Marvel's Runaways, Season 1, Episode 8: Tsunami
Honestly it's a bit of a shame that Runaways feels somewhat stifled and drowned by the sheer amount of superhero TV shows out there, because it's actually probably one of my favourite stories being told right now for the simple fact of how fresh and different it is from the multitude of costumed superhero shows out there. Perhaps it's the lengthening of the premise of the titular Runaways not actually running away until, well, it seems, until the final episode. I can totally see it right now -- the Runaways deciding to run away from their parents and trying to dismantle Pride from the outside happening at the end of episode 10. Which isn't probably how I'd write the show if I was behind it, but it's been extremely entertaining so far despite its many, many flaws, so I can't really say that I complain.
It is the direct aftermath from the huge mess caused last episode where Janet Stein shoots Victor with a gun and... doesn't kill him yet. But the Minorus show up and send out the titular "tsunami" keyword, summoning everyone with an insanely "OMG things are real bad", and apparently the only other time they did a tsumani incident was when the Hernandez parents' house burned down.
There's a bit more focus on the parents this time around, I think, as most of the parents except for Leslie get called in to help out with the Victor situation, with a particularly heartwrenching bit when the Yorkes-es are forced to quickly abort their very emotional attempt at trying to soothe Molly from having to live with her aunt. The pain in their face and how much they don't want to leave their adopted daughter with this conversation is evident, and some neat bit of acting there. And while the pacing might be a little slow as we get to a bit of a dark comedy bit with the Yorkes-es trying to jury-rig some sort of treatment for Victor, and then Leslie and even later Jonah popping up with a "tut-tut, you naughty boys and girls" is darkly hilarious as it is tense.
And equally darkly hilarious and tense is when Jonah essentially demands a sacrifice. Everyone is definitely aghast when their kids are threatened, there is the insanely fun sequence with Dale and his gun before he gets quickly subdued by Geoffrey, and the quick finger-pointing when Janet decides that she doesn't fancy dying to save her psychotic husband and trying to point fingers at Dale and later Frank as better candidates. It leads to a moment when Robert Minoru decides to take Janet's place because he loves her, and then Tina using the staff to destroy one of the boxes to save her husband. It's... it's a bit weird, I admit. Jonah was so close to killing everyone present (or their kids) and his reaction to how they lose one of their magic life-siphoning pods is a slightly-irritated "eh, we'll have to put Victor Stein in the fridge for a while."
The teens... Molly herself is dealing with being separated and going off to go on her own mystery digging involving some elephant and train stations, leading her to find a VHS tape. The other kids are fighting so much harder, though, with Nico grilling Alex over knowing her mother's password finally being revealed in a flashback to Amy. Apparently Alex hung out with Amy a lot before her death, and Amy was trying to hack into Tina Minoru's WIZARD servers when she discovered something. This revelation and the fact that Alex was sitting on it with the rather paltry excuse of "I didn't want to lose you" drives the two apart. It's a pretty understandable reason for a teenage boy, and the sudden transformation of Nico from borderline-suicidal goth girl to a perky, excited one is definitely very effective.
Meanwhile, Chase is so dealing with so much anger and frustration about his father possibly dying and his fate being at the hands of a secret society of possible psychopaths, and there's a neatly done scene where he just dials Gert and Karolina in frustration. The gang meet up, and Chase ends up acting out on this, noting that he doesn't want to push Pride at all with the information that Nico and Alex dug up from Amy's phone... because his father's life is in Pride's hands and he wants so badly to rebuild their relationship, leading to him smash Alex's laptop.
Oh, and we get more velociraptor action, which is neat. Good old girl hasn't had a lot of screentime in the past few episodes, and while I realize that a convincing, fully-CGI dinosaur is expensive, I do appreciate when its existence is actually acknowledged by it lurking in the shadows, keeping the effects cheaper while still having her around. Gert does a fair bit of bonding with Karolina which is neatly shown, and we get confirmation here that Karolina's gay for Nico.
Amy's death is pretty intriguing, too, although it does fall into the old fiction standby of being as insanely ambiguous as possible -- a blocked number telling her that "HE found out, leave the house now", and a shadowy figure confronting Amy. It's pretty neat that the show's actually built up a neat red herring in trying to make us think that Tina killed Amy (by proxy of Nico and her mommy issues), and then swerving to the side. It's Jonah... but it could be someone else. Who's the texter? Who's the killer? Which one is Alex -- is he just a kid over in his head, or does he actually have an agenda of his own? While pushed to the background for the past two episodes, and while he might act somewhat innocent, this revelation of his involvement in the Amy storyline makes Alex a lot more fun as a character.
Overall, there's a neat bit of storytelling going on, slowly building up to a crescendo with all these conspiracy points being dropped all around like the circumstances between Amy's death, Jonah's true nature, Pride's goals and all that jazz, but the fact that it's not meant to be concluded in this season is sort of a sour taste in my mouth, and there are definitely a fair amount of questionable editing and pacing problems with this show. I do enjoy it a lot, though, for the goodness of the scripting and character writing.
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