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Gargoyles

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Comment Room Archive

Comments for the week ending October 20, 2019

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Glad that article exists, but I don't think Greg saying "sometimes things come back" is a hint of any specific knowledge he has. It's become his general policy not to comment on old shows because they might come back, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

"Broadway Goes Hollywood" was a fun episode, and at least it gave us back Fox as a fighter, rather than the crying in "Ransom" (I don't begrudge Fox for crying over her kidnapped child, but that's ALL she did). Unfortunately, it also completed Jackal and Hyena's descent into Team Rocket status. They were already starting to lose their edge by "The Green," but quipping in unison killed whatever menace they might have still had.

As for mutants vs. gargoyles, I do wonder if some countries would start accepting gargoyles as full citizens, and whether the gargoyles would accept it. Or maybe it'd be some hybrid system like Native American tribes, which are both sovereign and also subject to the U.S. government. It'd be interesting to play around with that idea. I know the 2198 write-up suggests they'd achieve protected minority status, but that could mean a lot of things.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Thanks for the link, Matthew.

ALDRIUS - Your mention of "Broadway Goes to Hollywood" reminded me of another of those moments which made me suspect that the new production team saw the show as "X-Men with wings", the talk about how the Quarrymen intended to use the "Broadway blows up an L.A. landmark" that they were going to stage as a means of building up a support base on the West Coast. That seemed strange when the known gargoyles are just a handful in Manhattan, on the other side of the country - but in "X-Men", from what I've gathered, mutants are a worldwide phenomenon and known to be one.

Bishansky's review of "Angels in the Night" (which he linked to in his post below) commented that Goliath's speech to the trio about staying in New York to continue striving for a place in human society sounded more like Charles Xavier than like the Goliath of the first two seasons, and I certainly suspect that that's who the production team was subconsciously thinking of. (All the more since I don't think that the gargoyles of the first two seasons would be seeking to take a place in human society when they aren't humans - peaceful co-existence as if between two equal nations or peoples was what Goliath would more likely have been aiming for.)

Todd Jensen

Speaking of Greg...

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/2019/10/20/gargoyles-creator-teases-show-return-greg-weisman/

Matthew
Insert Inspirational Quote Here:________

Honestly the Goliath Chronicles just feels lazy and really, really campy. I get the feeling they had a really tight production schedule, but also... that show just OOZES Greg Weisman. And the characters & setting & stories are all great, but what MADE Gargoyles was it's mythos and love of classical stories. And without Weisman I think they just didn't have a good guiding hand for that.

There's also just really bad scripting. I remember, I think it's in Broadway goes to Hollywood. Broadway and I think Fox are having a conversation, and mid-conversation Broadway turns to stone because he finds out he's going to Hollywood. Then we come back from the commercial break... he wakes up and they just... continue their conversation. It was just like they needed SOMETHING for the act break. The show was so plodding and... boring.

And I remember even really not liking it as a kid. I think because Demona wasn't in it very much and the episode she was in, she was lame and I just found the plot confusing and I didn't care about the bad guy.

Aldrius

JURGAN - Yes, the best you can say about the episode (as has been mentioned before) is that Goliath going after the guy after hearing his name repeated so often is believable, given the effect it had on the viewers. :)

I still suspect that a lot of the problems with "The Goliath Chronicles" might have come from the new production team thinking of the gargoyles as if they were the X-Men, without being aware of the differences (such as the gargoyles aren't a sub-section of the human race like the mutants in Marvel, but a different species) - though some of the plotholes would be there even if you replaced the gargoyles with the X-Men and the Quarrymen with the Friends of Humanity.

And that is an interesting notion about how Owen being knocked unconscious got into "Ransom", which I hadn't considered before. Though, if that's how it happened, it's a pity the new production team didn't listen to Greg about Fox as well.

Todd Jensen

Yeah, that's the most obvious Weisman addition. Another one that sticks out to me is having Owen get knocked out during the kidnapping of Alex, so that Puck wouldn't be able to resolve the whole plot. I'd bet money the first draft didn't have that and Greg had to remind them of Owen's connection to Alex.

I've always maintained that To Serve Mankind is the worst TGC episode. Most of the others are only really bad if you're invested in the Gargoyles mythos. If someone new to the series watched Ransom or Runaways, they'd probably say "it was okay. Had some fun stuff in it." But I can't imagine anyone watching "EGON PAX EGON PAX EGON PAX EGON PAX" without bursting out laughing.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

MATTHEW - You're not missing much, I fear; it might be one of those rare occasions where forgetfulness is a good thing.
Todd Jensen

To be honest what episodes of the Goliath Chronicles I did watch kind of faded away from memory.
Matthew
Insert Inspirational Quote Here:________

BISHANSKY - It certainly qualifies for that. Some of the other episodes in "The Goliath Chronicles" seem to owe their problems simply to the new production team being not that familiar with the series, but the plotholes in "Angels in the Night" (like the villain being completely ignorant of someone else tinkering with his death trap or, after putting so much effort into painting the remaining two members of the heroes' team as criminals so that they'll be taken away by the authorities, attacking the passenger train those authorities are using to convey their prisoners to prison, having apparently completely lost the concern about his public image that he was showing in that "frame-up scene") would be glaring in any setting. (I still wonder whether Castaway's attack on the passenger train was thrown in after Greg Weisman talked the new production team out of the "gargoyles abandon New York" ending, as a frantic replacement, with a tone of "We've got to come up with something else before the deadline, so we don't have time to look over how believable it is.")

I took another look at the Gargoyles Season Two Volume Two DVD at the library today, and noted that the blurb on the back cover called the gargoyles "Gotham's guardians". Well, Gotham is an old nickname for New York, but it still suggests a different nocturnal defender (and evokes the production team's fears of "Gargoyles" being seen as a rip-off of "Batman: TAS"). Maybe they chose it for the alliteration; I can't think of a similar description with "New York" for the place name, and the only one I could think of for "Manhattan" was "Manhattan's monsters", which sounds far more appropriate for one of Castaway's propaganda speeches.

Todd Jensen

I still like mine. Worst episode of the series


https://gargwiki.net/Angels_In_the_Night_(review)

Greg Bishansky

Third.

I recently reread Juan F. Lara's review of "Angels in the Night" at the Gargoyles Fans Website, and noticed this quote from Elisa, when she's responding with horror to the apparent deaths of Goliath, Hudson, and the trio.

"I keep trying to tell myself it's all a bad dream. That it'll go away once I wake up."

I couldn't help thinking that it read like an unwitting G-rated double entendre on the "Goliath Chronicles".

(I've been reraading the reviews I wrote of the first two seasons over at the Gargoyles Fans Website as well - I'll confess that one of my chief responses to them was a wish I could revise them, since the style felt too wordy or bland in places. Not to mention that some of the "episode trivia" needs revising, since I wrote it before the "Clan-Building" comics came out.)

Todd Jensen

I'll second that.
Brainiac - [OSUBrainiac at gmail dot com]
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