Wolverine and the X-Men 1x19
Dec. 7th, 2020 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsWolverine and the X-Men 1x19: Guardian Angel
I had a vague memory of this show doing an Arch-Angel plot, but this isn't really what I remembered. I'm willing to say it got spliced in my brain with Cyclops' plot with Sinister that I didn't think I remembered at all. On the other hand I'm starting to wonder a bit if I ever really watched this show back in the day, because I have pretty strong memories of there being more to what we got of Storm's backstory in her episode early in the season. I don't know what else I would have been thinking of, as I haven't watched much if any of other cartoon X-men, and there have been things I remembered (mostly early on), but this one hit a weird spot.
Also because my opinion of the show now just isn't that good; while I can believe I watched it and enjoyed it in a shallow way, it's hard to see how I though it was worth keeping around. An opinion this episode fits right into, because this episode is fine for what it is, but its storytelling is pretty shallow. This feels like a comic arc that took 3-6 months to go through being compressed into a single episode (and this show has done similar things like with Samurai Logan); it's definitely not bad, it's just unsupported and not fully developed.
Let's start with the poor setup. Since when are Angel and Storm a thing? Have we seen evidence of this up until now? I can believe it was happening in the comics at some point, maybe during the arc this plot is based on, but it didn't do any of the setup in the show. And it's not like we know Warren as a character that well anyway. The Hindsight episodes set him up to be a part of this team, but he's only shown up a couple times. As shown here, he's arguably one of the few more traditional superheroes of the team, as he seems to be living a double life, keeping his identity secret and forced to hide his true self so he can try and do the most good. If we had seen him living that life more often up until now, we would know more about his relationship to his father, whether they pretend to be close or it's always about repressing Warren's mutant status; we might see him biting his tongue during meetings with Kelly so he has more information to pass on to the X-men; what is Warren's day job anyway?
As I say so often, basically every character on this show has some reason they would be a better protagonist than Wolverine. And it's not even that Wolverine's subplot in the episodes focused on him doing his own thing are that bad, I've been more kind to him in those eps than when he's with the team, but the show suffers for putting him in the center of all things. I'm kind of wishing this series had a set of interconnected subplots that over the course of the season built to a connected climax. Let Logan have his solo arc about figuring out his past, show us Warren's growing angry until it boils over; show us Rogue's journey with the Brotherhood; Nightcrawler on Genosha; let Scott be the one to try and rebuild the X-men, but he's fumbling because he's got too much of his own shit to deal with. And give us Charles in the future with very limited contact back to the present, have him on a mission to reconstruct Cerebro so that he can send messages back and prevent that future and not able to know if what he's already done has done any good; nor does the audience exactly, because maybe all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again, we're just given enough hope that it can be changed that it doesn't feel dark and depressing.
Now you might say that's kind of what we have; and in some small ways we do, since the show jumps between plotlines without much care, but there doesn't end up being a fully developed arc for anyone because we keep jumping around. If Angel's primary arc had been a three episode mini-arc, where we see him in his life before he falls including more of his relationships to the others, then followed him and he grew desperate enough to take any offered cure/reconstruction, then we saw his inner conflict between his former nature and his broken (semi-controlled) new state, that's an arc; even if he falls in the end, we were taken with him on the journey.
And trying to cram Warren's journey into a single episode is bad enough, but then to try and use it to explore life for a mutant outside the X-men and to kick off (what I am, perhaps generously, expecting to be) the Cure arc it doesn't allow them to fully do anything. I'm utterly confused by the politics at play here, because I thought they already more or less were at war with mutants, wasn't that what Kelly and Magneto's dual speeches were about? And also, Kelly seems to running too much of the show; we still don't know why he seems to want this war, instead of buying time to build up their arsenal of things to use against mutants.
Plus, and this could be expanded on in coming eps, this treatment of the Cure idea is much less developed than even in X3. The Cure is a murky mess of an idea; and while the movie definitely doesn't paint it in a favorable light, it acknowledges that it's complicated because people are complicated and politics is complicated. Why wouldn't movie-Rogue want the Cure? We're never shown her power being useful in a fight, she is being trained to fight, but not in any way she couldn't contribute as a non-mutant fighting with the X-men. But the Cure being used as a weapon is a power people shouldn't necessarily have, as it should be a choice for someone to make. On the other hand there are mutant killers/terrorists out there and if your choices are to kill or depower isn't it more humane to let them live while protecting others from their potential to cause mass destruction?
As a weapon, be it meant for offense or kept as a deterrent against the particularly dangerous mutants (and I'm not sure we should ignore that a small group of mutants could probably bend the world to their will; not to mention the destruction a single mutant can cause whether unintentional or willful if they're especially powerful) one could argue it's a better choice than the Sentinels (I definitely believe it would happen before giant robots that can remotely test DNA). The Sentinels are really just a dumb idea that are bound to end up causing the kind of collateral damage they're supposedly trying to stop by hunting down mutants (and I don't say that because we've been shown the future, I say that because they're giant robots with unwieldy weaponry).
But let's step away from possible reasons to defend the Cure, because it's still plenty dangerous. Because whether developed for practical or honorable reasons (we'll get to honorable) it's something far too easy to misuse as a genetic weapon to be used on an ethnic minority. That's clearly what Kelly sees as the end goal, to wipe out mutants. And seeing as this world doesn't seem to have anyone standing up for mutant rights and equality (we'll also circle back to that), not even mutants themselves, it would probably be inevitable that the Cure is used for genocide.
Because this episode focuses on Warren who is out in the wider world in a way most of the other characters aren't, it actually leans into how to view mutant treatment as a metaphor. And this episode leans pretty hard into the metaphorical queerness, going from Warren's speech to his dad about how he doesn't want to be cured, and then proceeding to come out to the people at work. And viewed through that lens, the Cure looks an awful lot like homophobic bigots developing and anti-gay drug that they're in a position to force onto the population.
But because I'm me and I'm not big on metaphors, even in that I find a problem. Because they explore this through Warren, who has one of the more benign powers among the main cast. He actually probably is more representative of average mutants out in the world, because a lot of mutations aren't inherently harmful, they're just differences that people figure out how to live with. My point is that because he's got a more benign (even cool) power, it's more possible to see him as an oppressed gay man who just wants to be out and proud and accepted for who he is and society punishes him for that. But then you have Rogue (especially movie-Rogue) who is more like someone born with AIDS that this is a cure for but as a side effect it makes you...mostly straight, though you might still be a little bi (I swear I've gone over this metaphor a half dozen times, and that's the best version I've made, see what I mean about struggling with metaphors?).
It doesn't help that the episode does not have the capacity to handle the aftermath of Warren losing his wings. Being that betrayed by his father (where is Mama Worthington anyway), first selling him out to the MRD, then having Angel's wings cut off, along with the loss of limbs, that's a huge amount of trauma dumped on him all at once. And the show has to rush through so much development that could come out of it. I watched the first couple seasons of Friday Night Lights, I've seen a story dealing with loss of limbs like this and the depression that comes from that is handled terribly here; hell Downton Abbey did a better job. The team doesn't exactly take great care of him, maybe physically but certainly not emotionally although it is hard to tell how much time is passing and whether it's been three days or six weeks (though to be absolutely fair, I think Angel has some disappearing ability as he uses it to leave the mansion and them somehow go unnoticed when he leaves Worthington Labs). The fact that people who suffer grievous injury can fall prey to con men who promise miracle cures is not hard to imagine, and Warren had a standing offer. Nor did it need to be about the Cure (or possible mind control) for him to after his father, he has every reason to be pissed off and moving into the anger stage of grief. Even if it has only been a few days.
Like I said up top, this is another ep that's kind of a bare bones blueprint for a better episode/arc on another show following the hardships and heroics of Angel, hence why I kind of assume it was a condensed version of a comic story. But then this wouldn't be the blueprint; it had a blueprint and just didn't know how to turn it into anything. I'm not sure I can quite view either as a good thing, but I can see good in it...so I remain conflicted.
I had a vague memory of this show doing an Arch-Angel plot, but this isn't really what I remembered. I'm willing to say it got spliced in my brain with Cyclops' plot with Sinister that I didn't think I remembered at all. On the other hand I'm starting to wonder a bit if I ever really watched this show back in the day, because I have pretty strong memories of there being more to what we got of Storm's backstory in her episode early in the season. I don't know what else I would have been thinking of, as I haven't watched much if any of other cartoon X-men, and there have been things I remembered (mostly early on), but this one hit a weird spot.
Also because my opinion of the show now just isn't that good; while I can believe I watched it and enjoyed it in a shallow way, it's hard to see how I though it was worth keeping around. An opinion this episode fits right into, because this episode is fine for what it is, but its storytelling is pretty shallow. This feels like a comic arc that took 3-6 months to go through being compressed into a single episode (and this show has done similar things like with Samurai Logan); it's definitely not bad, it's just unsupported and not fully developed.
Let's start with the poor setup. Since when are Angel and Storm a thing? Have we seen evidence of this up until now? I can believe it was happening in the comics at some point, maybe during the arc this plot is based on, but it didn't do any of the setup in the show. And it's not like we know Warren as a character that well anyway. The Hindsight episodes set him up to be a part of this team, but he's only shown up a couple times. As shown here, he's arguably one of the few more traditional superheroes of the team, as he seems to be living a double life, keeping his identity secret and forced to hide his true self so he can try and do the most good. If we had seen him living that life more often up until now, we would know more about his relationship to his father, whether they pretend to be close or it's always about repressing Warren's mutant status; we might see him biting his tongue during meetings with Kelly so he has more information to pass on to the X-men; what is Warren's day job anyway?
As I say so often, basically every character on this show has some reason they would be a better protagonist than Wolverine. And it's not even that Wolverine's subplot in the episodes focused on him doing his own thing are that bad, I've been more kind to him in those eps than when he's with the team, but the show suffers for putting him in the center of all things. I'm kind of wishing this series had a set of interconnected subplots that over the course of the season built to a connected climax. Let Logan have his solo arc about figuring out his past, show us Warren's growing angry until it boils over; show us Rogue's journey with the Brotherhood; Nightcrawler on Genosha; let Scott be the one to try and rebuild the X-men, but he's fumbling because he's got too much of his own shit to deal with. And give us Charles in the future with very limited contact back to the present, have him on a mission to reconstruct Cerebro so that he can send messages back and prevent that future and not able to know if what he's already done has done any good; nor does the audience exactly, because maybe all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again, we're just given enough hope that it can be changed that it doesn't feel dark and depressing.
Now you might say that's kind of what we have; and in some small ways we do, since the show jumps between plotlines without much care, but there doesn't end up being a fully developed arc for anyone because we keep jumping around. If Angel's primary arc had been a three episode mini-arc, where we see him in his life before he falls including more of his relationships to the others, then followed him and he grew desperate enough to take any offered cure/reconstruction, then we saw his inner conflict between his former nature and his broken (semi-controlled) new state, that's an arc; even if he falls in the end, we were taken with him on the journey.
And trying to cram Warren's journey into a single episode is bad enough, but then to try and use it to explore life for a mutant outside the X-men and to kick off (what I am, perhaps generously, expecting to be) the Cure arc it doesn't allow them to fully do anything. I'm utterly confused by the politics at play here, because I thought they already more or less were at war with mutants, wasn't that what Kelly and Magneto's dual speeches were about? And also, Kelly seems to running too much of the show; we still don't know why he seems to want this war, instead of buying time to build up their arsenal of things to use against mutants.
Plus, and this could be expanded on in coming eps, this treatment of the Cure idea is much less developed than even in X3. The Cure is a murky mess of an idea; and while the movie definitely doesn't paint it in a favorable light, it acknowledges that it's complicated because people are complicated and politics is complicated. Why wouldn't movie-Rogue want the Cure? We're never shown her power being useful in a fight, she is being trained to fight, but not in any way she couldn't contribute as a non-mutant fighting with the X-men. But the Cure being used as a weapon is a power people shouldn't necessarily have, as it should be a choice for someone to make. On the other hand there are mutant killers/terrorists out there and if your choices are to kill or depower isn't it more humane to let them live while protecting others from their potential to cause mass destruction?
As a weapon, be it meant for offense or kept as a deterrent against the particularly dangerous mutants (and I'm not sure we should ignore that a small group of mutants could probably bend the world to their will; not to mention the destruction a single mutant can cause whether unintentional or willful if they're especially powerful) one could argue it's a better choice than the Sentinels (I definitely believe it would happen before giant robots that can remotely test DNA). The Sentinels are really just a dumb idea that are bound to end up causing the kind of collateral damage they're supposedly trying to stop by hunting down mutants (and I don't say that because we've been shown the future, I say that because they're giant robots with unwieldy weaponry).
But let's step away from possible reasons to defend the Cure, because it's still plenty dangerous. Because whether developed for practical or honorable reasons (we'll get to honorable) it's something far too easy to misuse as a genetic weapon to be used on an ethnic minority. That's clearly what Kelly sees as the end goal, to wipe out mutants. And seeing as this world doesn't seem to have anyone standing up for mutant rights and equality (we'll also circle back to that), not even mutants themselves, it would probably be inevitable that the Cure is used for genocide.
Because this episode focuses on Warren who is out in the wider world in a way most of the other characters aren't, it actually leans into how to view mutant treatment as a metaphor. And this episode leans pretty hard into the metaphorical queerness, going from Warren's speech to his dad about how he doesn't want to be cured, and then proceeding to come out to the people at work. And viewed through that lens, the Cure looks an awful lot like homophobic bigots developing and anti-gay drug that they're in a position to force onto the population.
But because I'm me and I'm not big on metaphors, even in that I find a problem. Because they explore this through Warren, who has one of the more benign powers among the main cast. He actually probably is more representative of average mutants out in the world, because a lot of mutations aren't inherently harmful, they're just differences that people figure out how to live with. My point is that because he's got a more benign (even cool) power, it's more possible to see him as an oppressed gay man who just wants to be out and proud and accepted for who he is and society punishes him for that. But then you have Rogue (especially movie-Rogue) who is more like someone born with AIDS that this is a cure for but as a side effect it makes you...mostly straight, though you might still be a little bi (I swear I've gone over this metaphor a half dozen times, and that's the best version I've made, see what I mean about struggling with metaphors?).
It doesn't help that the episode does not have the capacity to handle the aftermath of Warren losing his wings. Being that betrayed by his father (where is Mama Worthington anyway), first selling him out to the MRD, then having Angel's wings cut off, along with the loss of limbs, that's a huge amount of trauma dumped on him all at once. And the show has to rush through so much development that could come out of it. I watched the first couple seasons of Friday Night Lights, I've seen a story dealing with loss of limbs like this and the depression that comes from that is handled terribly here; hell Downton Abbey did a better job. The team doesn't exactly take great care of him, maybe physically but certainly not emotionally although it is hard to tell how much time is passing and whether it's been three days or six weeks (though to be absolutely fair, I think Angel has some disappearing ability as he uses it to leave the mansion and them somehow go unnoticed when he leaves Worthington Labs). The fact that people who suffer grievous injury can fall prey to con men who promise miracle cures is not hard to imagine, and Warren had a standing offer. Nor did it need to be about the Cure (or possible mind control) for him to after his father, he has every reason to be pissed off and moving into the anger stage of grief. Even if it has only been a few days.
Like I said up top, this is another ep that's kind of a bare bones blueprint for a better episode/arc on another show following the hardships and heroics of Angel, hence why I kind of assume it was a condensed version of a comic story. But then this wouldn't be the blueprint; it had a blueprint and just didn't know how to turn it into anything. I'm not sure I can quite view either as a good thing, but I can see good in it...so I remain conflicted.
