[7.6/10] What a format bender! It’s impressive to see Primal pivot so expertly. Moving us forward in time to 1890 and seeing how proper English gentlemen would fare against someone like Spear is a wild departure from the usual program, but an engrossing one.
The episode wears its themes on its sleeve, as a Darwin-esque nobleman posits that our degree of civilization is merely a layer on top of our more primal selves, and that when confronted with a deadly threat, we’d revert back to our essential, atavistic selves. The thrust of the episodes sees the other upper crust-y know-it-alls in their historical society deride Charles’ theory as poppycock, only to see it proven before their eyes when a feral “madman” attacks them in their manor.
The attack is thrilling and scary. As fans of Samurai Jack know, Tartakovsky and company can do horror like nobody’s business, and this is as good an example as any. The show turns its 1890s wildman into a slasher movie villain, stalking the English gents and taking them out one by one in gruesome fashion while the remainder try to survive. A rabid, cannibalistic caveman isn’t a traditional antagonist, but the novel thought experiment of educated men versus a comparatively simple yet cunning animalistic human carries the day.
What’s interesting is the way Darlington, the skeptic, gradually reverts as he fights the “madman.” The modern men’s tools follow the timeline in reverse, as they go from guns, to swords, to arrows, to a large bone. The fighting styles themselves devolve at the same time, with Darlington’s superior boxing technique eventually giving way to wilder flails and stabs. It takes a harrowing experience, but soon, he affirms Charles’ theory by putting it into practice, reverting to his primal state in order to beat the intruder in his home.
The point, as I read it, is something of a mission statement from the show’s creative team. Sure, this is a fun flight of fancy all on its own. At the same time, though, it suggests why the show chose to follow a caveman without language whose primitive nature makes he seems at so far a remove from contemporary viewers. Spear represents something essential in us, something still buried down there deep, that could be revealed under life-and-death circumstances. I’m not sure I agree with the premise, but it’s an interesting theme to understand this break from the usual style and stories.
Spear may be gone in modern times, but some part of him lives on, in the spear-holding gentleman who stands in victory above a caveman-like attacker, and in the current day viewers like us, who remain awed by Spear’s exaggerated acts of fury and courage, so many ages after his kind gave way to ours.
