Marvel's Runaways, Season 1, Episode 4: Fifteen
So, yeah, Runaways is very much content to take things slow and not jump into superheroism just yet... or to have the titular Runaways, y'know, run away from home. Again, only a small proportion of the kids actually have some form of superpower at this point and they're still in full investigation mode. And if there's anything I can say about this episode is how... unfocused it is. There's a distinct lack of progression on both sides of the party, and it's especially bad for the parents.
The Yorkes-es spend the entire episode trying to run away (ironically the only characters in the show to actually plan to do so) and bring their kids and feral dinosaur pet to a villa owned by Molly's parents, only for the ever-cold Tina Minoru to show up and essentially scare them and make them all 'there's no escape'. The weird mummy is apparently Leslie's old lover or some shit, because she strips down and gets under covers to 'warm' him up, leading to a very weird moment where the crotch region of the bed glows with bright light. It's clear that the weird mummy man is likely to be Karolina's biological father, but surely there is a less silly way other than having the focus of the scene be a mummy-man's glowing wang.
There's also the weird return of the sexual assault storyline, and while Karolina's heartbroken "I would know... wouldn't I?" is one of the most well-acted moments in the episode, the oddity of this subplot in the midst of everything else that's going on and its reduction to just, well, one of the high-school drama stuff that isn't quite given the gravitas it probably needs. Sexual assault is a tricky thing to utilize in a narrative, and this show doesn't actually do that well of a job about it. It just gets glossed over as another form of bullying, and then Karolina gets to show off her glowing powers to Chase as she removed her bracelet.
Gert and Karolina also get some neat bonding moments over Karolina's trauma, though, and Gert's jealousy at Karolina and Chase being close melts away when she ends up being a supporting figure for Karolina to talk to. I just really wish there wasn't such an obvious catty alpha bitch who walks in just to spout some slut-shaming at Karolina and then walk back out of the show for no reason, though.
Meanwhile, Alex and Nico, perhaps the most cool-headed ones of the group, continues their 'what if our parents are murderers' train of thought and tries to go to a police station (where of course no one believes them) where they discover that their parents also have a hand in controlling the cops of the town. And apparently Victor and Robert got arrested because they're so incompetent that they bungled a hobo-kidnapping mission. It's really hard to believe that half the parents are super-influential but they can't get a random hobo to be delivered to their house without much problem. Victor and Robert's bungling the hobo-napping is hilarious comedy, though.
And I really do like the darker thought that Nico entertains -- I'm not sure that even Tina Minoru is such a monster to kill her own daughter, but Nico is so unsure what to think about that her big theory is that Amy is such a happy girl that she wouldn't ever take her life, and the diary proves that. Is that just a broken girl so desperately trying to cling to a justification for her sister's death and blaming a convenient villain (who just happen to be her less-than-ideal parents) or the mark of something sinister?
Gert and Molly, meanwhile, discovers that, well, Gert has the ability to control the dinosaur. Which is easily one of the most amazing superpowers ever. One thing that the show does amazingly well is the combination of joy, awe and fear that our young heroes feel at experiencing their superpowers for the first time. Gert's ability to command dinosaurs, Karolina's ability to sparkle... it's a cool scene that is built up well, but at the same time all the buildup does start to feel grate a bit. Oh, and we get to see Molly tussle with a dinosaur, which is cool! The Yorkes-es end up finding out, and we get the most chill members of Pride and the Runaways finally able to potentially have a sit-down and actually talk about at least one of the weird things that the parents are up to.
There's a couple of neat revelations in this episode, which is the fact that Amy apparently died of a drug overdose (and Tina's almost-detached behaviour as she tells her super-advanced Jarvis-esque AI to shut the house down), and that Chase is building some Doomfist-esque power gauntlet (it's called the Fistigon?), and the discovery of that ends up causing abusive-daddy Victor to relent and bond with his kid over inventing. It's a surprising moment of heartwarming between Victor and Chase, and while Victor may rank high among the worst human beings among the Pride members, this moment really humanizes him and shows us an important part of Victor's persona -- he is still a parent who wants a relationship with his son, despite everything.
The episode ends with more revelations that the cult has been going on for 15 years (meanwhile Frank is allowed to 'go ultra', whatever the fuck that means), and the cliffhanger that Wilder is kidnapped by some mysterious people (oh, it's totally Geoffrey's mob buddies, right?) and since all the ladies among the Runaways have superpowers and Chase is fast developing a super-weapon, we'll probably going to have a five-out-of-six Runaways team up to save Chase in the next episode. This is an episode that's perhaps centered a bit too much on buildup and meandering, and suffers a little as a standalone episode but definitely works as an entry in a season.
No comments:
Post a Comment