The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x01
Mar. 24th, 2021 08:41 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_reviewsThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x01
My first instinct is that I don’t know quite how I feel about this episode. I think I like it, it definitely shows promise for the series to come, but for every couple good vibes I get from it I find a negative one that gnaws at me.
It’s kind of a blending of three or four different stories, that I suspect will fit together alright, but so far don’t. And the problem there is that, far more than WandaVision, this feels like it was made to be binge-watched but is being put out week to week. It worked for WandaVision mostly because the gimmick lent itself to an episodic structure, not entirely because it was written for week to week viewing; this doesn’t have the gimmick so it’s a lot more obvious that this isn’t its proper viewing setup.
I don’t know precisely what that means for my watching it. I like watching things week to week, and having time to sit with them; I feel like it might not work this time. We’ll see how I feel next week or the week after. While I did mostly like this episode, I wasn’t left feeling like I needed to see the next one right away.
I do think I like each other the plot threads they’re setting up, we just don’t get very far with any of them in this format. And since all of the plot threads are starting by showing us the ground state for the arcs, it’s really slow starting out. This is something that increasingly bothers me about made for binge-viewing TV (not that it’s never been a problem for broadcast TV by any means); all plots have to progress at the same pace, which means some go too fast and others too slow.
That said, the worst of the episode was the action scene at the beginning. That was boring as hell and went on at least twice as long as it should have. And I can’t decide if it’s clever or annoying that they were so obviously evoking the start of Winter Solder that they even brought back the Leaper.
I mostly like that this is actually into the impacts of the Blip on the world. And I appreciate Sam’s summary that when things get better for some people they get worse for others. I do think the equating of ‘life was better during the blip’ with ‘abolish national borders’ is a bit of an odd fit. I assume it’s saying something like the world banded together during the Blip but old divisions are resurfacing now that people are back? That’s a complex idea that I’m not sold that the show fully understands. I’m willing to wait and see how it develops though.
Actually, on reflection I’m pondering it there’s some setup that they should listen to the antagonists. The episode starts with Sam having to be pinned in by national borders that he has to abide (I assume Libya doesn’t have all the Sokovia Award wrinkles ironed out), and it’s the ‘bad guys’ who are looking to get rid of them. Still don’t really believe the show will go there, but it’s interesting to ponder.
The discussion of Sam’s personal finances though…I like getting the detail, or I would if they actually gave us detail. Because that is a fairly large question that they ended up bypassing without giving the obvious way to write it off. It would be easy to say that Tony did pay them or that there was some Avengers’ money pool anyone could draw from as needed; but they don’t seem to be suggesting that. It would have been possible even to say Tony stopped bankrolling the Avengers after IW (although they were allowed to keep using his stuff rent free) and/or there are more Avengers now so money is tighter. I doubt they’ll get into this much more (although it does seem important), but we’ll see.
Bucky’s story is the far more emotionally affecting of the two leads. I’m not sure where it’s going exactly, but I am invested.
It was good to see Rhodey too. I’m going to assume he was thinking about Tony during Sam’s speech. Sure Rhodey liked Steve well enough, but Rhodey’s going to mourn Tony a lot more. And in a show that’s likely going to be all about how important fuck you Steve Rogers was, I’ll take what I can get that says Cap isn’t the be all/end all of heroes.
My first instinct is that I don’t know quite how I feel about this episode. I think I like it, it definitely shows promise for the series to come, but for every couple good vibes I get from it I find a negative one that gnaws at me.
It’s kind of a blending of three or four different stories, that I suspect will fit together alright, but so far don’t. And the problem there is that, far more than WandaVision, this feels like it was made to be binge-watched but is being put out week to week. It worked for WandaVision mostly because the gimmick lent itself to an episodic structure, not entirely because it was written for week to week viewing; this doesn’t have the gimmick so it’s a lot more obvious that this isn’t its proper viewing setup.
I don’t know precisely what that means for my watching it. I like watching things week to week, and having time to sit with them; I feel like it might not work this time. We’ll see how I feel next week or the week after. While I did mostly like this episode, I wasn’t left feeling like I needed to see the next one right away.
I do think I like each other the plot threads they’re setting up, we just don’t get very far with any of them in this format. And since all of the plot threads are starting by showing us the ground state for the arcs, it’s really slow starting out. This is something that increasingly bothers me about made for binge-viewing TV (not that it’s never been a problem for broadcast TV by any means); all plots have to progress at the same pace, which means some go too fast and others too slow.
That said, the worst of the episode was the action scene at the beginning. That was boring as hell and went on at least twice as long as it should have. And I can’t decide if it’s clever or annoying that they were so obviously evoking the start of Winter Solder that they even brought back the Leaper.
I mostly like that this is actually into the impacts of the Blip on the world. And I appreciate Sam’s summary that when things get better for some people they get worse for others. I do think the equating of ‘life was better during the blip’ with ‘abolish national borders’ is a bit of an odd fit. I assume it’s saying something like the world banded together during the Blip but old divisions are resurfacing now that people are back? That’s a complex idea that I’m not sold that the show fully understands. I’m willing to wait and see how it develops though.
Actually, on reflection I’m pondering it there’s some setup that they should listen to the antagonists. The episode starts with Sam having to be pinned in by national borders that he has to abide (I assume Libya doesn’t have all the Sokovia Award wrinkles ironed out), and it’s the ‘bad guys’ who are looking to get rid of them. Still don’t really believe the show will go there, but it’s interesting to ponder.
The discussion of Sam’s personal finances though…I like getting the detail, or I would if they actually gave us detail. Because that is a fairly large question that they ended up bypassing without giving the obvious way to write it off. It would be easy to say that Tony did pay them or that there was some Avengers’ money pool anyone could draw from as needed; but they don’t seem to be suggesting that. It would have been possible even to say Tony stopped bankrolling the Avengers after IW (although they were allowed to keep using his stuff rent free) and/or there are more Avengers now so money is tighter. I doubt they’ll get into this much more (although it does seem important), but we’ll see.
Bucky’s story is the far more emotionally affecting of the two leads. I’m not sure where it’s going exactly, but I am invested.
It was good to see Rhodey too. I’m going to assume he was thinking about Tony during Sam’s speech. Sure Rhodey liked Steve well enough, but Rhodey’s going to mourn Tony a lot more. And in a show that’s likely going to be all about how important fuck you Steve Rogers was, I’ll take what I can get that says Cap isn’t the be all/end all of heroes.
