The subversion with them attacking the slightly sympathetic mammoth (it's nature after all, natural selection) is well done. And them going through with killing it? Another good decision, nice. And the respect paid aftwards? Well done. I have mixed feelings on the ending regarding the comprehension of the mammoths and them just leaving Spear and Fang like that, but it's only a nitpick, and the episode was a good one. I also like how we're in a wintery scene this episode, contrasted to the jungle in previous episodes. I like in both settings you really get a feel for them, the wind in this episode and the sound of bugs in the jungle.
[8.5/10] My favorite episode yet! (I know we’re only three episodes in, but still!) I love how this episode constantly changes your perspective. It initially makes you feel bad for the poor wooly mammoth that’s separated from its herd and slowing down in the bitter cold. You want help and relief for the poor creature and then...it’s attacked by our heroes.
That makes things really conflicted, because you know that spear and Fang need to survive, and that they’re as separate as anyone out here. But it’s still pathos-ridden (and thrilling) when they go toe-to-toe with the patchy, missing-tusked mastodon and slowly take it down. The sadness of it is added to by Spear’s near-reverence for the creature, not wanting to cause it more pain in its final moments but still hunger-bound to finally take out the life reflected in its eyes.
What follows is sweet and sad, as Spear and Fang work together to make use of what they can from the mammoth’s caras. Their fur attire to protect them in the cold, their bone and tusk sled full of meat, and their curling up together in the show makes you feel for them just as much, communicating the way in which everyone’s just trying to survive out here.
Then they find a blessed ave, and we get a tragic memory of Spear hunting with his child, recalling once again what he’s lost and cannot fully mourn amid the constant need for survival out in this world. You feel for Spear in that moment, since every episode has featured him still grieving the loss of his children.
Then the rest of the mammoths attack, and you feel for them too! There’s something so sad when they surround the corpse of their fallen brother and clearly feel the loss themselves. It’s frightening when they knock into the cave, trying to avenge the member of their tribe and take down the killers who ended his life. But you feel for both sides. You feel the need on both sides of that equation, and it makes the skirmish harrowing all around.
I couldn’t help but flinch when Fang gets caught between two charging mastodons. It’s terrifying seeing Spear scamper around beneath giant four-legged stomps that threaten to crush him. The ensuing fight is the best of the series so far, full of emotion and visual virtuosity all around.
But I like what happens next even more. The whole thing is resolved when Spear gives up the fallen mammoth’s tooth to its mother(?). There’s a sense of the two of them as kindred spirits, parents who’ve both suffered the loss of their children and need some kind of closure or completeness to be able to move on from such devastation.
We see that for the mammoths. There’s power in the group of them swaying and almost chanting around their fallen brother’s dead body. There’s pathos in its parent caressing its tusk during the makeshift ceremony. It’s heightened by the knowledge the modern day elephants really do seem to mourn their lost compatriots, helping communicate the feeling that this community has lost one of their own and is paying tribute to them, honoring them, as part of this ritual.
It’s striking how a wordless episode manages to convey so much emotion and feeling, without turning either side of a bloody battle into heroes or villains. I can only hope that Primal manages to maintain this level of virtuosity throughout.
Holy Shit! this show is so fucking emotional. I knew it was going to be bad but i'd have no idea it was going to be this crazy
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/troy1.gif
[7.5/10] I like the elemental story that this one tells. There’s something brotherly (siblingly? I guess?) about the way Spear and Fang interact. They jockey for the same prey. They get mad at one another for snoring and other sleeping habits. There even seems to be a competition in the “going to the bathroom” department. The two were always going to be an uneasy partnership, but as competition for sustenance increases, their potential discord seems to come to a head.
That is, until they’re both in mortal danger. That’s what seems the most familial about this whole thing. They’re growing at one another, maybe even on the verge of a fight, until some external threat emerges and they close ranks, work together, and make it out alive. I’l admit, I didn’t love the animation in this one as much as I did in the series premiere, but it’s still cool to see how quickly things switch from “We’re about to throw down” to “We have to work together to survive.”
The ensuing, titular river of snakes and the plummet down the waterfall doesn’t make a ton of sense, but this was always an exaggerated universe so it works. The collaboration between our resident caveman and dinosaur, and the gesture of Fang returning Spear’s weapon, ends up being really sweet and heartening, especially when they’re hunting boars and stopping stakes as a well-matched team in the final frame.
Overall, this is a simple but effective and emotional bit of character storytelling, with action that’s a little less engrossing than before, but still good.
Instead of continuing the awesomeness at the end of the first episode, here they give us a bit of a subversion. We're not doing epic stuff, we're doing the normal stuff like hunting and a get to know you a bit of the characters. Which is fine if it's done well.
Instead, they have the caveman on the back foot the entire time, which i think is a mistake. They also have a lot of animosity between the t-rex and caveman, which i think is also a mistake. But it's ok, i can roll with subversion. If only they actually followed through on it. By that i mean the stone man killing the t-rex, that would have been a nice and logical subversion, given how much animosity was between the two. But they don't follow through on it.
Instead they give us "Here's a new enemy and circumstances for them both. They defeat it. Now they both like each more and things are fine now"
The abilities are also kinda not making much sense now, it's what the plot demands.
But i still enjoyed the episode and can still roll with the partial subversion. It makes sense in the end that they team up now to hunt.
This is just too good. Ending was so hypeee
professor X is GOATED he has real presence . Cyclops being back into means is the start of serious business against the villains . Excellent episode and backstory
Yet another episode that made me shout "YES!" The way this show drags emotions out of me is so weird but I'm not questioning it.
Fuck man
Captain America
:fire::fire:
My head literally exploded as soon as Cap appeared!!!
[8.210] Holy cow! A lot freakin’ happens here.
Let’s start with this. I love the memorials for Gambit. The show feels especially solemn and impacted by the loss of one of its main characters, which is as it should be. Nightcrawler’s eulogy is lovely, an appropriate blend of card metaphors to befit the guest of honor, but also with words that speak insight into the noble man who was dealing them. And you can feel the impact that the loss of Gambit has on everyone in the X-Men and beyond. Especially Rogue.
I kind of love Rogue’s roaring rampage of revenge here. On the pure fanservice front, it gives us the (I think?) first glimpses of the wider Marvel Universe we’ve had in X-Men ‘97 outside of the mutants’ corner of it. Rogue threatening none other than General Ross in an anti-Hulk base, and crossing paths with Captain America (replete with Josh Keaton reprising the role from What If), has a cool factor to it, and makes the show feel part of a bigger world.
On the personal front, it’s a sign of how much Gambit meant to Rogue. There is something that's always compelling for me about the person who’s lost some semblance of control, and their usual grip on what’s right and wrong, in the throes of grief. It’s a very human act to be unmoored after a great loss. Seeing Rogue throw out the usual rulebook, threatening government representatives, clashing with erstwhile allies, rejecting doing anything by the book, is a reflection of how messed up she is by what happened to Remy.
I appreciate Nightcrawler being there for her as a sibling, helping her process that loss in healthier ways. The acknowledgment that her pain is real, but that she has a whole family behind her, is a heartening one. The show smartly doesn’t diminish the intensity of Rogue’s feelings, or shortchange the time she has to express them in messy ways, but circles back to her support system, even as she’s clearly not better given the events at the end of the episode.
But that also speaks to an interesting curing theme in an episode chock full of complex ideas -- a sense of anger and even disgust at the sympathetic moderate. Cyclops reacts with anger to President Kelly pulling resources because siding with mutants isn’t good optics in the political scene right now. Beast responds with out-of-character scorn for the reporter who sits idly by as a neutral party when tragedy is happening, whatever sympathies she may offer. And Rogue refers to Cap himself as a “top cop” when he’s on her side, but doesn’t want to act to address the problem, lest the imagery of his presence knocking heads in Mexico City be an issue.
What I like about this is that the foils in these discussions are not one-note, caricatured bad guys. They’re people making points that make sense from their perspective, some of which are fair. But they also fall as cheap words upon the ears of a maligned community that's facing a monumental collective tragedy. The people who aren’t there to hurt them, but won’t step in to help them, despite the injustice of Genosha, are still painted in a bad light for their unwillingness to take the side of the people in genuine need, because of others’ prejudices. That lack of integrity is damning.
It’s why my favorite scene in this whole thing might be Roberto coming out to his mother. In contrast to the scene from the X-Men film series, there’s no rejection or fear from his mom. Instead, she offers acceptance, a confession that she’s always known, and the parental sense of wanting a child to tell their own secrets in their own time. It’s the kind of warm response you don’t expect, something that calms Roberto’s fears and makes him realize that his mother will love him no less.
But then she drops the bombshell -- that even if she personally accepts him, their company’s shareholders won’t, and so he’ll be expected to keep his full identity under wraps. It’s a different, but no less pernicious form of marginalization than the kind that Rogue faced from her father. Accepting someone behind closed doors only, giving into the prejudices on the outside for pragmatic or financial reasons, is a different type of oppression than that of the outright bigots, but it’s no less insidious. As with so many things, the way X-Men ‘97 picks up that baton from the original show, and takes it to more complex places, is masterful.
I’m also impressed by how much the crimes of Genosha are allowed to resonate. I’ll admit, one of my gripes with the old show is that some gigantic, incredible thing would happen, and then it’d be just on to the next thing. That is, to some extent, the nature of comic book storytelling. But it makes the destruction of paradise in Genosha a bigger deal when we get to linger on it, and really sit with the mutants mourning not just their dead, but this paradise lost. The simple triumph of rescuing Emma Frost from the rubble, matched with the stark reminders of who’s still missing, give this a punch. And Beast quoting no less a saint than Mr. Rogers tugs at the heartstrings.
It’s enough to build some bridges between Cyclops and Jean. Tragedy has a way of bringing people together. That's the small silver lining. And seeing them acknowledge the complexities of their relationship, but still want to provide solace to one another at a difficult time for everyone, is heartening development after the high drama of their last interaction.
Amid all of this serious meditation on both the plight of oppressed peoples writ large and the personal struggles of our X-Men, the show does a good job of setting up the next grand villain. I’ll admit that I found Trask doing a quasi-Oppneheimer routine and then becoming a killer robot kind of cheesy, and I don’t know much about Bastion. But the episode does a good job of introducing him as a sly, craft, malevolent presence within the world of the show, one with the presence of an antagonist from Dexter, and a mastermind sensibility. Him having captured Magneto is an intriguing twist, and while he fulfills some standard villain tropes, they did a good of leaving me intrigued to see what exactly he has planned for our heroes.
Overall, another outstanding episode of the show, which raises some legitimately thorny issues in an emotionally potent way, and ably sets up the next challenge in an organic one (if you’ll pardon the expression).
that mutant parrot girl made me tear up really cute design :cry: and sad
I haven't slept for 24 hours, but I don't think it's my fault that this episode was a bit confusing, but the fight scenes were still great and it was emotional. Overall, it was a good episode. It was nice to see America's top cop too. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:
Bright Eyes was pretty much place setting for the three part finale but like with all of X-Men ’97 it did so with a punch. While we see pretty much the whole cast throughout this episode this was Rogue’s story more than anyone else. Seeing her process her grief through sheer rage as she rampages to find the people responsible for the Genosha massacre was harrowing. She goes dark in a way that really reminds you she started her place in X-Men as a member of the Brotherhood and there’s a satisfaction to seeing her go ape-shit on everyone from Captain America to General Ross and finally Gyrich.
This episode also sees how everyone is coping with events post Genosha. We see Scott’s simmering tension with the human politics blocking aid to the country, Beast moving further away from Xaviers mission of tolerance and Jean be.ing psychically haunted by the echos thousands of lives but short in the tragedy. All small but viscerally impactful moments throughout the episode.
Given the consistent quality writing I’m so excited to see how this story unfolds in the weeks to come.
Waking up early, bleary eyed and watching this show reminds me of early-morning cartoon watching when I was a kid. Except with more tears now!
Getting better and better. :thumbsup_tone1:
I'm not here for you. I'm here for Sankta Alina.
Just so full...is this that much better than the first season? I'm really digging the writing, and the execution.
:taco::taco::taco:out of:taco::taco::taco::taco:
The first three episodes were so porely written I started to dislike characters like Kaz and Nikolai. Dialogue was bad and sometimes even cringey. Luckily the show pulled itself together these last two episodes. Kaz and Nicolai even shine in really good scenes now.
baghra escapes / genya smashes things / nikolai makes me laugh / wylan and jesper bang - just for that last one this is a 10/10
How is this show so heartfelt and emotionally strong
David and Genya…
Never fails to satisfy....
Loved the outcome of Kaz' gambit.
now THAT’S the Crows content we needed!
The first decent episode this season. Clear storytelling and some good writing.
One of those Star Trek episodes with pretty writing where at first you're like "oooooh the metaphors" and then you're like "wait, are there any metaphors that make sense here?" and then you're like "wait, does this story make any literal sense either?"
At first we seemed to be telling an allegory about the power of a dominant class dictating the history and myth we live by, but ultimately the oppressors' false history gets the subjugated people to raid their base and thwart them, so... I guess it wasn't very smart domination.
The memory loss should have been an opportunity to deepen characterization by revealing something about who characters were at their core, what parts of themselves they had built and what was most essential, but none of the choices here were interesting. Spock devolves to dumb-logical, and everyone else devolves to their posting. The shallowness of the devolution means that too much time is spent depicting it to advance the plot, and this episode drags almost as much as typical TOS.
So incredibly disappointed that Ortegas is set up to finally get some real character development and the payoff is "I fly the ship." Her monologues in this episode are badly written & directed, and don't play to her strengths. Before this episode she was consistently acted and written with this butch player edge and she doesn't get to lean into those vibes this episode - it's all pout and pluck, much too fledgling and girly. (I relate to a good imposter syndrome arc hard - Hoshi regularly saves Enterprise for me - but it's not right for Ortegas.)
The cold open of this episode is one of SNW's best, and I love the little details that make it feel like the previous mission actually happened, despite (I don't think) not being covered anywhere in existing continuity. And the writing is quite pretty, and our guest star's story delivered with appropriate pathos.
Why the stranded officer doesn't get any leeway for being under the influence of forgetonium is unclear to me. Seems like "amnesiotonic radiation erased my training and made me mean, I didn't know what I was doing when I made myself supreme ruler" is a pretty fair defense.
Once again, the central action sequence - here the raid on the citadel - plays like the writer wrote "insert action sequence here" and neither writer nor director really dug in to visualize what would make the shots work.
If this was a TNG episode it might be in the top quarter of episodes, but it's a little disappointing that the writing is holding things back so badly given 10 episode seasons, the vastly bigger budget/shooting schedule, and such a spectacular cast with great chemistry.
Prime Directive f*ck-ups always make good material for intriguing episodes. This one might not have had the depth and intellect worthy of a Jean-Luc Picard, like in the good old days, but it was fun to watch and actually quite reminiscent of said good old days.
One of the best things about this episode is that it got people talking again about that wonderful creature that is Pike's hair. Can't wait to see its character development throughout this season!
Now that felt like classic Star Trek. Ortegas was given some good character development other than "I look like a lesbian" and it offered decent storytelling without the writers boorish social politics wedged in.
I like that Captain Pike's disguise was mainly parting his hair on opposite side.
Can't La'an catch a break, damn:sob:
Also, I'm pretty sure if you saw Chris's perfect hair you wouldn't think he's a manual laborer lmao
An improvement over last week's disappointing outing, for sure. It was nice that Ortegas was given a little bit of a spotlight this week but I think the writers need to be careful not to make her too one-note with the jokey dialogue; they need to make her a well-rounded character with some emotional depth beyond "I'm sassy and I fly the ship". Otherwise, really enjoyed the main plot - another episode that felt like classic Trek output.
