Wolverine and the X-Men 1x14
Oct. 26th, 2020 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsWolverine and the X-Men 1x14: Stolen Lives
The contrast between the last episode and this one makes me very aware again of how this show doesn't really know what it wants to be. It's not even that I think it's impossible to have a major doom arc hanging over a story and still have adventures outside of that arc, to build character or to introduce another element of the world building, or what have you. But this show gives me whiplash when it switches back and forth.
Last episode was a huge climax to a major arc and touched on several major plot and character story-lines (how many it did well is debatable), but it was actually kind of an odd duck because it hadn't been built to. Then here, we're back to a story that belongs on a different version of the show where each character just has their own stuff to do, and we check in on those smaller arcs from time to time. This show hasn't exactly done a lot to establish Logan's relationship with his missing memories, so it's hard to feel him as desperate for clues about his past or feel like he's lost anything when he's told he can't be that man again. When I project movie-Logan onto it, I can see what it should be, but it's not that in the context it's in.
I'm not sure how to feel about Logan/Mystique in either context. Certainly the movies had a certain degree of chemistry between them, but it was more foe-yay than even hinted to be something more. And as far as the show it definitely wasn't set up before this episode. It was pretty clear in this episode that he was going to be shown to be the person she was talking about, but we don't know this Mystique; and as I said, this Logan has not been set up for any kind of crisis regarding who he was. I complained about that a lot in the previous episode about Weapon X; he doesn't have any sins to atone for or question if he maybe he's better if he doesn't remember them, apparently he was always just a good guy.
And that cuts right to why Wolverine is the biggest problem with this show. I don't know if it's a constraint of the rating or a consequence of making Wolverine the lead and leader, but he's boring in this show. I keep trying to make it more interesting that he's been put in charge than it ever actually seems that the writers intend. He's a crappy leader, but does the show know that? It sure doesn't know how to make him a grey character; not even in his forgotten backstory does he have things that make him question who he is and what kind of person he is.
What is Wolverine's arc supposed to be in this show? Is it growing as a leader? Is it learning about his past? Learning from his past? Atoning for his past? Letting go of his past? Is it growing into a more self-actualized person? Is it learning to stay when he was going to leave when the series started? I don't know and we're over halfway through the season/series. He's still a crappy leader who has learned nothing about letting his team in. I don't think we've seen him apply anything he's learned through the show to his decisions since he learned it (for that matter, has he learned anything?). And it's hard not to think that at this point the narrative has no interest in calling him on any of his flaws, and in the end he'll end up rewarded. Even if it's just being told he did a good job before he proves he learned nothing and goes off like he intended in the premier.
And it's not like this problem begins and ends with Wolverine, I'm largely not sure what anyone's arc is; Rogue comes the closest, but Bobby and Kitty are still blank slates, Beast is Logan's yes man, Storm isn't much better, as much as I have a soft spot for Forge since everyone else picks on him he's nothing either, I think Charles is an asshole but I also doubt the show recognizes that, and we haven't really gotten to know the Genosha group either. Scott kind of has his own thing going on, and should even more once they find Jean, but it's almost never put in focus except occasionally as something else Logan has to deal with as leader.
This is usually something I either wouldn't look up at all or I'd kick it until later, but it does look like this was the last attempt at an X-Men TV show aside from a couple of short runs as anime miniseries. Don't mistake me for saying this show killed the idea of an X-Men TV show (although it had been around in one iteration or the other for much of the 90s and 2000s; part of why this show felt it could go kind of loose with explaining who these characters are, since you probably know one iteration or the other); but a lot of things have shifted around such an idea since 2009.
In a way that obviously wasn't as evident at the time, this time around I'm realizing this show is kind of a relic of an older time in TV. The expectations of animated programs were already changing at the time this aired, but they've changed a lot since then. This show's episodic structure would be a lot looser these days, either having more direct focus on the main plot, or at least have smaller plots that still included elements of the larger plot.
Also, the perception of the X-Men, and comic book characters in general, changed around this time. This episode is using similar elements to X-Men Origins which came out around this same time, but that movie was not well received and the movie franchise went into a weird area that meant the culture understanding of the characters would be different than it was when this show was in production/airing. And let's not discount the MCU; for one, it gave Marvel a stronger hand in dictating how any of their characters might be used, and it meant a lot of other characters started to overshadow the X-Men as the most relevant in people's minds.
As a last note after that tangent, with a title like 'Stolen Lives' and thumbnail for the episode being two Wolverines, I had built this into some kind of multi-verse or weird replacement story. Maybe I should have guessed it would be Mystique, but she's been such a non-presence that it was far from my first thought. I'm not sure that story (whatever it might have been) would have been any better than this, but that it's where my mind went shows how I'm not really in step with what this show will do.
Oh, and I still don't trust Emma. I'm somewhat annoyed that Logan does, and it's not really important this episode, but I don't trust her.
The contrast between the last episode and this one makes me very aware again of how this show doesn't really know what it wants to be. It's not even that I think it's impossible to have a major doom arc hanging over a story and still have adventures outside of that arc, to build character or to introduce another element of the world building, or what have you. But this show gives me whiplash when it switches back and forth.
Last episode was a huge climax to a major arc and touched on several major plot and character story-lines (how many it did well is debatable), but it was actually kind of an odd duck because it hadn't been built to. Then here, we're back to a story that belongs on a different version of the show where each character just has their own stuff to do, and we check in on those smaller arcs from time to time. This show hasn't exactly done a lot to establish Logan's relationship with his missing memories, so it's hard to feel him as desperate for clues about his past or feel like he's lost anything when he's told he can't be that man again. When I project movie-Logan onto it, I can see what it should be, but it's not that in the context it's in.
I'm not sure how to feel about Logan/Mystique in either context. Certainly the movies had a certain degree of chemistry between them, but it was more foe-yay than even hinted to be something more. And as far as the show it definitely wasn't set up before this episode. It was pretty clear in this episode that he was going to be shown to be the person she was talking about, but we don't know this Mystique; and as I said, this Logan has not been set up for any kind of crisis regarding who he was. I complained about that a lot in the previous episode about Weapon X; he doesn't have any sins to atone for or question if he maybe he's better if he doesn't remember them, apparently he was always just a good guy.
And that cuts right to why Wolverine is the biggest problem with this show. I don't know if it's a constraint of the rating or a consequence of making Wolverine the lead and leader, but he's boring in this show. I keep trying to make it more interesting that he's been put in charge than it ever actually seems that the writers intend. He's a crappy leader, but does the show know that? It sure doesn't know how to make him a grey character; not even in his forgotten backstory does he have things that make him question who he is and what kind of person he is.
What is Wolverine's arc supposed to be in this show? Is it growing as a leader? Is it learning about his past? Learning from his past? Atoning for his past? Letting go of his past? Is it growing into a more self-actualized person? Is it learning to stay when he was going to leave when the series started? I don't know and we're over halfway through the season/series. He's still a crappy leader who has learned nothing about letting his team in. I don't think we've seen him apply anything he's learned through the show to his decisions since he learned it (for that matter, has he learned anything?). And it's hard not to think that at this point the narrative has no interest in calling him on any of his flaws, and in the end he'll end up rewarded. Even if it's just being told he did a good job before he proves he learned nothing and goes off like he intended in the premier.
And it's not like this problem begins and ends with Wolverine, I'm largely not sure what anyone's arc is; Rogue comes the closest, but Bobby and Kitty are still blank slates, Beast is Logan's yes man, Storm isn't much better, as much as I have a soft spot for Forge since everyone else picks on him he's nothing either, I think Charles is an asshole but I also doubt the show recognizes that, and we haven't really gotten to know the Genosha group either. Scott kind of has his own thing going on, and should even more once they find Jean, but it's almost never put in focus except occasionally as something else Logan has to deal with as leader.
This is usually something I either wouldn't look up at all or I'd kick it until later, but it does look like this was the last attempt at an X-Men TV show aside from a couple of short runs as anime miniseries. Don't mistake me for saying this show killed the idea of an X-Men TV show (although it had been around in one iteration or the other for much of the 90s and 2000s; part of why this show felt it could go kind of loose with explaining who these characters are, since you probably know one iteration or the other); but a lot of things have shifted around such an idea since 2009.
In a way that obviously wasn't as evident at the time, this time around I'm realizing this show is kind of a relic of an older time in TV. The expectations of animated programs were already changing at the time this aired, but they've changed a lot since then. This show's episodic structure would be a lot looser these days, either having more direct focus on the main plot, or at least have smaller plots that still included elements of the larger plot.
Also, the perception of the X-Men, and comic book characters in general, changed around this time. This episode is using similar elements to X-Men Origins which came out around this same time, but that movie was not well received and the movie franchise went into a weird area that meant the culture understanding of the characters would be different than it was when this show was in production/airing. And let's not discount the MCU; for one, it gave Marvel a stronger hand in dictating how any of their characters might be used, and it meant a lot of other characters started to overshadow the X-Men as the most relevant in people's minds.
As a last note after that tangent, with a title like 'Stolen Lives' and thumbnail for the episode being two Wolverines, I had built this into some kind of multi-verse or weird replacement story. Maybe I should have guessed it would be Mystique, but she's been such a non-presence that it was far from my first thought. I'm not sure that story (whatever it might have been) would have been any better than this, but that it's where my mind went shows how I'm not really in step with what this show will do.
Oh, and I still don't trust Emma. I'm somewhat annoyed that Logan does, and it's not really important this episode, but I don't trust her.
