Lost Girl

There are people in this world that watch Burn Notice or Suits or White Collar and rave about them, but you're like, "Dude, I don't watch shows on USA or whatever. Move along." But those shows have huge fan bases and viewers love them! The problem is they're just not the type of thing people will check out based on a recommendation. A person needs to discover them on their own, and then they will understand. This is how I feel about SyFy shows. They're my Suits! I love them, and I feel like everyone should watch them, but I know very few people will take my recommendation of a SyFy show seriously. (It doesn't help that the network stupidly changed their name from SciFi to SyFy. WTF, guys?) So, with the expected prejudice about SyFy shows in mind, I'm going to recommend two TV shows this week. Both are on SyFy, both are awesome, and both are worth your attention. Trust me! I would never endorse anything less than amazeballs.

Recently I had kind of a lost weekend. My heater broke, so I spent the weekend in bed, under a bunch of covers, with a heating pad. The rest of my house was just too chilly. Yes, I live in Los Angeles, but it gets chilly here too, OKAY?! Plus, I'm a huge wuss when it comes to temperature changes. Basically I like it to be 70 degrees and anything else is unbearable. My inability to tolerate different temperatures is so ridiculous, I annoy even myself. Anyway, I was in bed, and I was kind of depressed, and I didn't have anything to do. To Netflix! I had kept Lost Girl in my queue for a few weeks, and I decided to finally bite the bullet and give it a shot. And... I LOVE IT SO MUCH MARRY ME LOST GIRL.

Lost Girl is a fantasy procedural from Canada that centers on a succubus named Bo. Bo accidentally sexed her first boyfriend to death when she was 18, and she's been on the run ever since. She lives like a nomad, moving from place to place after she gets too hungry for sexy energy and kills someone in her current locale. In the pilot Bo saves a young girl named Kenzi from a date rapist and leaves his corpse in an elevator. The body is found by the local Fae authorities and Bo is discovered. Bo didn't know anything about herself before the local Fae intervened. She didn't even know she was a succubus, or that succubi were a kind of Fae. In the Lost Girl world, Fae is kind of an all-encompassing term for supernatural beings. Fae include sirens, succubi, wolf-shifters (Jacob Black is Fae!), goblins, and all kinds of other creatures-of-the-week.

The Fae find it hard to believe that Bo has been a clueless free agent all this time. After all, most Fae are raised learning all about Fae type stuff, and then when they're 16 they choose to either join the Light Fae or the Dark Fae (*cough*Beautiful Creatures*cough*). Now that Bo is in town she needs to align with either the Light or the Dark, but Bo, being the rebel she is, chooses no side (actually she "chooses humans," but to the Fae that's not a thing, so she's just unaffiliated). Because Bo is neither Light nor Dark, she can move through the Fae world unrestricted. (Light Fae cannot enter Dark Fae territory, and vice versa.) Bo become a private investigator of sorts, solving Fae problems for those who cannot help themselves because of their alliances to either side.

Of course there are secrets, romances, friendships, and revelations, in addition to the case of the week. Bo ends up living with Kenzi, who becomes her human sidekick, in a crack den they refer to as "The Clubhouse." Bo also befriends Trick, the bartender of The Dal (the Cheers of the Fae world), who has more secrets than anyone. She and Kenzi do their PI work with the help of Dyson (a wolf-shifter and total hottie) and Hale (a siren, second hottie in command) who work as detectives in the human world in order to cover up Fae crimes. Dyson and Bo have a completely hot relationship, which brings me to the good stuff: SEX.

I'd call Lost Girl Canadian True Blood Lite. There's supernatural stuff, and there's sex galore, but it's not on the same level as True Blood. After all, this is a basic cable show. But, because it's Canadian, they get away with more than their US counterparts. Expect copious side-boob, suggestive (and blatantly suggestive) language, an above average amount of gay stuff, they get to say "shit" (and do it often), and, oh, sex on sex (There used to be a link to a sexy gif here, but I had to remove it because I got an email from Google Ads telling me that they refused to advertise on websites contained pornography. So if that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is). After all, Bo is a succubus, and so she feeds off sexual energy. This is where Dyson comes in. See, Bo will kill a human if she has sex with them. They're just too weak, and she can't control her hunger. But Dyson is Fae, so he can take some power banging. He initially starts hooking up with Bo to help her heal her wounds after she gets into scraps while on the job, but they totally love each other and things get serious. You will ship these two so freaking hard (and, spoiler alert, at the end of season one you will have your heart flattened with a supernatural waffle stomper). (To make matters worse, in season two a lass from Dyson's past shows up and you will be like, "THIS. BITCH.")

There's also Lauren, who's a human doctor working for the Fae. She has the hots for Bo, and they end up sleeping together, but then Lauren goes and mucks it up and leaves Bo with a big case of the sads. Who cares, though? Bo and Dyson are MFEO. Look, I LOVE LOVE LOVE that there's a love triangle where a woman loves both a man and a woman. It's 2013 and it's about damn time, Television. But Lauren is so tragically boring. Why couldn't they have made her an awesome character and made my heart split in two between Lauren and Dyson, just like Bo's does? As it is, I just don't get Lauren. Just like Kenzi, I am solidly on Team Dyson, T-shirts and all.

There's obviously more to the show, but I'll leave my summary at that. However, there are a few observations I'd like to point out:

Anna Silk, who plays Bo, is kind of amazing. She has the face of Kate Beckinsale and the voice of Jennifer Garner, yet manages to stand out as her own person. She plays a pretty convincing succubus, although sometimes I wish we could get a better feel for the undeniable sexual attraction people have to her. She also serves push-up bra realness 24/7, to the point where I often worry about nip slips. Most of all, she plays a 28 year old when she herself is almost 40, and that deserves MAJOR props. Damn, girl.

Trick (Rick Howland) has perhaps the most soulful eyes you've ever seen.

Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) could easily have been a sidekick, but she Ksenia Solo makes her stand out as her own compelling character. I predict great things for Solo in the future. 

Dyson is played by Kris Holden-Ried, who you may remember as Sean's older brother on Degrassi, or that guy from The Tudors. He's incredibly attractive, so much so that he can wear some ridiculous costumes on Lost Girl and still be totally hot. He wears these vests that are like, lace up leather, and I'm like, "Fine. Good. This will work until you take your shirt off again." And then he wore this jacket that was just NO, but I was still like, "YES." and THEN there was a flashback to him having these anemic little dreads, and, I don't know, I still would. DYSON IS MAGIC.

Being a SyFy show, Lost Girl has super corny lines (it doesn't help that many episode titles are Fae puns), and can get a little schlocky. But the characters are well developed and interesting, and if you're a fan of fantasy there's quite an extensive Fae mythology. Plus, the first two seasons (35 episodes total) are on Netflix Instant, and the third season is currently airing on SyFy. I'm well into the second season now, and I can't wait to catch up. It seems a majority of the fandom ships Lauren and Bo (Doccubus) but whatevs because Lauen is boring and BO AND DYSON 4EVA.

(And in case you don't believe me, Maureen Ryan wrote on HuffPo that Lost Girl is "the best show you're not watching.")

(PLUS! Season 2 Episode 9 is a body swapping episode, which, if you remember, is my favorite TV trope of all time. Good on ya, Lost Girl!)

Lost Girl: Seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix Instant, season 3 currently airing in the US on SyFy