Ed writes...

"METAMORPHOSIS" - a big favourite of mine.

I liked Derek after "HER BROTHER'S KEEPER"; I suppose his situation was so believable and yet immensely gripping.

But "METAMORPHOSIS" stunned me. I remember that I timed this episode for some reason - I think I'd assumed up until then that cartoons were cut to exactly 20 minutes and wanted to check it out just out of curiosity. So when I was timing it I was thinking "yeah, right - how long until he gets his cure?" Despite everything, I thought they'd suddenly turn up with a cure eventually. Of course, when my watch told me the thing had been running 19 minutes, my eyebrow raised.

The ending was incredible. I was hooked. I just had to know what happened to Talon. In fact, GMTV never showed it. Eventually I caught "THE CAGE" on the Disney Channel (which I didn't have access to when they showed the episodes first time around). In fact, I think the first episode I saw on TDC that I hadn't already seen was "THE CAGE", which pleased me. That was great too.

I think the whole business of Sevarius' death play and the serum bothered me. How on earth could they have timed it so precisely that Sevarius had his serum to smash at the same time the "Gargoyles" arrived, and that he could be sure of a good way to "die".

Siren writes...

METAMORPHOSIS

I have a thing for cat-like characters as well. Catwoman from Batman has always been one of my favorite characters. So I liked the mutantes a lot. I love the electric eel thing too, it was very cool and very different. I like Talon's attitude. And Fang was a nice addition. I like Claw, but wish I could have seen more of him in the series. Maggie was a slight disappointment, mainly cause we didn't get to see her grow as much. They all seem to accept their new form later in the series, enjoy it even. Maggie was very different from the other mutants. She was more afraid, unsure, cautious...can't blame her. I am getting ahead of myself with this episode into other mutant episodes...but oh well...Maggie is very weak at first. Like a scared little kitten really. Very different from all the other strong female characters.
I think this episode also defined the moment for Brooklyn and all Brooklyn fans from then on. Here's ya got a handsome young gargoyle, who loves this new "gargoyle-like" creature and she blows him off, calling him a monster, even though she resembled a gargoyle. Then she runs to Talon. So ya got this sympathy for Brooklyn. Cause Lex and Broadway didn't seem as interested in her as he was. Ya got Demona even, in Temptation, to me, I felt that when he started to trust her, he started to like her, then she betrays him horribly. Then later, Angela goes for Broadway, when a lot of fans, including me, thought it would be Brooklyn. And poor Brook get's upstaged again, by one of his best friends too. Not that I wasn't happy myself. Actually, I like Broadway/Angela better then Brooklyn with her. Broadway isn't so "pushy"...I am gonna get it from all them Brook fans...So Brooklyn grows slightly from this. It's been over a thousand years, most of those sleeping, but the waking, with no females, so ya got this 16 year old boy, trapped on an island and suddenly the only female blows him off. It's hard for him and he develops the jealousy with Talon.
I also was slightly surprised, but certainly not disappointed by the ending. It was perfect for the episode and I wouldn't want to see it any other way.
BTW, I like look you developed later for the the mutants as well.

Blaise writes...

METAMORPHOSIS

Ah, one of my favs. Pity I missed it the first time it aired.
Throughout the second season, the show was on while I was still in school, so I had to tape it all the time. Three times the VCR, for one reason or another, failed to tape. Each time, the eps that aired were new ones--METAMORPHOSIS, THE CAGE, and KINGDOM (are you sensing a pattern here?). What made this twist of fate REALLY cruel is that these are some of my favorite eps. I love cats for one thing, so I was instantly attracted to the Mutates. This episode was also the one that cemented Brooklyn as my favorite character, so there's another. And, in two of the missed eps, Tim Curry, one of my (again) favorite actors, is featured.
Missing this ep didn't put me too far out of the loop. The only reference to it I picked up was Elisa's remark in EYE OF THE BEHOLDER that the Werefox was "human once, just like [her] brother." For some reason I didn't catch the reference to "mutated victims" and in OUTFOXED, after an initial "Huh?", I forgot about Renard's mention of some "Anton Sevarius" (keeping the strength of THAT revelation safe until the second time around). But, I digress. On with the ep itself.

Brooklyn's attraction to Maggie (whom I instantly recognized and grew interested in--what can I say, I have an affinity for cat-women) intrigued me. I always wondered if the fact that she wasn't a true gargoyle even mattered to him. Did I root for him and Maggie to get together? Not neccesarily. Did I *expect* it? Actually, yes. The attitude Brooklyn displays here is usually as deep as most animated shows go in depicting "love." After some intiial shock, my admiration for the series increased when Maggie wound up with Talon and Brooklyn's attraction was shown as just a crush. Regardless, his "love at first sight" mentality was something in Brooklyn I found appealing (a fellow hopeless romantic, perhaps). His experiences here and his final acceptance of the facts grabbed my notice and from this ep on, I always tended to favor him (though I made an effort not to do so at the expense of the other characters).
Looking at the ep, knowing what I know about the characters now, Brodway's ability to "read people" versus Brooklyn's self-delusion is very nicely juxtaposed, and they have some good exchanges. When Brooklyn tells Broadway "You don't know anything about her" there is much irony--Broadway knows more about her than Brooklyn does.

For what it's worth, I believed Xanatos (probably helped because I had seen EYE OF THE BEHOLDER before I got to see this). He seemed sincere enough to me, and mutation seemed ultra-slimy even for him. Boy was I surprised at the end. I was even more surprised by the end than by Sevarius' "death"--you guys had let people die in the series before, why not now? My surprise was tripled when I saw that Sevarius looked much younger and had a less thick accent than how he'd been played. I thought Sevarius the "mad scientist" was the real thing--he was voiced by Tim Curry who is usually thrown into the roles of over-the-top scientists and (in his own words) "east-European villains" so it was a pleasure to see a sort of send-up of type-casting in this. (And who couldn't recognize Sevarius? Even without the accent, he still had Tim Curry's inimitable pipes.)
The ending: Morbidly enough, this ending is one of my favorites because the good guys actually lost this round. Brooklyn's brooding and Elisa's crying really drove this point home. I am, strangly enough, reminded of a joke T-shirt: "Sometimes, the dragon wins."
And FINALLY! I now know who did the voice of the as-yet-unnamed Fang in this ep. I knew it wasn't James Belushi (it didn't have quite the same "growling" quality) but I couldn't for the life of me figure it out, something I can normally do. Truth be told, I would NEVER have guessed it was Jonathan Frakes (though now it seems so obvious to me). Still, the voices are similar enough, and even if they weren't, the Mutates' voices tended to change with their appearance (Rocky Caroll's (sp?) voice for Derek is different than his voice for Talon, and Kath Souci's voice for Maggie was slightly different in KINGDOM than for her first two appearances). But, nice trivia to know.
I hadn't really noticed how much the theme of self-deception was a factor in this, but it makes sense.
And yes, the animation is sub-par, but I just like the story so much I can live with it (and if I can live with the animation in KINGDOM, I think I can live with anything).
POINTLESS OBSERVATION> Not only does Hudson get left at the Clock Tower, but in this ep (as well as TEMPTATION) he doesn't get a single line). In fact his first words to Maggie are "Who's there?" in THE CAGE.

I'm sure there was more I wanted to say, but I think this message is thick enough already.

Punchinello writes...

Hello.
I see you are making progress with your backlog of questions. This question is kind of an ammendment to another question of mine.

A couple of months ago I asked if your idea for Owen was influenced by an archetype I referred to as being "a supernatural charachter indentured to a human master." I made reference to djinn being bound within oak or silver. Now, I dont recall if I was thinking this at the time, but...

I had just recently viewed "Prospero's Books" by Peter Greenaway again. There is a rather disturbing scene therin, of Ariel, bound in his "cloven pine." Spitting out splinters of wood and carring on. It's all rather ghastly. I had, in the past, made the observation that Ariel could be an other example of this archetype. I think, however, that I needed the emphasis Greenaway placed on certain elements to make some connections apparent to me. Of some peripheral interest is the fact that ariel is another spirit bound in a tree, but of greater interest is the stress placed on the characters servitude to Prospero. It was not much of a stretch to *read Owen* into the character.

OF GREATER INTEREST was how easy it became to read Xanatos into Prospero. I was struck by several things in this vein. The first being the parallel between the two men's status as "mortal's" who had aquired great power through supernatural means; particularly through the service of a captive spirit. (I realize the term "captive" does not really describe Owen's situation.) Further, Xanatos' collection of supernatural artifacts (The Eye, the Grimorrim, even the Gargoyles) could be a reflection of Prospero's robes and staff. The artifacts which empower him.

I also considered (perhaps on the heels of watching an adaptation that placed such emphasis on Pospero's Books) that the Grimorrim might be a volume Xanatos "valued above his dukedom."

I wonder also if a reading of Xanatos as *the exiled duke* would be too far off. Milan is in rather close proximity to Greece. I believe you placed Petros Xanatos as a native, there. While Xanatos may not have been physically exiled from his place of birth, it could be argued that his distance from his father and their conflicted relationship could be read as a kind of exile.

Now, I realize you have your reasons for not wanting to confirm or deny ideas that you had for the show, but were not able to elaborate on before it's cancellation. I read the anecdote about the guy who thought you had stolen his idea. (Wasn't he asking about the characters from "The Tempest," actually?) At this point, however, I think you have rather concretely established that Shakespeare plays a rather prominent and consistent theme in "Gargoyles." I cant imagine that anyone would not be inclined to believe that you were going for this reading from the beginning.

Maybe I'm completely wrong about all of this, but I'm sure it will elicit some interesting commentary from you.

Todd Jensen writes...

Just read your "Metamorphosis" ramble. Thanks for it.

"Metamorphosis" is one of my favorite episodes - largely because of what I thought was a very effective ending (Elisa letting Xanatos have it verbally for what he did to Derek, then weeping back at the clock tower); I certainly agree with you that it made a great tragic close to the story. Elisa's weeping scene remains for me, to this day, one of my favorite "great moments" in "Gargoyles".

And I was certainly fooled by Xanatos the first time that I saw this episode. I actually believed him when he made it look as if he wanted to help Derek. In fact, when he refused to let Sevarius cage Derek, saying, "He's a man, not an animal", I practically gave him a mental standing ovation. And then, of course, when I discovered the truth at the end....

But it's interesting to note that I got fooled by Xanatos even AFTER I was familiar with his being the main villain in the series. I knew perfectly well what he was capable of, and yet still actually wanted to think that his concern for Derek was genuine.

Sevarius's apparent death also took me quite by surprise; even though I knew that "Gargoyles" wasn't a typical Disney cartoon, I was still staring at the scene where he apparently gets electrocuted and Xanatos announces his death, with an attitude of "They actually killed somebody in a Disney television cartoon?" (Of course, I must have forgotten about the Wyvern massacre, the fates of the Captain and Hakon, and even Elisa getting shot in "Deadly Force" - although she doesn't actually die there - at the time). Sevarius turning out to be alive at the end definitely astonished me as well.

I don't recall, on the other hand, what I thought at the time about Brooklyn and Maggie's sub-plot (I hadn't even realized, I might add, until after reading your memo, that that and Derek's part of the story both shared the "self-deception" theme, although it makes perfect sense to me now). I did sympathize a lot with Maggie, though; she gets mutated as almost a conscript for a war that she knew nothing about.

One last little note of interest: although you don't mention it in your ramble, Xanatos and Sevarius tell an additional lie that doesn't even get exposed as a lie until later on in the series, about not yet having any gargoyle genetic material to create a clone from. And then we discover in "Double Jeopardy" that they'd already created a clone (given that they got the blood sample from Goliath needed to create Thailog before the gargs even left the castle in "Enter Macbeth").

As for Sevarius's name: well, I think that it's kind of appropriate that it would sound cliched, given the way that the guy revels in cliches.

Ray Kremer (repost by Aris) writes...

I'm writing this after reading your review of Enter MacBeth. I guess I don't have such a discerning eye, I don't remember noticing the animation. I did wonder how the fire spread so quickly in that stone castle, but some liberties can be allowed, I guess.

Continuity? Stuff's great. Elisa on crutches at the start - beautiful touch. Absolutely beautiful. The previously on Gargoyles clips also helped to reinforce the idea that there was something greater here than just episodic television. I didn't mind the early reruns either. Even though I was excited about a cartoon with Star Trek actors in it, when premier week came I forgot all about it until Friday. Just in time for the "surprise" ending that Demona and Xanatos were both bad guys. Oh well, you win some...

MacBeth. Fun guy. John Rhys-Davies has one of those marvelous voices. But I never gave him much thought until City of Stone. "You mean, MacBeth is the ACTUAL MacBeth? Cool!!!" That's gotta be one of the best surprise revelations in a cartoon show ever.

Hmmm, should there be a question here? Okay, how about this. Did you know our man David Xanatos made the Hall of Evil Geniuses? Yep, some guy's webpage roots for evil, and David's on it:
http://home1.gte.net/locke/genius.html

Blaise (repost by Aris) writes...

DEADLY FORCE

When I first saw this, I missed the first few minutes (it was on early in the morning where I lived and I accidentally overslept). I came in when Broadway was munching the popcorn. Still, when I did see the first few moments, Owen's actions didn't surprise me--I was already impressed enough with him (I had already seen his work in ENTER MACBETH). Dracon did make for an interesting addition to the cast of villains here. Not of the same caliber as Xanatos and Demona, sure, but in his own right he's pretty good.
Now, as for the shooting itself...how do I say this? I was surprised and I wasn't. Let me put it this way--I wasn't surprised that the show would have someone actually getting shot and I figured that Elisa would get shot the instant I saw Broadway pick up the gun. What DID surprise me was how close to death Elisa came. Not to mention the final image of Act I. Then of course there's the end of Act II where Elisa actually flat-lines. You guys always could do shocking cliff-hangers. Yeah, so you couldn't have Elisa die and make it real. She was the secondary lead. At least you did have her flat-line.
How Broadway deals with it is very well done. This is the ep that always impresses me about him. You're right, his rage here is indeed awe-inspiring. Everytime I see the way he handles Glasses I wince in sympathy. I'd hate to have him mad at me.
Him or Goliath. This is another thing I like about this series--the main hero has come close to killing someone in the name of vengence several times already. I like this edge--I like it that the heroes in this show are presented with very real flaws. And yeah, his unbeknownst-to-him-love for Elisa is pretty well shown here. I especially like the last moment the two of them have together.
Back on Broadway, compliments on pulling him out of the "eating machine" pidgeon hole. So many shows just designate a character as that and leave him there. Kudos for giving him something more.
Yeah, about the second or third time I saw this, I noticed it was Matt driving Chavez's car. That always brought a grin to my face the way you guys thougth ahead like that.
One of my favorite parts comes when Owen complains about Goliath destroying Xanatos's guns, and Goliath comments with a veiled threat; "I'll be happy to discuss the matter with him." Do you think he also destroyed those guns to get back at Xanatos? Not as a primary reason, but just as sort of a "bonus."

I always enjoy watching this episode for these little touches.

Ambrosia (repost by Aris) writes...

Don?t worry about coming off as arrogant, Greg. I love hearing your take on the episodes and I look forward to reading them. I always learn so much? Here?s my responses:

Kid movies and, yes, even Disney movies are obviously getting more and more violent. In 1936, the men working on Snow White said that it was too violent for them to take their kids to see. This summer, Clayton fell out of a really big tree with a vine wrapped around his neck and hung himself. A couple years ago, Frollo, obsessed with Gypsy Esmeralda, tried to burn her at the stake. Both of these things were violence and drama for their own sake. Deadly Force, as you said, was making a *statement*. A statement that REALLY needs to be heard these days. It?s easy to look at it superficially and go, ?Nope. Guns, blood. Can?t show that on television.? I?m upset that Toon Disney didn?t look closer.

About Elisa almost dying: I believe this is pretty close to what Doctor Sato said, ?The bullet entered high in the chest, ricocheted off the collarbone, nicked the heart muscle and passed through the right lung. I?ve removed it from the base of the spine.? Yeah. She?s damn lucky to be alive.

I liked what you said about time travel. You can?t change the past. I?d never thought about it farther than that that was the rules of the Phoenix Gate: time corrects itself. Like a river. But it?s true with or without the Gate. You CAN?T change the past.

Matt, as I recall, was also camioed in Her Brother?s Keeper. In his underwear. Briefs. Purple.

I work in a theater. We never keep bagged popcorn for more than overnight.

Tana (repost by Aris) writes...

Greg,

Read your "Temptation" Ramble, and there were a few things that I would love to point out about that episode.
First off: I loved the leather jacket and HOW brooklyn folded his wings under his arms. He really did look good in that episode. ^_^

Second: The bike. It was a cool bike! BUT, the bikers when they see it say: "Cool Hog." Now, okay people who don't know much about motorcycles would refer to any bike as a hog, but these Biker's would know better. A Hog is a Harley Davidson...and Lex's creation looked nothing like a Harley. I dunno if that was you, or somebody else. But oh well, it was still a cool bike.

Third: The spell. Now Elisa says: "I want you to act, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, as if you weren't under a spell." Wouldn't that in sense nullify some future spells on the big guy? I mean sure, Puck's spell worked well, cause he still ACTED like he wasn't under a spell. Were you maybe planning on keeping with this for future continuity?

oh, and I LOVE your little analizations (sp?) of the episodes. It really lets us get more into your head, and into the world of the Gargoyles.

Blaise (repost by Aris) writes...

TEMPTATION

While this isn't the ep that cemented Brooklyn in my head as "Favorite Character," I have to admit he is GREAT in it.
I still love Lexington's remark about building a horse from spare parts.
Demona's tour of the city--Yeah, the DEAD BODY surprised me too. Very powerful, very good, as were Demona's other two "examples" of humanity. Bennett and Sirtis did WONDERFUL jobs with their voice acting here.
As for the bikers not noticing Brooklyn, yeah everybody notices that. I just try to ignore it and that seems to work. If nothing else, most of the bikers in that scene WERE wearing sunglasses at night (as someone else already pointed out). Come to think of it, some of them weren't even wearing helmets....;-)
Elisa's finger--great, now that you've mentioned it, *I'LL* probably look for it and not be able to see anything else in the scene.
I was surprised to hear that Brooklyn's description of the Cloisters was taken by some folks as "proof" that gargoyles were not native to this planet. Anyone who saw the first two episodes should have understood what Brooklyn meant. Come to think of it, why WOULD people want the gargoyles to be from another planet?
One of my favorite lines in this episode--Brooklyn: "You hold the book, Demona. But *I* hold the *spell*!" I just LOVE that.
The resolution of the spell may have been a bit of a cheat, but it WAS a creative and original solution to the problem. So, you guys still get some points in that area.
Lex and Brooklyn talking about the motorcycle at the end and Lex's reaction are always enjoyable.
Pointless note: Hudson doesn't speak a single line in this episode. Odd, when I think about it. Still, you do at least SEE him a few times.

Good ep.