IMHO "Kings" (1.04): Boys' night out

Last night on Kings, Queen Rose was greatly excited about her annual charity dinner and ballet performance ("First Night") until it became clear that the presence of David Shephard, now the public's darling hero, was likely to upstage King Silas.

Cool cucumber that she is, the queen has her social secretary make up a lame excuse to disinvite David from the event. Something along the lines of: "Sorry, wedon't have enough dinner napkins. We'll make you a to-go plate."

David is disappointed because it means he won't get to see his lady love, Prince Michele. And honestly, those two should get together as much as possible. To run their lines. (They don't seem to have much facility with all the high-falutin poesy the cast has to spout on this show.)

Anyhoo, when Prince Jack finds out that David won't be going to the charity dinner he bows out himself and ropes our young hero in for a night on the town.

Hurray! I'm thinking this means we'll finally get out of King Silas' stuffy royal court and out into the gritty streets of Shiloh city — Where maybe: 1) We'll find out more about Jack's closeted gay personallife; and 2) People will stop talking like they've got a Bible stuck up their butts. 

Well, one out of two ain't bad.

If you were thinking that Prince Jack is trying to bond with David by planning a night out on the town you'd be wrong. Turns out all Jack wants is to destroy David's reputation by setting him up for a public scandal.

To do this, Jack flies in David's army buddies and plies them all with alcohol and promises of easy tail. Then he has his henchman/anti-social secretary start tossing around Magnum condoms and cocaine.  

Let's get this party started!

Adding to the hijinks, Season 3 Top Model contestant Ann Markley shows up as a professional party hostess. Yay! I love it when former ANTM alums get gigs.

It seems like Ann's character and many of the other partygirls have been enlisted by the Prince to get David into a compromising position. (And having been on Top Model, Ann clearly knows something about compromising positions:

Before we get too far along David's descent into scandal, we cut back over to the royal charity benefit where King Silas receives an urgent private call from his mistress. Turns out the King's illegitimate son is gravely ill.

Silas has to slip away from the charity, pissing of the queen in the process. And she's pretty pissy — even on a good day. Silas goes to the hospital where he gives blood for his son's needed transfusion.

Back at the charity benefit, Princess Michele discovers that her calculating mother actually disinvited her would-be boyfriend David from the event. She's upset and asks her mom why she has to be such a control freak.

The queen says it's because the people of the kingdom need someone to look up to. "It's why I designed every inch of this monarchy as I did. The color of the flag down to, yes, the china so they [the people] could have something larger than life to be inspired by. Decadence. Kings! Huge and poreless!"

Er. Poreless? Obviously the queen isn't watching this showin high def.

We cut back to Jack and David's night on the town. They wind up at some sleazy club. You can tell it is sleazy because everything is drenched in red light.

From the upper balcony of the club, Prince Jack watches David canoodle with one of the party girls. His private peep show is interrupted by a male "friend" who seems overly familiar with the Prince. He asks if, like usual, they are going to be hooking up later. 

Jack rejects him abruptly and spends the rest of the night avoiding the guy. At one point he even has his goons throw the guy out onto the street.  Immediately after, Jack sort of self-destructs. He picks a fight with a goon and gets beat up — self-punishment for denying his gay inner self.

It's pretty clear that the person Prince Jack wants to be with is David. Who can blame him? That guy who followed him around all night is awfully clingy.

The episode ends the next morning. David has spent the night at Jack's bachelor pad with one of the good time party girls. No doubt Jack filmed the whole thing.

I'll give this episode a solid C. It was certainly better than last week's debacle, but still nowhere near as good as the series premiere.

What do other AfterElton.com readers think of this episode? This series?