mercredi 27 décembre 2017

Marvel's Runaways: "Tsunami" Review


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All Hands on Vic.

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

[Note: Apologies for the delay for this week's Marvel's Runaways review. Holidays were a'calling.]

If there was ever any doubt that the Pride on Runaways had slyly and stealthily stolen the spotlight from the teens, "Tsunami" was here to set the detractors straight. Laced with an assortment of gallows humor antics, this chapter saw the parents scramble to get their collective s*** in order following last week's shooting of Victor.

By the end, freakin' Robert Minoru was standing in his underwear, wearing the Fistigon, professing his love for Tina in Japanese while she held aloft the Staff of One. It was a tender moment of remorse and reconciliation blended with really goofy "context is absolutely necessary" imagery and...that kind of sums up this episode, for the most part. I won't dive into everything that went on here, but all the parents, more or less, treated Jonah like he was their scary overlord. The inner-dynamic of Pride not only revealed itself more, but we also learned how the parents all, respectively, feel about their "boss." We saw, among them, who felt the most important, who was treated as the most important, and who was deemed least valuable.

Poor Janet, after a few minutes of bickering, was chosen to give her life to save Victor's (of course, none of this came to pass) and in one of her spare moments of backlash she mentioned the importance of her role as "Victor's handler," of sorts - as the abused and demeaned spouse who had to deal with the violent megalomaniac of the group, for the greater good. And through this small speech, Janet sort of tipped a hat toward the idea of Victor's evil tendencies being a side effect of Jonah's "gift." While everyone else got rich and/or famous, and were able to reap the benefits of the Devil's Deal, she got stuck managing the all-important brain.

All of Pride's story this week, their rambunctious race to save Victor's life, worked well, though it was frustrating to see it all take place so close to Chase, Karolina, and Gert. I understand the show's need to use big moments to draw a bunch of characters together - and this was the first time it was a crisis and not a scheduled social function - but to have all that important Pride activity happening just a few rooms away from our heroes, who have been actively seeking all sorts of answers from the very beginning, was unnerving. At one point, Chase was demanding to see his father and Frank was standing in the way. The story had to twist itself into a bit of a bun, by having Karolina pull him away, just to sell us on why no one would disturb the magic alien activity in the garage.

NOT present in the main story this week were Alex, Nico, and Molly - and while Molly's separate snooping looks like it's going to lead us toward what got her parents killed (also under the cloak of "Tsunami"), Alex and Nico's side adventure felt a bit muddled. We finally learned why Alex knew Tina's password and it was because he knew, once, that Amy had tried to hack into Wizard. He then assumed she killed herself because she feared Tina's wrath, or something, but I don't think any of us, so far, really bought her suicide, right? We knew, and Nico knew, it didn't make sense. By the end, Nico's suspicions were proven correct (to us) so Alex's entire "secret" was sort of an empty one.

It was nice to see those flashbacks of him and Amy playing Battlefront and chatting about his crush on Nico but overall his story about Amy feels half-baked. Mostly present here, from a relationship standpoint, was him not wanting to tell Nico what he knew because he liked her and was afraid she'd hate him. But the two of them stopped talking completely after Amy's death and he'd lost her anyhow. The entire gang pretty much resented him for not going to the funeral so him not telling Nico for fear of "losing her" doesn't quite gel. Of course. I'm talking around a lot of things here because there are certain things that happen in the comics that I don't want to spoil and I'm actively wondering if they'll get used on the show - and if they do get used how they'll fit in within this storyline. I think it can work. It might even help explain some of the murkiness.

The Verdict

"Tsunami" didn't really answer much, but it did give us a lot of Pride to manage and sort as all the parents had to scramble to save their most important, and violent, member. Mostly this chapter was about Pride all getting back on the same page (while also revealing all their weak and soft spots) while the teens continued to scratch their heads. It's too bad so much had to happen right under Chase's nose, just a few rooms away, as it made for a few frustrating moments.

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