1x02 The Star-Spangled Man

[8.0/10] Now that’s more like it! This episode felt fresher, more endearing, funnier, more pointed, and a better harbinger for interesting things to come than anything we got in the first episode. I wish Disney had released the first two at the same time, because it would have left me much more enthused about the show’s potential than the relatively staid first outing we got.

Let’s start with the easiest improvement. Sam and Bucky play off one another really well. The sheer fun and combativeness of their dynamic buoys every scene they share. Chemistry is a tricky thing. You can’t manufacture it. It just has to happen. And the repartee between Sam and Bucky shows that it’s there. Their playful banter, their brotherly spats with one another, the way each knows what the other’s deal is with neither of them having to say it, plays really well in this episode.

And it also has to be said -- the show is strongly hinting at them as a couple, which is intriguing. I don’t think Disney has the stones to go through with it, which tempers my expectations a bit. But the two of them have a cool-down scene mid-fight where one lands on top of the other. (Something the MCU did with Banner and Natasha in Age of Ultron, among the umpteen other places that trope has shown up.) They literally go through couples counseling together, at one point even doing the “gaze into each other’s eyes” exercise.

It’d be really interesting to see if part of the answer for Sam and Bucky coping with the void that Steve’s departure left in both of their lives would involve filling it in with one another romantically, not just platonically. But I imagine these coy hints will be as far as a Disney show is willing to go.

That said, even if the queer-bating is questionable, their back-and-forth is still enjoyable, and the substance behind it is strong. Bucky is frustrated that Sam gave the shield away. Sam wishes Bucky understood why he did what he thought was right. The former is freighted with Bucky’s guilt over his past actions and Steve seeing the good in him despite that, a good that’s jeopardized if Steve was wrong about Sam. And Sam’s choice is freighted with both the pressure to live up to a public figure like Captain America and the episode’s racial undertones.

That’s the next most interesting thing about “Star-Spangled Man.” I assumed that John Walker’s replacement Captain America would be a straightforward baddie, or at least a dope. Instead, the show adds real nuance to him as a foil for Sam and Bucky. The episode opens with things that endear him to us. He understands the moral responsibility of stepping in for Steve Rogers. He didn’t ask for this, but rather is the good soldier who just tried his best and wants to help people. He’s not explicitly racist himself, with a best friend who’s Black and a wife or girlfriend who’s a person of color. The episode paints him as a decent guy, trying to do his best, who’s not plainly a baddie.

And yet, he centers himself in the narrative. He wants to commandeer Falcon and The Winter Soldier not as partners, but as his wingmen. He thinks he’s doing them a favor, not simply helping them because assistance is what’s needed, when he leaps in for the fight with the Flagsmashers or he springs Bucky from prison. He asks them to follow his lead, expecting that they’ll owe him and act accordingly, and then tells them to stay out of his way when they refuse.

There’s some real nuance to that. John Walker is not a cross-burning racist. He may not even be racially-prejudiced in a meaningful sense. But he views himself as the center of this, instantly assumes leadership and expects deference, in a way that not only makes Sam and especially Bucky bristle, but which leaves him lacking in the collegial spirit that Steve Rogers embodied.

At the same time, there’s more explicit racism at play in the episode. Sam gets hassled by the cops until they realize he’s an Avenger, an interesting intersection between the hero worship that’s been a part of the MCU from the beginning and the whiff of respectability politics that’s only recently come to the fore. Bucky introduces Sam to Isiah, a black super soldier (Black Marvel?) who Winter Soldier tangled with, whose complaints of imprisonment, experimentation, and deception carry the air of Tuskegee. “The Star-Spangled Man” is subtle about these things, gesturing toward them rather than making them explicit, but that gives them more power than grand speeches or more ham-fisted dramatizations of these ideas would.

That just leaves the Flagsmashers, who are far more interesting this week than they were the last week. I still have some questions about the show positioning the villains as proponents of open borders last week, and this week they’re in favor of the conspiracy theorist’s worst fear/wet dream -- a one world government. But their wants and motivations feel way more compelling here than they did in the prior installment.

For one thing, their position isn’t as reductive as “We want things to be the way they were when half the world was effectively dead.” Instead, they feel like the government is favoring the people who returned at the expense of the people who survived. Some view them as modern day Robinhoods, reallocating vital resources to people who feel, ironically, left behind after the end of The Blip. Their sense of combatting the “GRC” -- a vague quasi-governmental organization to help refugees whose decisions and actions they disagree with -- is far more compelling as an M.O. than generic dudes in masks punching things in a flash mob.

But hey, the punching isn’t bad here! While you can see the seams in the CGI, and the action isn’t exactly smooth, the fight aboard two big rigs running in parallel at least makes for a creative and exciting set piece. The indications that the erstwhile villains are supersoldiers, with strength founded on the same formula that Steve and Isiah received, is a nice lead for Sam and Bucky to follow, and along with banter about the “Big Three” (Aliens, Androids, and Wizards), sets up plenty of interesting threads for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier to follow. (And that’s all before the Zemo tease.)

All in all, “The Star-Spangled Man” feels like an episode from a much more confident, entertaining, and depth-filled show. I hope the series continues that trajectory, and instead of reverting to the generics of last week, maintains this far more interesting course.

That wizards reference! It reminded me to that one teacher in Far from home that was like WIZARDS! Wanda reference! But why are they like “wizards don’t exist” so they don’t know about Westview?
Okay, so this was way better than the first episode! I think my issue with this show is that it doesn’t feel like a show, it feels like a movie that was divided into six parts, so a stand alone episode is gonna be kinda underwhelming and always incomplete and not like cliff-hanger incomplete but like literally incomplete, but overall this episode was so much better.
So when we got the first glimpse of Karli it was obvious she wasn't a hostage, and then when she smiled that was diabolical, BUT THEN it's explained that after the unblip some of those billions of people that returned are now displaced, homeless, refugees, like before the blip but now worse, so point to Thanos, and that the Flag Smashers are redistribuiting resources for the returned! so they aren't villains at all! so if the plot is that sam and bucky wanna go after them because they are riding an invisible moral high horse because even what they are doing is good they don't justify their means, then this show is gonna BS. That moral "dilemma" is so outdated so I would hope that next episode is them joining forces with Karli! No more patriotism, no more moralism or whatever.
Also I don't usually notice that stuff, but the visual effects on this episode were BAD! That one scene where they are fighting over the cargo trucks, it looked terrible, and when the helicopter pops in that was embarrasing, like what happened there? and for real I never noticed that stuff but this episode had me saying wait a minute.
Also I just think it wouldn't be realistic that the public would accept a new captain america, that literally does not make sense, unless they are in a different Earth, but I know us, and like imagine how we would react to a Chris Evans recast in the movies, there would be change.com petitions, people would boycott the movies, there would be hashtags, a movement, something similar to the
snyder cut, and that was for a movie, so now imagine it's real life and there's actual superheroes, and one of them has been around since the 40s, and then when half the world disappeared he was there, helping people one on one, no one would accept a recast!!! I liked The Boys vibes from this episode, but it doesn't make sense that the public would support this new guy.
And I can only speak of these two episodes, but how is it that the show is doing an ok job w issues like police brutality/racism agaisnt black people, or like the bank scene where we can see the system being designed against black people but still is so YAAAAY MILITARY YAAAY ARMY YAAAY WAR, how do they get so real about half of it and are still so delusional about the other part?
So I'm not hating, I feel optimistic the other 4 episodes are gonna explore these issues I have, I think I'm gonna wait to watch till at least 3 more episodes are out, so I can stop complaining about this being a movie and not a show.