LEXX: Mort

Stan, Xev and Kai hide out in Mort's mortuary from the police after the shootings in Prime Ridge, little realizing that Mort sees Kai as the answer to his prayers.

You know, I was going to give this episode half marks, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. Once again it's the old LEXX problem of not having enough plot to go round, and once the crew is ensconced in the mortuary you wonder how on Earth an entire episode can be built around them being there. The simple truth is, it can't. There's only really one story you can do here, and that's a Frankenstein-style reanimation one.

The guy who plays Mort is pretty good, creepy but also (in a slightly unusual way) with the right intentions. He's only doing what he's doing for love, even if rebuilding his ideal woman when only her head survived a nasty tractor accident is a little on the warped side. Considering how undeniably horrible this is, and the episode doesn't flinch from showing Didi's half-completed body, it's a good piece of acting that allows the audience to actually feel sympathetic for poor old Mort.

Beyond that it's business as usual. The crew tries to get help from 790, who will once more only obey the incapacitated Kai and they do a fair amount of running around the mortuary trying to get Kai well enough to help without anything much happening. Strong character drama it isn't. Xev gets to do her love slave thing and seduce a local cop and the only thing that adds a little amusement to proceedings is the attitude of Stan and Xev to the relatives of Mort's corpses, which is terribly inappropriate and quite funny.

It's really quite grotesque, stomach-churning in places, but not really that wonderful an episode.

**

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