It’s been way too long, hasn’t it? Unfortunately, this blog was a causality of the collision of of the necessities of life and money versus fun. There has to be a bit of a balance between the things you do for profit and the things you do for joy. That’s sort of the theme of this week’s villains: making money is great, but you have to do something for fun, too. Though, I guess there’s a difference between running a blog and hunting down sentient creatures with crazy death traps, in this first episodic standalone adventure.

We open up back at the castle tower, where Owen escorts Elisa up; it seems that despite her busting Xanatos and ruining his “kill everyone” plan, he “doesn’t hold a grudge” and therefore has no desire to deny her seeing the gargoyles.

This is what she likes to see, apparently?

It’s a really cool insight into Xanatos’s mindset—he isn’t being a villain because he’s evil, and he’s not a sore loser either. He was just doing his own thing, it failed, so now he’s going to have to do new things. Actually, we can pull a whole lot from this “you beat me, no big deal” reaction and events later in the episode as proof that Xanatos isn’t actually a villain so much as a very basic antagonist, in the sense that he creates conflict, but not specifically for nefarious reasons (y’know, except for when he is.) He doesn’t hold any malice, his plan just happen to involve the gargoyles getting screwed over, so when he’s defeated he understands that a piece of his plans didn’t work. Elisa watches the clan wake up, and everyone but Goliath is like “oh hey” before flying off, fascinated by the things they see on TV (not, like, the actual world or anything.)

I count myself lucky having a TV in my room, because having to GLIDE OFF OF MY TOWER right after I wake up to watch something might get irritating.

Goliath is happy because the castle is “truly ours” after “defeating” Xanatos. Elisa tries to get through to him that Xanatos was only convicted for receiving stolen property, and therefore only has a six-month sentence in prison. She’s confident the lawyers will manage to cut it down, surprised it wasn’t already suspended. After that, Xanatos will be out, and since he legally owns the castle, it’s not safe for the clan to sleep during the day. Goliath is still trapped in his very old-fashioned mindset, though; slay the dragon, take over the castle. He’s adamant that “defeating” Xanatos, The Bad Guy, means the castle is the prize, and the universe will let them keep it because those are the rules. But it’s 1994 now, the rules are totally different, and Elisa can’t seem to get him to see things realistically. “I think your head stays rock hard even at night,” she says.

SHAKESPEAREAN ANNNNNNNNNNNNNGEEEEEEEEEEER

The rest of the clan huddles around the TV (I still don’t understand why the Trio had to glid away) and a show called The Pack is being broadcast on every single channel, which I’d totally call out for being impossible if it weren’t a plot point.

I should get their genius artistic director to design my logo.

Fox, a redhead, tattooed beauty and leader of The Pack; Wolf, the old, awesomely-bearded muscle; Jackal and Hyena, the agile brother/sister duo with sharp claws and bad haircuts; and Dingo, the…Australian.

The Pack is…like…a reality show? I guess? It’s pretty much just the actors playing themselves, fighting ninjas and showing off their action-y side. It’s literally a televised stunt show every week, which…as dumb as all this seems, if you consider the success of 90s shows where people live in a house and argue, or game shows where kids get slimed, I can imagine something as kitschy as The Pack becoming a 90s fad we’d be nostalgic over and ironic fans of today.

Yeah, we would DEFINITELY have eaten up this shit as kids in the 90s.

There’s going to be a live show at Madison Square Garden, it seems, and Lexington is ecstatic about seeing it because “they’re warriors, like us.” Even six episodes in, the gargoyles still have a lot of growing to do in terms of understanding the complexities of modern life; being a warrior doesn’t automatically make people kindred spirits, and most importantly, not everything you see on TV is true.

Also they have like 6 different logos for some reason.

At Pack Media Studio, the Pack is training and shit, still in their costumes, because real stars spend their downtime in costume, I guess. They also show off their individual talents, which all vary among things like using ropes and punching and using metal Wolverine claws.

You know, real life skills.

This episode isn’t above making fun of itself, though. There’s a funny moment where a ninja shows up, looking like he’s ready to pounce, only to be doofy-looking guy named Harvey that Fox affectionally tells to work on his backflips. It’s cute, though it might have been fun to see more moments like this spread throughout the episode’s entirety as Hollywood satire, instead of the very broad “TV IS BAD SOMETIMES!” moral and generic superheroing we get. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Wolf notes how they took the job for “fame, money and action,” and while the fame and money are great, they aren’t actually getting much action with the only-fighting-fake-ninjas thing. Hyena strangely responds with, “Maybe a new haircut would help.”

LOOK AT YOUR OWN HAIR, LADY. LOOK. AT. YOUR. OWN. HAIR.

Dingo also makes a note about getting flabby, because doing stunt shows on a daily basis and working out on your downtime is a complete sedentary lifestyle. Then Wolf throws shit through the wall, which is productive I guess.

“Who’s gotta hankerin’ fer some dick?!”

Turns out in today’s mail they got sent photos of Goliath fighting the Steel Clan from the last episode.

Totally ‘shopped.

They have no idea where they came from, but they decide to hunt Goliath, because who needs hobbies like knitting when you can hunt magical bat mutants? Either way, before that, they’ve got a personal appearance to make!

There’s a shitton of people in the crowd amped up and hollering like it’s some kind of rock concert. I guess stunt shows would get people that excited?

Imagine if the cast of Jersey Shore was there.

The Trio is also there, watching the action show filled with ROCKIN 90S THEME MUSIC. After the announcer literally—literally—says, “Oh no…it’s the evil ninjas!” people start booing.

HOW DO YOU BOO AT NINJAS?!?!?!

Also, the announcer says, “The black ninjas don’t fight with honor like The Pack does! Teamwork, that’s the key!” Which, I’m pretty sure the whole staple of ninjas popularized in the media is that they TOTALLY fight with honor and all, but whatever. Lex is pretty much fawning over them until the show ends. Meanwhile, Brooklyn randomly yawns and Broadway wants food, and if that surprises you at this point you should probably get your brain checked.

Lex stays behind to try to meet The Pack, creeping backstage and then jumping in front of them and declaring himself “a warrior.” The Pack isn’t totally stupid, and realizes he’s the same species as the thing in the picture they were sent. Then, Fox gets really sensual and tries to…seduce him?…into getting more information on his bigger friend, Goliath.

I like to pretend this is the moment Lex seriously started questioning his sexuality.

Back at the castle, the rest of the clan notes how Lex “always cuts it too close,” despite him never once cutting it close in the show so far.

Lex eventually shows up and informs everyone that he totally outed himself to The Pack, and is taken aback when Goliath is pissed about it. Lex, however, pretty much calls Goliath out on his hypocrisy since Goliath made friends with Elisa so quickly. Goliath says that was “different” (which, of course, translates to “but she was really really hot!” and isn’t a good excuse anyway.) But it doesn’t matter because STONE…well, until the next night, when the argument continues.

As awkward and unnecessary as the “stone mid-argument then continuing next night” thing is, it is a cool idea, and a nice way to show how adapted they are to such a massive biological stipulation. We can rarely reignite our arguments after sleeping on them, but we can also generally choose when we go to bed. They can’t, so they have to be able to pause and restart their discussion out of necessity.

It also allows Goliath think of an argument other than Elisa’s boobs.

Lex is convinced that The Pack “fights evil” like Elisa, not thinking of them as a TV show. The other gargoyles even cite the “evil ninjas” to mean “maybe they need our help,” completely believing there are actually ninjas out there that are evil and want to hurt them. Figured out the moral here, yet? Goliath concedes to meet The Pack, and figures if they seem cool, the whole clan will meet them.

Naïve as he and the clan may be here, Lex isn’t stupid—he even says as such—because he only revealed as much as he needed to (as in not mentioning the turning to stone thing.) He also makes a good argument for not hiding from the world, basically focusing on not wanting to be perpetually alone. Thom Adcox’s acting is very natural here, and exceptionally strong. Even though we know Lex made a dumb decision by outing himself to the painfully obvious villains, it’s understandable why he’d do it, and his naïveté is  excusable given the circumstances.

They head to Pack Media Studios, where it’s dark and empty, clearly not a good sign. A spotlight comes up, followed by a grenade and a bunch of bullets.

“OH GOD THE PACK SHOWED UP NAKED!”

Hyena shows up laughing like a goddamn maniac, and Lex gets super SUPER pissed, going batshit crazy at this sudden betrayal. It’s not as painful to watch as the torture Goliath went through before, but it’s sad to see the little guy be this clearly hurt. Luckily, his rage is EPIC.

Also they don’t have pupils the ENTIRE TIME.

Turns out they’re in what Fox calls The Gauntlet, which normally isn’t lethal, but apparently they put in a whole helluva lot of money to make it deadly, because they can totally do that.

So Goliath just tears through solid steel. Should we ignore this?

Goliath and Lex get out pretty quickly considering how badass The Gauntlet was led up to be, and try to climb to the roof. Lex is still insanely pissed off by all this, assuming The Pack is “no more than animals.” Goliath is a little wiser, though, realizing they do it for sport, not hunger…though that probably drives the knife into Lex even deeper. Lex, sadly, swears to never trust anyone again before a fucking BOOMERANG shows up.

I mean, you’ve got the Australian named Dingo. You almost don’t have a choice but to give him a boomerage.

Then Jackal throws a knife at power lines and ELECTROCUTES THEM.

AKA “Lexington’s Least Favorite Day.”

We get Hyena’s fucking laugh again, followed by the building collapsing on our heroes as The Pack approaches…very…veeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly.

You…you’re not just…just gonna run up and stab them right now? Oh…okay.

What follows is probably the funniest moment in the episode, as a couple of kids (with creepy voices) show up wanting autographs and free tickets. Fox is like, “Uggggggggggggh,” naturally, and it’s pretty clear that these crazy thrill seekers who set out to get fame actually hate having fame (admittedly not unlike plenty of real-life stars.)

“Being rich and famous is just SO HARD you guys, you don’t even know.”

The parents somehow aren’t weirded out by encountering a bunch of costumed stunt stars in a dark alley in the middle of the night, and even when the gargoyles wake up their assumption is that they’re a “filming a movie or something,” just without film crew.

Another theme of this episode is that TV makes everybody really stupid.

Wolf does play it off well, by saying the gargoyles were sent by their nemeses, the Evil Ninjas, which is probably more clever than it needs to be considering this family’s intelligence. Of course, the kids totally fall for it, and help The Pack beat up the Lex and Goliath by throwing stuff at them, in what I have to admit is a painful moment. Lex angrily yells, “STOP IT!” in another great perfromance by Adcox. The kids finally freak out, and the family leaves thinking it’s a publicity stunt, with the mom noting how it looks awfully real.

Really not trying to be a dick here, but can someone explain what the thought process was when drawing those cheeks? Did she just have dental surgery?

The Pack decides to finish them quickly while the street’s deserted (yeah, now you think of that) but Goliath fends them off with a goddamn fire hydrant. Fox gives an inspiring speech to invigorate her comrades to fight back: “Take ‘em doooooooown!”

This generation’s Lord Nelson.

I have to be honest, this isn’t a great introduction to Fox’s character. I won’t go into future stuff with her since we’re looking at these episodes on a week-to-week basis, but needless to say, for a character of massive importance down the line, her first episode makes her out to be absurdly simple and uninteresting. I guess I can’t fault the episode since that wasn’t the point of it, but I can’t say I’m wholly invested in her in this outing, especially not when compared to her more colorful partners in crime.

We get to an awesome “Gargoyles stalk their prey” scene which, while it’s already been done numerous times, is still fun to see the horror movie scenario where we’re rooting for the monsters. It’s made even better by having actual stone gargoyles all over the rooftop of the building, though I seriously doubt any building exists anywhere with that many statues on top. Then again, the building owner could have been following a new trend started by Xanatos’s “castle on the rooftop” idea.

But come on…building regulations, much?

The Gargs start picking them off one-by-one, eventually leaving only Wolf and Fox. After a tussle, they fall inside of the building, where there’s a modeling shoot apparently going on at 3 in the morning. Fox takes a hostage, telling her to “relax, you’ll live through this,” which I’ll admit is a relatively interesting character beat for Fox, despite my aforementioned dislike of her introduction here.

At least she’ll die in an okay-looking one piece?

The photographer takes a bunch of pictures of what’s going on, because why not?. Lex has this crazy ass yell, as he does, and completely knocks the shit out of Fox. Wolf grabs Lex, pissing Goliath off, and finally gets the action he’d been wanting when they fight. Of course, Goliath is like “haha nope!” and knocks him out fairly easily.

Gotta admit, the pull focus here is pretty cool.

After hearing the cops on the way, Goliath and Lex decide to flee and leave The Pack to them. Lex admits he feels like a fool, and Goliath, while acknowledging the need to be cautious, tells him he was right—they do need to search for allies, and have to take chances, because they don’t want to remain forever alone. After hearing the news of The Pack, who were arrested thanks to the pictures of the hostage situation the photographer took, Hudson decides to help out any of the slower folks at home and state the moral of the story outright: they shouldn’t believe everything they see on television.

Meanwhile, Owen visits Xanatos in prison, and they reveal the cable was reprogrammed so the Gargs could only see The Pack. Xanatos sent the photos, and everyone reacted exactly as he predicted. And if that wasn’t enough of a shocker, Xanatos reveals he created The Pack from the get-go, always intending them to be “far more than just a TV show” to see what Goliath is capable of. It was all a test, and it was informative.

I dunno, I still feel like he could be the good guy.

The Xanatos reveal here comes very close to bringing this episode up in points. I’ll admit, it doesn’t quite fit into the show’s timeframe—if he created The Pack as a reaction to the gargoyles, how long have they been around? Could they have really gotten so ingrained in the public consciousness, with stadiums filled with people at their performances, in what I assume is a few short weeks? Despite that, though, the idea is perfect, tying in a standalone episode with what looks to be a larger series arc.

“The Thrill of the Hunt” is certainly not boring, overall. It’s fun, it’s crazy, and if I haven’t mentioned it enough, Thom Adcox knocks it out of the park. The animation works, the action sequences are well-designed, and the plot moves along at a brisk pace. There really isn’t much bad to say about it structurally—it’s just empty and simple. By children’s cartoon standards, I guess it’s fine, but the first five episodes of the show raised the bar so high that standard kids action show fare doesn’t quite cut it.

I’ll admit that the Lex/Goliath is a really interesting dynamic, though.

The moral is clear-cut and obvious, and while the pacing and overall scripting is great, it’s just all so straightforward. Lex learns to not trust people too easily. Goliath realizes they should be cautious, but not too cautious. Everyone learns not to believe everything they see on TV. There’s very little else to it. And for an episode primarily focused on introducing new villains to the universe, the villains’ motivations are mostly uninteresting—mo’ money, mo’ fame, mo’ fun. That’s really all there is to them, at least at this point. It hits the right beats for a typical superhero story, but there’s nothing particularly thought-provoking about it.

But at the very least, it’s a helluva lot of fun. And sometimes, a thrill is all we really care to have.

Holy crap, this episode is good. The bad guys, the good guys, but especially the bad guys. Also robots and explosions and lasers and rocket launchers and collapsing castles. And lots of crying and yelling and face-touching. No, really. It’s great.

Before we start, it seems I made a minor booboo from the beginning—I was trying to only name specific characters after they’ve been named, because I thought it would be clever/important to emphasize how long it is before characters are named. But somehow, I hallucinated that Demona’s name was given in episode one and have been calling her that this entire time. In reality, we haven’t actually heard her name once, and in fact the reveal of her name is kind of a big deal. Granted, every reader here probably knows her name already, but still. I’m going to pretend we don’t know it for right now (she’ll be Lady Gargoyle/Lady Garg/Lady G) because it’s just that worth it.

We open up with the Trio scampering off from bullets that are sometimes animated like lasers, throwing out a “Sorry, wrong floor” quip and climbing onto the next level. They then proceed to burst through the floor into the room underneath, which is a pretty cool move.

THOSE CRAZY GUYS

They grab the disk from the computer in that room after scaring the bejesus out of the scientists. Broadway then proceeds to…

rip an entire server out of the ground…

and…throw it out of a window.

They can burst through a concrete floor with their bare hands and feet, but they need an entire server bigger than they are to break a window?

Meanwhile, there’s a dude with a cool captain hat at the underground base, and after hearing reports of monsters breaking into their other locations, they begin increasing security. This is minor, but I really love the echo that’s going on in this underground chamber. It’s great attention to detail for a scene that’s relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Heeere on Gilligan’s Iiiiiiiiiisle

Meanwhile, Hudson and Bronx are sneaking through the tunnels. Some guards ambush Hudson after spotting him on the video cameras, and they blind him with a light.

Oooo, I think he likes it.

Hudson immediately surrenders, wagering that gargoyles aren’t bulletproof—again, a nice detail for the scene. However, Bronx bursts in and starts thrashing them, allowing Hudson time to go to the computer, which he’s completely confused by.

Hell, I’m from 2012 and even I don’t understand what the fuck he’s looking at.

Luckily, Hudson has learned an important American technique: hit shit!

Violence solves everything!

A fun little chase sequence follows, with Hudson remarking how he’s “too old for this [shit]” and does his John McClane moves until he escapes on a subway. They catch the air current and fly away, with Hudson telling Bronx, “You need to be losing some weight, and that’s a fact!” So now fat jokes for the dog is a thing? Why did that start being a thing?

Animaaaaal Obesityyyyyyyy

Back on the airship, Goliath and Lady Gargoyle burst into the main room and grab the disk without even trying. Instead of leaving with a clean win, Lady G decides to rip out a wire and electrocute a…thing.

Engine? Server? A/C Unit?

It’s apparently bad, because it sets it on fire and fills the room with smoke, meaning the guards are suffocating, struggling to put out the fire and fly the ship. So you know, not a great time to be playing Galaga on your shift. Goliath, not being a dick, doesn’t want to leave the people to burn, but Lady G pulls him off, and then the entire fucking airship BLOWS UP AND LANDS IN THE RIVER.

“I know I joked about installing a pool, but this is ridiculous!”

And yeah, we see people jumping off into the water. We see some people jumping into the water. But there is no way everyone survived considering how many people were on the ship. No freaking way. And, though it’s been hammered over our heads that we should expect our resident female gargoyle to be up to something, it’s still shocking to see her commit something so heinous. It doesn’t feel like it, since it’s a big futuristic airship full of faceless people and we don’t see anyone literally burning to a crisp, and that’s why it gets past the Disney censors just fine. But she committed an act of terrorism. She only did it to show that she’s the Big Man, and she can and will kill everyone, all just to scare Cyberbiotics (or really, humanity in general) and show that she’s got the power.

Also she gets WAY too much enjoyment out of holding that wire.

There was no other ulterior motive; the mooks on the ship weren’t even a threat. It’s a really powerful way to truly get us to understand the gravity of what’s going on, without making it gratuitous or too intimate (like if we actually saw her murder someone with her bare hands.)

It’s even more apparent when we see Elisa coincidentally witness the explosion from afar (though I assume it’s hard to miss.) She’s in complete horror of what she’s just seen.

Er…mild surprise.

But even worse, it was the gargoyles she trusted that had a hand in it, which only adds to the brilliant tension here. As much as we see stuff explode in movies, if you witness mass destruction first-hand, it’s terrifying. This is a big damn deal and a major turning point.

The clan returns the disks to Xanatos, and he’s like “Cool,” and leaves without much fanfare.

Yummy disks nomnomnom

Goliath tells Lady Garg that he’s going to visit his “friend” Elisa (I’ll get to that in a minute) and Lady G goes off on him for it. You could infer that maybe she’s jealous of him meeting with another woman, but honestly, I don’t think she’s even considering that at this point. She’s obsessed with humanity sucking, and that’s her reason for being pissed; I doubt she even considers Elisa as a threat to their relationship. Hell, Lady G doesn’t really seem to give a shit about her relationship with Goliath right now since he doesn’t agree on the “KILL ALL HUMANS!” mentality.

“I can never love a man who’s against genocide!”

“I cannot make war upon an entire wooooorld,” Goliath says, with a maybe-slightly-kinda over-the-top delivery from Keith David, but it’s still Goliath-y so it works. He even brings up how “Xanatos proves there are good humans”…the poor naïve big guy. Even more interesting is how Lady G still totally writes him off, wanting to have “blood for blood” and wipe out all the descendents of humans. Disproportionate retribution, much? Goliath harshly tells her straight up that she’s become hard and unforgiving and she isn’t how he remembers her. Contrast this to almost directly after, where he, again, compassionately refers to Elisa as his friend. This is a small moment, but it’s a brilliant time to establish Goliath’s rebuilding trust, just as he openly tears down his lover because he’s losing trust in her. Goliath goes through a whole helluva lot of development in this opening five-parter, doesn’t he?

Xanatos is watching all this, again, and notes that Goliath is too hard to control now, and it’s a pity.

MAN HE’S JUST SUCH A GOOD GUY I CAN’T EVEN HANDLE IT.

Goliath meets with a Elisa, who reveals a) She’s heard of the Cyberbiotics thefts; b) The logo on the tracer she found in part three belongs to a robotics firm owned by Xanatos Enterprises; and c) She double-checked and found out the disks were Cyberbiotics’s property, not Xanatos’s.

For some reason I think it’s really cool that she puts up those fingers to count to three.

It’s really unlikely that Elisa got all this policework done in the span of what had to be, like, an hour (she could have spent the day researching the logo, but the thefts just happened.) But despite that, this is some massive plot momentum we’re getting here. Xanatos is the bad guy, and he’s been totally playing the Gargoyles all along. We’ve suspected it, with all the dark shadows and ominous music, but it’s proven now. There’s a great tension that builds throughout this episode as the villains become more and more exposed, and we know it’s going to lead to a big climax. And boy, does it. But we’ll get to that in a second.

Elisa does this really great face-hold thing to convince Goliath to trust her, even though he’s been betrayed by humans again.

“Let me just wipe off this teensy smudge…”

There’s already a really nice connection between these two, but even that doesn’t cut into the palpable tension. And then we dissolve to…

Cape Fear 2: The Goliath Chronicles

Back with Xanatos, he talks all evil-y about the gargoyles outliving their usefulness and how he’ll wait until they sleep at dawn to kill ‘em all, which would be a crappy way to end all this. Luckily, Lady G shows up to keep the plot moving, telling him not to because he needs to test the “replacements.” Now the two bad guys are working together, and they’re totally a potential ‘ship! I MEAN LOOK:

“Hey there sailor…”

“Heeeeey bay-beh…”

We cut to the Trio (remember how they exist?) basically explaining their characters in one (slightly edited) panoramic screencap.

Yep.

Oh, but don’t worry, fucking ROBOTS show up.

FUCKING ROBOTS

Suddenly we’re all wondering what the hell we’re watching, because this show went from magical medieval fantasy to gritty urban action-fantasy to ROBOTS.

Also shit like this.

It’s definitely a way to prime new viewers for the “WE CAN DO ANYTHING” approach the show takes. The only thing crazier than this would be finding out the Loch Ness Monster exists or something.

Someone please make a GIF out of Lex’s crazy flailing here because it’s HILARIOUS.

The robots trash the Trio, probably because the robots are fucking robots. Xanatos even says it: “Steel instead of stone, don’t sleep during the day, they can fly instead of glide, and, best of all, they’re 100 percent obedient.”

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRR

Goliath has another Superman moment and makes the Trio look terrible by blowing up the robot REALLY FAST.

He’s learned the art of modern action movies really quickly.

Hudson and Bronx run out asking what all the noise is about. Which…a little late, guys. It’s cool though, because Bronx grabs a robot, drags it out of the air by its tail, and then Hudson shows up and slices through the robot’s face with his sword. (Also he has the exact same Keith David yell from episode 1, but eh.)

BUT SERIOUSLY HOW ARE YOU SO BADASS?

Elisa overhears the commotion (she’s got a radar for “shit blowing up,” apparently) and runs in past the guard yelling, “Police business!”

Fuck the police…?

Goliath flies two robots into another, causing them to explode super-easily in true 90s fashion. The bad guys have to dodge the debris, and Xanatos reveals that his robots are called the “Steel Clan,” which is too damn cool. With one robot left, the bad guys…leave. Broadway and Lex wake up just in time to get out of the way, while Goliath and Brooklyn chuck a piece of the castle on the last robot, crushing it. There’s a quip about how “And they say the middle ages were barbaric!” and then Brooklyn says “Dude,” to Goliath’s utter confusion.

Hey dawg, I heard you liked Goliath, so I put Goliath on a Goliath so Goliath can ride Goliath.

But during the comic relief, Lady Garg struts in, calls them all fools, and has a BIG FUCKING ROCKET LAUNCHER.

HOT DAMN

And it’s an utterly fantastic act break. Seriously, this episode basically packs in all the revelations, twists, and plot collision we expect typical season finales to have—except this “season” has only been a five-episode opener. It’s built on everything we’ve seen so far, turned it on its head, and now we’re seeing the results of where everything was headed, even with only five episodes under our belts. There’s just been so much packed into these opening episodes, and this climax is really really good.

Goliath, of course, is slightly weirded out by his girlfriend FIRING FUCKING ROCKETS AT HIM, while Xanatos staves off the rest of the clan with his laser to let them “play off their little drama.” She calls Goliath a fool once again, this time twisting the knife by adding, “but then you always were, weren’t you?”

“And I know you farted, I can smell it!”

But here’s where it stings. She reveals she made a bargain with the Captain in 994—they were going to make sure the gargoyles were out of the castle and let the Vikings in so they could sack it. If Goliath had been “smarter” and taken his whole clan away, they’d have the castle all to themselves after the humans were kidnapped by the Vikings.  But the way she stayed alive is “Because I didn’t trust [the Captain]…I don’t trust anyone!” When Goliath asks why, she says “You can ask me that? After how they treated us, they had to pay. All humanity had to pay for what they did to our kind!” Goliath tells her none of this would have happened if it weren’t for her, but she just shrugs it off.

Be prepared to see a lot of Goliath face close-ups. A LOT of them.

I’ve broken down the dialogue in this episode way more than normal, I know. But it’s impeccable. Lady G here is seriously off the deep end, it’s obvious. But she wasn’t totally in the wrong before; she was treated badly, and she and the Captain were only working in the gargoyles’ best interests. It’s just that those interests were selfish and revenge-ridden, thanks to their egos. But while the Captain got off fairly easy and just kind of went with the whole villain thing, Lady G lost everything, and did not accept that she did anything wrong.  She’s blaming it all not only on the Captain, but also Goliath. She’s blaming it on the guy who had no idea what was going on! And it’s every bit of it. The Captain might have tried to brush off his guilt on Goliath to make himself look better, but she wholeheartedly believes it was Goliath’s fault. She blames herself for absolutely nothing. It’s a wonderful explanation for her turn to villainy—just an evolution from stubbornness to pure hatred to total insanity, all based on her inability to admit fault. And frankly, it’s heartbreaking. She dug her own grave, but blames the shovel.

Also these guys are there too.

Goliath notes he’s aware that there’s good and evil in everyone—which, small of a moment as that is, it’s a really big development for him. This is exactly what the entire five-parter has been leading up to. Your race doesn’t determine your morality. You don’t have to trust everyone, but you don’t have to trust no one. Goliath’s seen every shade of both human and gargoyle, and all of them are shades of gray.

Lady G continues talking about how “Humanity is a poison that must be purged from this planet” (foreshadowing?) and that she wants to create a new world for her kind. Goliath starts crying and completely rejects her, and hot damn is all this emotional.

Manly tears.

This scene is phenomenal in every way. The reaction shots, the line delivery, and even the music shifts back and forth from sweet, romantic music to dark and creepy throughout the exchange.

Goliath’s rejection leads Lady G to declare, “If you are not my ally, then you are my enemy.” And then she tells Goliath that the humans gave her a name too—Demona. And suddenly there are chills.

“I AM THE VILLIAN OF THE STORY.”

Then Elisa shows up and TACKLES Demona, continuing to be a goddamn tigress.

“I know I joked about women mud wrestling, but this is ridiculous!”

The rocket fires into the air and causes a part of the castle to collapse, and both Elisa and Demona fall off the building.

Also she’s clearly unconscious but we still somehow hear a scream?

Goliath grabs Elisa just in time, but Demona falls…slowly…to her maybe-possibly death. And then we this moment from Goliath…

FIIIIIIIGARO

Unlike his scream of anger and turmoil in part one, this is him being broken. He can’t even let out a proper roar of rage. He just shakes and nearly falls to his knees. At least, until he grabs Xanatos, and tells him, “She wanted me to destroy humanity…I think I’ll start with you!”

Hooooooly fuck

And then, Xanatos taunts him! Like, seriously guys, this is completely, utterly, insanely intense. Elisa stops Goliath and convinces him to not be the same as Demona (I guess she overheard Demona announce her name…?) Hudson arrives and supports her, and thanks to who seem to be the two people Goliath trusts and respects the most in the world now, Goliath finally drops Xanatos.

WAIT NO NOT LIKE THAT.

I guess Elisa reported the thefts to her comrades and left out the medieval monsters/rocket launchers/lasers/robots part, because Xanatos gets arrested. Elisa and Goliath discuss not knowing if Demona survived or not, but they’ll definitely know soon if she did. Also, Bronx returns Brooklyn his cool-guy sunglasses, which break, and Brooklyn decides to be a hipster instead.

I liked gritty 90s Disney action cartoons before they were mainst–…wait.

Oh, and there’s our last Broadway fat joke for these opening episodes. However, he jokes that he ate Chinese food, but for some reason an hour later was hungry again. Which…is actually plenty funny, so I’m okay with it.

Elisa says she hopes Goliath has more friends, but she will always be his. She tells him she’ll be back same time tomorrow, and that maybe they’ll catch a Giants game, which Goliath takes completely literally and is forced to sleep with this face:

Flawless.

Elisa remarks, “I wonder if this city’s ready for you guys?” which probably refers to the rocket launchers and lasers and robots. And finally, we end an episode without a “To be continued”!

I’d say this is right up there with part one as the best of this five-parter. However, I was unimpressed with the animation and designs overall (though there were certainly some strengths, like Demona’s confrontation with Goliath.) But despite that, both episodes have a steady (but not boring) pace, establish numerous beats for multiple characters, have extremely beautifully-written dialogue and memorable lines, and mix action with drama and gut-punching emotion. With this episode, there are a handful some tiny logic slip-ups, but they’re all pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

The thing that pushes it over part one storywise, though, is the fact that we already know the characters at this point. No one’s being introduced, but there is certainly some massive character development for Goliath and Demona, defining moments for Xanatos, and an evolution of the relationships between Goliath, Demona and Elisa.

Also, ROBOTS.

Even though we don’t have Demona’s whole story yet, we understand her enough to realize just how tragic her story is. She’s her own victim because of a classic Shakespearean tragic flaw, right up there with Hamlet, Othello, Lear, etc. She actually is her own worst enemy, and it turns her into the most dangerous villain of the series. In contrast, Goliath learns from all of this, realizing how wrong he is to judge and fully trust any race so completely. Nothing is black and white, and it took him five episodes and 1000 years to come to that conclusion.

For me, character development tends to be much more interesting than character introductions, no matter how well the latter is done. So ignoring the animation, in terms of plot, character, pacing and acting I’d say this episode is the best of the five-parter. Part three was extremely solid, but this episode encapsulates everything great about the show: mixing insanely unrealistic sci-fi/fantasy action with strong, emotional characterization and realistic character development. The villains are interesting, the heroes are likeable and consistent, and the plot is unpredictable but still clicks.

Not too shabby for the conclusion to such a long pilot. Now we finally get to see how well the show fares in its regular episodic structure. (Spoiler: it works fine.)

The neverending series opener continues with another two-fold episode focusing on and contrasting the two women in Goliath’s life, old and new. Though there’s a whole lot of set-up for next week’s grand premiere finale (what?), we still have some thrilling action sequences to keep things interesting.

We open up with the main guard’s gun being way bigger than before for absolutely no reason, but whatever.

You know. Why not right?

From  the get-go, Elisa technically saves Goliath by absolutely kicking ass. Goliath does pick her up and run away, and he gets a big superhero moment by heroically gliding away from a blonde chick firing way more incessantly than necessary, but it’s Elisa who had to do the dirty work to free him up so he could do it.

I don’t even know if this is a real fighting move but DAMN.

Bottom line, they work together really well. The action in this scene makes it pretty evident that the animation of part one is back in full-force here, with fantastic fluidity and shadow and very beautiful designs.

Er…most of the time.

Meanwhile, the Trio is busy exploring the city and probably exploding more motorcycles, but complain that their wings are tired. Red gets the idea to hail a taxi, which doesn’t work since they’re fucking monsters, so they walk.

God they’re worse than DEER.

Back with Goliath and Elisa, they hide out under a bridge. Elisa finds a radio transmitter on Goliath, with a photo of a beetle that might be a company’s logo. Elisa sees an angry rabid stray dog nearby, but uses her dog whispering abilities to make the dog super friendly, teaching kids everywhere that putting your hand out to a starving wild animal will only make it love you. She puts the tracker on the dog to hopefully distract the people chasing them.

The more you know!

Hudson, meanwhile, is now watching TV and enjoying it, flipping through lots of random Disney references like The Lion King, and Dog gets annoyed at actual dogs on the TV for some reason. The only thing important about this scene is that Hudson says the sun is coming up soon and he’s worried.

I have a theory that the dog on the commercial is the same stray we saw on the street, whose life tragically spiraled into heavy drug use and loose women after achieving fame, until he burned all his connections and ended up homeless and penniless on the street.

The previous scene with the Trio does apparently turn out to be inconsequential, because they show up to the castle without delay anyway. They are, however, worried and wondering where Goliath is. That’s why you invest in cell phones, guys.

I’M BEAUTIFUL!

As it’s getting closer to sunrise, Goliath and Elisa make it to another part of the woods, when Elisa spots the armed guys walking down the path. Goliath “explains” the whole turning to stone thing in the most half-assed way possible, which is sitting down and actually doing it. In response, Elisa starts yelling in the face of a lifeless statue.

Reasonable plan.

Since that’s obviously fruitless, she jumps out and leads the armed guys away from Goliath. They say they’ll track Goliath with the transmitter later…which begs the question of why they hadn’t been doing that now, but eh. Elisa runs like hell, passing a creepy Alice in Wonderland statue, probably symbolizing how she “fell down the rabbit hole” and such. Which is cool, but after JJ Abrams’s adoration of Alice references these days, I think the TV world is sort of burnt out on that symbolism.

THE ISLAND IS SYDNEY BRISTOW’S PURGATORY IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE

Elisa hides under a table that completely shouldn’t hide her at all but somehow she isn’t seen.

“Nope I’m not gonna look below eye level ’cause there’s no way people would visibly crouch under a table!”

She still gets the upperhand by tripping up the dude from underneath, and steals his gun (which, if you look closely, apparently only fires tranqs.)

Tranqs propelled by gunpowder and mini-explosions, but it was the 90s I guess.

Elisa hides out in a cabin-y thing that’s of course filled with gasoline which the bad guys of course shoot up and cause an explosion. Did I mention that gun she stole already ran out of ammo? This really isn’t Elisa’s day. But luckily, she gets a big action hero moment.

JOHN MCCLANE’S GOT NOTHIN’ ON YOU (said completely unironically this time)

Elisa hides in the water, and shockingly, these armed guys aren’t total dunces, because they check for a body in the explosion instead of assuming she died. Which, sad as it is to say, is a lot smarter than most mooks on TV shows are. Elisa swims away like goddamn Aquaman, but can’t get any farther than the docks where the armed guys are standing.

LOOK AT THAT GREEN-ASS WATER

This is a very pulse-pounding moment as the bad guys are walking right on top of her, with their shadow looming over Elisa’s face. She manages to pull the exact same move she did on the other guy by tripping up one of the guards and running off in the mayhem. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Also running. Lots of running. Lots and lots and lots and lots of running.

Elisa makes it to a waterfall. I don’t know much about Manhattan geography, but is Central Park (or whatever this is) really this huge with waterfalls? I mean, I’ll give the show the benefit of the doubt here since I’ve only been to Manhattan once, but this seems kinda crazy. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, though.

Anyway, Elisa pulls another cool-ass move by hanging her jacket on a tree to distract the guard, before LEAPING ON AND WRESTLING HIM UNTIL HE PASSES OUT.

Like a goddamn tigress.

The last episode was an introduction to Elisa as a character, but this time it’s an introduction to her being a BADASS. What’s really great about Elisa’s action sequence is that, unlike the quip-heavy laser/taser/gargoyle battle in part two, this action sequence is very real, suspenseful and intimate. Elisa is our lone cowboy, out-of-breath and low on sleep, armed only with her wits against an entire force of armed fighters, and with no certain way out. She’s even been missing her gun (either the guards disarmed her or it hasn’t been replaced since Goliath crushed it—it isn’t clear, but either explanation is acceptable.)

Bullet-tranq gunner like a pro.

I know I’ve rambled on about how great Elisa is in these past two episodes, but it’s not out of previous admiration for the character; these two episodes just do a really, really good job at making her extremely likeable and interesting. Admittedly, she’s not as complex as other characters we’ve met and will meet, but that’s part of her appeal—she’s open, and what you see is what you get, but both what you see and get is awesome. We got a nice peek into her thought process last time, but now we get to see her in action and what she’s capable of in the worst of situations. It’s incredibly easy to root for her since we already know she’s a decent person, and it makes the stakes all the higher now because we desperately want her to win even with everything stacked against her.

You know like BEING COVERED IN GASOLINE.

She returns to the stone Goliath, where she notes that this was “’Lot to go through for a piece of lawn sculpture,” followed by a funny little scene with a runner confused that he never noticed a statue on that path. With the coast clear for now, Elisa hangs around and sleeps with Goliath.

WAIT NO NOT LIKE THAT, LIKE THIS.

That night, Goliath awakens and is surprised to see that Elisa stayed around to protect him from what Elisa calls “comic book rejects.” It’s a nice moment—they shake hands and establish that they’re even now.

And then he crushed her hand off.

While there’s no big “aha!” moment for Goliath to start trusting humans, it is a step for him to move closer to trusting them again. Elisa has proved herself, but it’s going to take much more to show that it’s not a fluke. They agree to see each other later that night, and part ways.

“Hellll yeah Imma get some pussaaaaaaaay.”

Goliath returns to the castle and informs his clan that they have enemies, while Xanatos and Owen ominously watch the exchange via video feed because they are definitely good guys.

Pure angels.

During the exchange, Hudson let’s it slip that he’s now named Hudson, and Blue’s…intimidated?

Like for real, what is that reaction?

They get over the shock and instead get excited at the prospects of naming. They use what they learned about the city locations last time and name themselves—Red chooses Brooklyn, Blue chooses Broadway, Green chooses Lexington, and I’m relieved to finally not list them as their colors four episodes in. Lexington asks, “Do…you like it?” after he names himself and it’s so cute and you want to pinch his cheeks. Brooklyn names the dog Bronx, who just walks away not giving a shit. Lex apparently doesn’t understand body language because he assumes Bronx likes it.

Exactly how I show appreciation. Walking away.

The exact reason they’re each named these names seems kind of random (Brooklyn is cool? Broadway is theatrical? I don’t know.) But it’s honestly not something I’ve looked into further, because it doesn’t really matter; we’ve already got a clear picture of these characters’ personalities, so its not like we need Broadway to be named “Gluttono” or something to clarify it. It’s also another testament to the originality of the show, that naming the major characters is a plot point so late in the game. It’s also goes to show just how quickly our leads are adapting to their new world and actually liking it, just as Goliath is easing back into trusting humans.

Owen shows up and summons Goliath to Xanatos. In a huge twist, Xanatos introduces Goliath to…DEMONA.

Totally no symbolism in this screencap.

I know this was ruined by the crappy shadow in the last episode, but enough time has passed that maybe you kinda sorta forgot. And seriously, his brief moment is insane. There’s a very off-putting zolly shot on Demona for one, which is rare enough to see in film and even rarer to see in animation. And then FUCKING THIS.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Let’s talk about this. I’ve been trying to sort through my feelings on whether I like how obvious the “Demona isn’t a good guy” hints are here. This show likes to go back and forth between being relatively subtle and overtly in-your-face (as much as I have a soft-spot the loud, epic instrumental score behind every episode, it is not nor will it ever be even remotely subtle) but it rarely shies away from being complex and smart with whatever way it chooses. So, this dark moment is really shocking for first-time watchers, and creates a sense of intrigue and suspense because we now know for sure that something big is about to go down. But the downside is that we’re immediately disconnected from Goliath’s journey—he doesn’t see the shadowy zoom on her eyes or hear the ominous music.

WHO FARTED?!

There isn’t really anything to make him suspicious, so while this moment is really good for the shock factor, we’re robbed from going on this journey with Goliath. However, I’m a little conflicted because of how this scene continues. Because, put simply, Goliath and Demona have a ton of chemistry. I mean, even Xanatos seems to be getting off from watching them stroke each other’s hair.

Yes…yeeees…keep stroking…

Keith David puts on a winning performance, and Marina Sirtis’s voice is noticeably high and very sweet. These guys are just so happy, and you want them to be happy together. In this sense, the “eeeevil!” glare before works, because now we as an audience really don’t want something to be up with Demona so Goliath can get some happiness, even though every fiber of our being is telling us that she’s obviously bad news, somehow.

Demona explains that back in 994 she left the castle to find Goliath before the sun rose. By the time she got back, the Magus had already turned the others to stone, so she did the same thing Goliath did and asked him to turn her to stone, too. Xanatos says he found her a year ago and added her to his private collection, and decided to take her to the top of the tower after Goliath and his friends woke up. Demona also says, “all the days I dreamed of this moment,” before the rest of the clan learns of the news.

I want to make fun of the hair stroking thing, but that’s such a cool element of gargoyle culture.

Note that this story has a lot of holes. Why was Demona gone so long before returning to the castle in 994? Wouldn’t this be written in the Magus’s book? How did Xanatos separately acquire Demona for his private collection a year earlier? How was Demona waiting for this moment “all the days” if she’s been stone, too? These are questions that could be explained, sure, but no one bothers to ask them because the gargoyles have no interest in looking a gift horse in the mouth. Goliath’s only interest is, “With you alive, I can start to live again as well.” The mixed emotions of the clan being happy and Demona being ominous are very off-putting and tense, but I’m not entirely sure it justifies the obvious “DEMONA’S EVIL OR SOMETHING!” moments.

Mostly because there’s ANOTHER EVIL EYE CLOSE-UP MOMENT.

Anyway, barring that discussion, Demona convinces Goliath to help Xanatos retrieve the disks stolen back in part two, if nothing else out of gratitude for reuniting them. Xanatos recaps the three video game levels the disks are being held in by Cyberbiotics.

GUYS LOOK AT LEX’S FACE.

Goliath and Demona take the air fortress, while the Trio takes the tower, resulting in them saying “cool,” which they explain indicates a positive response. Goliath is just like, “…Okay.” Hudson is sent to the underground base with Bronx, which he isn’t happy about.

NO REALLY, WHO FARTED?!

Goliath’s excuse is that Bronx “needs the exercise” which…uh…okay, sure. Also, Xanatos is all evil again.

Standard Xanatos screencap for every page about him on the internet.

We get another exchange between Goliath and Demona being lovey-dubby and talking about dreams coming true and shit that makes us single folks want to strangle ourselves. But again, it’s a very nice scene coupled with an air of ominous because of all these evil eyes and music. Hell, we even see Xanatos watching them evilly as they fly off.

When will my reflection show…
Who I am inside?

So, this weird mix certainly adds an effect of suspense we wouldn’t otherwise have. But the reason all this obvious evil bothers me spawns from the scenes following Goliath and Demona’s arrival to the big Cyberbiotics airfortress. Their entrance is really cool—it’s all very quiet and without dialogue as Demona and Goliath get caught in the air currents and have trouble getting up there, and the animation is spot on. Well, except for Goliath at one point stopping midair, changing his course and flying (not gliding) in the opposite direction the air currents that should be carrying him.

GLIDING DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT

Anyway, when they get into the airship, Demona makes some brief quips about guards “throwing away their lives” to protect their disks, meaning it’s a-ok to kill them. Goliath is noticeably weirded out by this—and it’s exactly what makes the previous hints about Demona’s evilness bother me so much. Before, her evil glares and creepy music were only things the audience saw or felt. Goliath is finally picking up on these hints because they’re actually tangible in the Gargoyles world, and not Gargoyles the TV show that we’re watching.

“Dear god…SHE farted?!”

But since we’ve spent the last 10 minutes getting moment after moment of ominousness from Demona, Goliath seems kind of slow for not picking up on it (even though there’s no way he really could have.) This very subtle moment right here could have been an amazing first hint at something being wrong with Demona, and we’d be right along with Goliath in thinking, “hold up…what?” So if you didn’t catch the holes in her story before, this would be the first clear indication to the audience that “YES YOU SHOULD BE WARY.” And it’d be even stronger, because we’re in the heat of battle, which makes it all the more scary when we consider she could be a traitor or a clone or robot or psycho or whatever. But instead, we’ve been readied to expect it before Goliath does, and it cheapens the moment. It made the earlier scenes slightly more interesting because they were a little more ominous, but I don’t know how much it was worth it.

Anyway, Goliath continues to think Demona’s behavior is risky. The sequence with the big-nosed guard freaking out in the smoke is very creepy as Demona and Goliath both stalk the guy like monsters (one reason why this show is awesome.)

Just poke him in the eye with your nose, bro.

Demona decides to drop the now-unconscious guy off the ship to his death, prompting Goliath to stop her, saying, “To kill in the heat of battle is one thing, but not like this.”

“I’m not the one who farted–it was HIM!”

Wow. This kids’ show openly justified killing in certain circumstances. And you think your kids shows are edgy, 2012? In any case, the growing tension between Goliath and Demona is very, very good.

Meanwhile, the Trio in the tower are, of course, totally excited about all the “magic in this century” (aka 90s technology.) There’s a fairly humorous sequence where they don’t understand why the elevator here is different from the elevator at the castle (because the car is on another floor.) They decide to use the rope to slide down, because gargoyles don’t get rope burn I guess.

I was a beast at this in gym class.

…And then the doors open up to a shitton of guns pointed at them.

Oops.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Oh.

Uh…yeah, this episode just kind of stops when it runs out of time. The cliffhangers at the end of parts two and three aren’t exactly pulse-pounding, but they do function well as partial closure and a launching point into the next episode. It definitely wouldn’t be a problem viewing this in its movie form, but as an individual episode, it doesn’t work so well. That doesn’t hurt the episode’s content at all, it’s just not a very good ending place.

One thing I want to make clear is that, while I was pretty negative this time around, this is still a really strong, enjoyable episode. The problem is that, by nature of what it is, there wasn’t too much substance to talk about outside of the Demona reveal, which is unfortunately flawed. But that doesn’t muck up the entire episode, or the theme.

Like part two, we got two plotlines for each half of the episode, one of which is mostly an action sequence. But this time the two plots complement each other really well thematically—comparing the two women in Goliath’s life. Elisa is a stranger, and of a race Goliath can’t bring himself to trust. But she still manages to prove her loyalty without asking for a reward, simply because it’s the right thing to do, and she knows Goliath is a good guy.

Just wanted a reason to use this cool screencap. Carry on.

On the other hand, Goliath’s old and supposedly “true” love of his own race, Demona, progressively shows more and more that she’s reckless, doesn’t share the same ideals as Goliath, and isn’t being completely truthful. It’s not a perfect parallel, but it works—one is risking her life for Goliath, while the other is quite frankly closer to putting his life in danger. It’s confusing for Goliath now and is leading to a very conflicted climax in the opening five-parter’s conclusion, and will likely be conflicting and emotionally confusing for us, too.

Or at least it would be if we didn’t already get so many damn shots of Demona being eeeeevil.

If the copious amount of action last time was too much for you, here’s a chance for the complete opposite in an episode that functions as Elisa’s big introduction. Seriously, there’s lots of talking and pretty landscapes and only one little explosion that was a total accident. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good, or packed with enough shipper-fuel to drive a truck cross-country.

We actually start of right in the thick of things—Elisa is in the middle of grilling Owen for answers, who gives some excuse about generators blowing up.

“So I says to Mabel, I says…”

Elisa doesn’t take his crap, quickly citing how she heard automatic weapons being fired. We’re not even a minute into the episode and already she’s winning us over with her intelligence and straightforwardness. We also get a cute little smile from Owen after she gets the upper hand, a rarity for him.

Mmm Mmmmmmm

Xanatos pops in, and even in his swoon-worthy presence she doesn’t choke—she grills him even harder than Owen. Xanatos, in turn, is surprisingly upfront; he acknowledges that the generator thing was solely for the press, and in reality he was totally attacked by an invading force. When she calls him out on how dumb that is since he’s just a company, Xanatos asserts that his company is bigger than some countries.

No country is as big as that goddamn door, either.

This whole exchange is well-handled, because we’ve got two characters who are very smart in completely different ways (Business vs. streetwise, Knowing how to mess with people vs. knowing how people really work.)  Instead of playing some game of chess, they’re totally straight to each other because they know playing the game either way will be fruitless, since the other person is too smart for it. I don’t know if Jonathan Frakes and Salli Richardson were in the same room when they recorded, but it feels like they were considering how well they play off one another.

OH, YOU.

Meanwhile, the trio finds the kitchen. You know, filled with food (you BETCHA Hungry Blue gets a fat joke in there) and also lots of loud things. So shenanigans ensue.

Guess you can say he’s now a “metalhead”…amirite?!

It isn’t a totally inconsequential scene (I TOLD YOU GUYS!) because Xanatos goes to check it out and sends Elisa away. Though not before she sees a stone gargoyle standing and notes that she saw it move. Even though a) he isn’t moving and b) he totally isn’t stone, but whatever. After Owen puts her on the elevator, Elisa, being a quick-thinker, has the crazy daring and clever idea of pushing a button to another floor.

JOHN MCCLANE’S GOT NOTHIN’ ON YOU.

Elisa explores the castle a bit, throwing out quips to herself about heating bills and Dracula, like she’s some crazy person (and also so the scene isn’t as boring.)

For real though, can we talk about the size of these doors?

She makes her way back to the roof, where the gargoyle Dog shows up, being all growl-y and intimidating. Then Goliath shows up and crushes her gun, being even more intimidating.

Way to not care about the Second Amendment you dirty liberal hippie.

So intimidating, in fact, that Elisa falls off the edge of the castle to her death, giving Goliath yet another horrific tragedy on his conscious.

This show is SO. DARK.

Just kidding, obviously. Goliath catches her in his big romantic Superman moment. He also flies RIGHT over people, but I guess we can ignore that.

dundundunDUUUUN dundundundun DUUUUUUUUUUUN

When they land, Elisa gives him a look of “Oooooo…?” and he gives her the spiel about being a gargoyle and all that. What’s really funny here is that Goliath is just kinda fed up with humans always needing saving, so while he’s certainly polite to Elisa, he’s openly annoyed about being in the situation. He doesn’t come off as rude, just exhausted. Keith David has a wonderful delivery when Elisa asks if there’s more of them, with a very distinct inhale followed by “Barely.” It’s not exactly subtle, but we aren’t beaten over the head with angst. Goliath is just really tired and pretty much done with life (which makes his experiences with Elisa in this episode and the next all the more important.) We also get a definitive explanation: that gargoyles can’t fly, but only glide. Because of this, Goliath has to climb up the building with Elisa on his back.

How…romantic?

Goliath tells her to “Please, don’t fall off the building this time,” which is just freakin’ hilarious. The other gargoyles show up, acting like excited children as they get in her face and ask question after question. It’s actually really cute, and Red even sniffs her.

Let’s forget the fact that there’s no female gargoyles around and say all this is totally innocent.

There’s some exposition here from both sides, but it’s handled really well; the gargoyle stuff is recapped quickly, while Elisa’s life as a detective is broken down in a way that highlights what the gargoyles are searching for at this point. She’s a good guy who fights bad guys under the justice system, but the justice system is run by humans, who the gargoyles don’t think they can trust. So how can they, as gargoyles, be good or bad when the way good and bad is defined now is by a human justice system? Also, the way Goliath says “De-tec-tive?” is glorious.

Also 75% of the back half of this episode is Manhattan Landscape Porn, just a head’s up.

Since Goliath saved her life, Elisa agrees to teach them about the city in return. Goliath randomly yells that she has to go now, but it’s really unclear as to why—whether he senses Xanatos coming or if the sun coming up soon—and it’s kind of a weird moment. But regardless, one of the best parts of Elisa here is just how calm and accepting she is of this whole situation.

Actually, let’s backtrack—she totally freaks out at first, as any normal human being would. So she’s not unrealistic, but she’s both intelligent and open-minded enough to realize that “smart, talking creatures who save my life = good.” I’d say it shows how she’s very trusting, but I don’t think that’s it—her insight into the explosions and her straightforwardness with Xanatos showed how well she could read into things and pick up on the details. So she can read the gargoyles well and realizes they’re just people (albeit a different species of people) that need some help. There’s always that portion of people who look at any issue with discrimination and say, “What’s the big deal? We’re all just people.” Elisa is one of them, and I’d argue her attitude makes her one of the best role models on the show.

Bro, if you see a zit on someone’s face, you don’t GLARE at it.

Elisa and Goliath also have some great banter in the scene (“Why were you sneaking into the castle?”/ “A good detective trusts no one.”/ “That’s one thing we have in common.”) The dialogue in this entire episode is really, really good, in fact. It flows nicely with what’s essentially a non-existent narrative plot, just because it’s so engaging. The animation, facial expressions and subtle movements are great throughout, too; Elisa does an adorable little hair sweep before she says “tomorrow, after dark” that doesn’t have much deeper meaning, but still adds color to her actions. Part one still had the best animation thus far, but this episode has enough nuance in the movement that it makes up for some occasionally spotty designs.

Anyway, Xanatos calls Goliath into his office and reveals it was his disks that were stolen in the last episode, by a place called Cyberbiotics. Xanatos describes the disks to Goliath as being the equivalent of “magic talismans containing numbers of spells.”

That doesn’t look like my iPod…?

Something of note here is that Xanatos makes a good case for why he can’t get the cops involved and such. But there’s a sense that he’s being a little too open and welcoming, thanks to Frakes’s borderline condescending delivery. It doesn’t feel like Xanatos is lying, but it does feel like he’s trying to sweet-talk Goliath. I think Goliath picks up on it, but there’s not much to do since you can’t exactly call someone out on sounding too nice.

Look at the VHS. Look at it. Now feel old.

Again the dialogue is great here, with Goliath’s surprise over the TV and referring to it as a “living tapestry,” and Xanatos noting that his naiveté is refreshing. Xanatos lays out the three places the disks are being held and their fortifications, basically setting it up like one big videogame. Goliath doesn’t want to put his charges in danger since this real life videogame is different than protecting a castle, but he considers it.

After Goliath leaves, a vague shadow appears and Xanatos says, “Everything’s going according to plan.”

NOPE. NO IDEA WHO THAT IS.

Yeah, cool as an act break as that is…why is the shadow so obvious? It’s really bothersome, since it ruins the surprise by having an awkward half-reveal here. Either full-on reveal her, or keep it secret, considering nothing more happens with it in this episode, anyway.

The next night, the trio goes exploring so they can get into more wacky adventures. Goliath meets with Elisa, and Old Beard shows up to make sure Goliath wasn’t being ambushed, since they’re all paranoid and stuff. There’s more banter here, as Elisa gets chastised for naming everything. The exchange is really funny, actually:

“Must you humans name everything? Nothing’s real to you until you’ve named it, given it limits.”
“It’s not like that it’s just…well…things need names.”
“Does the sky need a name. Does the river?”
“The river’s called the Hudson.”

“I’m literally getting a headache from all your stupid.”

Since he’s old and just wants the argument to end, he goes with naming himself Hudson, like the lazy gargoyle he is. (RIP Old Beard, you’ll forever be the name in my headcanon.) This is a cool exchange in any case; we don’t really have a reason for naming people other than it just making things easier to identify, but it’s certainly hard to explain. These little bits of culture collisions the gargoyles have, especially involving things that are ingrained in humans thanks to our society, are some of the best parts of this show.

Anyway, Goliath and Elisa start getting all chummy.

65 episodes of unresolved sexual tension, tee hee hee!

Hudson, however, gives them the best glare.

“Goliath is MAH man.”

Despite how hilarious the moment is, it’s worth noting that Hudson decides to stay in the castle because he finds the world “too big, too bright, too loud.” We’re definitely getting a grasp of his character by now—he’s the standard “old guy who doesn’t like new things,” sure, but the jaded warrior aspect gives it a tinge of originality. Also, he’s still Ed Asner, so come on.

Elisa and Goliath go flying around on what’s more or less their first date. It’s also an excuse to show off the beautifully painted and sometimes animated Manhattan, which I have to admit is incredibly well-rendered and quite beautiful.

New York: The TV Series (featuring Gargoyles)

The wording Goliath uses to describe the city (“towers of glass and iron”) is beautiful and precise, showing off a great poetic prowess we haven’t tapped into quite yet. Elisa notes that the biggest worries aren’t from outside, but inside—a big theme in the first season.

Meanwhile, Hudson and Dog discover the American Dream: a Home Entertainment Center. Except the TV has loud, bad-haired, and half-shirted rock music, which shows how old Gargoyles is since there are still music videos being played on TV. This causes Hudson and Dog to topple over and literally run away screaming in another absolutely hysterical moment.

Literally my reaction when Two and a Half Men comes on.

In the city, a couple named Margot and Brendan pull over when their car breaks down. Margot is pretty much established as the most non-ambiguously evil and sadistic villain in the entire series. That’s not just a play on Marina Sirtis voicing her, I mean she’s just a horrible person. It sets up the episode where Brendan snaps and the gargoyles have to stop him before he blows up New York in an ill-gotten attempt to prove to his wife that he isn’t worthless (I’m sure we’ll see it whenever the comics get relaunched.)

Look at that bitch. AND LOOK AT THAT CAR PHONE.

Then some hooligans show up being all 90s equal opportunity hooligin-y…

Crew cuts are for real gangstas.

…and Margot LOCKS HER HUSBAND OUT OF THE CAR.

KILL HER. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMEONE KILL HER.

Elisa shows up, being awesome and totally confident, and leads the muggers away from Brendan and his hellspawn wife. The end up in the alley, where they face Goliath. Naturally, their first reaction is “MONSTER!” And then their second reaction is “Trash it!”

Yeah, great plan guys.

Of course, the hooligans get beat up and Brendan and Margot run away. Elisa says that she thinks Goliath is the best thing to happen to the city in a long time, cueing a cute little romantic piano/superhero-y theme that’s quite adorable.

Elsewhere, the trio get totally entranced by a dude on a motorcycle like what men on motorcycles do to me. Green flies down to check out his bike, and of course the driver gets mildly freaked out by the flying, bald, giant-headed bat thing that’s talking to him.

Sup.

The driver falls off his bike and runs away (wow, a lot of running away happens in this episode.) Green tries to drive it and…crashes it and blows it up. Damn garg’ drivers.

Yeah, insurance ain’t covering that.

It’s worth noting that while Red and Blue just find the motorcycle really cool, Green is innately interested in how it works. Coupled with his “dragon” comment in part two, it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s going to have the easiest time adapting to the new world just because of his interest in how it all works. The trouble is when his curiosity is to a fault and he blows stuff up.

Back with Goliath and Elisa, they have a discussion about how ugly the world is—Goliath is still convinced humans aren’t worth saving, which Elisa somehow isn’t offended by. Although, maybe she is, because she sort of indirectly calls him ugly when she compares him to the city, which she says has an “ugly face,” which could be taken as pretty passive-aggressive. But it’s okay, because she also gives a nice little speech on the beauty and good people you can find in the city as well. So her “beauty on the inside” analogy would make sense, if Goliath wasn’t such a fucking stud already.

WHO FARTED?!

Then Goliath gets tranqed by the armed guys from the last episode, completely out of nowhere. TO BE CONTINUED.

I mean, at least the captor has kind of a nice ass.

An episode with no action and that spends most of its time recapping the plot and discussing the show’s themes should not be that good, but this manages to be incredibly engaging. It’s honestly less boring than the big explosive action sequence in the last episode. A big part of it is, like I mentioned, the dialogue. There’s a whole lot of talking this time, but the characters’ voices are all incredibly distinct, and when those distinct voices play off of each other, the banter is really entertaining. Every conversation has some tinge of annoyance, or frustration, or inner turmoil, or manipulation, and even the happy talks are great fun. Elisa talking about being a detective doesn’t sound like it’d be that interesting, but her precision with breaking it down and the gargoyles’ reactions and subsequent comments are very entertaining. Not to mention the talking is balanced out with a ton of humor, and all the jokes land.

The meat of the episode is the character interaction; we got lots of insight into the relationships between Goliath and Elisa, Hudson and Goliath/Elisa, Xanatos and Goliath, and the Trio and the world around them. It’s all immensely engaging, and turns what could have been a snorefest into a fun little romp that helps us learn a whole heckuva lot about everybody. Even the art and animation has improved since part two, meaning this entire episode overall is top-notch, and far exceeds part two in nearly every way. The cliffhanger is a bit out of the blue, but it’s also a big promise that there will be some action to come. But unlike last time, the action will actually matter.

Well I just got back from Granite Con, and it was super fun! I didn’t do a lot of shopping or wandering, but I did sell a lot of swag. Here are a few shots of my table:

For those of your really paying attention: yes, those are the completed Despondent Mega Man books! It was done in plenty of time for the con, much to my delight. Here are some close ups right after the binding and trimming were done:

Every copy of the book in their despondent glory!

A nice close up. I’m really happy with the cover.

So far I’ve sold five of these bad boys, and three more are tentatively reserved. I’ll have to get some fan feedback and see if anyone is interested in buying these online. If so, I will print more.

I spent some time with the Ghostbusters of New Hampshire. I love these guys! They are so committed to the art of bustin’ goblins, spooks, and demons!

The Hello Kitty Proton Pack. I’m a fan.

The highlight of the show for me was drawing sketch cards for people. They were so much fun to do, and if we’re being honest, some of them were hard to part with. Here they are!

A Gargoyles character! How cool is that?

For all the Robot Masters I’ve drawn, I’ve never done this one before.

Nor this one!

Oh, this one was hard to let go

But THIS one was my favorite!

As a side note, you might have noticed some thumbnails hiding under some of the pictures of sketch cards. Well, my friends, that is my new comic I’m working on! What is it, you ask? I’ll reveal it soon!

One last note: Despondent Mega Man now officially has a weekly release date. Every Thursday will be “Despondent Thursday,” and I will post a new comic up by that evening, come rain or shine.

That’s it for now! Sorry about the super long update, but I had a lot of ground to cover!

classy and deadly

Gargoyles is one of the cartoons that defined the kind of person I wanted to grow up to be.  One of the main characters, Detective Maza, was a beautiful, straightforward cop who kicked all kinds of ass and didn’t take shit from anyone.  She’s a gun-toting, badge-wearing, ass-kicking justice machine who had gargoyles for friends.  Naturally, she was my idol.  Plus I wanted to be a gargoyle.  So epic.  The series was full of strong female characters.  Even the evil ones like Demona were admirable.

Gargoyles was such a great series.  It was beautifully illustrated, flooded with mythology and voiced by half of the Star Trek TNG cast.  There’s nothing to dislike about this series other than the fact that it only ran for three seasons, and Disney has given up on releasing it on DVD in full due to poor first season sales.  Goddammit.  I’m reduced to watching it online.

the understated love story was almost too subtle for me at the time

Where No Woman, we need to talk… ABOUT SOME BADASS FRIGGIN’ LADIES. Specifically, those of Deep Space Nine. I watched some of DS9 when I was a kid and always liked it, but for some reason I wasn’t a dedicated viewer like I was with TNG, so after years of threatening to do so I’m finally watching DS9 as it should be seen: by an adult capable of understanding political plots, and on the lookout for rad female characters.

I highly recommend you all schedule this awesome awesome Trek in to your lives, and here present a multimedia argument to lure you in, with screencaps courtesy of  Trekcore:

FEMALE GUEST STARS OF DEEP SPACE NINE
LOOKIT ‘EM
(through episode 2.10 only; no significant spoilers) 

Note: Many of these characters were one-shots who appeared in episodes centered around them and did not appear again as much as I love Kira and Dax, the lesser known women of DS9 need attention too! I’m focusing on the latter part of DS9 season one and early part of season two, but I have to make a quick detour at 1.07.

“Q-Less.”

This is Vash. You may remember her from such TNG plotlines as being a rogue archaeologist thief who hooked up with Jean-Luc Picard like it ain’t no thing.

Her presence on DS9 is causing some hijinks because no less a superbeing than Q has decided she is the best

He is not wrong.

1.13, “Battlelines,” features a Kai Opaca-heavy story.

Though not my favorite, Opaca combines the qualities of ineffable goofiness with the gravitas of leadership — she is not content to merely serve as head of the Bajoran religion, but is on a spiritual quest of her own.

1.17, “The Forsaken,” brings in my other favorite recurring TNG character: Lwaxana Troi, mother of Deanna and pwner of all — portrayed by the first lady of Star Trek, Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

The fab hair changes aren’t part of her special alien powers (she’s a Betazoid telepath). It’s just something she does for fun.

Lwaxana is far greater than the sum of her hair parts.

1.20, “In the Hands of the Prophets” is when shit starts getting real, plotwise (but I’ll keep it vague).

Keiko O’Brien, founder and teacher of DS9′s school, believes in teaching her students the truth to the most current and rigorous scientific understanding and if you tell her she can’t she will make this face at you.

Winn Adami, Vedek of an Orthodox sect of the Bajoran religion, believes in wearing hats shaped like the Sydney Opera House and being morally ambiguous and tough as nails.

Neela, Chief O’Brien’s engineering assistant, believes in the Prophets.

2.01, “The Homecoming,” very briefly features a smuggler named Rionoj.

Kind of tells you all you need to know, doesn’t it?

2.03, “The Siege”: bonus Molly!

Molly is the daughter of Keiko (see above) and Chief O’Brien. She was born in a bar! Just… so you know.

2.06, “Melora” is DS9′s not entirely faily Very Special Disability episode, featuring an ensign from a low-gravity planet which requires her to use a wheelchair in higher-gravity environments.

Julian attempts to impress her by taking her to a Klingon restaurant; she perceives that her racht are half dead and chews out the proprietor IN KLINGON.

2.07, “Rules of Acquisition,” is about one of Star Trek’s only two onscreen female Ferengis (custom requires that they stay naked and subservient to their family’s men). But Pel has business acumen and wants a better life, so she decides to take a page from the Oldest Trick in the Book: drag!

She comes out to Dax.

There are complications. (First Ferengis in the Gamma Quadrant, holla!)

I love her a lot.

2.08, “Necessary Evil,” is DS9′s fantastic take on hard-boiled detective noir!

You’ve got your mysterious woman in white, your dark and stormy night…

Your bonus flashback Kira…

And your super sweet spangled flapper headbands.

2.09, “Second Sight,” guest stars Salli Elise Richardson, voice of Elisa Maza in Gargoyles, which also featured the voices of Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Nichelle Nichols, and Brent Spiner among other starnerds!

And she’s a mysterious woman in red.

Or is it grey?!

Our last episode of this installment, which gave me the final push needed to put this post together for you, is 2.10, “Sanctuary.”

Meet Haneek. Haneek thinks this dress is horrible.

Haneek has two sleepy husbands. (And one son played by Walter Koenig’s kid. Chekov Jr!) Haneek wonders why Kira doesn’t have her own males.

BECAUSE HANEEK IS FROM A POLYANDROUS SPACE MATRIARCHY, OKAY?!

DAX: Are all your leaders women?
HANEEK: Yes.
BASHIR: All of them?
DAX: You heard her, Julian.
HANEEK: Men are far too emotional to be leaders. They’re constantly fighting amongst themselves. It’s their favorite thing to do.

Boom, roasted.

DS9 is my favorite thing to do. ♥ WATCH IT AND TALK ABOUT IT WITH MEEEE.

Written by: Steve Perry
Original Air Date: September 13, 1995
Introduces: N/A
Timeline placement: October 1 – October 31, 1995
TMNT episode I could make an incredibly easy comparison to: Ep. 7.04: “The Engagement Ring”

The Beats:

• Xanatos proposes to Fox. It is awkward and unromantic. Fox accepts.

• Xanatos gives Fox the Eye of Odin as an Engagement not-Ring. Bad idea, Xanatos; the eye causes Fox to uncontrollably turn into a werebeast.

• Out of control, the WereFox roams the streets at night, hitting meat stores and the like. On one of these occasions, she runs into Elisa, who unsuccessfully attempts to stop her. On another, she runs into both her and Goliath.

• After Xanatos and Owen figure out that Fox has gotten Foxier (sorry) and that the Eye of Odin can’t be taken away from her without shocky ouchie pain, they attempt several stratagems in order to stop her.
• One of these stratagems involves trying to manipulate Goliath into doing the work for him, which fails, as Goliath sees right through it, and tells Xanatos as much. The gargoyle refuses to help, even after Xanatos explains who exactly the werebeast is.

• Halloween arrives, and the gargoyles (except for Hudson) are out and about. Lexington is dressed as an old-timey pilot; Broadway is a noir detective; Brooklyn is a pirate. Elisa gets fancy and cosplays as Beauty and the Beast‘s Belle. Goliath, ever the non-conformist, goes as himself.

• As the night wears on, Goliath begins reconsidering his “don’t help Xanatos” stance, especially the implication that he can love.

• Working together, Goliath, Xanatos and Elisa manage to restrain Were!Fox and remove the Eye of Odin.

• Xanatos takes Fox back home, while Goliath keeps the Eye of Odin.

• As they head home, Owen remarks that Xanatos, in her efforts to save Fox, has never looked more heroic.

Continuity Notes:

• The Eye of Odin last appeared in “The Edge“.  Xanatos remarks in this episode that it is meant to
• Fox and Xanatos were first revealed to be a couple in “Leader of the Pack“.  Here it is revealed that their relationship is such that Fox has her private own room inside the castle, although it is not stated whether that is her permanent residence (and yes, I know Greg has said it was; the episode doesn’t say it).
• Elisa fears the Werefox is another of Xanatos’ experiments, a reference to her brother’s fate in “Metamorphosis“.
• Broadway’s private eye costume–or at least the trenchcoat and hat–was first seen last episode, “The Silver Falcon“.  Given its fate in that episode, it can be assumed that the version seen here is a new one.

—-

So the big thing about this episode is that Xanatos is in love, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.  It’s a  good character beat, and rather subversive, given cartoons at the time; while villains in love isn’t a new trope, it’s almost always played as the sort of infatuation that will lead to stalking and kidnapping and murder attempts, so something like this–where the villain’s love is good and noble and improves a person–comes as a surprise.  We’d already seen that Fox was in love with Xanatos in “Her Brother’s Keeper”, so it’s basically a match made in  heaven.

I do think, however, that these relationship upgrades  come a tad too quickly, with each successive Fox appearance heralding a new-to-the-audience status.  Last time we saw her, we found out that she and Xanatos have a thing going; here she gets engaged; in the next episode, she’ll get married, and in the one after that (if you don’t count her cameo in City of Stone) she’s pregnant.  Thankfully, the pattern gets broken after that, or else, by the time the comics came around we’d probably have her becoming  a great-grandmother.  >_< Combined with the fact that these events are not usually used to develop others and not her–note that we never really get to learn anything about her experience as a werefox from her point of view–it all makes Fox feel more like a plot device like a character at times.

Goliath claims that Xanatos’ capacity to love offers some hope for the world, the idea apparently being that evil people are incapable of sincere, positive love. Is it the right idea?   While it’s not out of character for him to believe this–despite his ever-expanding world-view, he still tends to think in black and white at this point–is there any in-universe evidence to support this assertion, or does the show argue that Goliath is incorrect?

Love, of course, isn’t an alien emotion to the series’ villains. Aside from Xanatos and Fox’s relationship, there are Macbeth’s various relationships (established while he was still being used as an antagonist), Oberon’s sincere love for Titania, and of course, Demona’s love for Angela. Still, Xanatos is distinct among the villains because unlike Demona, he believed himself above love.

I’m not the biggest fan of the proposal scene.  The vibe that comes off is rather off-putting and somewhat awkward, which is something that Xanatos rarely is.  I could see him casually proposing after sex, during a random conversation, or as they’re both playing chess.  But it seems too contrived and artificial here.  If he doesn’t respect the idea of marriage, or its tropes (and I think this is what the scene sets out to show), why stage a fancy dress dinner for two, set it up to be like Citizen Kane, and propose there?  If he does care, why not try to actually make it romantic?  It makes Xanatos seem eccentric, which is not an adjective I would have ever used to describe the character.

According to Xanatos’ second-hand account, the Eye of Odin endows the wearer with power and insight.  Goliath suggests that it has made Fox more like herself (which seems rather presumptive of him, given that he’s only met her once).  Does anyone agree?  Does this jive with Goliath’s own experiences with the eye?

Aside from the discovery that Fox is apparently an otherkin, the biggest surprise of the episode is probably that Elisa is a cosplayer, and a rather dedicated one, it seems–that Belle costume is perfect, and one wonders how much time and money she spent on it.  And then she removes the bottom part of it and the whole thing turns from cute to oddly fascinating.

The more I think about it, the more I’m fascinated by the dress’ removable skirt, which feels rather impossible.  For one, the bottom seems quite light and flexible, while at the same time being stiff enough to keep its bell shape without any underlying support.  The way she removes the skirt also seems to suggest that there’s a hidden slit somewhere (which makes sense, given her ability to quickly draw her gun from her thigh holster) which makes it even more magic, in my book, since it still manages to remained perfectly closed despite all the swaying about.

Also, the stockings: I wonder whose idea it was.  I could kinda see them as a little something to prevent her from seeming naked in that teeny-tiny short underskirt, except that the outfit we got actually feels more risque than that would have been.  I kinda want to believe that it was the Japanese animators’ fault, because they worked on this episode and because short skirts + stockings is absolutely huge there, but I’m not sure if it makes sense for things to have turned out that way.  In-story, I could soooort of see them being justified as a way to keep warm on a late October night, except that it doesn’t really make any sense for Elisa to go for stockings and not, say, leggings.

On a less obsessively focused note, I happen to find Goliath and Elisa’s interactions here–the first since “The Mirror”–rather sweet and refreshingly angst-free.  They do feel like they’re friends, who wish they could be more.

Random Thoughts:

• In the Gargoyles comic books, we find out that Hudson spent his second Halloween (in 1996) at his friend Jeffrey Robbins’ house.  Given what happened then, we can probably assume that he did not do that in 1995.  So what did he do?  Stay at home?  Fly around?  Have his own wild Halloween adventure?

Written by: Cary Bates
Original Air Date: September 12, 1995
Introduces: Martin Hacker; Dominic Dracon; Pal Joey (unidentified); Mace Malone (Mentioned only)
Timeline placement: October 27- October 28, 1995
TMNT episode I could make a forced comparison to: Ep. 4.01: “Cousin Sid”

Synopsis:

It was a dark and stormy night, like something out of a cliche. Private Detective and master of unlocking in training Matt Bluestone breaks into a shabby, apparently empty building, and heads towards the cellar, which appears to be the site of some activity.  He is greeted by blinding spotlights and men with firearms.

Elsewhere, in a world without color, an armed mafioso two clogged arteries short of a heart attack runs, panicked. By the time he thinks to look ahead of him instead of back, it’s too late: a fire escape ladder is headed right his way, driven, if such a thing can be driven, by a man in a hat and trenchcoat.  The goon goes down, and, with nowhere else to go, he can do nothing but listen to the ladder-wielding man as he says:

You made one mistake, Louie.  You messed with my partner.  And when someone messes with your partner, you’re supposed to do something about it.

Back in the world of color, Broadway is saying those lines to.  It turns out Louie and ladder guy are characters in a noir movie.  Broadway, he likes old stuff.

Meanwhile, Elisa Maza, owner of the apartment where Broadway gets his Bogart on, speaks with 23rd Precinct Captain María Chávez, who tells Elisa how she’s worried about Matt Bluestone, who apparently hasn’t checked in 48 hours.  Although Elisa isn’t convinced that Matt needs the help, she agrees to check on him.  She unlocks her gun from her safe and prepares to leave when she is approached by Broadway, who offers to help her.  Thanks but no thanks, says Elisa.  One partner is enough.

Some time later, at Matt’s apartment, a masked burglar is ransacking the place when zie hears Elisa at the door. Outside, the intruder is being watched by a large guy in a hat and trenchcoat (Broadway, although given creator comments, it’s not clear if the animation was supposed to make that obvious at this point).  The burglar pulls out a gun and prepares to face Elisa when Broadway breaks in and attack hir.  Hearing the commotion, Elisa kicks the door open, and barely manages to avoid the burglar, whom Broadway throws into the hall.

The intruder tries to get away.  Elisa tries to shoot him (and it’s clearly a “him” now) down, but before she can get a bead on him, her view is blocked by Broadway, who enthusiastically gives chase.  The burglar manages to get into an elevator, but this proves to be a mistake, as now he is stuck as Broadway breaks into the shaft and pulls the elevator back up to Matt’s floor.  Elisa watches as Broadway throws the burglar again, this time knocking him unconscious.  She is pissed at Broadway, and the gargoyle doesn’t get why.

Elisa and Broadway bring the burglar back to Matt’s apartment and proceed to investigate.  Elisa unmasks the unconscious intruder (whom she can’t identify) and searches him, finding a page from Matt’s calendar with a note from the missing detective.  Broadway, for his part, turns Matt’s computer on, which, it turns out, had been rigged to explode: it’s only the burglar’s fortuitous return to consciousness, and his impulse warning, that allows the gargoyle to carry the two humans outside in time, thus avoiding very messy deaths for the three of them.  Not everything is peachy, though, as the momentum from the explosion causes Broadway to miss his landing and almost fall and, although he manages to get back up with Elisa’s help, the confusion gives enough time for the burglar (now Bomb Guy) to escape.

Broadway, unfazed by this setback, asks Elisa what they’re going to next.  Nothing, Elisa says: she‘s going to check the appointment Matt wrote about on the retrieved calendar page (“Hacker, 10 p.m., Cleopatra’s Needle”), while Broadway, who has already screwed up twice due to his inexperience, will go back home.  Broadway protests; while he acknowledges his mistakes, he argues that the fact that they’ve almost been killed twice is proof about how dangerous the situation is, and that, given what’s already happened to Matt due to working alone, Elisa really shouldn’t be investigating this without a partner.

Cleopatra’s Needle. Elisa meets up with (Martin) Hacker, F.B.I. agent and Matt’s former partner back during the detective’s bureau days.  Apparently, Matt a) told Hacker quite a bit about Elisa (including the fact that Matt considers her to be the best partner he’s ever had), while not really telling Elisa anything about Hacker, and b) asked his former partner to authenticate an item for him, specifically one that Matt believed could be a lead on the Illuminati society and c) had lost his job as a feeb specifically due to his “obsessive” attempts to prove his conspiracy theories.

The item in question, it turns out, is a letter written by one Mace Malone, a gangster during New York’s prohibition days who disappeared in 1924, and whom Matt believed had a connection with the Illuminati.  The letter went like this:

D.D.

Our little society has racked up quite a nest egg.  Every time I see the Silver Falcon, I have to smile.  Stay in touch, partner.

Mace

The letter is legit, Hacker adds, although that’s just about the only part of the whole thing that doesn’t raise even more questions–the only concrete clue is the letter’s 70-year old return address.  The F.B.I. agent offers to help Elisa, but the cop declines the offer.

Not long after Hacker leaves, Elisa is approached by three armed goons, including the intruder at Matt’s apartment.  Elisa, however, has a surprise of her own–namely, Broadway, who takes out two of the mooks with ease.  The third, however–Mr. Bomb Guy–manages to escape, thanks to a fourth gang member serving as the getaway guy–not good, Elisa explains as she handcuffs the other two: if Bomb Guy overhead enough, his bosses at the Illuminati know about the address Hacker gave her, and it becomes a race to see who gets there first.

High on the Apex Tower skyscraper building, atop a gargoyle/gargoyle in the form of a bird of prey, Broadway watches as, across the street, Elisa (who can watch Broadway back) interviews G.F. Benton, C.P.A., who, it turns out, is a Mace Malone buff who had chosen his apartment solely because it had once been the mobster’s.  He notes that the office is rather infamous for that same reason, and that it still attracted the occasional curious visitor, including, as it turned out, Matt.  G.F. Benton, C.P.A. further explains that when Matt saw a particular photo resting atop a filing cabinet–one of Mace Malone and an unidentified “handsome fella” wearing a suit with a monogrammed “D.D.”  on its lapel–he turned to leave with a quickness.  Elisa asks G.F. Benton, C.P.A. if he knows where the photo was taken, and the accountant replies that he does: The Silver Falcon nightclub, Mace Malone’s “pride and joy”.

After asking G.F. Benton, C.P.A. to go to the police and tell them what he just told her, and filling Broadway in on what she’d just learned, Elisa and her would-be partner race to The Silver Falcon.  They enter the night club and head towards the noise and light coming from the cellar.  From the stairway, they spot Dracon’s lieutenant Glasses, who is ordering two workers to dig through a wall will lasers.  They also find Matt, blindfolded and tied to a chair.  What they don’t notice is that Glasses has spotted them as well; the gangster presses a trigger, causing several pounds of C4 to explode right above the stairwell and our heroes, burying them.

Fortunately for the two heroes, the exploding C4 proves to be too weak to kill them on the spot, while at the same time being strong enough to open a hole  several feet deep on the cellar floor; Elisa and Broadway find themselves several feet underground, and only Broadway’s strength has prevented the rocks above them to collapsing and killing them both.  Unfortunately, that fickle bastard known as the sun chooses this moment to rise, turning the gargoyle to stone and preventing him from being anything but the world’s most elaborate pillar.

Matt, sensing an opportunity to help Elisa, goads Glasses, reminding him that he hasn’t fulfilled Tony’s orders about destroying Mace’s letter, and that unless he frees Elisa and sees the letter himself, he can never be sure whether she had it or gave it to someone else.

Elisa is working on digging herself out when she notices people doing the same from above.  In order to prevent the sleeping Broadway from being spotted, she breaks off one of the beams supporting the stones above them, causing a small cave-in which buries and hides the gargoyle.

Elisa is pulled out of the wreckage.  Ignoring the fact that there had been a second person down there, Glasses goes directly for Malone’s letter, which he destroys, just in time for the arrival of the big man himself, Tony Dracon.

With Elisa and Matt contained no more obstacles in sight, Glasses and the rest of Tony’s crew continue their work, unimpeded.  Matt remarks that the entire effort has to be rather expensive, which prompts Tony to note that his goal is worth it: if his hunch pays off, he’ll find a collection of uncut diamonds that Mace and his grandfather stole decades ago–a stash worth twenty times what he’s spent.

Matt provides Elisa with additional details:  D.D. is Dominic Dracon, Tony’s Grandfather, who had been Mace’s partner during a diamond heist decades ago, only for Mace to run away with the loot. In other words, Matt had been drawn into a wild sheep chase, one that didn’t involve the Illuminati at all.  Worse still, he says, he went into it without letting Elisa know.

Glasses and the crew have finished their digging, having uncovered a man-sized safe, the sort Dick Cheney would use.  Instead of calling Geraldo Rivera to properly hype it, they open it, only to find it empty, save for a note.

Right idea, wrong falcon.  Better luck next time.  Love, Mace.

Tony, incensed, throws the note away.  Elisa, with a bit of cockiness, asks Tony to calm down: she knows where the jewels are, and she will lead Tony there, as long as Matt and she go free.  Tony agrees, giving his word as a Dracon.  Elisa specifies that, given the loot’s  location, they’ll have to wait until dark before they can try to retrieve it.

Nightfall.  At the Silver Falcon nightclub, Broadway awakens to find the establishment empty.  After looking around, he finds Mace Malone’s discarded note and, with some difficulty, manages to make out its message.  Pondering the its meaning, he heads towards the opened safe and, as he stares at his reflection on its door, inspiration strikes.

Elisa leads Dracon’s helicopter to the Apex Tower, where she and Dracon exit onto the observation deck.  As Elisa climbs atop one of the building’s gargoyles, she explains that the building is visible from Mace Malone’s office, and that once you take away decades’ worth of soot from the falcon statues, you see…silver.

Elisa reaches inside the falcon’s open beak and retrieves a satchel.  She checks its contents and satisfied, turns towards Dracon, who insists that if she hands it over she will be safe.  Elisa isn’t buying it, but fortunately, she has another option: Broadway has arrived, and she sees the gargoyle standing unseen on a windowsill.  She takes the leap.

Dracon, his plans now falling apart, jumps back into his helicopter and orders the pilot to descend to the streets, to see if they can pick some of the diamonds from among the Elisa giblets. With Elisa safe, Broadway goes after Dracon’s helicopter; unseen, he disables the vehicle’s hydraulics with a punch, forcing Glasses to try to make an emergency landing, one that knocks him unconscious.  Tony makes a run for it, leaving Pal Joey alone with Matt, who easily overpowers the mobster.

Desperate and exhausted, Tony runs into an alleyway, and is knocked on his feet by a swinging fire escape ladder driven, if such a thing can be driven, by Broadway.  Dracon, who know recognizes his stalker, stares horrified as Broadway delivers his version of the line from the noir movie: “You made one mistake, Dracon: you messed with my partner.   When someone messes with your partner, you’re supposed to do something about it.”

Meanwhile, satchel in hand, Elisa climbs her way to safety, only to run into Dominic Dracon (a.k.a. G.F. Benton, C.P.A.), who prevents her from climbing over the railing and into solid footing.  Elisa isn’t surprised, though; she’d known who he was since she realized that he was the only one who could have warned Tony about her upcoming appearance at the night club.  Dominic demands the satchel, but Elisa throws it onto one of the silver falcons.  Growing panicky, the old mobster lets Elisa go and goes for the satchel, only to find (after feeling around inside the bag for a comically long time) that instead of diamonds, the satchel is filled with marbles…and a note from Mace.

Dominic, seems you still haven’t learned that crime doesn’t pay.

Demoralized, D.D. makes no attempts to resist arrest by Elisa.

Daylight breaks, and the NYPD formally arrests the entire Dracon gang.

Continuity Notes:

• Matt Bluestone first mentioned the Illuminati society in “The Edge“.
• Tony Dracon and his gang were last seen in “Deadly Force“.  The white streak in Tony’s hair was obtained off-screen, and is a physiological reaction to his encounter with the gargoyles.

This episode functions as a sequel to “Deadly Force”, but its actual thematic kin is “The Edge”, as it continues to deal with the theme of partnership and trust.  Matt doesn’t trust Elisa and gets captured, and his apartment is blown up. Mace Malone and Dominic Dracon don’t seem to trust each other at all, and indeed appear to have a relationship where they attempt to one-up one another via deception.  It is not until Elisa and Broadway begin to trust one another that they can work together.  We don’t know how much trust is involved in Tony Dracon’s outfit, but they seem to work rather well together–they’re just physically outmatched when it comes to the gargoyles.

I actually don’t much like the way the show handles these issues. The show goes to a lot of trouble to insist that solitude is undesirable and bad, which, as a person who loves solitude, sticks on my craw.  I like working alone.  I like being alone. This does not make me a sociopath, nor does it mean I hate people.  And yet, characters who enjoy and thrive on solitude are in short supply in the series; gargoyles, who despite Weisman’s best efforts do come off as an idealized race, are biologically primed against solitude; Elisa winds up losing arguments about needing a partner, and whenever somebody comments on being single, it’s so they can angst about it.

Regarding trust, I can understand the overall point, but I feel the show goes too far in making it, and I dislike the implication that true trust can’t co-exist with secrets.  For all its problems, I love that in One Piece, Luffy is unwavering in his trust for his crew, even after he’s warned that said crewmates have a history of repeatedly being the only survivor of whatever group zie’s in.  I love that Commissioner Gordon doesn’t need to know Batman’s secret identity in order to work with him.  I love that Black Canary could trust Oracle even when she was only an anonymous voice, even though I love that they eventually got to meet.  Trust involves more than just not keeping secrets; sometimes its about knowing that your partner is doing the right thing, even when you don’t have all the details.  And that’s something I feel the show misses in its depiction.

There’s really not a lot to say about the episode otherwise–it’s perfectly good, but rather unremarkable from a mytharc standpoint, so on to the…

Random Thoughts: 

• I’m not a big fan of Tony Dracon’s skunk stripe.  I get why Weisman put it there, but I sort of feel like Tony’s the kind of person who would try to hide it via hair dye than leave it on display.  On the other hand, I feel that more work should be put in making the henchmen distinct, particularly if he’s going to start naming them.
• Did Greg Weisman ever had plans for having Brooklyn and co. Timedance to the 1920′s?  Dominic and Mace’s past seemed like an obvious hook for future plots, and that particular device seems like the most natural way to deal with it.  Plus, I find Prohibition era to be a really fascinating stage in the U.S.’ history, and I’d love to see the show’s take on it.
• One particular thing that strikes me as odd is that at the Silver Falcon Night Club, no one, not even Matt, really makes an issue about the heavy guy that’s with Elisa when she falls into Dracon’s trap.
• This is the first episode in which Goliath doesn’t star, which I liked.  I feel that a lot of opportunities are missed when a show insists in showcasing every single cast member in all episodes, so it’s nice to see that Gargoyles‘ producers are smart enough to avoid that particular trap (TMNT, by the way, only had two episodes which didn’t feature all four turtles).  It’s also nice to see that it’s not just Goliath who has a special relationship with Elisa, and that there can  friendships between members of opposite genders without sex getting involved, particularly since last episode established that gargoyles and humans can feel sexual attraction to one another.
• Given Matt’s remarks on needing a partner in “The Edge”, his behavior here comes off as a tad hypocritical, and the more I think about it, the less I like the character, and I wonder if that’s supposed to be intentional on the part of Weisman and Co.
• Given the time difference involved and the thousands of possibilities, I wonder why Dominic and Tony were so sure that the diamonds had to still be in play.
• One wonders when exactly Matt was booted from the force, how much time passed between that and being hired at the N.Y.P.D., and what he did between both.  There’s a story there, I feel.
• Speaking of untold stories, taking the time of Elisa’s appointment into account (10 p.m.) and the alleged urgency of the case, it seems rather strange that it was almost dawn by the time they’d made it to Mace’s nightclub.  Where was all that time spent?

“You serve the human,  now you can serve me.” –Demona

Written by: Lydia C. Marano

Original Air Date: September 11, 1995

Introduces: Puck

Timeline placement: September 27-September 28, 1995

Synopsis:

Inside one of New York’s many museums, a security guard is giving final instuctions to his partner before she begins her shift. Once this bit of business is done, we see the female security guard—Elisa, rocking some glasses and with her hair in a bun—head into a hall, which includes a large mirror as its central display. Elisa checks herself out in the mirror until she’s interrupted by a commotion elseswhere in the building, which includes some familiar gargoyle shrieks. As she leaves to check it out, we see Demona run into the hall, where she makes her way towards the mirror. Before she can have her way with it however, Elisa returns, along with Goliath backing her play.

Outnumbered, Demona makes her escape; Elisa and Goliath follow, leaving the mirror unprotected and giving a pair of professional-looking thieves the opportunity to enter the room and steal the artifact without distractions. Meanwhile, Elisa and Goliath let Demona get away—she’s failed, they believe, and there’s really nothing they could do with her if they’d actually caught her.

Later that night, in a rather well-off part of the city, the two thieves, after using the password “Oberon sent me”, gain access to Demona’s brownstone, where they leave the mirror behind. Soon after, we see that Demona has wrapped iron chains around the mirror. After explaining to no one in particular that her losing streak ends tonight, she uses a copper (I think) ring, a silver bell, a feather, and some Latin to cast a spell. Abraka-fucking-dabra, a man (or at least a humanoid—he’s got rather large elfin ears) appears, trapped in the iron chains and looking none too happy about it.

Over at the gargoyles’ lair, Elisa explains that despite their efforts, the mirror ended up being stolen. She asks goliath what this means, which gives the gargoyles an opportunity to exposit on The Children of Oberon. Short story shorter:

1. They’re considered The Third Race alongside humans and gargoyles.

2. They’re shapeshifters made out of pure magick.

3. They’re known by different names by several different cultures.

4. Shakespeare wrote about them in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

5. Their artifacts pack heavy magickal punch.

6. It’s suprising that Elisa doesn’t already know about all this.

Elisa’s a bit skeptical, but she follows along.

At Demona’s, the possibly-a-Child-of-Oberon, identified here as Puck, tries to free himself from his chains, which Demona explains are there to prevent him from turning on her. They banter a bit. Demona flounts his dominance over him.

Clocktower, where the trio commiserates on how cool it’d be to be a shapeshifter, and the benefits it’d bring, such as the ability to go out in the open, meet new people, even find love. Hudson, being the old, wise one, admonishes them to be careful what they wish for.

[Deity of choice] dammit, this recap’s going to be a pain. A lot of the dialogue on the Puck/Demona scenes is vitally important to the episode, which means a lot of quoting. Onward, I suppose.

At Demona’s, our favorite genocidal gargoyle, after pondering wishing for the ability to remain flesh by day and for Puck to “get rid of” all the humans (the latter which is dismissed by Puck as being beyond his ability), settles, after some prodding by the faerie, on having him “rid me of that human: Elisa Maza”. Puck, who despite his initial protests appears to be having fun, complies: turning towards the mirror (which show Elisa standing alongside Goliath), he performs the following incantation:

Thy sight Demona doth offend

so I will hasten to amend

begone Elisa, human-born

be no more as you were formed!

Now, that doesn’t sound like a killing spell, does it? Uh-oh…

Inside the clock tower, Elisa is suddenly sent aloft by Puck’s magicks, and a blinding flash fills the room. Once that’s gone, Elisa is left…well, like this…

After she regains her bearings, Elisa looks at the bewildered gargoyles and becomes ecstatic. “Goliath, this is wonderful!” she says. “You’ve been changed into a gargoyle!”

Oy.

At Demona’s, Puck confirms that indeed, the human, Elisa Maza, is no more. Demona, thinking big, decides to have Puck do the same for everyone in the city. Puck gives a token protest, saying that Demona doesn’t know what she’s asking, and that he doesn’t have the power to do that from indoors.

Clocktower, where Goliath tries to explain to Elisa that the clan hasn’t been turned into gargoyles, she has. Elisa is skeptical, saying that she’s always been a gargoyle. Goliath asks her to remember the circumstances under which they’d met, and asks why she’d needed rescuing if she’d always had wings. Elisa, now growing unsure, replies “I can’t glide with these…can I?” Goliath answers in the affirmative, and then takes her to the skies with him.

Titania’s Mirror appears atop one of the Twin Towers. From it exit Puck and Demona. Puck informs that it’ll take him some time for him to gather the strength to do what Demona wants.

Goliath and Elisa glide, arm in arm. Goliath compliments Elisa, saying that when she was human, he’d never realized how beautiful she was, and then does the gargoyle version of a blush when Elisa calls him on the comment’s obvious implication.

As the couple glides near street level, Elisa becomes aghast t what she sees. The two gargoyles land atop a roof (followed soon after by the rest of the clan), and Elisa, aghast, notes that—oh noes!–everyone in Manhattan has been turned into a human. Before Goliath can explain, however, the gargoyles notice an unnatural flash of light emanating from afar.

At the source of the light, Puck casts his second spell:

All humans on this concrete isle

Demona finds your presence vile

so do you now as I command

and be not woman, child nor man!

Puck’s incantation reflects from the mirror and is transmitted across Manhattan in the form of a flash of light. The gargoyles, suspecting Demona, decide to investigate, leaving the still-shaky-on-her-wings Elisa behind.

At the tower, Demona and a now-unconscious Puck are attacked by the gargoyles. Outnumbered, Demona picks up Puck and throws the mirror over the rooftop edge to buy herself time to escape—fortunately, Hudson manages to rescue it unharmed. Demona, for her part, glides down to street level and becomes horrified at what she sees.

The clan follows Demona into the New York subway but fail to find her: surrounded at all sides by gargoyles (a situation The Trio finds is not without appeal) she manages to escape, unseen, inside a train. Once safely hidden, Demona, livid, demands that a conscious-but-still-tired Puck change the gargoyles to humans. Puck, as he must, complies.

The clan, once again reunite with Elisa, discuss what their next step will be, now that they have the mirror and know that Demona has taken up with Puck. Goliath takes off and tries to convince a still-skittish Elisa to do the same, tempting the drama Gods by saying that he’ll always be there to catch her and that gliding is easy…which is just when Puck’s spell hits the clan, turning them all into humans.

Goliath falls. Elisa, getting over her fears, dives down and rescues him. She returns to the the rooftop, where Goliath expresses confusion at his fall, when he notices that Elisa “[has] changed back to normal!”

Now it’s the clan’s turn to be out of sorts. Elisa explains that it’s they who have changed to human, a claim which is met with skepticism: the clan has always been human, they claim; they’ve never needed wings to glide before. However, it’s not long before they realize that Elisa is correct: the clan is meant to be gargoyles, and the gargoyles are all meant to be human.

Demona, for her part, doesn’t take long to figure out that again, things have and have not turned out as she wished. As she prepares to carve Puck a new face in retribution, the faerie distracts her once again by noting that by turning Goliath human, he’s made him much easier to eliminate, a prospect that makes Demona quite happy.

Mirror in hand, the human contingent of the Manhattan clan walks down the city streets, terrifying the gargoyle population in the process. Goliath explains their new tactic: with their mobility now hindered, their only hope is to keep the battle near street level, where Demona’s wings will be less useful. Once they find a suitable location, they uncover the mirror (it had been covered earlier to prevent it to be used as a conduit for more spells), and immediately, Puck and an armed Demona spring from it.

FIGHT! The clan, arming themselves with the merchandise from a conveniently-nearby weapons store, take on Demona and Puck. Puck, not one for hand to hand, uses magick to enchant the environment, turning weapons into giant attack sunflowers, the ground into wet tar, and Bronx into a dog. However even with this and the timely assistance of a group of gargoyles who misguidedly turn to assist Demona, the Oberon’s child is defeated. Meanwhile, despite Demona’s initial advantage in her fight with Goliath, the tide turns against her with the arrival of Elisa, whose gargoyle strength is now a match for that of Goliath’s ex, and eventually she is defeated as well.

Atop the Twin Towers, some time later. With Demona chained, Goliath tells Puck that if he reverts everyone back to the way they were before Demona had summoned the faerie, they would set him free. Puck, with nary a protest or willful attempt to misinterpret Goliath’s request, complies, turning the humans-turned-gargoyles back into humans and, before Elisa and Goliath have a chance to get it on, he turns the gargoyles-turned-human back into gargoyles. This completed, Goliath breaks the trickster’s bonds, and Puck, free at last, teleports himself, Demona, and the mirror back to Demona’s brownstone.

There, satisfied at the events of the night, Puck thanks a tired and impatient Demona for the entertainment. Demona will have none of it, however, and asks Puck to leave. Chagrined at being snubbed, Puck complies, but not without a parting gift. Recalling Demona’s earlier desire not to stone during the day, he casts one final spell:

Fearsome creature who would stay

unchanged by the light of day

remain you thus thorough the night

and be thou flesh by dawn’s fair light.

A somewhat melancholy air hangs around the clock tower as the gargoyles prepare for dawn.

Goliath begins to tell Elisa something.

Goliath: Elisa, I…

Elisa: Yeah, I know: you’re as relieved as I am that things are back to normal.

Goliath: That’s not what I was going to say… [Turns to stone.]

Elisa: (resigned) I know. But that’s the way it is.

Demona’s brownstone, where Demona basks in the warmth the newly-risen sun, gaining a measure of satisfaction despite that night’s disaster. And then she sees…

Cue big no, mirror breakage. The end.

Continuity Notes:

• This is Demona’s first appearance since she teamed up with Xanatos to create Coldstone in “Reawakening“.

—-

The theme this episode, as Hudson helpfully reminds us, is “be careful what you wish for”.  The bigger a wish is, the bigger the chance that getting the wish granted will bring about a host of unintended consequences.   It’s the basis of literal genie stories from time immemorial, and it drives the plot here.   Demona wishes for the power to eliminate humanity, but has no idea what to do with it once she gets it, and ends up wasting it.  Elisa and Goliath (unconsciously, at this point) wish they could shag the other, but the one opportunity they get to do so is instead spent saving each other and the city.  The trio wishes for the opportunity to walk around without fear of persecution or being considered monsters, and end up getting considered monsters just the same.  Xanatos, had he been in this episode, would have gotten immortality and immediately turned to complain that he nothing to do.

So far thourought the series, we’ve been getting several character spotlight episodes, including ones focusing on each individual gargoyle, Elisa, and even Xanatos. Given that, it’s a bit shocking in retrospect that it’s taken this long for Demona to get one.

Until this point, what we’ve learned of Demona has been limited in scope: we’ve seen her game face, but never what she’s like in private. Here we begin to see some tantalizing tidbids of that, as well as some hints as to what her life has been like in the last thousand years. And one of the things we learn is that, for all her disdain towards humans, she’s become rather more like them. She’s learned to use money. She’s bought one, maybe more, swanky estates, which she presumably pays taxes on. She decorates, which means she’s developed a sense of style, something we have yet to see from any of the other gargoyles.

We also come to learn one of her key flaws: she’s impulsive, and doesn’t take the time to think things through. She goes through the trouble of obtaining Puck, and then isn’t sure what to wish for, and basically never catches on to the fact that she’s being manipulated for the start. This eventually becomes something of a quality of her’s: she’ll often leave her guard down if she thinks she’s gotten what she wants.  All of which would make her harmless if she weren’t so dangerous.

She’s also jealous.　Sensing that there’s more to Goliath and Elisa than friendship before even they do, she’s added “–especially Elisa Maza” to her overall “exterminate humanity” wish list.  What’s particularly interesting is that she reaches this conclusion despite very little interaction with her–less than fifteen minutes, taken collectively, which either makes her very perceptive, very, very jealous, or both.  I do wonder, though, what Demona would have done if she knew or suspected that some other gargoyle had been vying for Goliath’s romantic attention during their Wyvern days.    The words “Melrose Place” spring to mind.

In any case, Demona is more or less right: while the relationship between Elisa and Goliath has been strictly platonic so far, this episode officially breaks the champagne bottle launches their ‘ship, as both discover that they’re mutually interested in being more than friends*. I’m not usually a big fan of how relationships are written in cartoons (given the various ways in which sexuality is constrained or simply nonexistent, most relationships seem unrealistically chaste, which in addition to Western TV’s general reluctance to portray functional or happy relationships, makes for a whole mess of unappealing**), but this one, I feel, works incredibly well.  They have a lot in common.  They like each other.  They communicate well.  And here, unlike  a lot of cases, the “will they or won’t they” element and the chasteness makes perfect sense.  I also feel that the pacing of the relationship was handled extraordinarily well–Elisa and Goliath’s sudden realization that they’re hot for each other doesn’t feel sudden or unnatural, nor does it go for the other extreme and feel overdue.  By this point they’ve known each other for a while, and have a good idea of who the other is.  Now, only the big “they’re different species issues” remains.

On another note…

One of the bigger differences between Gargoyles and TMNT‘ is their approach to humor.  While TMNT could be very serious at times–both shows are comparable in that respect–it also worked very hard to be funny in any way it could, be it via pop culture references, one-liners, oddball characters, slapstick, or comedic violence.  It can accurately be described as an action comedy, with the “comedy” part gaining more or less prominence depending on the season.  Some of it worked, some didn’t.  Gargoyles, on the other hand, is all action: there was the occasional comedy, but it forms a much smaller slice of the series pie. Unlike the latter series, there are only a handful of purely comedic episodes, and these usually take the form of comedies of error with plots that look like something Shakespeare would have plotted, if Shakespeare had written about gargoyles and cyborgs.  Thus, it’s no coincidences that most of these episodes revolve around Puck.  He’s very much the Mr. Mxyzptlk of the series: immensely powerful–easily the most powerful being the gargoyles have faced so far–but thankfully more interested in amusing himself than in causing lasting damage.  Which makes it all the more ironic that he’s involved in what is one of the grimmest episodes in the series.

Random thoughts:

• Demona’s motivations and the reasoning behind them  have never really been logically consistent, and this episode provides another example why: despite her “gargoyles are inherently better than humans” stance, she immediately acknowledges that the humans-turned-gargoyles would be no better than they were before.
• The human versions of the gargoyles are loosely based on the voice actors who played them.  And by loosely, I mean that human Goliath gets relatively darker skin.  I know it wouldn’t have made sense to have actually have been black–not many people of African descent in 10th century Scotland, as far as I know–but I kinda really really wish they’d gone that way anyway, not just because Keith David is one fine-looking human, but because I feel it would have introduced another level of subversiveness to the show***.
• That said, if the TMNT are somehow turned humans, how do you think they would all look?
• When Elisa checks herself out on the mirror, her reflection doesn’t move with her.  It doesn’t really come up again–it’s just a hint that the mirror is actually magickal, but it’s a detail I’ve always liked.

—-

* Or at least, that’s the way I interpret it–Weisman has been on the record about his belief that Elisa had already developed vaguely romantic feelings towards Goliath and had come to terms with them.  Needless to say, I prefer my version.

**That said, I find what’s been shown of the Broadway/Angela relationship mostly unpalatable.  I’ve never claimed to be very consistent.

*** And yes, I’m aware it could have easily gone sour as well, since doing so would have carried the unfortunate implication that black people can only star in animated series if they’re made not black.

Written by: Brynne Chandler Reaves & Lydia Marano
Original Air Date: September 5, 1995
Introduces: Maggie; Anton Sevarius; Fang; Claw
Timeline placement: ? – Sept. 11, 1995

Synopsis:

In the streets of Manhattan, a homeless woman looks on at a group of equally homeless men, as she converses with a sympathetic, well dressed, probably not homeless man.  She explains that she is not like them (they never are)–her situation is just a temporary setback.  Fortunately, the sympathetic man just happens to have a job opening for people just like her, and she offers homeless woman the position.

The next day, inside a private airport, Detective Elisa Maza watches  a glider swoop down from the sky. Its pilot is one Derek Maza, her brother. Once Derek lands, Elisa comments on how Derek missed on family dinner night, and asks if Xanatos was responsible for his abscence, starting another round of the “working for Xanatos is a baaaaaad idea” argument and the subsequent “I’m pretty sure Xanatos is not a Nazi” comeback.  Fortunately, he discussion doesn’t get too heated, and Elisa finishes by asking her brother to tell her if there is any trouble, which he promises by punctuating it with the old “cross my heart, hope to die” swear.

Night.  Inside a building labeled “Gen-U-Tech”, something not quite human is causing a stir, as we hear alarms ring and security guards running to the scene.  We see a lithe, winged creature attack the guards and escapes into the night.

Brooklyn and Broadway are gliding through the city when they spot our winged catgirl inside an alley.  Suspecting Demona–after all, there aren’t many winged females in Manhattan–they decide to land and check it out, and find out that they’re quite wrong: cat girl isn’t nearly as intimidating, and is in fact completely terrified of them.  The gargoyles don’t get enough time to explain themselves, however, as a couple of “ambulances” arrive at the scene, carrying the goons from before, armed with tranquilizer guns and other non-lethal ordnance.  Brooklyn tries to save catgirl, but only manages to make her drop the bracelet she’s wearing.

Eventually, the goons managed to recapture the beast.  At Brooklyn’s insistence, both gargoyles try to fight the goons and rescue the mutate, but a well placed shot from a tranquilizer puts the Gargoyles’ lancer out of commission, forcing Broadway to abandon the attempt and carry his rookery brother to safety.

Castle Wyvern.  Xanatos’ helicopter is making its landing and is met by Owen, who informs Xanatos of some “fascinating expense reports” coming from Gen-U-Tech: apparently, the head of one of Xanatos’ “special projects”, Dr. Sevarius, has been hiring mercenaries behind X’s back.  The billionaire decides that he’ll have to pay his employee a visit, and Derek, concerned about the mercenaries, decides that he’ll go as well.

Clocktower.  Brooklyn and Broadway have finished telling the clan (+ Elisa) of the night’s misadventures.  The two ‘goyles have one notable disagreement: while Brooklyn is convinced that the cat-creature wanted their–particularly, his–help, Broadway points out that everything he saw suggested the opposite.  Broadway also shows the clan the bracelet catgirl dropped, which Elisa identifies as a tracking device–”digital, long-range, expensive”–and which she nots is marked with the Gen-U-Tech logo, leading us to…

Gen-U-Tech.  Xanatos is asking Dr. Sevarius–whom we now see is the man from the opening scene–about the project he’d been charged with:  designing a creature using gargoyles as a template.  Sevarius exposits that since cloning gargoyles or working off their DNA was not an option, he had to merge the genes from several species into a chimera that managed to replicate their key traits; combining genetic material from bats (for their wings), jungle cats (for their strength, speed, and agility), and eels (for their unique energy source) he finally achieved a measure of success.

Derek, not terribly impressed with the doctor’s expospeak, comments that while it’s all very nice theory, it doesn’t explain why he’s been hiring mercenaries.  Sevarius nonchalantly explains that they were needed to recover escaped test subjects.  Also non-chalantly, he explains that said test subjects were humans taken from the streets and mutated.

Sevarius, soon realizing that his initiative and creative problem-solving skills are apparently not the qualities Xanatos was looking for in an employee (wait…), gets defensive, pulling out a dart gun and shooting Derek with it. This doesn’t down him, though, and the bodyguard earns his keep by disarming the mad scientist. As Derek notes that Sevarius’ dart seemed to have no effect, Sevarius gloats that the dart did not contain sedatives, but the mutagenic formula he’d used on the human subjects.

Xanatos demands an antidote for Sevarius’ mutagenic formula.  The scientist counters that while he can produce one, he needs time to actually make it, and has no desire to do so—he does not wish to destroy his work.  A lab assistant/goon announces that there are two policemen—Elisa and Matt—at the door, giving Xanatos the ammunition he needs: if Sevarius doesn’t work on the formula, he’ll just invite them inside to see the doctor’s work for themselves.  Terrified by that possibility, Sevarius stutters that Xanatos, being equally or more responsible for everything, would be in equal or greater trouble than himself.  Frankly, Sevarius, Xanatos doesn’t give a damn: he’s perfectly willing to go down for this, should Derek give the word.  Fortunately for the billionaire, Derek declines, asking for Sevarius to cure him first.  It’s going to have to be quickly though—he’s already changing.

At the clocktower, Elisa muses on how Gen-U-Tech is hiding something, and how there’s not enough evidence of probable cause to do anything about it.  Brooklyn murmurs how his ties, as the sun turns him to stone for the day.  At least he didn’t get interrupted midsentence.

Transitional scene: As Derek’s mutation progresses, Sevarius works on a cure under Xanatos’ eye.

The Manhattan Clan wakes up, and Brooklyn is raring to go rescue  cat lady, because “she needs [his] help”—something he believes wholeheartedly, despite any evidence to support the assertion.  Goliath sensibly tells Brooklyn that rushing in to rescue her without a plan won’t help her—fortunately, he has one. A plan.

The gargoyles make their way inside Gen-U-Tech and find Brooklyn’s “girlfriend”, but she’s in no mood to be rescued; using the intercom built into her cell, she calls for security, and, as Goliath frees the mutate, we find out that “security” is the Xanatos goon squad, last seen in “Deadly Force” (and although it’s not explicitly said, it’s patently obvious that they are also the men in white coats).  A quick shot from a tranquilizer gun sedates the mutate, forcing Brooklyn to carry her to “safety”.

At Sevarius’ lab, the bad doctor is about to give Derek the antidote when the gargoyles burst in, followed by the goon squad.  The battle resumes, and the general chaos causes Sevarius to drop the antidote.  Derek dives to save it, but fails.

Their task completed, the gargoyles make their escape.  Sevarius, trying to safeguard his creation, grabs Goliath by the leg, but the gargoyle effortlessly kicks him aside.  Unfortunately, the force of the kick causes Sevarius to crash against the eel tank, breaking it, and spilling both the animals and the water.  Dazed, the mad geneticist grabs, and gets the shock of his life.  ^_^

The gargoyles now gone, Xanatos makes his way towards the fallen doctor and checks for a pulse that is no longer there.  Sevarius is dead.

Derek’s bad day has just gone from horrible to worse; if he only had one more second, he believes, he’d have been cured; now, thanks to the gargoyles’ intervention, he’s fated to remain a mutant forever.  He vows his revenge on the creatures.  Xanatos, ever calm, suggest they make their exit before the police—including, most likely, Elisa—find them.  The billionaire promises he will find a cure for him and the others.

Inside the clocktower, the female mutate regains consciousness and finds herself surrounded by the clan.  “Were you human once too?” she asks, clearly scared out of her wits.  Upon hearing the negative, she insists that she is not like them—she’s a human “Maggie…Maggie Reed.”  The gargoyles try to console her, but she doesn’t believe them; she just wants things to go back to normal.

Goliath notes that sunrise approaches, and the gargoyles take their positions atop the clocktower roof.  Maggie watches as the six “monsters” turn to stone.  She does not take it well.

Sevarius’ lab, Gen-U-Tech.  The police, including Elisa and Matt, are making their way through the crime scene.  Notably, Sevarius corpse is nowhere to be seen, nor is the chalk outline which would indicate that his body had been removed by the police.  Elisa is looking through the company papers and finds what we already know: Xanatos owns Gen-U-Tech.

Sundown.  The gargoyles wake, only to find that Maggie’s gone, and had probably left just after the ‘goyles had turned to stone.  Goliath orders Hudson and Bronx to stay behind while the rest go to the castle.

At the castle, Derek, who is acting as the makeshift clan’s leader, takes his fellow mutates—including Maggie—for a gliding session.  As Xanatos watches, he instructs Owen to find him the best geneticist on the planet.

As they glide through the Manhattan sky, the mutates see the gargoyles approaching.  At seeing the people (he believes are) responsible for his condition, Derek orders his no-longer-men to attack.

As the two groups fight, Brooklyn tries once again to get through to Maggie.  No dice: the cat-lady still believes that he wants her to remain a monster.  In desperation, manages to emit electricity from her hands, a feat that Derek is able to recreate with Goliath.  Apparently, the eel D.N.A. isn’t just for energy.  Shocking.

Elisa arrives at the castle battlements and points her gun at Derek, stopping the fight between he and Goliath.  The policewoman asks the mutate why he’s attacking her friend; Derek, who identifies himself as “Talon”, explains that Goliath is responsible for his situation.  Elisa categorically denies Talon’s claim and offers to help him, doing the “cross my heart” swear…which Derek instinctively replies to, giving the game away.

Immediately, Elisa blames Xanatos’ for Derek’s fate; Talon defends the billionaire, saying it was an accident.  He accidentally shocks Elisa, which causes him to grow even more despondent.  Derek takes to the sky, followed by his fellow mutates.  The gargoyles, at Brooklyn’s insistence, decline to follow; clearly, their help is not wanted.  Chin up Brooklyn: you might have lost a potential girlfriend, but in exchange you got a clue.

With Derek gone, Elisa threatens Xanatos: “Now it’s war, Xanatos.  You’re going down for this, I promise you.  No matter what it takes.”

Not a tag: Xanatos is at his office when he Owen enters the office, leading a man in a trenchcoat and hat, whom the majordomo introduces as “the best geneticist on the planet”.  Geneticist removes his hat and coat; although he doesn’t look quite like him, Xanatos refers to him as Sevarius, so I guess that’s who he is.

Sevarius talks about his “death scene” with some pride; Xanatos thinks he overplayed it (yes).  They go on about how the plan was a complete success, even if it took months for the gargoyles to become aware of the mutates; although their four victims still have free will, the fact that they know Xanatos is the only person who could ever provide them a cure

Meanwhile, at the Clocktower, Elisa cries, alone.

—-

This episode is both a breakthrough and a disappointment. Its animation is rather terrible, the plot stretches believability to its breaking point, several of its details just don’t make sense, and its rewatchability is nearly nil. And yet…and yet…damn. What a punch in that last scene.

One of the things that people most mention about Batman: The Animated Series was its ability to make its villains tragically human. Two-Face, Scarface, and Clayface (the similarity in names is coincidential–I think) weren’t just villains, they were regular guys who couldn’t deal with the bad hands given to them by life. It gave their existence an element of tragedy that hadn’t been seen in cartoons before. Even so, they were still villains. We knew that they were going to become villains, the writers knew they were going to become villains, and once it inevitably happened, that element of pathos eventually faded away from their continuing narratives.

Derek’s story in this episode takes the Batman approach one step further, with one key difference: his fate is not a foregone conclusion, and in no way certain. Additionally, his status as Elisa’s brother and as a recurring cast member (his appearance here is his fourth, which means that at this point he’s appeared more than The Pack and just as many times as Matt Bluestone) means his story can’t just be ignored; his tragedy and how he adapts to it will continue to be a part of the series as long as it continues. What’s more, there’s the fact that this is indeed a tragedy, one that involves a good guy and which will not be resolved in half an hour. What other cartoon was doing that, at the time? Even with all its flaws, the episode carries a tremendous punch.

Last episode portrayed Xanatos as his villainous best, as he enacted a plan which was brilliant, atypical, and yet completely plausible in its execution—the prototypical Xanatos Gambit, as TVTropes would eventually call such plans. This episode, however, his plans take one step further and head into implausibility, into what would later be called a Xanatos Roulette—a plan so dependent on random chance to work that it requires omniscience to plausibly be conceived and executed successfully. And this one’s a doozy, requiring not only lots of improv, but riding entirely on no one being able to save Sevarius or his “cure”. While there’s indeed a nod to the role chance played—Sevarius mentions that it’d been months before the gargs’ took their bait—it’s still stands out as the series’ most implausible plot.

The whole plan to turn Derek also stands out for portraying Xanatos at his cruelest, reminding us that while he may be awesome, he is in no way good.  Until now, none of his plans had any real, notable consequences; his worst act–driving the gargoyles from his home–was also perfectly legal (note that we won’t learn of the extent of the whole Cyberbiotics thing until Outfoxed).  Here, he’s kidnapping people, lying to them, mutating them against their will, and possibly killing them (we don’t know how many test subjects Sevarius went through before perfecting his formula to make viable mutants–given science and his particular methods, I think “a lot” is a safe bet).  And, as I’ve mentioned before, it also proves that he’s lying when he claims to be above revenge.  After all, why specifically target Derek if not to get at Elisa?  Heck, had he wanted to, he could have rather easily gotten willing test subjects.  Imagine, for example, a man with a terminal disease, who can’t afford to care for his kids–surely, the odds are better than fair than he’ll find being turned into a mutant in exchange for security for his sons an acceptable deal, particularly if he can get rid of his disease in the process (not that we know if the mutagenic formula can do that, but it seems a logical-enough assumption).  All in all, while he’s not a complete monster, he’s nowhere near as cool as some would portray him.

Speaking of revenge, Elisa’s vow turns into one of the series’ rare series details that never got a proper follow-up.  Given her eventual sting to finally take down Tony Dracon, one would have expected Elisa to consider doing something similar to Xanatos, but nothing really comes off it.  It’s also somewhat difficult to reconcile an Elisa who hates Xanatos for what he did to her brother with the Elisa who seems accepting to the clan’s decision to return to his castle, and indeed who accepts party invitations from the guy.

This episode also expands the series’ rogues gallery by introducing Anton Sevarius to the mix. He’s a fun guy, Anton, very much in the mold of The Joker–he’s amusing until you realize he’s also a complete monster.  The fact that he’s voiced by Tim Curry–who was originally going to be the voice of Batman:TAS‘ version of the Joker–merely makes the comparison more apropos.  I have to say I don’t really get the design switcheroo.  We eventually find out that he’s still working publically as Anton Sevarius, using his look from the end of this episode, so…what was the point?

Random thoughts:

* Notable detail: While the woman in the first scene is obviously Maggie, she never really identifies herself until she’s already a mutate.  Technically, there’s nothing stopping Weisman from suddenly revealing that Maggie and the woman are different people.  Heck, if one where to run with it, it begets the question: what happened to her?

—–

As all of you must have noticed, this post is unforgivably late in the coming.  I’d been working on this post, but between schoolwork, driving lessons (yes–only 9 years too late), hip-hop and capoeira classes, and meeting new people, mean that by the time my day gets done, I just want to go to sleep .  So yeah.

Original Air Date: February 3, 1995
Introduces: Coldstone; Othello; Mr. Jaffe
Timeline placement: Feb. 3 – Feb. 4, 1995

Synopsis:

As snow falls over Manhattan, a robber holds Mr. Jaffe’s general story at gunpoint, and steals the money in the cash register–the third time it’s happened this month (althought presumably not with the same robber).

We flash back to Scotland, on the day of the Wyvern Massacre.  Goliath, accompanied by Not-Yet-Demona,  is preparing for his trek to track down the vikings, when a clan member we hadn’t seen before–Othello (not his actual name)–asks him why they need to go after the invaders at all, instead of just letting them have the castle and move the clan elsewhere.  The question is answered by an approaching Not-Yet-Hudson, who remarks that “a gargoyle can no more stop protecting the castle than breathing the air.”

Goliath takes the opportunity to ask his mentor to join him in his hunt.  He says farewell to his two rookery siblings, telling Othello (not his actual name) to guard the castle, and that he will see him again; and Not-Yet-Demona that he will never lose sight of her.  He then takes wing in search of the vikings.

Manhattan, present day; snowy with a chance of more snow.  Inside the Clock Tower, the Trio prepares to head outside for a movie, and invite Hudson to go along.  He declines, saying that a) he’ll be able to see the movie once it comes out on cable (fat chance, given that it’s Bambi) and b) somebody has to stay guarding the tower.  He begins reciting the gargoyles-protect-breathe idiom, and finds himself getting echoed by the younger gargoyles, who have heard it enough so that it no longer means anything to them–Lexington even comments that they don’t live in a castle anymore.

Exit trio and enter Elisa, looking all sorts of cute with her scarf and gloves.  Small talk with Goliath eventually turns to the topic of the police motto: Protect and Serve.  Goliath asks her to elaborate, and she explains that a policeman’s job is to protect the people of the city.

Elisa prepares to leave for her shift; Goliath offers to go with her, despite the obvious dificulties.

Castle Wyvern.  As they bitch at one another, Xanatos and Demona do their best Frankenstein impersonation, as they use a combination of magic and SCIENCE! to bring a moster to life.  Surprise!  It’s Othello (not his real name), decked out with plenty of circuitry, making him a cyborg gargoyle corpse “cold stone, brought to life,” according to Demona.

Demona asks Coldstone what he remembers, which turns out to be basically everything until his death.  Demona fills in the millenium-long gap, saying that Goliath abandoned him, and that it’s his fault that Othello (not his actual name) is in his current state.  She leads the alive-again ‘goyle to a mirror, where he gets a look at his new self.  It’s not pretty.

Elisa, at Matt’s request, stops her car by Mr. Jaffe’s store.  Matt tells his partner the storeowner’s sad tale, and how he wishes there was more they could do for him.  He goes inside the store to check on his friend, but Elisa elects to stay behind.  As she waits for her partner, she contacts Goliath through the tiny two-way radio they’d procured beforehand.  Goliath asks why the storekeeper doesn’t simply close down the store and move to a safer area, and Elisa explains that, given the neighborhood’s dire straits, the store is the one place where its people can buy food; Mr. Jaffee knows this, and considers keeping the store open to be part of his responsibility to his community.

A code three alert is heard through Elisa’s scanner, requesting all officers to head to Times Square.  Matt rejoins Elisa and they speed towards the scene, where police have cordoned of the area and are attempting to stop Coldstone (who they can’t see clearly due to the “darkness”) who has been causing widespread destruction in the area.  Elisa and Matt try to shoot the cy-goyle down, but bullets just bounce of him.  Coldstone prepares to throw a car at the two officers, but gets tackled by Goliath before he can launch it.

The policemen at the scene manage to shine spotlights on Coldstone, making him visible to all.  Goliath, seeing but not recognizing his fallen brother, calls the cyborg an abomination.

Coldstone, upon seeing Goliath clearly for the first time, accidentally activates his arm cannon (the same one Steel Clan robots are outfitted with) and shoots.  The two gargoyles fight.  As they battle, Goliath begins to realize the truth: he is fighting his brother.

As the battle continues, its collateral damage reaches a nearby movie theater, where The Trio watches Bambi.

Outside, Coldstone has Goliath at his mercy, and prepares for the finishing blow, when…

MOON TIARA…MAGIC!

No, wait, it’s just a hubcap, heralding the arrival of the Trio.  A second hubcap allows Goliath to free himself.  Soon after, Xanatos (in his red armor), Demona, and a Steel Clan robot I will call “Scott” appear, once again evening the odds, and allowing Goliath to understand why his brother has turned against him.  The policemen, still observing, have no idea what to do.

“We have each created our own clans now, Goliath,” Demona says, “you have yours, and I have mine.”  She orders Coldstone to kill Goliath, but Xanatos belays the order–that’s not what he wants.  Demona tries to convince Coldstone that killing Goliath and Co. is the proper thing if they wish to survive, but the cyborg is clearly conflicted, particularly after Goliath pleads for mercy, given that there’s already been too much killing.

As this discussion goes on, a news van approaches the scene, with Travis Marshall inside.  Elisa warns Goliath, who, suggests to Xanatos (whom he still believes is off-site) that it probably be best to move the battle elsewhere.  Xanatos agrees,  and the two clans take off.  Elisa, who has heard Xanatos’ suggested location, tells Goliath via the radio that she’ll be sure to bring back-up.

Goliath and the Trio are the first to appear at the agreed-upon destination: George Washinton Bridge.  Demona’s “clan” arrives soon after and immediately begins attacking.  They soon settle on one-on-one fighting: Brooklyn takes on Demona; Lexington fights Scott; Broadway battles Xanatos; and Goliath wrestles Coldstone atop the bridge.  Lex, the first to defeat his opponent (Scott proves to be unsurprisingly vulnerable to walls), then goes for Xanatos, and manages to damage his armor enough so that he’s forced to remove his helmet and reveal himself.  Meanwhile, Goliath and Coldstone have managed to fight themselves out of the bridge and into the freezing river.  As both gargoyles sink, one of them–it’s not clear which–recalls Hudson’s mantra about gargoyles’ need to protect, and, as Goliath reaches out for his brother, the cyborg grabs his arm and flies them both towards safety.

The battle isn’t over yet, however; Demona is still determined to kill Goliath.  Coldstone asks her what the point is; is it mere survival, as she’d previously indicated?  Demona thinks that’s enough, but Goliath disagrees: gargoyles live to protect, he says; to lose that is to become empty.

Demona, sensing the potential for a philosophical discussion, decides to stop it in its tracks by shooting Goliath.  Coldstone moves to protect his brother and gets hit by the blast, which causes him to malfuction and to fall off the bridge and into the water.

As Goliath dives into the river to save his brother, Demona aims for the three remaining gargoyles.  Before she can shoot, her blaster is knocked out of her hands by Xanatos, who repeats that he wants them alive.  At that moment, Bronxs enters the scene and pins Xanatos down.  Elisa, who has also arrived with Hudson aims to arrest the whole bunch, but Xanatos has other plans: activating his jetpack, he frees himself, picks up Demona, and flies into the night.

Elisa asks a downcast trio what happened to the monster; Goliath, who has just returned emptyhanded, tells her that he was no monster but family, and that now he’s gone.

As the gargoyles prepare to head back home, Brooklyn asks Goliath what exactly it is they protect.  Hudson answers that they protect the watchtower, but Goliath disagrees, saying that that is merely where they sleep: the clan, he says, protects Manhattan–that is their castle, and one they will endeavor to protect from that day on.  Elisa, concerned, asks if Goliath needs anything (awwh… She cares!); Goliath answers that he will need a detective.

Dawn, some time later.  The robber from the beginning of the episode is once again at Mr. Jaffe’s.  However, he has not come to steal, but to return the money he’d stolen last time.  Pressed for an explanation, he says that he’s been ordered to do so by six monsters.  Outside the store, Elisa, flanked by the now-stone Manhattan Clan, comments that the city feels safer already.

—-

So the first season ends, not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with…I don’t know. It’s a good bit more restrained than most season enders try to be, and it works well enough: it’s a good–if not great–ending to the first act of the Gargoyles saga, and there’s really not much to say about it.

The big thing about this episode is that it marks the gargoyles’ transition from mere survivors to protectors-slash-super-heroes, as they expand their circle of protection from the clock tower to the entirety of Manhattan Island.  It’s a necessary step for the series, and more than anything else, it’s what makes the episode feel like an ending, instead of merely a semi-arbitrary stop.  According to Weisman, Goliath’s vow doesn’t represent a new approach to things, but a reaffirmation of the values they always held but had forgotten in the transition to the 20th century and their forced relocation to the clock tower.  While I’m not entirely convinced this is the case, the transition still makes a certain amount of sense: after all, if one concludes that the Scotland gargoyles limited themselves to protecting a castle because it was a self-contained, self-sustaining enviroment (at least from their perspective), then the appropriate modern day equivalent would indeed be the city and its community.  Weisman notes that this is still a pretty limited view–that eventually gargoyles would come to see themselves as defenders of the world–and while I’m not entirely sure how that would work, I’m game.

The other big thing here is, of course, Coldstone–at least, it would be, if there were anything to say about him.  Here, he’s definitively in “sentient plot device” territory (which is unfortunately where he’ll spend most of his time) with not much personality to speak of.  He’s got a cool design (albeit one that I think could have been improved had the artists stuck more closely to the idea that he’s a reanimated statue) but that’s it.  There’s also no sign of the other two personalities lying dormant within–the creators wouldn’t think of that until season 2.

I’ve previously mentioned that, despite holding up very well in general terms, Gargoyles still have moments that date it terribly (for example, Xanatos’ use of floppy disks) and this episode features one that is subtle, and yet terribly important: basically, the way the gargoyles’ masquerade isn’t considered to be in jeopardy until a news crew arrives.  It’s a scenario that wouldn’t work at all a decade later, wit cell phone cameras and Youtube accounts being ubiquitous.  Combined with the series’ use of Hollywood darkness, it contributes to a scene that doesn’t quite ring true when watched with modern eyes.  Here we have police mobilized in Times Square; dozens, if not hundreds, of witnesses; and one of the most well-lit areas in the city, and the gargoyles are still considered urban legend-y enough to arouse ridicule whenever they’re mentioned seriously (see “Avalon” pt. 1)?  Unfortunately, we don’t really see the aftermath of this episode’s events; by the time we catch up with the Gargoyles in season 2, it’s been almost exactly  seven months since Coldstone’s rampage, which is more than enough for the public at large to have set the incident aside in favor of the problem of the day.

Weisman has been on record as a lover of parallelism, and you have it in spades here.  Obvious title aside, the whole episode plays as a twisted reflection of the pilot, with Demona and Xanatos together again in order to bring a gargoyle into the present day in order to co-opt him.  We get another flashback to the day of the massacre.  All in all, it’s yet another thing that adds to the “finale” feel of the episode.

As for the season itself?  Well, it reminds me of Avatar‘s freshman season: it’s good, but completely overshadowed by what came afterwards.   Had the series ended at this point, it would probably have been remembered as a good series with a lot of unfulfilled promise, and then quietly forgotten as time went by.  While the season as a whole is entertaining, well written, and (usually) very good looking, the series won’t acquire its spark until season 2, which I (we?  nosotros?) will begin exploring in two weeks.

The Story So Far

Over the past several years, the crime lord known as The Shredder has consolidated almost all organized crime in New York City under the control of his Foot Clan.

Twenty-oh-four: With the Shredder reportedly killed under mysterious circumstances and his 2nd in command Hun missing, the various elements of The Foot’s crime empire have begun fighting amongst themselves.  Thus far, three main factions have emerged: the Foot remnant, led by the Shredder’s Elite Ninja; the Purple Dragons, a street gang usually in charge of most of the Foot’s lower-level criminal activity; and The Five Families, a consortium of old-school gangsters that had been bought out by the Shredder, and who consider the current confusion to be their best chance at a comeback.

After a few skirmishes, the battle for control of the city finally grabbed the public’s attention when fifteen men were found dead at a Canal Street warehouse.  In response, the New York Police Department organized a special task force to deal with the escalating violence–one which, whether by design or happenstance, includes many of the same people who in 1996 formed part of the Gargoyle Task Force.

One of the people not in the Task Force is disgraced cop Longer, who relishes the opportunity to regain his lost reputation and honor.  To that point, he has begun investigating the strange going ons on his own, aiming to…what, exactly?

Thanks to a series of lucky accidents, the Task Force has been able to make some headway into the investigation, and they now have a vague idea of what they’re dealing with.  Meanwhile, task force members Martin Hacker and Lin Koyobashi have been making inroads of their own, and not quite of the positive type…

Dramatis Personae

The Detail:

Gordon Miller: Lieutenant assigned to head the detail by Chief of Detectives Sterns.  A pragmatist and realist, he has little hope of closing the case, but plans to do his damnedest.

Elisa Maza: Detective 1st Class assigned to the N.Y.P.D.’s 14th (Midtown South) Precinct.  Despite her solid chops, her numerous investigations by the Internal Affairs Department has not endeared her to the brass.

Cedric Harris: Detective 1st Class and Elisa’s long-time partner in the 14th Precinct.

Tri Chung: Detective 1st Class, and a would-be by-the-book cop.

Paul Whitmire: Detective 1st Class assigned to the 9th Precinct.  Miller’s former partner, it is this association that got him assigned to the detail.

Martin Hacker: F.B.I. Agent assigned to the gang war detail, who is also a member of the Illuminati Society.

Lin: A Japanese transfer to the N.Y.P.D., assigned to the detail due to the suspected involvement of Yakuza elements in the gang war.  Secretly a member of The Foot Clan, a fact only known by Martin Hacker.

Other police and lawmen:

Longer: A detective disgraced for his “overzealous” pursuit of corrupt arms dealer Ruffington.  Now working evidence control at One Police Plaza,  he  seeks to get back in the action by any means necessary.

Matt Bluestone: Inspector and head of the N.Y.P.D.’s Midtown South (14th) Precinct, where Elisa Maza and Cedric Harris work.  Member of the Illuminati.

The Five Families

Jack “Diamondback” Trent: Current boss of the Five Families.

Weasel: Diamondback’s consigliere, despite being disliked by almost everyone.

Tony Puzzorelli Sr.: Former head of the Puzzorelli crime syndicate, now one of Diamondback’s lieutenants.

Tony Puzzorelli Jr.: Tony Puzzorelli’s son, a reluctant gangster held in low esteem by his father.

Tony Dracon: Former head of the Dracon crime syndicate, now working for Diamondback.  Currently in hiding inside the Labyrinth.

Glasses: Tony Dracon’s best friend and former consigliere.  Currently in a coma due to injuries sustained during the Canal Street Massacre.

Pal Joey: Former member of the Dracon syndicate, now dead.

Others

Mr. Touch and Mr. Go: A pair of super-powered assassins-for-hire wreaking havoc in the underworld scene.  Mr. Touch possesses super-strength, while Mr. Go possesses super-speed, which they access by coming into physical contact with one another.

Lauren Stanton: Crime Beat reporter for the Daily Globe, known for her investigative acumen and less-than-sparkling personality.

Gabrielle Puzzorelli: Tony Jr.’s wife.  The two have known each other since college.

Talon (a.k.a. Derek Maza): Eliza Maza’s younger brother, who has spent most of the last decade as a mutate and leader of the Labyrinth.  A former policeman, he is currently keeping Tony Dracon under protective custody.

Original Air Date: January 27, 1995
Introduces: The Coyote Diamond
Timeline placement: Jan. 25 – Jan. 29, 1995

Synopsis:

Xanatos is driven across downtown by Owen, perfectly aware that he is being tailed by a police helicopter piloted by Derek Maza and with Elisa as its one passenger.  Elisa is determined to find Xanatos guilty of something, but Derek rightly notes that there’s no probable cause–they’re following the guy merely because Elisa doesn’t like him.

Over at the lair, Lexington is playing a helicopter simulation game for a videogame console that seems just a smidge too advanced for early 1995.  His rookery brothers are not entirely happy about this, particularly since he’s apparently been at it since they all woke up (“cause I’m the only one who knows how to work it” is his retort).  Before they can get too snippy, they’re interrupted by Goliath, who tells them that, as brothers, they shouldn’t be fighting over things like videogames.  Broadway gets a nice moment as he explains that he’s worried about Elisa–he doesn’t feel helicopters are entirely safe.

We return to Elisa’s chase, were Xanatos has decided that he has some urgent shopping to do.   At a nearby Diamond Exchange, Hyena and Jackal–last seen in episode 6–are about to steal the priceless Coyote Diamond with STEALTH.  Before they’re able to do so, the diamond is taken out of its display as it’s been bought by–quelle surprise–Xanatos.  This deters them not at all, as they decide to screw STEALTH and just take the diamond via kick.

The two criminal siblings make their way towards the rooftop, where they pick up the hang gliders they’d stashed there beforehand.  Before they can use them, they’re stopped by Derek’s chopper.  Jackal decides to go for plan C: hidden rocket launcher.  As he prepares to fire, he’s tackled by Xanatos, causing the rocket’s arc to go wide and hit the chopper’s tail, causing it to lose control.  As the pilot tries to land the ‘copter, the Pack goes for Xanatos.  They’re to slow: before they can carve up his face, Elisa approaches them, gun drawn.  They decide to go with their original plan, going back to the hang gliders and high-tailing it.

Now out of danger, Xanatos picks up the Coyote Diamond (somehow dropped during the action) and makes a quip about how there’s never a gargoyle around when you need one.  He heads towards Derek and hands him his business card, telling him that he’s impressed with the policeman’s flying and that he’d like to have him as a pilot and bodyguard, if he’ll accept.

As Xanatos makes his exit, Elisa tells Derek to ignore Xanatos’ offer: it’s obviously just a stratagem to get under her skin.  Derek bristles at his sister’s suggestion, particularly in the way it implies that Xanatos could never actually be interested in his flying skills.  While he doesn’t quite say it, his demeanor indicates only one thing: butt out.

Pack Media Studios, some time later.  After finishing a phone call, Jackal tells Hyena that they have new orders from Fox: kill Xanatos.  Hyena likes these orders.

At the lair, Elisa is not happy about the recent turn of events.  The Gargoyles tell her that, if it will prevent Derek from taking the job offer, she should tell him brother about the clan, and maybe even stage an introduction.  Elisa, determined to remain unsatisfied for the duration of the episode, doesn’t like that idea either.

Twenty-third precinct.  Derek is watching the sunset inside a briefing room when he’s approached by Elisa.  She has something to tell him, but doesn’t manage to say it before he drops a bomb: he’s taking the job.

Over at–OHMYGOSH, an actual bar–Elisa has gone to her father for support.  Peter agrees with her, telling her that she has to convince him.  He suggests that she “tell him…it’ll just kill his mother if he quits the family business.”

Aaaaand…he’s wrong.  At the elder Mazas’ homestead, Diane assures Derek that if he feels that quitting the force and getting a job with Xanatos is the right choice, then he should take that chance.

Much to its occupants displeasure, Elisa enters the 23rd Precinct’s locker room (male) and approaches Derek, telling him that she has something to show him regarding Xanatos.  Derek tells her it doesn’t matter: he’s taken the job, he won’t change his mind, and given how Xanatos saved his life, he’s willing to give him a chance.

At the lair, Elisa explains the situation to Goliath and asks that the clan help keep an eye on him.  Goliath instructs The Trio to keep watch over Castle Wyvern, preferably without killing each other in the process.

Later as they try to carry out their instructions, Broadway and Lexington fight over priorities–Lexington wants to go directly after The Pack, while Broadway considers helping Elisa to be more important.  Brooklyn interrupts them to tell them that Xanatos’ helicopter is on the move.  They watch as another copter, helpfully bearing The Pack’s logo, quickly begins following, and they decide to give chase.

As Derek and Xanatos try to respectively evade and shoot down their attacking followers, The Trio manages to eject Jackal and Hyena from their helicopter (the two manage to land safely with their parachutes) without quite realizing that it’s left them with an out-of-control aircraft.  While Lexington’s frantic attempts at “flying” aren’t pretty, he does manage to safely crash the thing, with no casualties and little property damage, inside an abandoned alley.

Later, at the lair, the gargs decide to fix the helicopter in case they need it to follow Derek and Xanatos.   Goliath, on the other hand, will watch over Derek for the night.  He again tells Elisa that  she needs to tell Derek about the clan.  Elisa responds that just telling him will no longer be enough.

Yay, Fox!  In a fantastic scene, Elisa goes to The Pack imprisoned leader for some answers–and boy does she get them.  Without missing a beat, Fox explains everything: how Xanatos is the mastermind behind The Pack; how he set up the assassination attempts on him as a way to assure Derek’s service; how she’s  the only one Xanatos keeps in the know; and how Xanatos had expected Elisa to track down Fox and had already prepared for it.  It’s all very gloat-ilicious: Fox has absolute confidence that Xanatos will prevail in this game–”He’s the most brilliant man in the face of the Earth,” she says, with not a little bit of adulation.

As Elisa leaves the prison, she takes a look at her prize: a tape recording of her conversation with Fox. As she nears her car, she herself is approached by Goliath, who informs her that Xanatos and Derek have gone somewhere via helicopter, too fast for him to follow.  Xanadu, Elisa concludes: the upstate retreat where Xanatos keeps his sleds and snowglobes and statues and wifes.  They meet up with The Trio and begin following in the Pack’s now-repaired and refurbished helicopter.

At XAA-NADUU!, Derek is asking Xanatos if he should expect as much excitement from his job as he got the night before.   The lights go out (or so we’re meant to believe–in reality, there’s no noticeable difference): it’s Hyena and Jackal, sporting some nifty-looking spy catsuits, night-vision goggles, and laser rifles.  Before they can do any killin’, the calvary arrives in the form of the Gargoyles-copter.  Thanks to all the nifty features Lexington installed–a blinding spotlight, armor, net-deploying missiles, and an impossibly accurate laser–the brother/sister criminal team goes down without much trouble.

The threat passed, Xanatos thanks Elisa and the Gargoyles for saving his and Derek’s lives, and leaves the two siblings to hash things out amongst themselves.  Derek reveals that Xanatos had beaten Elisa to the punch and had told him about the ‘goyles, complete with his own skewed narrative of past events.  He is also determined to remain with Xanatos.  As the siblings are about to again head into argument-land, they’re silenced by Goliath, who tells them that they shouldn’t be fighting, and that they should instead be grateful for those bonds of brotherhood–bonds he himself no longer has and misses terribly–and that the most important thing is family.

As snow begins to fall, Elisa apologizes for her behavior, admitting that she was wrong in insisting Derek not take the job.  She does however remain adamant in her assessment of Xanatos, and gives her brother the tape recorder with the Incriminating!Fox conversation.

Sometime later, as the gargoyles prepare for the approaching dawn outside the clock tower, Brooklyn and Broadway congratulate Lexington on his job with the helicopter.  Lexington reciprocates, saying it wouldn’t have been possible without his rookery brothers’ help.  As the sun rises and the snow accumulates on the now-stone gargoyles, a melancholy Elisa re-enters the building.

—-

After watching and re-watching season 1 over the years (except, as I’ve mentioned, “Long Way Till Morning”) I’ve concluded this is my favorite non-pilot episode of the lot.  It has some great animation, a nice mixture of drama and action, and manages to feel meatier than the episodes that preceded it.  With no new characters or concepts to introduce, “Brother’s Keeper”  has the freedom to cram in a lot of characters and viewpoints; sharing the spotlight are the Mazas, Xanatos, Fox, The Trio, Hyena and Jackal, and Goliath–the most characters in a single episode to date.

The theme here, is, course, sibling relationships, with three groups for the viewer to compare and contrast: the Maza sibs; The Trio; and Jackal and Hyena, who, as murder-happy bastards, are of course have the best fraternal relationship.  Greg Weisman is a fan of parallelism, and while it works  in the case of the Mazas and Jackal and Hyena, it doesn’t quite work in the case of The Trio.

I can understand how three siblings living in close quarters and with no other peers would eventually get on each other nerves–that bit feels naturally enough.  However, the way it’s handled here, with a pat, “everything’s okay now” sort of resolution, feels false, particularly since a) their fighting is actually rather mild, and b) we don’t get to see The Trio really arguing in this manner until its again used in “Upgrade”.  It stands in stark contrast to its blog-mate, TMNT, where disagreements and fights are ever present, and don’t affect the plot unless they actually revolve around something important, such as the ones  “The Shredder Strikes”, pt. 1 or the entirety of “City at War”.  Granted, the cases are not quite equivalent–Gargoyles focuses on The Trio as a unit only occasionally, while the turtles fraternal relationship is the series’ main one–but I think that the latter series’ handling of the issue was superior.

On the other hand, there’s the relationship between Elisa and Derek which forms the true meat of the episode, and which shows why Gargoyles is one of the best-written children’s programs in memory.  Unlike TMNT, whose closest parallel to Elisa and Derek–April and Robyn–feels like an afterthought, this relationship helps enrich the world and the show in a manner that few shows bother to attempt.

When we got introduced to the family in “Deadly Force”, they were all acting as a united front in the face of a family crisis.  With life now back to normal, we begin seeing more of the family’s day-to-day interaction, and it’s actually rather interesting.   Like Katherine’s dad, Derek is another character whose backstory I’d really like some information on.  Clearly he doesn’t feel as strongly about his police work as Elisa and Peter do–maybe I’m just projecting, but it seems to me that to him police work was a last resort sort of thing, something to do after whatever his original plans fell through.  I’d like to know what that previous thing was.

Meanwhile, Elisa lets her distaste for Xanatos and particular hang-ups get the better of her here.  There’s a bit of an absolutist streak in her this episode–Derek CANNOT take the job; Xanatos CANNOT just be minding his own business, but fortunately, it gets some resolution by the end of the episode.  We eventually know how the job thing ends, but I still await discussion on how Elisa now deals with dealing with the guy who turned her brother into Talon as something other than an enemy.

Speaking of Xanatos, it’s hard to think of his attempts to hire Derek as something done for any reason other than getting under Elisa’s skin.  True, we don’t know the extent of Derek’s skills as either a pilot or a bodyguard, but absent any unknown details about him, it’s hard to think that he’d be in Xanatos’ sights if he weren’t Elisa’s brother, or that he’d be so cavalier about losing his services if he truly considered Derek to be the best man for the job.  So what does this mean?  Mainly that despite all his posturing (or Greg Weisman’s statements) Xanatos isn’t as above it all as he likes to think he is.  Which is fine: I like that he does have a streak of pettiness to him, as long as it’s not permitted to take over his entire characterization.  It makes him seem more human.

Moving on to the episodes other antagonists, this is a much better outing for The Pack than their initial episode, thanks in part to the tighter focus, and because they’re allowed to have some actual and defined chemistry.   They may not be the most credible long-term villains–their motivations tend to be the sort where success dramatically speaking is not an option, meaning they have a definite sell-by date–but they have some nice chemistry between them, and work as appropriately threatening antagonists here.  On a related note, Fox looks really good here, which is actually rarer than one would think it would be–more on that on Wednesday.

Random thoughts:

• This episode features the first and only appearance of the Gargoyles’ helicopter, an attempt at synergy that went awry, as Kenner, who came up with the idea, decided to scrap their plans to build a helicopter action figure.  While this is really the kind of thing that feels more appropriate in TMNT–as evidenced by the fact that they acquire three different helicopters during the course of the series–I actually don’t mind the concept in theory here, and wish that they’d tried to either incorporate it more or explain its absence (say, by saying that they couldn’t acquire additional fuel for it, which is perfectly logical reason to discard the vehicle)–given Weisman’s fondness for bringing back old concepts no matter how insignificant (see the next bullet point), its absence feels somewhat amiss.
• Like pretty much everything else in the series, the Coyote Diamond from Act 1 eventually makes its return, as part of the system powering Coyote 5.0′s A.I., which makes me wonder if Greg Weisman is a hoarder in real life.
• Yet another little thing dating the series: Actual alcohol!  In an actual bar!  Sometime during the late 90′s/early 00′s, showing alcohol–even in innocuous cases such as here–became a big no-no, and adult characters have been meeting in badly-disguised “Billiard Rooms” since.

Most of the shows I watch and enjoy aren’t on TV anymore.  Either that or they’re on TV at a time when I can’t watch so I end up watching the DVDs or on the web.  There is one show I love that I think that many people would really enjoy if they took a moment to watch it.  That show is perhaps one of the best, and definitely the smartest show to ever come out of Disney.  That show is Gargoyles.

I have watched Gargoyles pretty consistently since about age 9.  It used to come on TV after school and I’d watch it whenever I could.  I was fascinated by the gargoyles and their story and wanted to emulate Elisa Maza and for a while daydreamed of being a police detective.  I think the best part of the show was the writers’ ability to weave myth, legend, and literature into a modern story–a cartoon, no less!  The characters were three-dimensional with the good guys and the villains each able to really stand on their own.  It’s really a shame the show only ran for 3 seasons (a short first and third and a really long second).  Even with all of the excellent stories told, there are still stories of greater depth yet to be told.

In the mid 90′s when the show ran originally, Marvel Comics picked it up and did a short series of comics with the characters.  In 2008, Slave Labor Graphics picked it up and told brand new stories with show creator Greg Weisman at the helm.  I have several of both series of comic books and am impressed with the way they were done.  The Marvel version did an interesting job of making the stories a little more “grown-up” and serious than the show, which was already fairly dark and serious for a cartoon.  The newer issues put out a couple years ago were very interesting, too, but as it’s been a few years since I’ve read them, I can’t remember much of the new storyline.  I need to go back and pick those up again.

Also, if you are a fan of the Star Trek franchise, half of the cast was on Gargoyles, too, including Nichelle Nichols, the original Uhura.  Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Brent Spiner of Star Trek: The Next Generation all make appearances in the show as well.  Aside from all the Star Trek crossover, other series notable regulars are Keith David (recently of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline) as Goliath, Salli Richardson-Whitfield (Eureka) as Elisa Maza, John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings) as the villain Macbeth, and the great Ed Asner (Up) as Hudson.  Those knowledgeable of animation will also recognize voice-over buffs, Jeff Bennett, Kathie Soucie, and the amazing Frank Welker, who I’m fairly certain has been in nearly any cartoon you could name.

Overall, it’s a great series that I think many people would enjoy and find interesting.  If you can’t get a hold of the DVDs, set your DVR to record it on Disney XD.  It’s excellent, and well worth your time.  :)  This series gets Two Thumbs Up from me,

The Nerdy Blogger

Original Air Date: January 13, 1995
Introduces: Travis Marshall; The Eye of Odin; Xanatos’ Battle Armor
Timeline placement: Jan. 12 – Jan. 14, 1995

Synopsis:

During a sparring match with Owen, Xanatos gets his ass handed to him in five seconds flat–the first time he’s ever been beaten during the excercise.  While he’s somewhat shaken by the incident, he dismisses it and gets right back to business, rescheduling a meeting with “the Emir”.

At the 23th District HQ entrance, Elisa has her hands full carrying a TV set.  As she tries to maneuver the door open, dropping the TV remote in the process, she’s helped by a red-haired man in a trenchcoat–the same man whom viewers (but not Elisa) first saw driving with Captain María Chávez back in “Deadly Force“–who opens the door for her.     He asks what the TV is for, and she explains that it’s just a gift she’s “stashing” for the day. As she thanks him and enters the building, she leaves the remote behind, until Red Hair picks it up and goes in behind her.

At Captain Chávez’s office, Elisa is complaining about her superior’s decision to assign her a partner.  It’s not up for discussion however; one has already been assigned: María opens the door, revealing Red Hair, whom she introduces as Detective Matt Bluestone.  “You dropped this” he says, handing his new partner the remote she’d accidentally abandoned.

As both detectives walk through the precinct, Elisa continues her complaining, only now with Matt.  “I don’t need a partner, and I don’t want a partner.”  Matt, in turn, replies with “Hey, I understand; problem is you have a partner: me.”  After making an offhand comment about a conspiracy to ruin her life–a comment Bluestone responds to seriously–Elisa asks to be excused for twenty minutes while she works on something.

Elisa makes her way to a broom closet inside the precinct.  Television in tow, she pulls down a service ladder leading to the Gargoyles’ lair, where the gargoyles are relaxing.  She asks for Goliath, but is told that he’s downstairs at the library.  The detective makes her way there and finds Goliath alone reading Dostoyevsky (which prompts Elisa to joke: “Yeah?  Who’s it by?”).  The detective notes that Goliath is broody, and asks what’s bothering him.  “Xanatos”, he replies: he’s managed to take everything from them, and enjoys every advantage, while the Gargoyles are forced to live as outcasts.  He expresses his desire to make Xanatos feel the misery he currently feels.

Back at the lair, the gargoyles and Elisa are trying out their new TV when they see Xanatos appear on the screen.  The gargoyles watch as newsman Travis Marshall does a piece on Xanatos’ public donation of  a priceless jewel called The Eye of Odin to the Museum of Modern Art.  Although it purports to be a softball piece, Travis includes a commentary on Xanatos’ recent stint in prison, one the billionaire blows off with a simple “it was a mistake”.  Goliath throws what would be called a hissy fit where it not being voiced by Keith David, establishing a theme for this episode.

Later, as they drive through the city, Matt is telling a skeptical Elisa with his theories on the Illuminati, a group that he believes secretly controls the world, when the detectives hear an alert on the police scanner: there’s a robbery in progress at the Museum of Modern Art.  As they arrive, guns drawn, they see a shadowy winged creature resembling a gargoyle break through the windows and fly away.  Before Elisa can properly process whats going on, she sees Matt take aim at the creature.   She tries to stop him, but it’s too late; fortunately for her, the bullet bounces off the creature, confirming to Elisa that the creature was not a gargoyle.  Once the creature flies out of sight, Matt asks why his partner tried to stop him, and she explains that shooting the creature was reckless, since they had no idea what it was or what shooting it would do.

Back at the 23rd, Captain Chávez briefs Elisa on the various creature sightings: apparently, they (Chávez notes that there are at least three of them) have been seen (and photographed) all over the city.  Matt enters the room and turns the TV on to a report by Travis Marshall, where he airs security camera footage from the museum robbery, which shows a goliath-like silhouette (framed in shadow despite the otherwise normal lighting) breaking the glass display and taking the Eye of Odin.  Captain  Chávez asks her two detectives for their opinions, but Elisa has nothing to say, yet.

Up at the lair, Elisa tells Goliath and Co all she’s learned.  Given the facts, they conclude that the Eye of Odin must have been stolen by one of Xanatos’ rebuilt robots.  Goliath decides that enough is enough, and orders Hudson to stay guarding the tower while he and The Trio head out to confront Xanatos.

As Goliath and The Trio fly off towards Castle Wyvern, Elisa dashes towards her car.  Before she can follow, she’s stopped by Matt Bluestone, who insists on coming with her despite her protests, saying that she won’t let her go out alone with those “monsters” on the loose.  Elisa protests, but eventually gives in.

Castle Wyvern.  Xanatos stands  outside, waiting for something.  Goliath and The Trio make their entrance, and Goliath approaches Xanatos while the others hang back in the parapets.  Goliath then throws another hissy fit, decrying Xanatos’ theft of their identities.  Xanatos remains unflappable, saying that Goliath misunderstands; he just wants to aid the Gargoyles by making them an offer they can’t refuse: stay with him as his guests at a facility upstate, or be hunted down by the public he’s turned against them.  Goliath has no response; enraged, he tells his kin that they’re leaving.

Meanwhile, Elisa, followed by Matt, makes her way into the Eyrie Building.  Before she can make her way past the lobby, she is stopped by Owen, who insists that the detective is no longer welcome and that, unless she has a warrant, she is intruding.  Elisa acquiesces; as she exits the building, she spots the Gargoyles gliding off, and rushes to follow her in her car, with Bluestone in tow.

As they glide back home, Goliath and Co. are attacked.  It’s the Steel Clan, led by a robot with a distinctive red hue.  Worse, they’ve been upgraded since their last encounter, fighting off their flesh counterparts with ease.  Eventually, the robots herd the gargoyles towards a rooftop, and then grow immobile, hovering, but doing nothing else.  Goliath surmises that they’re waiting for the Manhattan clan to retreat to their lair and so discover their location.

Below, a crowd of spectators has gathered on the streets, and is watching the battle above.  Elisa and Matt arrive at the scene, and ask Travis Marshall what’s going on.  “Looks like that urban myth about gargoyles just became urban reality,” he says.

Realizing that they can’t stay at their present location, Goliath elects to move the battle to a more isolated location.  He leads the trio to Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, with the Steel Clan following.  As they make their way there, they are watched by an astonished public, including Matt Bluestone, who watches them through commandeered binoculars.

Statue of Liberty.  As Goliath battles Red Leader, the trio tussles with the two other Steel Clan.  In the end, Broadway defeats them both, causing one to crash into the Statue of Liberty’s book, and throwing its now-severed arm at the other robot, impaling it in its chest and causing it to crash.

Its comrades defeated, Red Leader, which had been holding its own against Goliath, is now surrounded by the Manhattan Clan.  Outnumbered, it decides to cut and run.  Noticing approaching helicopters, the Manhattan clan does the same.  As they glide away, a police helicopter arrives at the scene, piloted by Derek Maza and carrying Elisa, Matt, and Marshall.  The four discover the wreckage left by the two robots.

Later, at the Tower, Elisa informs Goliath that the official story is that all the flying creatures were robots created by persons unknown, which means that the flesh and blood gargoyles are safe.  Goliath is pleased: tonight’s victory was their first definitive one against Xanatos, and obtaining it has dispelled Goliath’s worries about Xanatos.  As he turns to stone for the day, he’s happy, for the first time in a while.

Meanwhile, as Matt and Chávez exit the 23rd Precinct Building, Matt expresses his disbelief at the party line: those things he saw were not robots, and he’s going to find out what they really were.

At Castle Wyvern, Red Leader turns out to be Xanatos himself.  Owen notes that the night did not end successfully, as they did not learn the Gargoyles’ new location.  Xanatos isn’t worried, however, since everything else went right: he has the Eye of Odin and the perks that came from donating it; he’s successfully tested his exo-armor; and he’s proved his mettle against Goliath.  His worries about his edge dissipated, Xanatos smiles.

—-

When I initially watched season one, this was my favorite episode after the pilot: a Xanatos spotlight and a return to the super-good animation of the first five episodes?  Be still my heart.  While time has led me to view the episode in a more critical light, there’s still a lot to like in this episode.

First–of course–there’s Xanatos’ big return to the spotlight, proving that despite his defeat back in “Awakening”, the writers have little intention of subjecting him through villain decay—a big departure for a villain in a children’s cartoon.  As in previous episodes, we see him using every tactic in his book: setting himself up as an apparent victim; unnerving his enemies with his calmness, and attempting to have them destroy themselves.  Not only that, whereas “Awakening” had him humiliatingly defeated by falling masonry, this episode also establishes him as a very physical threat to Goliath.

This episode also features an important win for Goliath, particularly since his previous victory over Xanatos has now been erased with his release.  While it’s mostly hollow—Xanatos will eventually discover the lair’s location on his own, and pretty much does nothing with that knowledge—it allows Goliath to boost his morale,  relax a little and recover a bit from all the recent tragedy in his life, something he really hasn’t been able to do since “Awakening pt. 5″.

The other important event in this episode is the proper introduction of Detective Matt Bluestone (played by Tom Wilson, whom I fucking love–why aren’t you in Glee?), after his brief appearance back in “Deadly Force”–one of my favorite bits of long-term planning from the show.  He doesn’t do much here aside from being the Mulder to Elisa’s Scully*, but already he feels fairly three-dimensional–conspiracy theory angle, semi-reckless behavior (what if the robot had exploded?), concern for his partner…it’s a lot to learn for a just-introduced supporting character, particularly when he’s not even the focus of the episode.

As I was initially writing this, I was going to include a paragraph about how I never really bought Matt’s “good guy” persona, thinking that he acted like a smug git towards Elisa, spouting platitudes to someone whom he’s known for twenty minutes (even though I think that he’s right on the money when it comes to the subject).  Then, as I did my scene-by-scene rewatch, I noticed something that made me feel somewhat differently about him: the way he helps Elisa in their initial scene, not by offering to carry the TV–which would have been the more obvious, “manly” thing to do–but by opening the door.  It’s speaks to certain level of …I don’t know, trust?  It’s the one scene where he doesn’t come off as condescending.  Fortunately, he comes off better in future episodes as he and Elisa grow to trust each other.

Random Thoughts:

• Matt’s revolver is huge.  It’s worth noting that this is the only time we see it–when next he draws a weapon in “Reawakening”, it’s a standard handgun like Elisa’s, the second such inconsistency in the series.
• The Eye of Odin doesn’t play too much of a role here–it’s merely a Macguffin–but it will prove very important in the second season.  Still, its role here could have been filled by any generic item.
• I’ve never quite gotten how there’s a library inside the Clock Tower–at least not a library carrying stuff like Dostoyevsky.  The Gargoyles wiki explains that the library includes several establishments besides the police station, which makes things clearer, but it’s still not something that’s really made clear from the episode.
• Another episode with flying enemies, another scene where it is inevitably made to crash into a solid object.  While it’s not quite tiresome yet, it will eventually become so.
• While a lot of noise is made about gargoyles’ inability to truly fly, the animators are perfectly willing to cheat when it suits their purpose, such as here.  Given the Steel Clan’s greater mobility and capacity for long-distance attacks, they should have no problem just blasting the Gargoyles from above.  Granted, that’s not their intention here, but its an early sign of the creators’ propensity to make tough  enemies weaker than they should be in order to allow the ‘goyles to eke out their plot-required victories–see “Archmage, The”.
• Travis Marshall will eventually become the go-to guy when the series needs someone to report on news.  While his role isn’t really expanded much beyond that, he does manage to desplay a certain amount of personality.  Here, as in future episodes, he manages to feel as if there’s something more to him than what we see.
• I really like the set design for the Clock Tower–more than what we end up seeing of the castle, even.

—-

People who’ve been following this section will notice a gap in the time-line–specifically, between 1994 and 1997, or the time-span in which the Gargoyles series takes place.  Why the omission?  Because I have nothing to add to that time period, which would mean that by including it here, I’d be copying other people’s work (particularly, that of the awesome people at Gargwiki) wholesale without adding anything of value.  Plus, all that text would be a bitch to format.  So if you have to know what happened in that period of time, you can just check their timeline: 1994, 1995, 1996.

Also, note that, unlike Greg or the wiki, this timeline does not cover every event in TMNT–I’m just not dedicated enough to assign a date to every single event.  This is mostly just a guideline in order to have an idea of when each important event occurred; however, this should not be taken to mean that these events aren’t canon.  Also, as with the other installments, the list is subject to later additions, which will be announced in their own blog posts and then added here.

ETA: Small alteration: I added an item down over at “March 2009″.

1997:

• Oroku Saki receives a crystal with strange properties found deep under Manhattan.
• Brooklyn leaves, and returns, from his Timedancer Journey.  Katana, Nashville, and, Fu-Dog, Coldstone and Coldfire join the Manhattan clan.
• Big-game hunter Jack Marlin attempts to hunt down the Manhattan Clan.

January 1, 1997: Although they managed to foil Anton Sevarius’ plan, the Redemption Squad fails to bring in the doctor.  (“Louse”)

January 5, 1997: The Redemption Squad sets out to take down an Illuminati island stronghold.  (“Redemption”)

October 31, 1997: Xanatos’ probation expires.

1998:

• Tachi hatches.
• “Accounts Settled and Closed” (Monsters of NY)
  • [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] are [REDACTED] by the [REDACTED].
  • [REDACTED] is [REDACTED].  [REDACTED] loses her [REDACTED].
  • Xanatos makes a deal with Oroku Saki.
  • Xanatos hosts a summit at Castle Wyvern.  Several of the Manhattan Clan’s allies (and some enemies) appear.
  • Demona casts a spell.
  • Brooklyn relocates Katana, Gnash, Tachi, and Fu-Dog to Avalon.  [REDACTED] also makes the trip.
  • Goliath begins his [REDACTED], joined by [REDACTED].
• Demona exacts her revenge.
• The Foot begins construction of an underground genetics laboratory in New York.

1999:

• Elisa returns to New York.
• The Foot makes a deal with Tony Dracon, giving him $50,000,000 and a get-out-of-jail-free card for him and Glasses in exchange for his contacts, personnel, product, and territory.

August 2000: Foot Geneticists begin Project: Muta-Mole (not its real name), with the aim of  genetically mutating humans for underground exploration and retrieval and using them to find the Utrom’s hiding place.

2001: Silver Sentry makes his first public appearance, heralding the Second Age of Super-Heroes.

January 2001: Earth Protection Force Librarian Irma Langstein finds something amiss in the organization’s records.

February 2001: E.P.F. Librarian Irma Langstein presents her report on the irregularities on the E.P.F.’s records.  She is assigned to investigate their cause.

August 2001: E.P.F. Librarian Irma Langstein finishes her investigation.

2002:

• April O’Neil graduates from the University of New York with a degree in Mathematics.

• Longer begins investigating Ruffington.

June 2002:

• The Foot’s mutant scouts find the Y’Lyntian underground city.  They mistakenly hypothesize that it is Utrom in origin.

August 2002:

• After determining that the underground city their mutants have found is not Utrom in origin.  Project: Muta-Mole is canceled.
• The mutants created for Project: Muta-Mole break free and destroy the Foot Lab, killing everyone within it.

September-December 2002: “Lies” (Monsters of NY)

2003: Karai gets her Business and Commerce degree from Keio University.

August 2003:

• The Foot Mutants find the Y’Lyintian city.
• April O’Neil begins working for Stocktronics.
• Oroku Saki relocates permanently to New York.
  • Karai is officially made head of The Foot’s Japan branch.

September 2003:

• Mousers attack the TMNT’s lair, destroying it. (“Things Change”)
• The turtles find a new lair in what was once a Y’lyntian outpost. (“Things Change”)
• The turtles meet April O’Neil. (“A Better Mousetrap”, “Attack of the Mousers”)
• Baxter Stockman is defeated and disgraced. (“Attack of the Mousers”)
• Raphael meets Casey Jones. (“Meet Casey Jones”)
• A nanomachine colony escapes from a lab U.S. Government lab. (“Nano”)

October 2003:

• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meet, and fight, The Shredder.  (“The Shredder Strikes”)
• A time-travelling Leonardo and Cody Jones appear at the site of the turtles’ first battle with the Shredder. (“Timing is Everything”)
• Two days after their disappearance, a time-travelling Shredder and his squadron of Foot Ninja finally return to their proper time.

December 2003:

• “Notes From the Underground”
• The turtles are driven out of their sewer lair by the Foot Ninja. (“Notes From the Underground, pt. 3″)
• The Shredder attacks the turtles at April’s appartment, and drives them into hiding. (“The Shredder Strikes Back, Part 2″, “Tales of Leo”)

March 2004: The turtles return from their Northampton exile, and attack the Shredder at his tower.  The Shredder is believed killed. (“Return to New York”)

April 2004:

• “The Search for Splinter”-”Secret Origins”
• Thanks to Ruffington’s influence, Longer is disgraced and demoted.

August 2004: “Electric Boogaloo”

September 2004:

• Donatello finds a cure for the Foot Mutants (“Return to the Underground”)
• The gang war reaches its boiling point, as seen in “City at War”.
  • Karai, with the help of the turtles, takes control of The Foot, and retakes New York’s underworld.

October 2004: Gargoyles, a fictional horror story written by John Castaway, is released.

November 2004: The Federation makes contact with the E.P.F. and strike an alliance:  Federation support and technology in exchange for the Fugitoid.

March, 2005:

• The turtles discover that the Shredder still lives, and that Karai has dishonored their deal. (“Rogue in the House”)
• The Justice Force briefly reunites when several of its members are kidnapped. (“Return of the Justice Force”)
• A new Justice Force is formed, with  Silver Sentry, Ananda, Metalhead, Chrysalis, and Tsunami as active members, and with Stainless Steel Steve and Zippy Lad as consultants.

April, 2005:

• The Ninja Turtles attend their first Battle Nexus Tournament (“The Big Brawl”)
• The Triceratons invade Earth, leaving Manhattan and China (among other places) devastated and the world’s armies in shambles before quickly leaving.  (“Space Invaders”, “Worlds Collide”)
  • Beijing gets lifted up into the stratosphere.
  • “Reprise” (Monsters of New York)
    • Goliath and company return to New York.
    • Coldstone and Coldfire capture a Triceraton ship.
    • Xanatos holds a press conference.
    • [REDACTED]

May, 2005:

• Thanks in part to covert sponsorship by John Castaway, H.A.T.E. is formed.
• Brooklyn returns his family to New York.  [REDACTED] joins them.

June, 2005:

• The New Yorker publishes an article on Oroku Saki and David Xanatos titled “The Saviors of New York”.
• The gargoyles get their own reality TV show.

July, 2005:

• Lexington officially goes into business.

September, 2005:

• The first episode of the Manhattan clan’s reality show airs.  It’s a smash hit.
• The turtles foil a H.A.T.E. plot to detonate a nuclear bomb inside New York. (“H.A.T.E.”)
• John Castaway meets with H.A.T.E.’s leader, Skonk, in prison.

October, 2005:

• Leonardo and Michelangelo meet Nobody, and help him take down Ruffington. (“Nobody’s Fool”)
• Dr. Chaplin begins working for The Foot Clan.

November 2005:

• Despite the show’s positive effect on their P.R., the Manhattan Clan declines the offer to produce a second season.

December 24, 2005:

• The Christmas Aliens
• David Xanatos and Oroku Saki hold a Christmas party.  Attendees include Fox Xanatos, Karai Saki, Hun, Matt Bluestone, the Mayor, and the Manhattan Clan.

January 2006: C.F. Volpehart is killed when The Beast severs its link with him.  It quickly finds another host. (“The Darkness Within”)

February 2006:

• Beijing, which had been lifted to the stratosphere during the Triceraton Invasion, is brought back to Earth.  However, it now faces the “wrong” direction. (“Mission of Gravity”)
• Tectonic activity arround Greenland causes sudden shifts over the Northern Hemisphere.  However, such activity is brief.
• The turtles, along with Versalia, a female Y’lyntian, destroy the last known Y’lyntian City, along with most of its inhabitants.  (“The Entity Below”)

March 2006: The turtles meet Renet, and are taken to the year 1406.

April 2006: Agent Bishop captures Karai and attempts to use her to extort Oroku Saki.  (“Hun on the Run”)

May 2006:

• Agent Bishop kidnaps Splinter and uses his genetic data in order to complete his super-soldier army.  (“Bishop’s Gambit”)
• “Exodus”
• The turtles retire to Northampton to convalesce.
• The Purple Dragons call in all their markers.

June 2006:

• Oroku Saki is officially declared dead.  Karai takes the helm of his holdings including the Foot Clan.
• Hun and the Purple Dragons defect from the Foot.

August 2006: Raptarr makes his public debut.

September 2006: The healed turtles return to New York.

October 2006:

• The President of the United States is abducted by aliens and “saved” by the E.P.F.  After the confrontation, large quantities of alien D.N.A. are left all over New York. (“Aliens Among Us”)
• Karai inaugurates the Oroku Saki Memorial Library. (“Still Nobody”)

October 31, 2006: The self-proclaimed King of Thieves summons an army of hundreds of gargoyle-like gremlins to indiscriminately steal for him.  (“All Hallows’ Thieves”)

November 1, 2006:

• The Quarrymen experience a small uptick in their membership.
• The Manhattan Clan faces a mild PR crisis as (thanks in part to Quarrymen disinformation) people have begun conflating them with the King of Thieves’ gremlins.

December, 2006:

• Leonardo leaves the lair to find The Ancient One. (“The Ancient One”)
• Raptarr befriends the Manhattan Clan.

March, 2007:

• “Scion of the Shredder”/”Prodigal Son”.
• Large numbers of mutants appear throughout New York. (“Outbreak”)
• Donatello is infected by the outbreak virus (“Outbreak”).
• Angela regains something she had lost.

April, 2007:

• Anton Sevarius hires mercenaries to capture several of the creatures mutated by the virus.
• Several of the new mutants attack The Labyrinth.
• Sydney (“Notes From the Underground”/”Return to the Underground”) joins the E.P.F. as a consultant.

June, 2007:

• Donatello mutates due to the Outbreak virus (“Adventures in Turtle-Sitting”)
• The turtles work together with Bishop and Baxter Stockman to find a cure for the outbreak virus. (“Good Genes”)
• The Ninja Tribunal kidnaps the turtles and takes them to the Lap of the Gods (“The Ninja Tribunal”)

August, 2007

• The Demon Shredder’s acolytes attack the Lap of the Gods (“The Beginning of The End”)
• The turtles are sent back to New York (“The Beginning of The End”)
• Nobody, Raptarr, Nano, and Turtle Titan I join the Justice Force (“Recruitment Drive”)
• Matrix travels to New York to meet Nano.  Dingo and Robyn join him.
• The Demon Shredder is resurrected, and he begins to take over New York.
  • Note: the events of New World Order through Enter the Dragons take place within the span of 48 hours.
• Demona’s spell is broken.
• The Shredder turns New York city into a hellscape.  The Eyrie Building, having activated its magical defenses in time, is unnafected.
• Noticing great power residing within, the Shredder sends one of his minions to attack the Eyrie Building.
• In the aftermath of the Demon Shredder’s assault, people’s attitudes towards gargoyles take a huge downturn.  Quarrymen membership increases by a factor of 400%.
• The turtles spend three days in Northampton.  Unbeknownst to them, they are followed there by The Rat King.

September, 2007:

• John Castaway becomes a media darling.
• The Ninja Turtles are accidentally taken to the future by Cody Jones. (“Future Shell-Shock”)
• A crisis brings together representatives from four clans.
• Karai makes a deal with Hun.

September 18, 2007:

• Goliath and Elisa leave the clan, leaving Angela as leader.
• [REDACTED]

September 23, 2007: Artus is conceived.

October, 2007: The Foot officially abandon their New York operations.

November, 2007:

• Emerson Valentine is assigned as the first liaison between the E.P.F. and the Department of Defense.
  • After a quick agreement between Hun and Bishop, Baxter Stockman begins working for the Purple Dragons.

March, 2008: Khan begins in earnest his attempts to re-form the New York Foot.

April, 2008:

• Baxter Stockman develops his latest body.  It presents a significant step up from previous bodies, as it allows him to have a simulated sense of touch.
• Casey Jones joins Khan’s dojo.

September, 2008: The Ninja Turtles return from their stay in the future, with Serling in tow.  Master Splinter is lost among the way. (“Tempus Fugit”)

October, 2008: Casey Jones proposes to April O’Neil (“The Engagement Ring”)

March, 2009: Cyber-Shredder takes over every computer system in New York (“City Under Siege”), including several belonging to the Illuminati.

May, 2009:

• April O’Neil marries Casey Jones. (“Wedding Bells and Bytes”)
• Khan is broken out of police custody.

July, 2009:

• Karai Saki and Joshua Claiborne (“Lies”) meet for the first time in seven years.
• The Illuminati Declares war on The Foot.
• [REDACTED]
• “Hurlyburly: Electric Boogaloo 2: Electric Boogaloo”
  • Rumors surface of the Shredder’s re-appearance.
  • A time-travelling Shredder and his squadron of Foot Ninja appear in New York.
  • An alternate-timeline Demon Shredder appears in New York
  • Renet arrives in New York
  • Starlee Hambrath arrives in New York, but stays only for a few moments.

August, 2009:

• Serling moves out of the turtles’ lair, and into Leatherhead’s.

November 2009:

• Turtles Forever
• Agent Bishop claims the deactivated Foot Robot Ninjas and most of the downed Foot Mutants.
• Foot mutants Tokka and Rahzar are captured by Sevarius.
• Karai negotiates a ceasefire with The Illuminati.
• Karai gives Agent Bishop some vital information.
• Their lair destroyed, the turtles go their separate ways: Raph and Splinter go to Northampton; Don moves in with Leatherhead and Serling; Mikey stays with Casey and April; Leo becomes adrift.

But no, this is just a list of my favorite characters in the Gargoyles-verse, done so I could figure out who they were and so that y’all may have some idea of the though processes behind my stories and reviews.

10.  Fox Xanatos (neé Janine Renard)

Fox is the type of character I ought to love, in theory.  She’s hot, smart, ruthless–a femme fatale to the core, and the one person who can keep up with David Xanatos.  While If she’s not higher on that list, it’s because a) I feel that she isn’t used in this capacity enough–half the time she’s feels like simply a satellite character to Xanatos, and given that she only appears occasionally, her ass-kicking moments are few and far between, and b) more superficially, the animators tend to put her in some spectacularly unflattering looks.

9. The Weird Sisters: Phoebe, Seline, and Luna

“City of Stone” was one of my first episodes, so seeing these three appearing everywhere right of the bat being all mysterious was one of the things that told me, “okay, this is cool”.  While they didn’t quite live up to their potential–they are far less interesting as the Archmage’s minions than they are as manipulators in their own right–they’re characters I’d really love to see more of.

8. Elisa Maza

A splash of normalcy and light in a painting characterized by weird and grey, Elisa embodies all of the positive elements of what TV Tropes calls The Chick archetype.  She works insanely well in the world they’ve created and which she, in turn, makes work.   While I’d like to see more of her outside her relationship with the Gargoyles and her role as a policeman, I am always glad to see her.

7. Demona

While Demona isn’t my favorite villain in the series, there’s no questioning that she’s a damn good one.  She’s dangerous–she almost wipes out the planet’s population once–but not in a way that makes defeating her seem improbable or jeopardizes her coolness.  He’s cunning.  She has understandable and clear motives–you can understand where she comes from, even if you consider her a monster.  Plus, she has two advantages over characters like the Joker and Green Goblin: a) she’s consistent, since she hasn’t been pulled every which way by a series of writers with differing ideas on what she should be (at least outside fan fiction) and b) she’s female, which in a genre where Big Bads are overwhelmingly male makes her unique.

6. Goliath

Leaders, particularly competent ones, are usually accused of being boring–it’s the basis for the “Standardized Leader” trope described on TVTropes.  While Goliath is indeed a tad on the dry side, he’s far from uninteresting, and everything I want in a leading man: he’s sympathetic, capable without being perfect, and possesses the ability to learn from his mistakes–he even has a bit of a sense of humor.  The fact that we occasionally see him read helps.  While I don’t really believe he works without a dynamic supporting cast to complement him–part of my problem with the world tour was that its cast consisted of three “straight men”– he does an excellent job of unifying the cast.

5. Halcyon Renard

Halcyon makes the list for one simple reason: there’s simply no one quite like him. An old man made bitter by the inability of humanity to live up to his standards, who owns an airship?  Okay, you’ve got my atention.

4. Anton Sevarius

The mad scientist has been a staple of the superhero genre for decades, making it important for any newer iterations of the concept to stand out in some manner.  While Sevarius adheres to the standard in many ways, voice actor Tim Curry and the script imbue him with equal parts menace and fun, both of which makes him yet another stand out villain in a series filled with them.

3. Macbeth

He’s an immortal old man with a kick-ass look and sound (Gimli!), an awesome origin story and a mindset that allows him to be used believably in a variety of stories as both ally and antagonist.  How can he not be awesome?

2. Owen Burnett.

Like the cliche says, good help is hard to find.  In a medium filled with incompetent or comic-relief lackeys, Owen stands out for being just as badass (in his own way) as his boss.  Need some mocha, some files, or merely to discreetly dispose of an inconveniently dead Lithuanian prostitute?**  Owen’s your man.***

1. David Xanatos

Finally.  The big man.   Demona is a better Magneto; Xanatos is in a class all of his own.  Like I said with Goliath, learning from ones’ mistakes is a trait I value in protagonists, and seeing an antagonist apply that to himself–and use it to succeed, no less– blew my mind. What’s more, the traits that make Xanatos Xanatos are ones that have not yet been succefully duplicated in western animation (although he does have analogues in other media: see Lord Vetinari and Grand Admiral Thrawn, who embody many of the same characteristics), which means that his particular brand of awesome has held up incredibly well over the decade and a half since the show first aired. The fact that my first few episodes (“Vows”, “City of Stone”) also portrayed Xanatos at his most awesome also help.

—-

* Really DC, cutting down the series from ten issues to nine?  You really do suck sometimes.

** Not that Xanatos would ever cavort with prostitutes, Lithuanian or otherwise.  He’d find 98% of them too uninteresting.

*** Apropos to nothing, I’m also fascinated the idea that he has a significant other that we haven’t met (at least I think that’s what Greg has said–somebody please tell me I have not imagined this)–what kind of person would he/she be?

Original Air Date: November 18, 1994
Introduces: Tony Dracon, Matt Bluestone, María Chávez, Derek Maza, Peter Maza, Diane Maza, Glasses,  Dr. Sato, Cagney
Timeline Placement:November 18, 1994 – November 20, 1994

Synopsis:

It’s evening at the docks.  Owen and the Xanatos Enterprises Security Force observe as several boxes are unloaded from a freighter and into a truck.  Just as one of the security guards invokes karma by reassuring Owen that there was nothing to be worried about, the group is attacked by four gas-mask wearing men armed with gas guns who make off with the truck.  As they drive away with their stolen cargo, their leader removes his mask and laughs.

As the sun sets, the Gargoyles wake up inside Castle Wyvern.  As soon as he’s mobile again, Broadway hastily heads off into the night.  Goliath asks what the rush is, and the remaining two members of the trio explain that he’s probably off to see Showdown, a cowboy movie they’d seen once before and which Broadway in particular had really liked.

Over at the N.Y.P.D.’s 23rd Precinct building, Elisa argues with her superior, Captain María Chávez: they both know a man called Dracon was behind the weapons heist, she argues, and all she needs is a warrant to bring him in.  Chávez, unconvinced, explains that Dracon is “bulletproof”–they can’t make a move against him without evidence.

Changing tacks, Elisa asks what was stolen; Chávez answers that the theft involved several “non-projectile weapon prototypes” belonging to Xanatos Enterprises.  Elisa asks her to elaborate, just in time for Owen to enter the office and explain that the weapons are laser-like particle beams, and that 322 of them (of various makes and power ranges) were stolen.  Peeved, Elisa leaves the office.

At a movie theater on Broadway, Broadway the gargoyle arrives just in time for Showdown to begin.

The scene shifts to Park Manor, where Elisa confronts the leader of the group responsible for the weapons hijacking–Dracon.  His four companions make threatening gestures, but Dracon calms them down, and cockily explains that yes, he has an alibi for that time, that no, he’s not the guy she’s looking for, and that even if he was, she’s incapable of stopping him.  “Face it, sugar,” he says, as he turns to leave.  “You’ve got nothing.”

Back at the movie theater, Broadway enthusiastically watches Showdown‘s Climatic scene–a duel between two gunslingers.

Elisa arrives at her apartment, hangs up her coat and her holster, and greets her cat, Cagney.  She glumly tells the feline to be glad to have a home, as New York just got a whole lot meaner.

As Showdown ends, Broadway exits the movie theater.  As he acts out scenes with finger guns, he glides towards Elisa’s apartment. Entering through the window, he greets Elisa, who’s preparing dinner (breakfast?) and promises to make the gargoyle some steaks. As he waits for her to finish, Broadway looks  around the room, taking a look at a picture of Elisa with her family before he’s distracted by Elisa’s holstered gun. Entranced, the gargoyle retrieves the gun and uses it to reenact scenes from Showdown. As he pivots, he accidentally pulls the trigger.

Broadway apologizes for his carelessness, but Elisa is nowhere to be seen. The gargoyle approaches the kitchen and sees a terrifying sight: Elisa laying on the floor, unconscious, in a puddle of her own blood.

Horrified at what he’s accidentally done, Broadway takes Elisa and carries her to a hospital, and leaves her on a stretcher left outside.  He watches as two M.D.’s quickly find her, realize that she has no pulse, and take her inside.

Castle Wyvern.  As dawn approaches, the Gargoyles note Broadway’s absence.  Owen arrives at the rooftop with dire tidings: Elisa’s been shot, and doctors aren’t sure if she’ll live.  He is unable to elaborate because, true to form [RAGE!], sunlight has turned Goliath to stone mid-reaction.

Upstate New York, woods.  Dracon and his posse are using their stolen weapons for target practice.  One of the posse, and African-American man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, asks if they’ve all heard of Elisa’s accident.  Dracon snarks how it’s dangerous to leave a gun lying around, and then laughs at his own joke.  Dracon changes the subject announcing that they’ll complete their deal with a buyer they found that night, and asks Glasses if he’s had to sell a lot of the guns.  Yes, he says, and they might have to sell more before the deal comes through.

Elisa is operated upon.

As night once again falls, the gargoyles make their way to Owen’s office to demand answers.  He tells them what he knows: Elisa is Manhattan General, and she’d been working on getting the stolen weapons off the street before she was shot.  As Owen makes his exit, Goliath gives orders: Hudson will stay in the castle, Brooklyn and Lexington will search for the still-M.I.A. Broadway, and he’ll go to see Elisa.

Atop a rooftop, Broadway sobs.

Manhattan General, where Goliath watches Elisa from outside the window.  Dr. Sato, the doctor in charge of the operation brings Elisa’s parents and brother inside her room and fills them in on her status: after ten hours of operation, they removed the bullet from the base of her spine; although there was a lot of damage, there’s a chance she’ll pull through.  Mr. Maza asks if they should call Elisa’s sister and have her fly in from Arizona, and if there’s anything they can do.  Diane, Mrs. Maza, replies that they can pray.

As Dr. Sato leaves, Captain Chávez enters the room, she greets Elisa’s family, whom she’s obviously familiar with.  Derek, Elisa’s brother, asks if they know who shot Elisa, and she tells them that the most likely suspect is Tony Dracon.  Goliath listens as the policewoman talks about the stolen weapon, Elisa’s confrontation with Dracon, and the scene of the crime at her house.  Peter asks if the shooter had left any fingerprints, and she remarks that while that is indeed the case, they’re so heavily smudged that “they don’t even look human” and are unusable.

The visitors leave the room, allowing Goliath a chance to enter.  Taking Elisa’s hand, the gargoyle asks her to fight on, and vows that he will find the man who did this to her and make him pay.

Goliath makes his way towards Park Manor, and overhears Dracon discussing the details of the upcoming deal with his lieutenants.  Glasses explains that the meet will be at the docks at midnight, and that he’ll meet Dracon there.

A nervous man makes his way across a park when he is accosted by a mugger carrying on of Xanatos’ stolen weapons.  An enraged Broadway attacks the mugger, destroying the gun  and demanding to know where he got it and who gave it to him.  The mugger stammers that he got it from a man called Glasses, who’s selling them at Canal Street, near the docks.  Broadway lets the mugger go and heads there.

Back at the hospital, doctors rush to Elisa’s room: she’s flatlined.  Using the defibrillators, Dr. Sato and her staff restore her vitals.

Down on the streets, Captain Chávez and an unnamed detective tail Tony’s car.  Tony’s driver notices, and is told to lose them, which he does by getting out of the cops’ line of sight, hiding the car in a garage as they pass through, and then heading in the opposite direction.  However, they haven’t noticed that they have another follower: Goliath.

At the docks, Glasses is selling one of Xanatos’ particle beams to a customer when he’s attacked by Broadway.  Holding him by the head, the Gargoyle asks Glasses who his boss is.

Goliath watches as Dracon and his posse arrive at the warehouse where the stolen goods are stashed.  To his surprise, he is joined by Broadway. Believing that the younger gargoyle doesn’t know the situation, Goliath explains how Dracon was responsible for shooting Elisa.  Broadway does not correct him.

Inside the warehouse, Tony talks to rambling Glasses via cell phone (or maybe it’s just a cordless–it’s hard to tell in 1994).  He tells his men to begin moving the weapons when Goliath and Broadway break in.

Using the stolen particle beams, Dracon’s men attempt to hold the Gargoyles off.  However, Goliath has knocked out the warehouse’s lighting, leaving the mobsters at a disadvantage.  The two Gargoyles take down the crooks, with the last man standing being Tony Dracon himself, who tries to hold them off atop a catwalk.  Using his tail, Goliath disarms Tony and grabs him upside down by the ankle.  Before he can have his revenge, however, he’s interrupted by Brooklyn, who explains that it he, not Dracon, who shot Elisa.  Upon hearing this, he picks Dracon back up and binds him with metal bars, a task he repeats with all of his men.

A short while later, Goliath and Brooklyn meet the buyer that Dracon had been talking about: Owen.   Xanatos’ personal assistant explains that they had to get their weapons back somehow, and thanks the gargoyles for their help in doing just that.  He also notes that nearly forty weapons are missing, and have probably already been sold.

In his biggest “fuck you” to Xanatos to date, Goliath takes one of the particle canons and uses it to melt the rest to slag.  He then destroys the remaining gun and leaves it with Dracon and the gang, as a gesture to make sure that the police connect the group with the robbery.  He then tells Broadway to come with him to see Elisa, a comment that perks up the younger gargoyle, as he hadn’t been sure if she was still alive.

Back at the hospital, Goliath and Broadway watch as the Mazas watch over Elisa, who regains consciousness.  Overjoyed, Derek explains that they’ve been told that Dracon has been arrested for grand theft, and that they found him tied up in a warehouse babbling about monsters.

A nurse enters the room, checks up on Elisa, and then asks the Mazas to leave Elisa her space.   After all the humans have left, Goliath and Broadway enter the now-empty room and greet Elisa.  Broadway explains and apologizes about playing with her gun, and vows never to touch a gun again.  Elisa isn’t angry, however: she kindly explains that she was at fault to for having left her gun in an accessible place, and that the best thing they could both do is learn from their mistakes and not repeat them.  Goliath pats Elisa in her hair and then leaves along with Brooklyn.  As the sun rises we see the two gargoyles standing guard outside the window.

—-

After two uninspired post-pilot episodes, this last episode of the Trio Tryptych reminds us why we were paying attention to the series in the first place.  Not only do we get a real shocker–somebody gets SHOT!  IN A CARTOON!*BLOOD ON THE FLOOR!  PANIC AT THE DISCO!–we get bunches and bunches of supporting cast building, some real development for Elisa and Broadway, and some important set-up for down the road.

It’s been my opinion that although he’s a fun character Tony Dracon  stories (which also tend to be heavily N.Y.P.D.-focused) don’t age well.  Back when I was first going through the series–2002-2003, if I’m not mistaken–I liked that his episodes displayed a grittier, more realistic (or so I thought) side to the show.  Then I watched The Wire, which forever ruined police procedurals for me.  However, despite the fact that this is his debut episode (a lot of characters debut on this episode–possibly the most out of any non-pilot episode) and that he plays an important part in the plot, it’s not his episode.  It’s Elisa and Broadway’s.

For at least twenty-five years, guns have been a rather troublesome topic when it comes to cartoons.  Sure, movies like The Secret of NIHM could still show guns and blood and death, but television shows at the time (or perhaps even earlier–I am not an animation historian) had begun to excercise several practices which for the longest time would render most so-called action cartoons of the time largely toothless (which is why Robotech, despite being an [awesome] Frankenstein creation, is considered revolutionary).  Even after Batman: The Animated Series showed that displaying guns would not turn kids into Red Dawn‘s Wolverines (Note to self: watch Red Dawn), most cartoons preferred the time-honored technique of having all the guns be lasers (or an appropriate equivalent depending on the setting), or point-blank not displaying firearms at all, as if this were the U.K.  or Japan.  While it’s not terribly surprising that Gargoyles managed to show  “real guns” (most, if not all, of  the ‘toons in the ol’ Disney Afternoon line-up did) having it be the focus of an episode–and one where somebody gets shot, no less*–is something else altogether.  The fact that it’s handled sensitively (despite a couple of minor anvils) is a small miracle.

That said, Gargoyles is nothing if not pragmatic.  Its creators understand there’s a reason for the “lasers are better than bullets” trope, and why it’s practical if you don’t want your characters to have the aiming skill of your average imperial Stormtrooper.  They also realize that while a millionaire like David Xanatos can have a laser rifle if he damn well pleases, having Jimmy Bats carrying a BlasTech when he’s also a meth-head who usually never has more than $5.40 in his pocket tends to look darn unrealistic, particularly when he can just make good with a revolver like regular meth-heads.  Hence, in this episode we have the beginnings of an underground market for the latter, using the former’s weapons.  It’s a nice compromise and yet another example of how the series turns potential disadvantages into advantages, managing to use a usually-maligned trope, justify it, and use it to further develop its world.

Another thing I really like about this episode is the prominence Elisa’s family gets.  Family members in serial fiction are something that usually only get trotted out when the plot absolutely demands it, and the exact makeup of that extended family is usually left  vague, in order to be able to create aunts or cousins or brothers as necessary.  Here, in the first episode focused on Elisa as something other than the gargoyles’ friend, we get to see her family set in stone, so to speak.  In only a couple of minutes we learn that she has parents living in or near New York, a cop father, and two younger siblings: a brother also living in or near New York and a sister in college in Arizona.  Strictly speaking, they’re not important to the plot–they can be excised without altering much of the story–but their presence in the episode makes Elisa, and the world of Gargoyles as a whole, a stronger one.

Until this episode, Broadway had been solely characterized as “the one that eats a lot”.  Here, we see the first signs of what will eventually regular facets of his personality.  First, he’s the member of The Trio closest to Elisa, and the one most comfortable around her; I don’t see Brooklyn, Lexington–or heck, even Goliath, making an impromptu appearance at her apartment.  Second, he’s eventually becomes a movie buff, particularly old movies–here it’s “Showdown”, and next season we’ll find him acting similarly towards noir.  We learn that he can be really scary when he wants to be.  Finally, there’s his aversion to guns, whose origins are obvious.  I do wonder, however, that given the “guns aren’t inherently bad” aspect to the episode’s message, whether we’re meant to take his “I’ll never touch a gun again” stance as a healthy response  to the events of this episode.  Clearly, he’s exaggerating here, given that we see him destroying guns in future episodes, but does his vow mean, for example, that he’ll never fire a gun even in a situation when it seems necessary?

Finally, Tony Dracon.  While I don’t much like his episodes, I do like the character, and I like the idea of Elisa having an archnemesis (of sorts) of her own.  Still, he’s one of the more limited characters in the rogues’ gallery.  He’s neither a physical or mental match for the Gargoyles, has no way to keep avoiding jail time without seeming weird.  Still, I’m glad he eventually gets jailed on a permanent basis, although I’m left wondering if Greg had any future plans for him.

Random thoughts:

• In the episode, Elisa notes that she, by leaving the gun accessible, is partly at fault for the accident.  In his comments on the episode, Greg Weisman agrees, elaborating that her fault is the same as Broadway’s: she did not “respect” the gun or its power.**  Given the fact that she lived alone and had little reason to expect that someone would handle it (a point Weisman readily admits, I’m not too sure I agree.  While I’m all for responsible gun-keeping, I don’t think it was out of line for Elisa to expect her guests (which at this point and throughout the series seems to be limited to gargoyles) not to touch her stuff.
• This episode also features one  of those really weird similarities between Gargoyles and TMNT–the kind that are almost certainly coincidences and are all the more weird for it.  In the TMNT episode “H.A.T.E.” we see Michelangelo dropping of a man who has been shot outside a hospital, and being found by a man who, when you take into account the different art styles, looks a lot like an older version of Dr. Sato from this episode (continued after the fake bullet point).

• (not an actual bullet point) Even accounting for the possible role of stereotype (and I’m not sure there’s one as specific as “heavyset, nearsighted East Asian men are all M.D.’s”), the similarity  between both the characters and how they’re used is uncanny, particularly since it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t really merit an actual shout-out.  Still, I kind of like the idea of Dr. Sato having a brother or other relative (assuming the TMNT extra is not the good doctor himself) living in Massachusetts.

• In his commentary for this episode, Greg Weisman notes the mild oddity of black and white western apparently doing so well in 1994.  I’m wondering why the movie theater seems to be more like a theater theater than an actual theater.  I mean, look at that marquee!  I don’t hang around Broadway much–it’s usually outside my price range–but I don’t recall seeing movie theaters like that.  Can any actual New Yorkers tell me if they actually exist?
• This episode has a lot of scene changes–more than in any other episode.  It makes writing recaps the way I do…interesting.
• I like how Matt Bluestone is “introduced” here.  He’s there, he’s noticeable, and it makes his actual introduction feel more natural.
• Note that both Dracon and Chávez seem to be rather “hands-on” people, even when their ranks aren’t usually associated with field work.  I can buy it in Dracon’s case–he’s young enough so that “doing it for the adrenaline rush” feels like a valid enough reason, but not in Chávez–with her, it just seemed like she’s just there because the creators didn’t feel like creating another detective.  While it sorta-but-not-really works here–she’s a friend of Elisa and the family–it crosses the line in “Protection”, the next big Tony Dracon episode.
• Would Tony see jail time for his crimes here?  I doubt it.  Elisa’s shooting is a dead end, with no witnesses, no evidence, and no way to account for how Elisa made her way to the hospital.  Would Owen step up as a witness, even after “recovering” the weapons?  Doubtful.  The only real evidence against him is his fingerprints over the destroyed guns (assuming there are any intact) and his proximity to them.  Given the way the police found the group, I don’t think it’d be hard for a competent lawyer to establish reasonable doubt.

—-
* It’s worth noting, however, that this is not the first time a character is shot on American Animated television.  The original Johnny Quest cartoon had at least one person get shot, as did Batman: TAS.

** Shades of Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms, although the power displayed by the “gon” in that book is of a rather different stripe.

“What makes you think I’ll help you?” Elisa repeated.

“We’ll, you’re a cop right?  Protect and serve and all that?”  Dracon said, trying to gesticulate despite having his arms handcuffed to a chair–Elisa was not in the mood to take chances.

“Sure, if you want to get technical…  Why come to me, thought?  There’s thousands of other cops.”

“Because I don’t need a cop, I need protection.  You’re the only one I know who can give me that.”

“That’s…pathetic.”  Still, while she hated to admit it, his instincts had been on the mark.  Gargoyles protect, even the dregs of society–how could she do any less?  If Dracon was indeed in danger, then that protection would (unfortunately) extend to him.  Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t make the best of it. “Okay, Dracon, you have my attention.  However, if you want my help, you’re going to have to tell me everything.  You’re going to tell me why you’re not in prison, who’s running your old turf, and everything you know about the massacre at the docks.”

“I noticed ‘who’s trying to kill you’ wasn’t in that list.  Anyway, the story goes something like this:

“About five years ago, me and all the leaders of The Five Families began getting visits.  I’m not exactly sure how it went for the rest, but for me, it was this Japanese guy, Kozue Nagayami–I think he actually did crap soap, he was so smooth.  In any case, he made me an offer–50 mil if we just abandoned our turf and gave all our products and contacts to their group.”

“Did the group have a name?”  Elisa asked, with obvious interest.  If true–and she knew that there was a good chance it wasn’t–this was career making intel.  The circumstances beyond The Five Families’ disappearances were the stuff of legend in police circles, with a thousand theories circulating.  To actually learn what had happened…

“Well, they didn’t really give us one, and I wasn’t exactly asking.  Still, anyone suicidal enough to talk to the cops will tell you they’re called The Foot–it’s really an open secret at this point.”

“The Foot, huh.  Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It shouldn’t.  Rumor is they have ways of knowing if the police ever hear the name, and people who mention it to the wrong people don’t have a good track record of surviving.  Anyway, where was I…oh yeah: as a bonus, they’d have those of us who were in jail–and our top people–out on parole.  I still don’t know how they managed that.”

“And you took it.”

“Damn, Maza!  Of course I did!  I don’t know if you know, but by then, my crew was basically done–it’s a small miracle that I had any strings to pull with my group at all.  Plus, a carrot that big usually means a damn big stick.  So yeah, I took it.  I eventually got out on parole, and even after paying off my own people, I had enough money to do whatever I wanted.  Most of the other families did the same.

“So by the time I got out, the Foot already had the Purple Dragons working as their people on the ground on most of the city.  Anybody who was left wised up and decided that it was time to run.  And that’s the way it was for until now–prostitution, protection, narcotics…they were in charge of anything, and God help you if you tried to take it away from them.”

“So what happened?  I’m guessing they were weakened in some way, right?”

“Right.  A few months ago, word came down the grapevine that a group of crazies had somehow gone and killed The Shredder and that the whole thing had gone clusterfuck-shaped.  I don’t need to tell you how that’s turned out.”

“Um.  Yes, you do.  That’s the deal.”

Dracon sighed.  With marked hesitation, he began again.  “Fine.  So the five families got back together in order to make their bid.  As our first move, we were going to steal the Foot’s shipment of heroin and sell it ourselves.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, though.”

“The massacre.”

“Yup.  We’d managed to take care of all the Foot Ninja–yeah, ninja; don’t give me that look–when these two guys show up and just start wailing on us.  I’m talking some seriously fucked up shit.  You remember Pal Joey?  These one of these guys just punches him, and his face turns to…you know how mosquitos look after you squash them?  Like that.”

Elisa flinched.  She did not, in fact, remember Pal Joey, but she had seen the crime scene pictures which confirmed Dracon’s claim.  She and Cedric had been trying to determine what had caused that injury–the coroner’s report had been unsatisfactorily wishy-washy on the matter–but it never would have occurred to her that it had been made  by a fist–well, maybe it had been Goliath’s…  “So these two people, they were unarmed…” she not-quite-asked.

Dracon shot the detective a “what are you, stupid?” look.  “Yeah, unarmed.  They didn’t need them–they were like The Silver Sentry, but evil.  Fast, strong…nothing could hurt them.  And we tried, believe me.” He had a look with suggested contrition, which was not an emotion that Elisa would  have ever associated with Tony Dracon.

Summoning every reserve ounce of professionalism in a situation that was increasingly anything but, Elisa carried on with the interview.  “So, these two men…I don’t suppose you’d have their names…”

“Actually, I do.  Mr. Touch and Mr. Go.  They made sure we knew. “

Elisa stifled a chuckle; although Dracon’s story wasn’t terribly implausible, there was a limit.  Dracon wasn’t laughing, though, and given that he’d given her what appeared to be their first solid lead  in the massacre investigation, she was willing to believe him, but still…Touch and Go?  Dracon’s physical description of the men didn’t help–they sounded like something out of a James Bond movie.  Then again, so had the Gargoyles.

“So what happened afterwards?  You survived, obviously.”

“Yeah–they weren’t paying too much attention, so I managed to play dead until they left and managed to sneak away before you cops came.  Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. “

Dracon explained how,  as the sole (conscious) survivor of the initial massacre, he’d become the target of The Foot’s retribution.  In the past two days, his apartment had been torched, his car stolen, and his every movement watched.  Finally, he decided to take a shot with the one cop that had landed him in jail in the first place.

“So you see?  I’m a marked man.  You send me back to prison, and I wake up one morning with a knife stuck through my heart.”

Elisa looked at Dracon’s eyes.  He really did look high.  Still, she was convinced.  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later, a tapping could be heard on the windows leading outside.  Elisa drew the curtains open, revealing their visitor, a seven-foot tall winged panther.

“Hey, Derek,” Elisa said nonchalantly.  “Thanks for coming.”

“No problem, ‘lisa,” said the beast–Derek.  “So, is this the guy?”

“Yup.  Talon, Tony Dracon—career criminal. Tony, Talon—ex-pilot, all around good guy.”

Talon moved to shake Tony’s hand, but desisted once he realized that Dracon’s hands were (still) handcuffed together.  Tony had yet to say anything, stunned as he was at the sight of a creature whose very existence violated everything he knew to be true.  And yet, even as his brain shut down from the terror, he felt a tiny blip in the back of his mind, almost like déjà vu…

“Tony, you alright?” Elisa said, bringing him back to the present.  “Like I said, Talon’s going to help you.”

“I’m going to take you to my home, The Labyrinth.  You’ll be safe there until everything blows over.”

Tony opened his mouth to complain, but nothing came out.  Even if this was a baroque plan of Elisa’s to have him killed—and his gut told him it wasn’t—it was better than dying at the hands of The Foot.  “Well, as long is it’s not someplace in the sewers…”

“Not quite,” Talon assured.  “We’ve fixed it up over the years, and now it’s actually quite homey.”

“Talon’s ready to take you whenever you’re ready.  Just say the word, and he’ll fly you over there.”

Keys in hand, Elisa moved behind Tony and undid the locks to the handcuffs.  “You’re free to go, criminal-man.  Just to let you know, once this is over and we patch up our leaks, I expect you to turn yourself in and tell everything you’ve told me to the cops.  You got that?”

“Will do—Scout’s honor.”  Then, more sober, he added, “Hey, Su—Elisa, do you have something private we could talk?  I’d like to tell you something, and I don’t need Bagheera here listening.”

Elisa led Tony to her bathroom and closed the door.  “What is it?”

“Well, I just wanted to thank you for doing this for me.  I know we kinda hate each other and all, but still, it’s real stand-up of you.  So thanks.”

“Don’t.  I’m just doing my job.  By the way, I do have something to ask you.”

“What?”

“You mentioned a couple of times that going up against The Foot is suicidal.  And yet you did it anyway.  Why?”

“Glasses.”  Tony answered brusquely.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Glasses.  You remember—my second hand man?  Black, wears horn-rimmed glasses?  Well, ever since I can remember, we’ve always been watching each other’s backs.  Best friends, he and I.  Well, he was with me that night on the docks.”

Elisa nodded.  According to the reports from that night, Glasses had been the only known survivor of the massacre, aside from Tony—although in the former’s case, it hadn’t been a particularly good thing.

“Back when I first heard about the Shredder, I got all gung-ho about the idea of going to war.  I was restless, bored…I had an itch.  One more big score for all the marbles?  Getting some payback on The Foot?  It was a dream come true.

“Well, the day after that night at the docs, I called Glasses to check in on him.  I got his wife, Nora, who told me that Glasses had been taken to the hospital—that the doctors told her that even if he woke up, he probably wouldn’t be able to function properly on his own—he wouldn’t be able to eat, talk, stand…

“People tell you it’s all part of the game—dying, getting caught.  Glasses and me?  We never really believed it—even when you were giving us trouble, we were like ‘this is nothing.’ This, however?  It’s too much.  Glasses, Nora, the kids…they didn’t deserve this. And I couldn’t even go visit them, with the Foot on my tail.”

Elisa knew the feeling.  For her first two years in the force, she’d been the same way, until Charlie, her partner back then, got killed working undercover trying to bust Dracon. It’s the kind of thing that sobers up a person.

“So yeah, that’s it.  I may not be brave enough to think I can get all Scarface on The Foot for what they did to Glasses, and I’m definitively not stupid enough to try to martyr myself for him.  Still, if I can hurt them in a small way without putting my life on the line, I’ll take it.”

Elisa stared at Tony’s eyes, trying to determine just how full of shit he was.  To her surprise, his little speech seemed sincere.  While she wasn’t about to give him credit for doing the right thing once doing the wrong thing had blown up on his face, she allowed herself to feel a measure of pity for her former nemesis.

Eventually, Tony and Elisa rejoined Talon over at the kitchen.  After a short conversation explaining to a bewildered Tony that yes, Talon was going to carry the gangster to the Labyrinth on his arms as if he were some damsel in distress, the two men flew into the night, once again leaving Elisa alone.

Elisa went to the fridge and fished out a bottle of beer.  Although she was now finally nodding off, the info Tony had given him needed to be organized before she began forgetting about the different details.  With Lacey resting on her lap, she turned her computer on and began typing.

*          *          *

Gordon Miller was exhausted.  The conversation had  lasted only a minute so far, and he had already been condescended to, subtly insulted, and riled up to the point where assaulting a superior officer seemed like an attractive option.  Chief Sterns may or may not have been good police once, Miller reflected, but he had a talent to compress an hour’s worth of conversation into one minute, a technique that at times involved shunning articles, adverbs, prepositions, and all sense of social grace–fun to watch, but hell when one was at the receiving end of it.

“This should not be so hard for you to understand.  No.” Stern said.  The “Fucking.  Way.” after the “no” was implied.

Stay calm, stay calm.  Even he can be reasoned with.  “Because you’ve yet to give an actual reason why you won’t allow a good cop–a good cop who’s not doing anything, mind you–join my dangerously understaffed detail.”

“Reasons?  Longer is insubordinate, troublesome, corrupt, irresponsible, a disgrace to this  police force, and a general pain in everyone’s ass.   The only way he’ll ever do any actual police work again is if everyone in One Police Plaza is killed in mysterious circumstances.  Now.  Ass.  Office.  Out.  Now.”

Fuming, Miller exited his superior’s office.  Stern’s argument may be one hundred percent grade-A bullshit, but that didn’t make it an ineffective one–after all, why should an insubordinate, troublesome, corrupt, irresponsible disgrace to the police force and a general pain in everyone’s ass be allowed to do police work?  The only problem was that the description fit 80% of the police force, and the fact that Longer off all people would be disciplined in this manner–even after the Ruffington debacle–indicated that something was very definitively up behind the scenes. However, he was not in the mood, or in the position to investigate–not when there was still a score of murders yet to solve.  For the moment, Longer was on his own.

First and foremost was Paul Whitmire, his former partner.  Him he trusted implicitly, since they had known each other for more than a decade.  There were also Bluestone’s recommendations, Elisa Maza, Cedric Harris, and Tri Chung, of the 14^th precinct, who had all worked a similar detail before as part of that anti-terrorism task force created after the 1996 attack on the 14^th Precinct’s (then the 23^rd precinct) headquarters.  Harris and Chung had solid records.  Maza was reportedly very good, despite a more-than-casual familiarity with the Internal Affairs department.

Next was Lin Koyobashi, who had been hoisted upon him by his superiors.  Gordon knew almost nothing about her, except that she had apparently been some hotshot Yakuza expert back in Japan, and had transferred to the N.Y.P.D. some three months ago; given the reports that the current bigwigs in the New York crime scene were an offshoot of a Japanese crew, the brass had thought it advisable to involve her.

Outside the N.Y.P.D. proper were Martin Hacker and Leo Burnett.  Hacker was F.B.I., and had previously worked with Maza, Harris, and Chung on the anti-terrorism thing; he had also been Matt Bluestone’s partner back when he had been part of the Bureau.  Burnett was the Assistant D.A. assigned to the group; Gordon knew nothing about him.

“So here’s the thing, boys,” he began, after they were all done with introductions.   “The boys upstairs have decided they can’t have criminals killing each other for turf any more, so they’ve asked us to do something about it.”  He picked out a series of file folders from a box beside him, and distributed them among the task force.

“Now, in case you hadn’t noticed, this department hasn’t had a proper organized crime investigation since The Five Families disappeared in 1999.  And since whatever replaced them afterwards wasn’t Cosa Nostra, after 9/11, the F.B.I. just couldn’t be bothered—no offense Hacker.”

“None taken.”

“Now, as a result of that, we have no idea what’s going on.  We know from some low-level arrests that the current violence is due to the death of the guy running things—this ‘Shredder’ person—but we don’t know who the players are, what their game is, or how we can deal with them.  And that’s our first bit of business.”

Maza raised her hand.  “What about the shootings over on Canal?”   She asked.

“Yeah, that.”  From prior experience, Gordon believed—and the brass apparently agreed—that that particular incident would remain unsolved.  However, he’d have to keep that opinion to himself.  “I want you all to check with any  C.I.’s you have and see what you can find out about that night, and if it matches up against we have on Organized Crime at HQ.  After that, we’ll see what we can do to establish some probable cause and get us up on some wires.  Oh, and we’ll need someone to go over those who were killed—we need to know who these people are.  Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Harris piped up.  “Do we really have to work in this dump?” he asked, eliciting several cheers from the peanut gallery.

“I know it’s not the best place”—an understatement: the only reasons rats had not taken over the place was because cockroaches had done so first—“but I’m doing what I can to get someone to clean it up and bring some equipment in.  Until then, this will be your home.  Learn to appreciate it.”

Shortly after dismissing them, Gordon received a call on his cell phone: Longer.

Anthony Puzzorelli Sr. steeled himself as he approached the entrance for the Skinny FoXes strip club. It wasn’t supposed to have happened this way.

Ten men lost, including a nephew. Only two survivors, one in the hospital, and another missing. And now he had to explain to Jack Trent how, after fighting so long to have his family allowed to organize yesterday’s mission, he had managed to screw up so badly.

Upon arriving in the bar, Anthony haphazardly mixed several drinks into a glass, whose final product took on a sickly green pallor, which he began imbibing. He watched as Weasel, The Most Punchable Man In The World and—for some reason Tony couldn’t fathom—currently Jack Trent’s Consigliere, approached him, with a look of barely suppressed glee on his face. “Diamondback wants to see you,” he said, in his intolerably screechy drone which never failed to give Tony a headache. “Probably wants to congratulate you on your success yesterday.”

“In a minute, Weasel.” After finishing his drink, he went to the bathroom, where he took a prodigious piss. After spending a minute washing his hands, he finally decided to move towards the strip club’s back room, where Diamondback awaited.

Jack “Diamondback” Trent first made a name for himself as an enforcer for the Bustamante crime family during the early nineties. It was during this time that he gained his nickname, after he was reportedly shot eleven times in the back during a gang war with the Dracons without sustaining any major injuries. Since then, he had become the family’s go-to troubleshooter, until a civil war within the group caused several of its higher-ranking Mafiosi to rally behind him as the one man who could take down Silvio Bustamante, the Boss. Which he did. Years later, after the Five Families reunited in order to take advantage of The Shredder’s demise, he was an obvious candidate for leadership. Not that Tony Puzzorelli agreed.

Tony found Jack sitting behind his desk, looking more restless than anything else. “Remind me again, Tony, why choosing you to organize yesterday’s operation was a good idea. I’m sure you had a reason,” he said in a clear, precise monotone, which of course was scarier than if he’d been shouting—people who remained that calm, in Tony’s experience, were usually psychopaths.

Tony tried to recall his old arguments. “I knew people. It was in my old turf. It would help keep any heat away from you.” All logical reasons, although that did not make Tony feel any better.

Diamondback apparently agreed, as the eerie calmness persisted. “Oh, that’s right. Perfectly logical,” “So please explain why the fuck we’re down 14 men with nothing to show for it.”

“I…I don’t…” suddenly another rumor about Jack Diamondback came to mind. That while he hadn’t received any injuries to his torso, his head had been another matter entirely. Surely that was the only way to explain why the crime boss wasn’t trying to strangle him right now.

“What’s that? You don’t know how you fucked up? That there was no way you could have predicted that another group would attack the warehouse that same night?”

“Exactly. I didn’t—wait, what? You mean it wasn’t the Foot that killed all our men?”

“I’d wager not. Calling attention to themselves with something as flashy as a fire isn’t their style. No, this was someone else.”

Tony’s allowed himself to become a tad calmer. He may yet live through this. “So I’m off the hook?”

“Oh, not at all. However, you’ll get to keep your guts, for now. Fail me again, however, and no amount of mitigating circumstances will save you. Is that clear?”

“Y-yes sir.”

“Good. Two things, then. Has anybody heard from Dracon?”

“Not at all,” Tony said, glad that he was no longer the topic of conversation. “We’re reasonably sure he’s still alive, though—my man on the force tells me he wasn’t among those found.”

“Find him. He’s just as responsible as you for yesterday’s fiasco and I can’t have him, or anybody else, desert us at this time.”

“Yes sir.”

“Second question: is there any reason why Anthony Jr. was not chosen for yesterday’s job?”

“Junior? He’s useless. A total disappointment to the family.”

“Fair enough. However, you might want to integrate him more fully in what we’re doing here. It doesn’t look good to have one of my lieutenants shielding his family from the dangers of our job—it gives the impression of favoritism, and you don’t need people to be any more pissed off at you than they already are. Is that clear.”

“Yes, sir,” Tony said, as he tried to repress a scoff. No favoritism? In this outfit?

“Well then, unless you have something else to say, that will be all. And Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Fix yourself a drink and call up a girl. You look horrible.”

As he left the room, his life assured for the moment, a wave of anger washed over Tony. How the fuck could he have let that upstart dominate him to that extent? He was Tony Puzzorelli, and yet there he was going all “yes sir”, “no sir” and “please allow me the pleasure of sucking your dick, sir.” It was intolerable.

As he served himself another shot of bourbon, Tony allowed himself to fantasize. Give him half a chance, and he’d show everyone what he could do. Tony Puzzorelli was no one’s puppet.

* * *

“Any idea what Bluestone wants us for?” Elisa’s partner, Cedric Harris, asked, as they both walked to their superior’s office in the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct.

“I have a few guesses. Did you see him at the press conference?”

“Yup. Calling it awkward would be doing it a kindness.”

Although Matt Bluestone did not usually take part in press conferences, the fact that he had been tapped to deal with the “Canal Street Massacre”, as the media would dub Tuesday’s incident, meant that he’d had to take questions from the reporters. And while it was something Bluestone could certainly do, it had been clear that the spotlight did not shine on him favorably.

“Elisa. Cedric,” Matt greeted, as the two detectives entered the office that had once belonged to María Chavez, until the N.Y.P.D.’s post 9/11 restructuration moved her on to better things.

“Hey, Matt,” Elisa intoned, casually. “What do you need us for?”

“You both heard the press conference, right? How we’re supposedly organizing a task force to deal with this gang war we’ve suddenly admitted is happening? Well, you two have both been drafted.”

Detailed. Although Elisa wasn’t the least bit surprised, she was still quite apprehensive. Task forces, in her experience, were usually crapshoots. Given the right team, they could lead to some surprisingly rewarding work. Just as often, however, task forces were cobbled together from people whom departments really wanted to get rid of or punish; when that happened, it usually meant weeks of carrying the bad members’ loads, only to find the work wasted at the end when the brass lost interest.

“I’ll be e-mailing you the details later on—I just wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“Did they ask for us, or was it your suggestion?” Cedric asked.

“I suggested you, actually. Gordon Miller—your new boss—asked me for suggestions, and I’d thought that I’d send my best people.”

“Yay us, then. Anything else?”

“Not really.”

“Just like old times, eh, Elisa?” Cedric asked, as both detectives left Bluestone’s office?

“Huh?—sorry, I was distracted.”

“I was just saying how this reminds me of our first detail together—that anti-terrorist thing seven—eight years ago.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Some memories, huh?”

Which wasn’t quite true. Although both Elisa and Cedric were indeed thinking of the same assignment, their memories of the period were quite different. Elisa remembered that group as the Gargoyle Task Force, formed the day the world learned of the creatures’ existence. Cedric remembered no such thing.

* * *

As the first drops of sweet, sweet alcohol touched Longer’s lips, the disgraced policeman dwelled, as he usually did, on the events that had derailed his career.

He’d been a good cop, once. Although his investigative and deductive chops during those first few years weren’t up to snuff, he had something just as important: professionalism and passion. “Treat everybody with respect, complete every job to the utmost of your abilities; you might not get up that ladder, but you will never despair”, his mother would often say. He had never really believed it growing up, which made it all the more surprising when he began abiding by the maxim, and even more so when he realized…it worked. Witnesses were friendlier. Informants were more cooperative. Other policemen were less dismissive. Nobody was surprised when he was quickly promoted to detective and reassigned to Organized Crime. Things were fine, for a while. He learned the ropes, improved his craft and continued as he had on his beat. He had found his calling…until Ruffington.

Longer first learned of the arms dealer when he learned that Agatha, his then-boyfriend’s sister and a vice-president for Ruffington’s company, was being investigated for allegedly embezzling funds. Convinced of her innocence, he began investigating the C.E.O.—first on his own, and then, after convincing his superiors of the soundness of his claim, as part of an official investigation. It took some doing, but eventually they hit pay-dirt: Ruffington was dirty: briberies, illegal sales to underworld groups, fraud; had it been against anybody else, it would have been a slam dunk case.

However…

Lost evidence. Disappeared or strangely silent informants. Pressure from above. A suddenly cautious target. With each setback, Longer grew more paranoid and obsessed with stopping him. Ruffington had laid a trap for him, and he’d eagerly and without reservations walked into it.

As Longer drunkenly made his way to his apartment, relying more on muscle memory than anything else, he suddenly heard an all too familiar sound. Gunshots.

Shaken out of his half-awake state, the policeman pulled out his service weapon and headed towards the source of the noise, one of Manhattan’s ubiquitous dark alleys; however, instead of the ubiquitous New York mugger, he found something altogether different—the less ubiquitous New York corpse.

Shaking off his drunkenness as much as he could—the smell of blood helped—Longer examined the scene as well as he could in the dark. The shooter was nowhere to be seen, although he or she apparently had not been smart enough to know not to leave the murder weapon behind. The body was dressed like something out of martial arts movie, in a full body suit and mask, which sported an insignia that seemed familiar, although Longer couldn’t remember from where. He held a bloody sword in its right hand—apparently the killer had been wounded as well.

Before long, a forensics unit arrived at the scene, and after answering a series of questions, Longer was let go—something about being too intoxicated to be of further use, which was almost undoubtedly the case. Although disappointed, the detective felt happier than he had in a while; it had been the closest he had come to actual police work in months. Already he was imagining several scenarios for how the murder had gone down. Given the amount of blood on the floor and on the sword, the shooter had to have been pretty badly wounded—he or she would most almost certainly have to check in at a nearby hospital or unlicensed clinic. Fortunately, he knew precisely where to look.

His companion ignored the comment. “We’re here,” he said from the passenger seat in their van.

“Here” was  across the street from warehouse 13 at the West Manhattan docks. Once, the warehouse had been the center of Xanatos Enterprises’ shipping operations within the island. However, business had been eventually moved elsewhere, and the warehouse fell into disuse. While still technically owned by Xanatos, the rotting building had since become the home to a number of unsavory parties. Right now, it’s owners were The Foot, who used it to store their heroin after it was shipped into the city. Given the worth of the drugs, the stash was usually heavily guarded; however, given their recent leadership troubles and internal civil war, their security had now been reduced to a skeleton detail.

“You guys ready?” complained Tony, the van’s third passenger. “I’d like to get this over with sometime soon.”

“Right,” Joey said, picking up his assault rifle from its hidden nook in the car seat, and making sure it was properly loaded and ready. Joey really wished they were lasers—they left behind far less forensic evidence for the police to find—but those had become increasingly hard to come by, even if one had far more resources than they did right now. These would have to do.

The hours leading to the assault had been characterized by the usual camaraderie and dark humor. However, the mafioso really hadn’t been able to get into it. Bravado aside, the truth was that most men in the squad were in their forties, and had remained outside the scene for more than five years. They had the numbers—their group numbered twelve—but that was their only obvious advantage (and from what he’d heard of the Foot, it wasn’t much of one). Tony had been adamant, however, insisting that they couldn’t waste the opportunity that Puzzorelli had granted them. He hoped his friend was right.

* * *

For nearly four decades, O’Toole’s had been the establishment of choice for the policemen in north Manhattan. First opened by Jane O’Toole in 1947, it quickly attracted throngs of exhausted lawmen just exiting their shifts. When O’Toole died of a heart attack in 1973, the place was bought and remodeled by then-Deputy Commissioner James Bradford, who since leaving the force in 1985 now served as its main barkeep.

Elisa Maza had been a regular at the O’Toole’s for nearly three years. Every night at 7:00, she would drink her usual, then spend the next few hours sobering up in time for her shift. In the meantime, she would speak, listen, and commiserate with the other patrons. Tonight, this meant Longer.

Detective Longer had grown infamous for his obsessive vendetta against New York-based arms dealer Ruffington. Over the last two years, he had single-handedly done everything in his power to investigate the entrepreneur, leading to his high-profile arrest. Unfortunately for Longer, it didn’t take: whether by shoddy evidence or simply very good defense lawyers, Ruffington got out from most of the charges. Longer, in return got harshly disciplined, being demoted to working the evidence room at One Police Plaza. The punishment had not agreed with him, and he could now be seen most nights at O’Toole’s, drowning his sorrows over a pint or three.

“I don’t get it Maza. The city’s going to hell—you’ve seen it. The murder rate’s going up, and we’ve got what—three officers down in as many weeks?”

“Four. Morgan told me Travanti got shot down earlier today. He’s okay, but he’ll be out of rotation for a few weeks?”

“Who?—anyway, they should be calling up every available man. And I’m still stuck here because the brass wouldn’t be able to see good police if bit them in the ass.”

Elisa didn’t say anything. Although Longer was indeed good police, he was far from being a victim. Ruffington aside, the detective had a definite history of bending, if not outright breaking, regulations; frankly she’d expected this to happen sooner or later.

* * *

As it turned out, the assault on the building had turned out to be simple one. What came afterwards was very much not so.

After securing the warehouse, the group was moving the product to their vans when they were approached by two men. The first, a lanky man of indeterminate ethnicity, was dressed rather dapperly in a white suit and wide-brimmed hat of the same color. His companion, the larger of the two by a considerable margin, wore black. They did not appear to be armed.

“Look at this, Mr. Touch,” said the smaller man. “It appears we have been beaten to the punch.”

“Indeed, Mr. Go. How rude.”

“What the hell is this?” Tony snarled. “You’ve got three seconds to explain why we shouldn’t kill you two.”

“Observe, Mr. Touch. Mr. Mafioso here thinks he is being funny. Sadly, he is quite mistaken about who’s killing who. What say you we should help him better understand his situation?”

Joey had seen several weird things in his life. He’d seen a man who’d been shot twelve times last for an hour before finally dying. He’d seen another make an eight story jump and escape unharmed. Still, nothing could prepare him to witness how, in violation of all human logic, an unarmed Touch and Go would defeat 12 armed men in the most grisly fashion possible; how Three-Fingered Johnny had simply stopped looking human after one punch from Mr. Touch, and how the pair seemed to be immune to any bullets that managed to hit them Already, he could see several of those still living struggling to escape the carnage. It looked like an excellent idea. If he still had use of his legs, he’d be doing the same thing. However, one kick from thin one—Mr. Go? Had to be—had rendered them unusable…if they were even still there. He wasn’t sure they were, and he didn’t wish to confirm the suspicion. He wished like hell that he would lose consciousness, and then he’d wake up in the hospital, and he could tell Janine and Sasha that he loved them and never wanted to see them go. However, only the first of these happened, as a stray bullet passed through his left ear and into his brain.

* * *

“Hey, Maggie, turn the TV up!” one of the policemen at O’Toole’s asked the forty-year old bartender, who readily complied.

“—located the bodies. So far 11 have been found, although they do not rule out finding more,” the reporter at the television said.

“Whazzgoingon?” Longer asked, as he returned from the bathroom.

“People dead. Warehouse. West side,” Elisa answered, without taking her eyes away from the screen.

The detectives stared transfixed at the TV, as details came in. Apparently, shots had been heard coming from the warehouse, and the police had been called in to investigate. By the time they’d arrived—half an hour after the initial call—a fire had begun consuming the place.

“Although sources inside the NYPD could not be reached for comment, we have been informed that a press conference on the matter will be held tomorrow. This is Travis Marshall, with Nightwatch.”

For a minute, neither policeman said anything. Twelve deaths was bad enough; combined with the recent overall increase in violence and the NYPD’s slow response time…

Elisa felt her cellphone vibrate in her pocket. As she scanned the bar, she could see that the same was happening to almost every policeman there. Longer’s tinderbox, it seemed, had just caught fire.