Highlander (TV Series) Free Fall (1992) User Reviews

weirdly funny when you know "they" had to have rock...

[jtsjtssmokey-703-366973 · 7/10 · 3 March 2014]

No, not one of my favorite epis, but hey they were getting feet wet so to speak and were told rock royalty had to be apart of the show (umm acting chops or not, there was 1 that wowed us, no need to name but hey its 90s cheesiness and this is one the those shows I liked).

The other reviewer had the basics in his review and seemed he or she really didn't like it. No she wasn't a actress, think I read she just did this for fun, and hey why not, I have seen a lot worst, if you can even finish.

First female immortal and one Mac didn't kill, Richie had feelings for her, though wonder how season 5 Richie might have felt...

I remember I love Rock and Role, and a friend and I well singing it in our elementary school, usually at top volume, an a few of her other songs so maybe its that old age creepin up on me in memory...

happy watching

Duncan's Katana No Goof

[nickknightforever · 6/10 · 15 June 2019]

Another review titled Goof says that we learn the truth about how Duncan received his Katana in Season 3 Episode 1 which was made after this episode. Being early days for the show there probably wasn't an established timeline for Duncan's past and how he received the katana. The episode is alright could of been better but also could of been worse. A better episode in my opinion is Turnabout from season 2 guest starring Geraint Wyn Davies who later co-starred with Adrian Paul in the tv series Tracker.

Did Richie already know that he would become immortal?

[danrs000008 · 6/10 · 1 August 2020]

When Richie was talking to Tessa concerning Felicia, Richie says "I'm not worried about what happens next month or next year, I have all the time in the world, not like you". After hearing Richie say this it made me wonder if he already knew that he would one day become an immortal. If he did not know, then I don't understand why he made the statement about having all the time in the world. And by the way, I thought Richie was being rather hateful in talking to Tessa in this manner. I always loved Tessa and I hated it when Alexandra Vandernoot left the show in season 2.

Joy of Joan

[zeppo-2 · 1 February 2006]

This episode depends very much on how attractive you find Joan Jett, the former lead singer of the 'Runaways,' and solo singer in her own right with her group, the 'Blackhearts.' The anthem, 'I love rock & roll' is a classic of her generation.

Joan wanders into the story as her first group sing, 'Cherry Bomb' as backing music, sadly, it goes downhill from there. There's a gratuitous scene with her in just a tight, skimpy, black camisole/teddy but that can't hide the poorness of the actual episode. As yet more immortals fight over who has the right to be 'the Only One.' For a small clan, there's seems to be an awful lot of these immortals...Joan is yet another one and is a wolf in sexy clothing as she tries to seduce Ritchie over to the 'dark side.'Who seems to be enjoying the journey very much! Surviving an final sword encounter with Duncan, seems to indicate her to be a returning character.

Joan is no actress but then again, neither is anyone else in this, so, it doesn't really show that much. Joan's New Jersey accent is surreal to hear alongside Duncan & Tessa's attempts at French tinged English.

As mentioned, if you like Joan Jett and find her tom-boy, bad girl look an attraction, then it's worth a watch. For everybody else, it's very run of the mill, TV series grist to the mill fodder.

Goof

[cadoddinga · 6/10 · 27 April 2018]

McCloud tells Felecia that his katana was given him by a clansman, and is "a family heirloom ". However we learn in episode 1of season 3 that the true story behind his katana his very different, and much more interesting.

Free Fall. A story that plays with our expectations...

[David_del_Real_Reviews_in_IMDb · 9/10 · 7 December 2017]

FREE FALL

A Story that Plays with Our Expectations...

------- ------- ------- -------

With FREE FALL we have a story where a villain careful plans the way to approach her objective and a plot that plays a lot with our expectations, as the tough man that had more or less the appearance of being a villain, was a good man and the woman that seemed innocent and needing guidance was an extremely cold and ruthless villain. Actually, in a sense, she's like the female version of Slan Quince, first episode's villain as they both like to attack indirectly at first, hurting what a person loves more before any direct attack.

I think it was much easier for the fans of Joan Jett to guess that her character, Felicia, was or would become a villain judging by the way she looks when she sings; her tough appearance makes only natural (IMO) to imagine her as an interesting villain. In my case,(I didn't know who she was before the episode) she completely fooled me, I totally bought her "innocent woman with amnesia" story and her attraction towards Richie, which could actually have been not totally false, as she would maybe be the first, but never the last villainess in the Highlander series, to use an authentic feeling of attraction to make her story (or the lack of it) more believable.

Some details that you may notice on a second watch (or at least when you have already seen the full episode) are: Being Felicia an immortal that is why she didn't allow Richie to see her wound as it'd have very probably already healed if the wound ever existed, and the blood was most probably fake blood. Also, that is why she had so much care to put Richie's card somewhere it could be found after her jump, so that they'd contact Duncan and Richie afterwards...

Thanks for reading.

IMDb Review written by David del Real.

December 2017.

Joan Jett not very good here. Weak story. I didn't like Richie's attitude.

[reb-warrior · 5/10 · 6 March 2020]

Joan Jett plays Felicia, an immortal who is trying to fool the gang into believing she's a new immortal in order to gain their trust. She wants to kill Tessa in order to defeat a devastated Duncan in battle, thinking she'll have an advantage.

Richie has the hots for her and actually plans on leaving with her. I didn't like it when Richie said to Tessa when she warned him about her breaking his heart, that he didn't care, he had all the time in the world, unlike Tessa, implying Tessa was getting older than Duncan. It just seemed so out of character for him to be so cruel.

I love Joan Jett. I love her music. I thought she was pretty good in other roles. But here I found her acting weak. She doesn't get into her character. It seems like she's just playing herself. In the flashback, her French accent is pretty bad.

I didn't care about Felicia and Devereux's flashbacks. I don't care about these people. It wasn't interesting to me. I found Felicia's plan kind of dumb. Duncan fought in many wars, lost many people he loved but always managed to fight.

How do immortals know of each other? Felicia knew who Duncan was, and so did Devereux even though neither of them had ever met Duncan before. This comes up in other episodes, "I heard so-and-so was in town," "Methos is a legend." A lot of them seem to know of each other without ever meeting. Is there a club for immortals where they go and gossip about each other? Do they have their own information highway? It's just an odd thing where they seem to know about other immortals without meeting them.

Someone said in the reviews that in this episode there is a goof because Duncan said Conner gave him his sword. Whereas in season 3 episode 1, 'The Samurai,' it's revealed that Hideo Koto gave him the sword. This is not a goof. The Samurai episode is actually the goof because it came after. Therefore in season three, they weren't consistent with previous episodes. The Samurai episode is really good, and I liked that version better especially since we never got a version about Connor. But again, not a goof in this episode.

In the end Duncan and Felicia fight, but Richie stopped him from killing her. I found the story weak and gave the episode a 5/10

Richie Ruins It

[Johnny_West · 3/10 · 11 February 2021]

The incredibly annoying Richie (Stan Kirsh) is the lead character in this underwhelming episode. Joan Jett is the guest star. I was a fan of hers back in the day, and saw her in concert. She looked a lot more petite when I saw her live. In this episode, maybe she had been bulking up, but she looks very manly, and her voice is totally man-like.

I had never watched Highlander when it was on TV, because I could not fast-forward through Richie's scenes. Now I can, so I started watching it from the first episode. Richie is the worst combination of annoying characteristics. First of all, he has a big mouth and a bad attitude, but he is a total wimp, so he has to rely on Duncan MacLeod to back up his mouth. Secondly, he is a no-talent vagrant bum who is living off Duncan's charity, yet he is always mouthing off to Duncan. Thirdly, he is always creating problems and expecting MacLeod to take care of them. It never made any sense as to why this useless character was on the show. Richie is a drag on almost every episode he is in.

This time, Joan Jett targets Richie in order to get into the home of MacLeod. Since Richie is a moron, he immediately falls in love with the most masculine woman that he has ever met. Needless to say, it all ends badly for Richie, and MacLeod has to step in. The acting by Joan Jett is wooden at best. It is hard to watch her and Richie together, since they have to be one of the worst pair of actors that were ever filmed. The story is predictable, down to the point where Richie asks MacLeod for a personal favor.

What's the point?

[skteosk · 5/10 · 3 March 2024]

A distressed woman comes into the shop and meets Richie, before throwing herself off a tall building. When her body disappears, Duncan and company conclude she is a recently activated immortal. But who's the moody long-haired bloke following her around?

The first part of this episode is the best of it. Joan Jett does well at portraying Felicia's apparent confusion and makes a believable ingenue. Which is fortunate, because the regulars are all pretty unlikable here. Richie just comes across as creepy and sleazy, cracking on to an apparently emotionally distressed woman the moment he sees her and not really changing mood for the rest of the episode. Duncan and Tessa meanwhile are in a permanent bad mood, snapping at everyone without any real justification. When Tessa says Duncan won't want a complete stranger staying with them, I wondered what she thinks Richie was. (Richie claims to have worked for Duncan for six months here. Either he's bigging himself up to Felicia or these five episodes have covered a lot of time.)

But once we got the reveal that Felicia is no innocent but the Evil Immortal of the Week, it basically becomes a shaggy dog story without an ending, as we wait an age for the characters to catch up. By the end, quite a few good people are dead one way or another, without any payoff at all as Duncan decides to let one of the vilest villains he'll encounter off with nothing more than a lecture because...Richie fancies her? Were the show expecting a return and never got around to it? (I hear Joan Jett was a big deal, but I don't know anything about her other than that she's in this episode.)

I suspect the show's makers realised they screwed up with this, so tried to use the DVD extras to rewrite the episode and turn Felicia into a tragic figure who only murders defenceless women and children because they deserve it. This is spectacularly distasteful and doesn't remotely match the episode, so best to just ignore it. Actually, best to pretend that, since the episode ends with Duncan clearly stopping and waiting just a few paces from where Felicia's lying dead, that he went back and took her head once Richie wasn't looking.

Our first female Immortal, and the first time we see someone other than MacLeod receive a quickening in the series. There's still an awful lot of soon-to-be-ignored mythology, as Duncan continues to blather about the Gathering and claims there's a set time for someone to be activated as an Immortal. We get a new police officer character (this one will be back next episode), who has decided by the end of the episode that Felicia is the one beheading people all over town.