It’s taking me longer to get around to writing these. Episode 5 should actually just be finishing on air as I start this, so I’d say this is officially late.  Considering that I didn’t think I’d make it this far, we’ll just view everything from here out as bonus.

Episode 4, Raising Hell. Sounds like it will be full of action. And look at this screenshot Hulu is using for the episode. FIERCE.

If you remember, we left off with Simon drooling over Clary’s throbbing neck pulse. Doesn’t that sound hot? This one starts with Clary dreaming of losing her memories I guess, though she’s rolling around like she’s doing interpretative dance in her bed. When she wakes with a start, she sees Jace sitting with her. Except it’s actually Simon. Awesome. I’m glad we’re starting with the love triangle nonsense right off the bat.

Simon has been in the infirmary of the Institute, except from the looks of things, they don’t even know how to clean a simple cut. Clary tells him again how he’s all she has left, and Jace is conveniently hovering outside her door listening. Always a sign of a worthy romance. You have two amazing options here Clary.

We go over whether Jace is trustworthy again.  Clary rambles on in contradictory statements for a while. “I need to know who I really am. I want to put all of this behind me. Maybe I’ll remember where my mom hid the cup. I’m so lost.”  You said it sister. But it’s true, her mom is missing because of this lost cup, so we might as well try to find it.

“Start with what we know. We know that dreams are remnants of memories.” Do we? I mean, sure, lots of them do pull from real life, but I’m fairly certain my reoccurring nightmare about the vampires, werewolves, and mummies taking over the world was not pulling from anything my 6 year old brain had encountered. Regardless, they remember that Magnus Bane took her memories, and suddenly they have their “first real lead.”  We’ll just disregard the fact that they figured this out already in the last episode, and again in the one before that.

Simon is hallucinating blood on his lip and Camille walking up behind him, and his first thought is, “I’ve got to get out of here.” I’m not really sure how that’s the Institute’s fault, but if you want to run around unprotected where vampires can actually get to you, have at it Simon. You’re annoying anyway.

After the title sequence, we come back to Clary walking into Jace’s bedroom unannounced while he’s punching some workout thing. He doesn’t have a shirt on, and so we can see that he has a lot of muscles and no hair, which is no surprise. I think I would die of shock if they had a normal looking human male shirtless on one of these shows. This also means we get to see all of his runes.

Clary is so embarrassed, which I don’t get at all. He helpfully puts a shirt on for her so she can turn back around and actually look at him. I KNOW.  That can’t have been the first time. Though I guess if you have a 17 year old teenage crush, everything embarrasses you. What I find more interesting is the proposed architectural layout of this abandoned church. Jace’s room has glass panel walls, and through them you can see stonework and one of the cusped windows with some stained glass visible. This is actually a fairly common historic preservation approach to very old buildings/dig sites where you don’t want to restore something so much as reuse it while remembering its past. For example, here’s a picture I took while in a subway station in Athens.

You can see the archaeology there, the yellowish bits. It’s all behind glass walls very similar to Jace’s room. I think this is pretty cool set design. It serves the show in that the outside of the building is meant to look abandoned, and so the actual wall is left as is, while also demonstrating real life historic reuse techniques.

I also did some digging and discovered the outside shots of the Institute are actually the Metropolitan United Church of Toronto, a lovely Gothic church that’s still fully in use today. So I guess if you’re super romantic about this show, you could go get married there or something.

  

 

I can’t find any evidence that the window in the shot above (with Jace) exists in this church though. However, I did find a full shot of it being built, thanks to shadowhunterstv.com. I’ve never seen a design exactly like this, but you can tell that it takes many elements from traditional Gothic windows.

 

Okay, back to the show. Sorry, I actually got interested in something there for a minute.

Jace and Clary have a back and forth about trusting Simon (sound familiar yet?whether Clary’s memories will be useful, whether she’s worth the people risking their lives for her. Typical teenage drama stuff.  Isabelle barges in to tell them the “mundie” is leaving. She has a weird braid across the back of her head, layered over only about 3 inches of space before disappearing again under her hair. Someone must have decided it looked dumb, because a second later, in the same scene, it’s gone.

Simon has decided they’re not safe there, where all the superhero powered people and weapons are, the ones that just kept him from being eaten by a vampire. He actupally calls Jace “Captain America” like it’s an insult, and I guess if Jace were a goody goody it might be. Otherwise Captain America is pretty cool. He also challenges Jace with the ever mature, “Come at me bro!” Seriously Simon. Get it together. He decides he can protect his family, and Clary, and himself, even though he’s demonstrated all of that is untrue. So he leaves, and Clary stays.

The whole Rescue Ranger team has gather around a table in front of one of those massive screens that haven’t been super helpful thus far. They’re just using it to look at pictures of Magnus Bane throughout his 300+ years, a la Doctor Who. Hodge is flicking his finger upwards over the tablet controlling the tv in the dumbest way possible. They can’t even make technology we actually have look normal and cool. Clary refers to him as the “Downworld’s David Guetta,” and after a quick GIS, I’m just confused. [not surprised, he’s a musician – B.]

There’s more stupid rune burning from Hodge, and more terrible technology use from Isabelle, but they decide to lure Magnus out of hiding from Valentine by attending a rave. Apparently it’s a big deal. Their bait is a necklace that alerts its wearing to the presence of demons; he had given it to his lover at the time, Camille. Yeah, that Camille. They’re all super impressed with it, but I think it looks super fake and ugly. That might be my lack of class coming out, I don’t know.

Speaking of Valentine, he’s back after being absent all of episode 3.  There are mostly invisible people in his lair, except for their eyes which are strangely obvious. He has the guy that Dot stabbed with a needle in episode 2 blow some kind of green smoke on the Clave scouts that are hiding there, which somehow kills both them and the guy who did it. I don’t understand, but apparently there was some kind of mutation from whatever was in that syringe. Valentine stabs him with the light sword anyway. I don’t know what’s going on. I did notice that he also has that burned circle rune on his neck though, which seems weird considering everyone thought he died in a house fire and the revolt fell apart. I must either be mis-remembering something from the book, or the show is making stuff up again. He tells the other lackey, “Gather the dead Seelies. Their blood could be interesting.”  We start to get a weird idea of what those unseen creatures in cages and the various syringes were for from earlier episodes.

The other real adult in the show, Luke, also comes back for this one. His partner seems to know who/what he is, and is warning him that his captain is keeping a closer eye on him now that those two witnesses are dead. “Get your act together Luke. Our people need you to keep your shield.”  “If you want me to get the Cup so badly, I need to get Clary alone.”  They’re really painting him as a shifty character here.

Isabelle decides to dress Clary for the party, no surprise there. She gives her a very tight, small black dress, also no surprise. I’m actually more surprised that the first thing she picked up was pink and sparkly and full of tulle.  “You’re so lucky to have such a flat chest. I can never wear that without a bra.” Jace walks in and does some obvious up and down staring, but then they act all embarrassed to be around each other after Isabelle makes an excuse to leave. He gives Clary a “seraph dagger”, which is a smaller light sword.

Elias, a warlock with little forehead horns, doesn’t want Magnus to leave their hideout because it’s too dangerous. Magnus is pretty sure he’s super badass though, and just tells them to all maintain the protective wards until he gets back.

Isabelle finds Alec going over his arrows. He has not dressed for this party. She’s pretty annoyed that he’s not excited about it. As usual, Alec is mad they’re helping Clary, because she’s Valentine’s daughter and everything surrounding her is crap. He’s not wrong. She’s been a cannonball of chaos since she showed up. Ranting cheered him up a little bit though. She warns him to stop bottling things up before he explodes.

Simon gets home, closes all of his blinds because of the vampire thing, and falls into bed just as Maureen storms into his room. Was she just hanging out there waiting for him? He missed rehearsal last night and didn’t call her. He has an excuse about schoolwork, but of course his mom comes in and moms things up. “If you’re going to be out with Clary all night, one of you has to have a phone.” Hahaha, whoops. Maureen’s really only worried that he might be dating Clary, but he admits they’re not. She tells him she’d like to date him, gets flustered, bumps into a picture breaking the glass, and things get weird. There’s a drop of blood on the glass where she cut her finger, and she leaves angry because he’s just staring at it and not answering her. Can you guess what happens next? Yeah, he tasted it.

Apparently they’re back at the club where Jace stole the flying motorcycle; he said that was “vampire night.” There’s stupid banter and sex jokes about Isabelle admiring men’s jewels in reference to the necklace. Inside, people are dancing in a way that does not entice me to ever attend a rave myself.  They’re saying his name awfully loud for a group of people that claim to care whether or not Valentine shows up. Magnus checks that the necklace is authentic, and reads an inscription on the back that they actually showed us wasn’t there. I don’t think anyone proofs this show at all.

Magnus fed Clary’s memories to a “memory demon” so Valentine couldn’t torture the location of the cup out of him. Clary finds out that Dot is dead, and her acting skills are pushed a little too far. But then Magnus does some cool magic to open a portal to his hideout and so I was distracted from her. She refuses to go with him, but then Alec kills someone approaching them with a knife. Magnus does a double take when he sees Alec, which is adorable, but then runs through the portal to escape Valentine’s men.

Clary manages to keep a ring from his finger where she was grasping his hand as he left. She has a bit of a temper tantrum outside, but Jace can use it to track Magnus. Except “the signal isn’t strong enough,” so they have to do “parabatai tracking.” Clary says, “This whole parabatai thing seems oddly intimate if you ask me,” which is funny, because they’re making googly eyes at each other while holding hands. They keep holding and then not holding weapons, and I’m not sure where they’re being stashed from moment to moment…

They get into Magnus’ lair, but it’s already been infiltrated. He’s fighting a shadowhunter who mentions killing Elias and getting his warlock mark. They’re glossing over this a bit, but warlocks always having a distinguishing feature that shows they’re not human. For Elias, it was the horns. Magnus has yellow cat eyes. Alec helps him kill the shadowhunter, which allows them to formally meet and stutter at each other while grinning stupidly. It’s nice to see Alec smile.

Magnus and Clary talk, and he says something about her and her mother helping people from their hearts instead of duty. He’s saying shadowhunters are stuck up assholes. He does some fancy magic that moves the entire lair. Magnus is a little over the top, but his magic is pretty cool.

Simon is trying to call Clary but she’s obviously not answering. He leaves her a message about how he’s sorry and how he hasn’t been feeling right since leaving the vampires. It’s too bad he didn’t say something when he was still with people who could actually help him. “It’s probably just the flu.”  Oh. Keep being dumb Simon.

Back to Magnus. He gives the necklace to Isabelle in thanks for their help defeating Valentine’s men, and takes the opportunity to ask her what Alec likes as gifts. Clary doesn’t have time for this flirting and wants to summon the demon now. Like, right now.

Magnus warns Clary to trust no one, not even the Clave. That includes him. He gives her a plastic sounding leather holder of colored chalks, because in order to summon the demon she has to draw a fancy pentagram on the floor. He offers his help, but she actually smirks and says, “I got this.” That really annoyed me for some reason.

Jace has to give her a rune because the Memory Demon is a Great Demon. “The rune will be far more powerful than anything you’ve faced so far.” I don’t know what this rune is for, they never bother to tell us. She does scream like a horror movie while he puts it on though.

I have a really hard time believing that she drew that freehand and little enough time has passed that she doesn’t look a bit disheveled. Then again, she wakes up with unsmudged mascara and is supposed to be a magic artist, so maybe I should just go with it.  Magnus compares her to Michelangelo, and mentions he was great in bed while looking pointedly at Alec. Alec is still pretending to not understand what’s happening.

They’re supposed to take their rightful place on the pentagram, but Clary is confused and needs help. Apparently the star point 3 inches from her feet was too hard to find. They’re told they can’t let go of each other’s hands no matter what, which means you know someone will. They also make it super dramatic when they each link up. Or at least, it’s supposed to be, and Isabelle even laughs at them for it, but it’s really unimpressive. Magnus knows that the demon will expect payment, but says he doesn’t know what it will be.

Isabelle seems freaked out that her necklace is pulsing. The one that is supposed to warn her when demons are near. When she’s summoning a demon. As flippant as she is, and as obvious as the necklace lighting up should be, she should have said, “Oh look, it works!” But I guess we’re supposed to be buckling down for the drama now.

For payment, they have to give up a memory of whoever they love the most. Isabelle gives Alec, Clary gives her mother, and then Alec gives Jace. Jace looks confused, and Alec freaks out. They’re parabatai, this shouldn’t be that weird. But Alec makes it weird, and Isabelle tries to reassure him, but he’s really super not ready to come out. Instead, he breaks the circle and the demon gets free. Magnus is trying to contain him, but it grabs Jace. Alec and Isabelle try to pull him free, but they’re failing. Her options are let the demon take Jace, or kill the demon and lose her memories forever. The moment she stabs it is when we get that image of her being fierce that I first posted, though it loses a little of its effect when she’s wobbling on four inch heels and keeping her knees together because her dress is uncomfortably short. Hopefully for her own grace, they’ll let her fight in her own clothes next time.

Clary: Is he going to be alright?
Magnus: I don’t know. Does he normally just lay like that without moving?

She gives him a really dirty look, but considering I have zero emotional attachment to these characters, I found it funny.  They keep telling him to get up until he wakes up.

Magnus: There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Alec.
Alec: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Magnus: You will.

After what looks like a shower and a change of clothes, which is oddly a zip up hoodie that isn’t fully zipped and no shirt underneath, Jace checks on Clary. He compliments himself by telling her she must have had a great sword teacher. When he leaves, she starts trying to call Simon, but now he’s not answering because he’s outside the Hotel DuMort, aka Camille’s lair. She decides to get ready for bed, and stops to touch her ridiculously huge rock necklace. When it glows and shows her her mother, Valentine is leaning over her, and says, “Nice to see you Clary. You want your mother? GIVE ME THE CUP.” She throws the necklace on the bed with the weakest arm I’ve ever seen. And that flippant gesture is our dramatic ending.