[7.0/10] This is a tough one to grade, because so much of it is really dumb. Gargoyles often devolves into standard Saturday Morning Cartoon clichés. Random cloning conspiracies and convenient lab recordings that lay out shady plots and palette-swapped evil twins all fall into cheesy, implausible nonsense, even on a show that veers toward the fantastical. You can ignore most of the fights and “Who’s that guy?” faux-mystery and evil cackling in this one.
All that said, though, Thailog is a fascinating character! Let’s be real -- chances are he exists because Disney wanted to sell more Goliath toys and recoloring him and giving him a new name is the easiest way to do that. But “Double Jeopardy” goes to some really interesting places wit the idea.
For one thing, I love framing Thailog as the son of Goliath, Xanatos, and Dr. Sevarius. He doesn’t reflect the last guy very much, but there’s something truly frightening about someone with Goliath’s physical gifts and other abilities paired with Xanatos’s Machievellian instincts and diabolical nature. The episode rushes his development, but watching Thailog turn on his various parents has power because he’s giving each of them a taste of their own medicine.
Better yet, I love Goliath’s reaction. At first, he’s ever angrier with anatos for the existence of this being, viewing it as a diminishing of his own soul. And yet, Elisa convinces him that however Thailog arrives, he’s a living being and almost offspring of Goliath, with the same right to exist as any of them. Goliath takes the point to heart, blaming Xanatos not Thailog, and aiming to save his duplicate’s life even as the freshly-minted gargoyle tries to end his various fathers’ lives.
The set pieces and storytelling here are janky as all hell, but that central idea is compelling enough to grab me. I hope that, as the end of the episode promises so clunkily, Thailog will return and continue to raise these thorny moral and personal questions. Only hopefully then, Gargoyles will build a better episode around him.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-07-16T21:20:46Z
[7.0/10] This is a tough one to grade, because so much of it is really dumb. Gargoyles often devolves into standard Saturday Morning Cartoon clichés. Random cloning conspiracies and convenient lab recordings that lay out shady plots and palette-swapped evil twins all fall into cheesy, implausible nonsense, even on a show that veers toward the fantastical. You can ignore most of the fights and “Who’s that guy?” faux-mystery and evil cackling in this one.
All that said, though, Thailog is a fascinating character! Let’s be real -- chances are he exists because Disney wanted to sell more Goliath toys and recoloring him and giving him a new name is the easiest way to do that. But “Double Jeopardy” goes to some really interesting places wit the idea.
For one thing, I love framing Thailog as the son of Goliath, Xanatos, and Dr. Sevarius. He doesn’t reflect the last guy very much, but there’s something truly frightening about someone with Goliath’s physical gifts and other abilities paired with Xanatos’s Machievellian instincts and diabolical nature. The episode rushes his development, but watching Thailog turn on his various parents has power because he’s giving each of them a taste of their own medicine.
Better yet, I love Goliath’s reaction. At first, he’s ever angrier with anatos for the existence of this being, viewing it as a diminishing of his own soul. And yet, Elisa convinces him that however Thailog arrives, he’s a living being and almost offspring of Goliath, with the same right to exist as any of them. Goliath takes the point to heart, blaming Xanatos not Thailog, and aiming to save his duplicate’s life even as the freshly-minted gargoyle tries to end his various fathers’ lives.
The set pieces and storytelling here are janky as all hell, but that central idea is compelling enough to grab me. I hope that, as the end of the episode promises so clunkily, Thailog will return and continue to raise these thorny moral and personal questions. Only hopefully then, Gargoyles will build a better episode around him.