherwise, it was an interesting episode with plenty of character development and rich pathos.