Summary
The Witcher Season 4 becomes fairly inert in “The Joy of Cooking”, which boasts some character-driven pleasures and a couple of great monologues but can’t escape the feeling that it’s running in place.
Not to get all philosophical on anyone, but sometimes resting is the quickest way to get somewhere. But this is a difficult concept to get across in a TV series. The Witcher has been trying it all throughout Season 4, to mixed effect, since Geralt doesn’t have time to rest and, frankly, neither do we with so much going on. But his leg is badly wounded and, following their daring escape from the Redanian camp, Jaskier’s badly concussed. Since getting to Nilfgaard means fording a river that isn’t being especially accommodating, Episode 5, “The Joy Of Cooking” seems like a good time for a break.
What this amounts to is storytime around the campfire. Character-building. Zoltan and Yarpen, who share a history, share a capsule summary of it that reveals most of their antipathy is rooted in misunderstanding and allows them to repair their relationship. Milva has a traumatic background that she unburdens herself of. Cahir continues to lurk, not as welcome as the others, but a bit more tolerated by Geralt since he reveals that he, too, has been having weird dreams about Ciri fighting big cats infected with spindly parasites.
Oh, and naturally, we get a brief song from Jaskier. But this one segues into an extravagant costumed song-and-dance number that Geralt finds himself reluctantly involved in. It’s a nice moment of levity, and it’ll appeal to a certain subset of the fanbase, but it mostly made me think that this show perhaps has too much time on its hands, given how serious events are elsewhere, which is part of what I was moaning about in the review. The song goes on for ages as well.
But the arrival of Regis really enlivens all this. With the revelation that he’s really a vampire, the character has taken on a different, more menacing contour, and Laurence Fishburne leans into it really well. Even his offers to treat Jaskier and Geralt’s wounds and spice up the stew with some fresh herbs have the tinge of a threat, even though he means well. There’s an extended animated sequence detailing his backstory, narrated by Fishburne, that is really good, so much better than the silly song and dance that it beggars belief they occur back to back in the same episode.
And just like that, Regis is back among the others, which I’m thankful for since he’s so much more compelling than everyone else. But Cahir gives him a run for his money. The storytime gimmick of “The Joy of Cooking” gives him the opportunity to share his own backstory, embellished through flashbacks, explaining how he was roped into the service of the Nilfgaardian Empire despite not being Nilfgaardian, largely out of loyalty to Duny, the anthropomorphic hedgehog form of Emhyr that you hopefully remember from a couple of seasons back. This is pretty important, since it finally clues Geralt in to something we already knew — if Duny was Emhyr, that means Emhyr is trying to marry his own daughter and sire an heir. Cahir clarifies that Vilgefortz has convinced Emhyr that his destiny is to fulfil Ithlinne’s prophecy.
You can appreciate that this chafes rather awkwardly against the political machinations in The Witcher Season 4, Episode 5. Skellen, for instance, is trying to unseat Emperor Emhyr, a plan that is contingent on the Continent not finding out that his impending marriage to “Ciri” is fake. This is important, since through a random side character from Season 3, Radovid figures out that Vilgefortz duped Emhyr with an imposter, and word travels quickly thanks to the loose lips of Redanian officials.
To keep Teryn on-side, Skellen gives her a great monologue about acting that is probably the single best stretch of dialogue and performance in the season thus far, and it pains me that Skellen has been given so little to do based on how compelling he is, and how gamely James Purefoy commits to the role. In such a transitional chapter largely about everyone becoming best friends, Skellen is a nice reminder that pretty serious business is afoot, and that we should probably get back to it.
“The Joy of Cooking” does kindly end on a note of foreboding, though. Even while Geralt is thanking all of his diverse friends for being there for him, Vilgefortz is torturing Fringilla in a variety of supremely violating ways to compel her to give up where Yen and the other mages are hiding out. And she does. Everyone might have gotten the rest they needed for now, but something tells me that there won’t be any time for that in the final three episodes.
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