MovieChat Forums > Relic Hunter (1999) Discussion > Season 2 is horrible.

Season 2 is horrible.

posted 13 years ago by I_Guard_Tanelorn
8 replies | jump to latest

This isn't the same show at all. Every ep of season one was a fun light hearted adventure. Now the episodes are more thriller/suspense based, often there's not an adventure at all, with little tomb raiding and puzzle solving. Sometimes the episode barely relates to the artifact introduced in the beginning at all. Claudia is shoe horned into every episode whether she fits or not. It's become a tedious chore getting thru these episodes. It feels like scripts for another tv show that have been hastily adapted into Relic Hunter format.

"I said no camels, that's five camels, can't you count?"

[–] I_Guard_Tanelorn 13 years ago

I just loved season 3. It sort of continued from what they did with the retooling of season 1, but drops those elements so completely that you could just forget about them and accept the new format for what it is. Love the juiced up supernatural aspect. The stories were a good deal more lively and fun, mustache twirling villains were introduced, and all in all, it was a good deal more campy. I also love how the characters are famous and well known and actually have reputations. It was also a good deal darker, with people being bumped off left and right and the stakes higher. It blew my mind when they killed off that black mercenary with a perhaps heart of gold. The danger in this season for our heroes seemed much more real. The location shoots were amazing too. I don't know how much of it was studio or not, but you really felt like you were going places!

Just a terrific show overall. Really glad I gave it a spin.

"I said no camels, that's five camels, can't you count?"

[–] fabian5 13 years ago

Season 1 and 2 were the best seasons of Relic Hunter. In season 2 you had excellent episodes like The Put Back, Dagger of Death, Last Of The Mochicas, M.I.A, Out Of The Past (where Claudia travels to Egypt to find Cleopatra's jewelry necklace with Sydney), Midnight Flight, The Executioner's Mask, The Royal Ring, Set In Stone and Deadline.

Season 3 was the weakest for Relic Hunter. In season 3, there were only perhaps only 8 good episodes made (Wages of Sydney, Sydney At Ten, The Light Of Truth, Incognito, All Choked Up, Antianeirai, Arthur's Cross and Fountain Of Youth) and 3 average to good shows such as Vampire's Kiss, Hunting with the Enemy, and Warlock of Nu Theta Phi. The other 9 or 10 shows were subpar overall.

[–] tbonesays 13 years ago

I thought the first two were okay. By 3 it seemed they recycled the same damn script every week.

[–] fabian5 13 years ago

Overall, I would rate Relic Hunter overall as 7 to 7.5 out of 10 but its quality was slowly declining in its third season. There were still a respectable number of good season 3 shows made but perhaps the producers cancelled the show at the right time. This was not, however, comparable to the third season of the original Star Trek series of the 1960's which saw its budget slashed and many key producers and writers leave that classic show. That truly was the season from hell for fans of Star Trek.

There were no production cutbacks in Relic Hunter's third and final season. It just seems as if the producers were recycling scripts as tbonesays...like they were running out of fresh new ideas. Once a while they would make a first rate episode such as 'Arthur's Cross,' 'Sydney at Ten', 'Incognito', 'Antianeirai,' 'All Choked Up' or 'Fountain of Youth' but follow it up with a bomb such as 'Women Want to Know', Pandora's Box', the really slow moving episode 'Under The Ice' and the strange and uncompelling season ender 'So Shall it Be.'

[–] FireGoddessOasis 12 years ago

omg...i loved this series..havent watched any reruns of it in forever heh. but i was curious for a while tho...what episode was it again in which there was a brother and sister ruler duo..some desert area peoples or something? just wondering. thanks :)

[–] fabian5 12 years ago

That was a season 3 Relic Hunter episode titled 'The Warlord'.

[–] FireGoddessOasis 12 years ago

awesome..ty! any sites where i can watch the whole series? youtube is rather limited. thanks again

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 5 years ago

I liked all the seasons. I think there is some good comedy in Season 2. I loved the disguises in The Put Back and Nigel discovering he has to pretend to be a demolitions expert in Dagger of Death. The kissing scene in Roman Holiday makes me laugh every time, as does almost everything in the The Reel Thing, starting with Sydney designating Claudia to advise a movie director about historical accuracy. In Out of the Past, I loved that Claudia's past life is as Cleopatra's handmaid, whereas Sydney and Nigel share a past life as....cavemen. BWAHAHAA!! And in Don't Go into the Woods, I loved the bit where they have two separate monologues but somehow manage to converge on the right answer.

Even so, I agree that Season 2 in some way does not tempt me to rewatch as much as seasons 1 and 3. Season 3 is even darker than season 2, so I don't think it's anything to do with that. I think the Season 2 episode interpretations were simpler, so even though many of those episodes are fun to watch, and were good for three or four rewatches (I just love the look on Nigel's face when he says, "I'm a demolitions expert." It cracks me up every time), I don't get more out of rewatching the way I do for seasons 1 and 3.

For season 3 in particular, on each viewing, I pick up new things that I didn't notice before. That is true even for the weaker episodes like Women Want to Know. For example, in Women Want to Know, when Nigel says, "I'm a relic hunter too," his voice has almost the same inflection as the ridiculous Stewie does when he says the exact same thing in the Season 1 episode "Etched in Stone." It's a funny callback as well as giving us some important (if slightly sad) insight into how Nigel has been affected by spending the last three years in Sydney's shadow. Season 3, in my opinion, much more forms a coherent whole than the earlier seasons, even though it's also obvious from watching it, that it was intended to create an arc lasting into a season 4.