Posts Tagged animation

Gargoyles – “The Price/Revelations”

Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Childhood Revisited, Television, Writing on February 17, 2014

HELL YES MATT BLUESTONE.

I am an unabashed fan of Matt Bluestone. I truly, honestly love him, with his ginger hair and his bright, baby blue eyes, spouting Illuminati nonsense and running around looking for connections and secrets and red herrings. I love that when he does indeed find answers, it only makes him crazier and more unhinged. I wouldn’t ship him with Elisa though – Elisa would try and calm him down, and the last thing we need right now is a relaxed Matt. Screw Gargoyles; Matt Bluestone needs his own spin-off. His partner could be Xanatos’ dad! Matt could be flying an alien spaceship into the sun, playing space chicken with some Martians to get them to divulge their world domination plans, while Xanatos’ dad is sipping martinis in the back of the spacecraft, complaining about the “ruckus and whatnot”.

I’m getting ahead of myself. “The Price” and “Revelations” are two fairly run-of-the-mill episodes. Nothing too exciting or surprising, nor terrible or upsetting. They don’t quite push things along (“Revelations” does, kinda, but it’s hard to tell if it’s significant), but they don’t really hurt the show in anyway (“Revelations” does have a part in the middle that feels way too forced). The hiatus has put a bit of distance between me and some of the events of the episodes, but then again, after the whole “City of Stone” saga, coming down from that high feels like a let down. Still, we learn about some characters in new and interesting ways, which is always nice.

“The Price,” in particular, feels perfunctory. It doesn’t do much really but give a bit more insight into Xanatos and Hudson, although the biggest surprise involves Owen. Here, the gargoyles are attacked by Macbeth while on patrol, and we get a cool, if not particularly exciting fight scene. Macbeth is “killed” in the fight, but not before smashing a bag of pink powder over Hudson’s face. It seems innocent enough, but when the gargoyles awaken the next evening, they find that Hudson is still stuck in his stone slumber. Assuming it was the magic dust, Goliath and Lex head off to Macbeth’s mansion to find a cure while Brooklyn and Broadway stay behind to watch Hudson.

All of this is just a massive distraction, as the real Hudson is locked away in a laser cage, held captive by Xanatos and Owen. Once again, Xanatos has an ancient Macguffin, the Cauldron of Life, which grants mortality after boiling a piece of a gargoyle’s stone skin for twenty-four hours. You see, there was a bit of a misdirect – as the gargoyles were sleeping, Xanatos and his crew grabbed the real Hudson and replaced it with a fake stone model. The dust was just a red herring. I gotta be honest. This is a reach of a plan. For one thing, after the gargoyles awoke from their stone slumber and flew off, I’m sure there would be a lot of stone skin pieces lying around to choose from. Second, how could a sculptor know the exact pose Hudson would be in when changing to stone “weeks in advanced” to fool the other gargoyles? That’s a bit of a nit-pick, but that is also a fairly big flaw in the planning of this episode.

I won’t harp on it too much, though, as this gives Hudson and Xanatos the opportunity to shoot the shit. The Cauldron grants immortality, something that someone like Xanatos would want, of course. Hudson advises against it. After all, he’s seen so many things and lost so many clansmen, so he knows full well what immortality is – a curse. Xanatos doesn’t buy it. In a rare moment of vulnerability, he plays his card when he overreacts to Hudson’s claim that he fears death: by crying out he’s not scared of anything, Xanatos pretty much admits he’s scared of dying. At the same time, Xanatos accuses Hudson of being an old, useless waste of space, contributing nothing. We know that Hudson has his insecurities – we learned that back in “Long Way to Morning” – but he’s too prideful and loyal to give in to age, which is important. Xanatos completely underestimates Hudson in that regard, which is how the gargoyle escapes his fate.

I do like these kinds of conversations. You don’t really see it a lot in cartoons, adult or not. It comes off a bit clunky, but Ed Asner (Hudson) and Jonathan Frakes (Xanatos) sell it well. As I mentioned before, Gargoyles has always been about purpose, finding ways to move on and keep going, despite tragedy or riches. Xanatos’ has pretty much everything, yet his whole motivation is about wanting more. Hudson sees him as a rich fool who thrives on greed and power, which is true to an extent, but Xanatos’ real desire is to WANT that greed and power. Which is why he never really commits to going after the gargoyles, or simply taking out Elisa or Renard. The multiple threads in the air allows him to function off these characters for whatever end goal comes his way, and death would be the end of that high. So, yeah, he fears death, because it would completely take away his edge.

The weirdest and potentially most significant thing to take away from this episode is Owen. Much is made in the way of his service and dedication to Xanatos here, with Xanatos making some passive-aggressive digs at Owen’s loyalty, responsibility, and accountability. It’s sort of a strange development. Xanatos never really expressed any doubts about Owen before. In fact, the two seem to connect a bit during the “City of Stone” debacle. So to see Xanatos praise his fake Macbeth over Owen is rather surprising (and out-of-character if this doesn’t lead anywhere). In order to prove his worth (and he doesn’t really have to, which makes the moment even that much creepier), he dunks his hand into the Cauldron to test it, no questions asked, turning his arm into stone. You see, the Cauldron grants immortality by way of stone transformations, because sorcerers love misdirected wordplay in their magic spells.

Hudson makes it back to his clan after they thought he was dead, and they learn that Macbeth, who kept coming back and repeating the same lines over and over, was a series of robots. It’s a nice reunion to a rather straight-forward episode.

“Revelations” is just as mainstream, although since it stars MY MAIN MAN MATT, I have to give it extra points. Good ol’ Matt is still on his tear about the Illuminati, desperately wanting to break that entire group wide open. Here he gets close, but not after a whole lot of crazy and paranoia, which works so well for this kind of show. I wish Gargoyles had more unhinged, slightly-bonkers characters. Maybe if Malone escapes his hotel prison we’ll get a few episodes of that.

“Revelations” is aggressively the most comic-book-like of the series so far, beginning with a sequence of a captive Goliath crushing his way through a series of deadly funhouse traps inside a horrific hotel. Matt Bluestone and Mace Malone watch Goliath struggle from surveillance cameras, which then triggers Matt to recollect the events on how they even got in this situation. I’m almost convinced this WAS a comic book that they decided to make into an episode, with Matt’s running commentary equivalent to captions. While I’m normally not into narration and in media res formats, I think it works for Matt because he’s so nutso, but also because his craziness is combating a sense of guilt and betrayal. His recollection of events is his way of determining if he wants to save Goliath or let him be killed so he can delve deeper into the halls of the Illuminati.

Matt is being pulled at all sides. He pushes his former FBI partner to give him info on the whereabouts of Mace, while Elisa constant disappearing into the attics of the police station confuses him. Elisa starts to act flirty towards Matt to throw him off, but even though she’s faking it, flirty Elisa does not work for me. It doesn’t seem like something she’d do, falsely or not. Good thing it happens briefly, although the episode implies a romantic pairing between the two. I hope that doesn’t happen. I REALLY hope that doesn’t happen.

“Pulling the wool over your eyes” is the core of this episode, with Matt being the guy struggling to see. Even though everyone around him is trying to throw him off the trail, he bullies and forces his way to find answers. There’s a nice moment in the episode where he mentions to Elisa that his crazy pursuits give him purpose (there’s that theme again!) and makes him stand out. And even though it causes people to distrust him and ignore his claims, it keeps Matt driven, and that’s all that really matters.

Matt tracks down Mace Malone, who indeed offers Matt access to the Illuminati if he can bring in a gargoyle. The scene that follows, in which a psycho Matt speeds along a cliff to force Elisa to divulge information on the gargoyles, is great and quintessential Matt, but it’s also really, really forced. Elisa was driving. It was her car. Matt asks to drive and Elisa, rightly, tells him no. But then she pulls over and lets him drive anyway? I was really thrown off by this. I’m aware the Youtube episodes are edited, so did I miss something? Why would she tell him piss off, only to give in into his pointless request? Elisa seem wildly out of character here, and for a chunk of the episode as well.

It works though, and soon Elisa shows him the gargoyles. They quickly become friends, kinda, which allows Matt to lure Goliath to Mace and the hotel-of-death, with a million rooms of deathtraps and other psychological torture devices. I mean, this is as comic book as you can get – the only good thing that came out of DC’s New 52 was The Court of Owls, who basically did the same thing to Batman. We return to the present as we watch Goliath struggle through the rooms, up until he reveals a hotel key he snatched off Matt. The episode kinda glosses over this – apparently if you have a hotel key you can shut off all the traps – by specifically not showing Goliath actually use the key and work his way safely through the hotel. It’s silly, in that comic book kind of way, but I buy it because if you’re going to do silly, you got to do it by way of Matt Motherfucking Bluestone.

In the end Matt Motherfucking Bluestone saves Goliath by attacking Mace before the latter pumps the beast full of lead. He rather keep his new beastly ally instead of expose the Illuminati, at least for now. Mace Malone now is slowly losing his mind in the hotel, trapped inside its walls without his key. Matt and Elisa bond some more over the gargoyles, and their partnership is restored – and hopefully kept that way. Not all is lost on the crazy front though, as Matt’s former FBI partner outs himself as an Illuminati member assigned to throw Matt off the secret society’s scent. Both he and Elisa tried to push Matt in the wrong direction, but you can’t fool crazy for long, especially “yelling nonsense at the sky after damn near committing a murder-suicide” crazy. I love you, Matt. May the Illuminati completely and utterly regret bringing your brand of insanity into its fold.

Oh, and apparently Xanatos is a low-level member of the Illuminati. Nice one, Gargoyles crew.

“The Price” B/”Revelations” B

animation, Cartoons, Television, Writing

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That Terrible Episode of TMNT Was Terrible

Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Television, Uncategorized, Writing on February 12, 2014

We need to talk about how bad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is right now.

I watch a lot of cartoons. I watch a lot of TV in general, but cartoons tend to be the easiest for writers to bypass and push aside under the mistaken belief that, since their work is for kids, they don’t actively have to try. They can skirt by with an abundance of action scenes, physical comedy, and fart jokes. And I’ve certainly seen my share of cartoon episodes that just embarrassed me to watch, terrible episodes of an already mediocre animated show. When it comes to bad TV, there’s usually two kinds – it can be bad at a narrative level, and it can be bad at a technical level. It rarely is both, but for the most part, TV is usually competent technically. Narratives tend to be hit or miss. But bad TV is bad TV, and when an episode sucks, it sucks. At the very least, you can simply say, “That sucked.”

“The Kraang Conspiracy,” TMNT’s latest episode didn’t just suck though. It was bottom of the barrel terrible, an embarrassment to every single person involved. It’s the kind of episode that anyone else would have shelved immediately, hiding from the public. It’s just pure trash, with awful quips and horrendous timing and pathetic plotting and piss-poor pacing. The characters are suddenly extra dickish and shit kinda happens in this episode with NO explanation and then they gave April psychic powers, because what?

“The Kraang Conspiracy” is the epitome of a season that has been sliding downhill ever since the first episode, “The Mutation Situation.” In the first season, what made TMNT a delight was its sense of discovery and growth. It had a keen focus. It emphasized the turtles’ brotherly connection while maintaining each brother’s difference, all while they sought to understand the world around them and their growing list of enemies. Things were happening, and the turtles themselves were training, struggling, and working their way to face each new problem. It was amazing to actually see the turtles become better fighters over the course of the season, and yet fail miserably at taking on The Shredder. They smartly toned down Raph, who has always been portrayed as an emotional wrecking ball – in fact, they completely shut down his attitude in one single episode. They dealt with Leo’s leadership issues and Mikey’s silliness as an extension of wanting to make a real connection, and while Donny’s crush on April is not exactly narrative gold, it at least gave him something outside of his nerdiness to follow. The entire endeavor built to a pretty great (if not memorable) season one finale.

Then season two came.

Season two, frankly, is a mess. We were already in dangerous territory when it began as a tedious slog of mutagen canister fetch-quests, but then this plot goes away. Then Shredder leaves for Japan for unknown reasons. Karai’s in charge and she fucks up everything. This plot then goes away. Then the Foot is replace by robot-Foot, who’s abilities lie in the fact that they can immediately learn your moves and adapt. This should have made for truly intriguing, complicated enemies. It doesn’t, to the incredulous point that Casey Jones, who is only a half-assed hockey player, can take them out. This gets worse when somehow he can hold his own in a fight against Raph – you know, the turtle who has been training in martial arts since birth. Oh, the difficult robot-Foot plot? Completely irrelevant now. (Made so when, upon finding the turtles’ lair, only one robot-Foot soldier analyzed the location and ran off to report it.) Worst of all, they did two episodes in a row about emo Raph being a complaining baby, the very thing the first season actively worked to avoid (seriously, like, you can tell the first season went out of their way to make Raph likeable). Season two is random, jumbled, unfocused, out-of-character, and just not congealing at all.

Then came “The Kraang Conspiracy,” an episode so awful that it made me physically ill and forced me to move on from the show.

What makes this particularly problematic is that the second season represents the worse writer mentality. It misinterprets the first season, pooling together a group of writers who missed out that tight focus and saw nothing but a bunch of talking turtles that fought bad guys. Thinking that such a show could be and would be easy to write, they went off and just tossed the turtles into any situation they could think of and literally made up the crap as they went along. So why, for example, Casey Jones can fight off the learning robot-Foot Clan with ease? Because it would be cool, of course, barring all logic or reason. Bringing back emo Raph is just lazy, since you can’t think of anything better. Why is Shredder gone? Don’t bother to break it down. Just make it vague and useless, so Karai can be bratty on her own. And after you do all this stupid stuff, make “The Kraang Conspiracy.”

There is just so much awfulness here. I mean, we begin with the turtles running across the rooftops with ease, only to find a slow, inept April behind them. Why is she patrolling the rooftops with them? There is no reason. Like, they even say this. They literally are like, April, we trained years for this. But April is there, trying to keep up, and failing. They want to bring April along because the experience will help her learn faster. But this is just straight up reckless. Not even April should be down with this kind of danger (why isn’t she still training with Splinter?! Hell, why isn’t she at school?)

So they find out someone is talking pictures of them on the roofs (because of April’s psychic powers – more on this later) and they chase him down, and this makes no visual sense. There’s absolutely no sense of space, so the chase is muddled and confusing. They approach a gap between the roofs, and they pull out grappling hooks. Grappling hooks! When did they get grappling hooks? Oh, and April has one? Okay, fine. I suppose Donny (who I assumed made them) would have created a spare. So everyone crosses the gap except April, who is just sucking at grappling hook. Donny comes back and goes, “April, you can use my grappling hook!” Which is clearly a handjob joke. But the flaw is that the tension of the chase is complete gone, now that we’re spending a minute with Donny and his sad attempt to feel up April. It fails, of course, because Donny will perpetually have green blue balls and it’s important to run this gag into the ground.

Because of all this, the turtles should have lost track of this guy because of April. Yet somehow they catch up to him with easily. The logistics of this chase sequence is baffling. But they follow him into his creepy apartment and find out he’s a reporter who’s been tracking the Kraang for years. They’ve been around for millennia doing stuff with human DNA apparently, but failing. This development makes little sense. It makes less sense when the reporter mentioned they finally broke human genetics or something through April’s father, making April “Kraang special”.

Then the Kraang arrive. The reporter yells out, “They found me. I don’t know how they did it but they found me!” Well, this is a good question. How DID they find you? The show doesn’t answer this. The Kraang just ARRIVE because network notes demanded an action scene at this point. And it’s sloppy. Somehow the apartment changes sizes and the Kraang are really terrible shots at close range. Everyone escapes and because they need to cut to commercial on a tense moment, a Kraang arrives suddenly with a gattling laser gun! They manage to escape it because – randomly – they drive over it with their Turtles’ Van! Where the fuck did they get access to their van? This whole scene was just random and awful and pointless.

Oh, but here’s the best part.

The reporter goes, “We gotta check out TCRI.” And April goes, “Didn’t you guys blow that up?” Because they did. CUT TO the turtles staring at a BRAND NEW TCRI BUILDING. Not even in the middle of re-construction. Just fucking there! Raph yells out, “They rebuilt it? That fast?” The implication being, “Are the writers this fucking lazy?” You mean to tell me no one noticed that the home base of their fucking enemy got rebuilt? In maybe a month, tops? This fucking tower is HUGE and no one noticed it? And you mean to tell me you couldn’t just render another nondescript building to act as the Kraang’s new home base? Go the fuck home.

Oh, and now April is acting like a bitch. With both April and Raph being assholes this season, you’d think one of the writers is having issues at home. Leo tells April to wait outside because SHE’S UNTRAINED AND INEXPERIENCED and she’s pouts because she doesn’t want to wait on the sidelines anymore. What? Do you realize how insane and dangerous this is? This season is just filled with way too much stupidity, in particularly by doing that thing where kids do dangerous shit because they’re bored or because it would be cool, a thing that ruins so many fucking kids shows that it’s sickening. So of course, inept-ass April follows along, because what could she possibly add to their advantage?

No, she’s there because she needs to be able to LINK PSYCHICALLY TO THE KRAANG. Which is a whole different thing than simply having psychic fucking powers. Listen, if April could indeed connect to the Kraang because of the experiments done to her in the past, I can buy that. If she’s mentally noticing stalkers from afar and blowing up entire rooms of Kraang robots, that’s a whole different (ridiculous) ball game. See, in the first season, they kinda implied April could detect Kraang tech if she could concentrate and focus. That’s fine. But if she’s just going to be an adolescent Jean Grey, then just be a fucking different show. Because there’s no way this will end well.

Okay, so then the Kraang finds them and there’s a whole bunch of fighting, and they do too much standing around/talking in the middle of the fight because they need to get some jokes in there. They then find a whole bunch of April clones, because the Kraang wants to extract her DNA, but they can’t do it through the April clones (so why bother with them at all?) so they almost take it from April when they captured her, but Raph saves her. Oh, and when April sees Raph coming to rescue her, she goes, “Oh, great, Raph. He’s never gonna let me live this down.” Holy flying fuck of aces, what the hell are you talking about? Are you seriously being passive-aggressive with the guy who is about to save you? And since when has Raph given you shit about needing rescuing? How did you have the wherewithal to being snarky while you WERE ABOUT TO DIE? Oh, goddammit.

So Raph rescues her and they’re all about to escape, but the Kraang releases all of the April clones – but why? They’re not exactly fighters or useful. But then in an incredible bit of hilarity, the clones grab April and pull her into their masses. The turtles LITERALLY watch her get taken and, somehow, they get confused on which one is the real April! Like, they weren’t distracted or busy or blinded. They lose track of the real April without losing visual contact with her in SECONDS. I couldn’t believe that happened. How did no one on staff watch a screener of this episode, point to this moment of abject stupidity, and yell out, “What the fuck is this shit?” You couldn’t even spend three seconds to alter the turtles attention to make this moment comprehensible?

Don’t worry, they all escape and then Donny looks at April’s DNA and goes, “You’re a human/Kraang mutant, April. That’s why you’re acting like an annoying prat.” He didn’t say that last part, but I wish he did. But who cares, the episode from top to bottom was just an embarrassment, a shitty story told terribly and everyone – writers, storyboarders, animators, producers – should be ashamed of themselves to allow this to air. Just a lazy, lazy nonsensical episode that made the TMNT look pathetically inept. And if this is the direction the show is going, there’s no way I can continue to watch this without going insane.

animation, Cartoons, Television, Writing

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