DC's Swamp Thing, Season 1, Episode 4: Darkness on the Edge of Town
Okay, this episode was pretty great. The third of episode of Swamp Thing introduces a threat that's a bit more impressive than just the relatively abstract threat of the green flu and the general whole corporation profiteering that Avery Sunderland and Dr. Woodrue are up to. Sure, the bug-decay zombie was dealt with pretty quickly by Swamp Thing's supernatural powers, but this episode ends up throwing another maybe-supernatural, maybe-scientific foe our way in the form of a fear-plague that is transmitted from one person to the next, hopping like some sort of ghost changing hosts. It's actually a pretty neat little threat, with different minor supporting characters hallucinating and experiencing their worst fears, and the hallucination stopping when the odd fear-plague jumps into a new host.
We're not sure if this is the same entity that possessed the corpse of that one dude Swamp Thing killed last episode, but it certainly is yet another sign that the magics of the swamp itself is being corrupted. We get a particularly horrifyingly gory bit with the first showcase of this fear-plague, with the poor deli worker stabbing his own arms and plunging his entire hand into a weird meat-grinder machine to get rid of the snakes that he sees. That's pretty nasty. The other fear hallucinations, thankfully, aren't quite as gory, mostly just involving guns and the characters (Delroy, Chief Lucile) going through some of their worst fears... and Abby, of course, coming face-to-face with the dark figure of her father basically being a gigantic douchehole to her before she managees to stumble her way into the swamp and get Swamp Thing to expunge the disease from her.
And... for the most part, Swamp Thing is still pretty damn confused about what's going on with him. Sure, Abby's trying to try and work out the bizarre plant/animal cell combination that Swamp Thing has -- and we get an encouter with Dr. Woodrue, who sort of latches on to Abby's research with a "pinky swear I promise I am going to be ethical" bit. Not a whole ton of progress is made on this front, because Avery Sunderland is still gathering funds while Abby's distracted by the whole fear plague thing, but it's interesting. Avery gets an interesting subplot where he basically continues to try and manipulate and worm his way into everyone's good graces by acting all sorry for poor little Susie Coyle, and ends up paying off her relatives in order for Avery to adopt her -- both for good publicity, and to basically fill the childless void that his wife has, which, in turn, get her to help fund Woodrue's research to cure the poor sick widdle orphan. (With Shauna's ghost roaming in the house, though, this can't be good).
Xanadu and Daniel Cassidy, the other DC superheroes, are... done a bit better here. Turns out that Cassidy has made a deal with some larger figure, something or someone, that tasked him to do a mission in this small town... and it seems to be helping out Abby Arcane. It's an interesting little idea that makes Cassidy's involvement in subsequent episodes feel a bit more natural now that we know he's a man with some sort of mission.
Overall, a pretty solid episode. It builds up on the plot threads set up from previous episodes, it solves another small-town-supernatural-horror threat, and continues to build up on the backgrounds and histories of our characters. I just hope we do actually cover some of these payoffs before the season is over.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Abby Arcane's father, Anton Arcane, in the comics, is a pretty huge asshole that faced off against the Swamp Thing and his allies time and time again, and is pretty big on trying to corrupt his own daughter. I'm not going to spoil too much here, because it seems like this incarnation of Anton Arcane will probably be pretty faithful to the comic-book version.
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