Guys, before we get any deeper into Reign Season 1 Episode 18, we have to talk about something important. We need to talk about the viper in the suitcase.

I don't know that I have ever loved anything on this beautiful, cuckoo-bananas show more than I have loved the viper in the suitcase - and I am saying that after watching an episode that featured King Henry tied up and wearing leather trousers.

I liked the viper THAT much. It was more than just delightfully demented (but. I mean, where is Queen Catherine keeping all her spare vipers so that she can get one on such short notice?).

Watch Reign Season 1 Episode 18 Online

The viper in the suitcase was a great metaphor for everything that's wonderful about Reign, which lives and thrives by its own deranged logic, and somehow makes it all seem perfectly natural.  #sixvipersandamovie

I know there was a lot of conspiracy and international intrigue in this episode, but once again, I could barely focus on it due to all the sexual perversion, attempted murder-by-reptile and Taming of the Shrew-style tension between Bash-Kenna (which, one again, led to all the best Reign quotes of the week). Where are you putting that wax, Penelope?

(My sympathies to any teenaged readers whose parents walked into the room right as that scene was going down.)

But if this hour did have a theme besides King Henry's leather pants, it was how quickly and easily we can turn into our parents if we're not careful.

Which is extra dangerous for Francis, because his parents are, you know, murderers.

The ease with which that baby-faced man-boy tortured James's footman and locked Mary up was truly troubling, and the seeming inevitability of his corruption by power a bit saddening.

Luckily, Kenna and Queen Catherine delivered some much-needed comic relief by tricking Penelope into doing weird sex stuff in front of a bishop and having her basically murdered. Like mother, like daughter!

Okay, fine, Catherine isn't her actual mother. But I've felt like she's spiritual mother for a while now - both of them are about the archest, hautiest characters found on The CW since Blair Waldorf hung up her headband.

With their withering put-down powers combined, who knows what Kenna and Catherine could get up to? They'll probably have the run of the whole damned court by next week.

Speaking of people who technically have the run of the whole damned castle...what do you think Mary's going to do after she gets out of that tower? Is this kind of treatment how one becomes someone like Queen Catherine?

And where does this all leave the court? Where does this whole mess leave France, in general? Do politics and the concerns of nations, instead of elevating us, actually turn us all into animals, reverted to our basest natures?

Also, did we just drop this whole entire "darkness" thing? Seriously? Aren't we still even a little concerned about it? It was on a murder spree as recently as two weeks ago!

And now that Olivia's gone, so is my hope that that subplot will ever be resolved. You royal jerks really don't care about the little people, do you?

Official Reign Fashion Watch: 10/10. I will follow King Henry's leather bondage trousers to the ends of the Earth.

But leather trousers alone do not a successful king make. So tell me:

Is this the end of King Henry?