TV Database Gargoyles (1994)

Like The Pack, Tony Dracon is undoubtedly one of the weaker aspects of the show, a petty two-bit "mob boss" that's also a part-time sleaze misogynist, often referring to Elisa Maza, an officer of the law, with pet names such as "Sugar," "Sweetheart," and of course, the ol' time favorite, "Honey." This episode also adds another phrase to his colorful vocabulary, "Goliath's woman," to which the Gargoyle found no amusement from.

That being said, it must be commended for Disney to have such a slimeball character to walk across its green earth. Despite being a more mature and grounded show, all of its antagonists were either larger than life characters like Macbeth and Demona or riffs on Saturday morning cartoon archetypes like The Pack and Xanatos. Dracon, however, felt more realistic, more mundane, your typical sleazeball with little respect for a woman in a position of authority. He is interesting among this collection of villains in that he stood out among them, just not in the same way Xanatos is interesting.

The plot in question for this episode involves a sting and an undercover operation, basically Gargoyles going Infernal Affairs with Elisa playing the Tony Leung of the play. It's pretty obvious from the start where this was going, but I like the way the episode kept the ruse going, because it allowed Broadway to showcase his genre-savvy nature and figure out what's going on. The undercover cop storyline is an old one, and despite not being as intricate as Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Hong Kong masterpiece, it felt like a nice episode to introduce to the kids the world of undercover policing and how tricky (and dangerous) it can be sometimes.

Not a bad episode in general, just not a lot of significant plotting going on.

This episode had a nice bait and switch involving Severus, but it didn't sacrifice any characterisation for the sake of the trick. That said, I do have a few problems with it:

1. Talon and Maggie's relationship felt too abrupt, especially when Brooklyn was already implied to have feelings for her.
2. Xanatos felt almost mustache-twirling here because I was surprised he'd tip his hand so quickly instead of letting the deception play out, even having a cheesy line like "He's the scientist; you're just the experiment."
3. The resolution also felt a little too clean. Sure, it's great to have the good guys have a win once in a while, but it has to feel earned. I felt like the acceptance of Talon happened a little too fast (instead of having any X-Men level prejudice), but I guess you can't show non-white prejudice in an animated series. Greg's storylines are usually more nuanced than this, so this feels a little disappointing.

A great start to the Avalon arc by reintroducing two characters we haven't seen directly since the start of season 1, Princess Katherine and the Magus. I also forgot about the gargoyle eggs until this episode brought it up. It's nice to see the two characters finally fleshed out even more since their season 1 debut, with Katherine a far more honorable protector of the eggs than her initial bigoted self at the very start of the show, and likewise, her faithful guardian, the Magus.

We also got to see Avalon, a place of time dilation. Sure, we've had the time dilation trope introduced in many shows before and after this episode's airing, but my first thought went straight to "Digimon Adventure" (even though, granted, Digimon came out four years after). Like, you could even hear that synth-heavy tune at the end that sounded vaguely like the works of Takanori Arisawa from Digimon. lol

But yeah, not a bad start so far. I'm usually for a more grounded story, but this seems like it could be interesting, especially with the Arthurian background and the Weird Witches involved.

While the time-loop was interesting the first time around, it only felt interesting because it was a way to subvert time-paradox by the brilliant Xanatos... not a Saturday morning cartoon sprouting “AHHH! After 975 years... I’m free! It’s time to conquer EARTH!” like he's Rita. Archmage's schemes to use the time-loop is technically interesting in terms of worldbuilding, but it's only interesting in the nerdy way like the more scientific aspects of Star Trek (as opposed to the narrative aspects). To put it in another way... I don't really care that much about how midi-chlorians work so much as I care about Anakin's downfall.

And character-wise? The Archmage just doesn't offer much depth for me to care that much about him. He's here seeking revenge and world domination, and if you're seeking world domination in a Saturday morning cartoon, you've officially moved into campy villain territory, and in a cartoon where you have Xanatos, Macbeth and Demona? That's just criminal. Even The Pack had more depth than you.

I guess it's also because it's a motivation that's hard to take seriously because it's such a generic excuse. Not exactly delving deep into the weight of rulership over the world or how the UN would interfere. But I'm thinking too hard about this.

Lucius: So now I'm in deep trouble. I mean, one more jolt of this death ray and I'm an epitaph. Somehow I manage to find cover and what does Baron von Ruthless do?
Bob: [laughing] He starts monologuing.
Lucius: He starts monologuing! He starts like, this prepared speech about how *feeble* I am compared to him, how *inevitable* my defeat is, how *the world* *will soon* *be his*, yadda yadda yadda.
Bob: Yammering.
Lucius: Yammering! I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up!
- my reaction to the Archmage's actions this episode

Click to expand...

If you have read comic books, then you should be familiar with multi-part stories and limited series. The biggest problems these stories face is the weak ending despite the great setup. It's hard to do a great ending, and a story can be significantly weakened by its ending (see "Mass Effect 3"). As a writer, Greg has faced criticisms regarding his time on "Young Justice", and I can see why; the man struggles with longform writing, evident from his time on "Gargoyles", particularly here in the finale to the "Avalon" arc.

This episode has lots of problems. For starters, the Archmage is hilariously incompetent. He's like the anti-Xanatos; all the magical power at his fingertips, none of his intelligence, just prolonging the heroes' suffering like a Bond villain. Once again, on a show with so many complex villains, it's just an eyesore.

Speaking of those complex villains, Macbeth and Demona get a downgrade in depth here, reduced to mind-controlled puppets that could have been replaced with literally anyone. Sure, Macbeth got to fight King Arthur, but other than a proclamation how he always wanted to fight the best warrior... nothing, despite his former praise of Arthur's character (and not just in combat prowess). As for Demona? Sure, she got to fight Elisa h2h again, round 2, but it was only for like a few seconds and didn't amount to much. Neither of the antagonists' scenes felt like they really justified why they were there in the first place other than being Greg Weisman's pawns. And in the end? They were yeeted out of the episode like they hardly mattered. No closure, no nothing.

King Arthur's appearance should have been a bigger deal. Instead, he just feels like a secondary player who swung a mace around a little bit and punched Macbeth's lights out. Should've just gotten Artoria Pendragon.

And finally, the Weird Witches. Oh boy. Sure, Greg has said that they were merely sprouting that "Every life is precious" stuff because they needed to manipulate Goliath and ensured the safety of Macbeth and Demona as their pawns (which was obvious even without Greg pointing it out), hence why they hypocritically endangered lives here in this episode (instead of just being out-of-character), but I'm not so sure, because the sisters seemed very sincere when they gave Macbeth and Demona the sermon on how their actions caused their own downfall. I can kinda buy Greg's explanation, but it also feels like a weak explanation. And even if Greg was right, there's not enough payoff to justify it. Xanatos' subversions of the villain tropes worked great because there was enough justification from the character himself, confirming that he didn't care about petty villain motives like revenge. For the sisters, I'll need to see some of that before it would feel satisfying.

There were good stuff that worked in this episode though, some. Katherine raising a rifle to defend the gargoyle eggs, absurd as it might have been for someone who never stepped out from Avalon for decades, was a pretty cool mama bear moment for her ("No one threatens my eggs!").

Goliath and the Archmage's fight was not too bad (save the monologuing) because it incorporated a few cool gimmicks, like teleporting in and out of the present time due to the effects of the Phoenix Gate, and the Archmage turning the lake into ice. The idea of the Grimorum relying on The Eye of Odin to have its power contained felt a little cheap though. There's a way to make it make sense, but there's not enough setup in the past regarding the usage of the Grimorum to make this revelation pay off well enough.

And finally, we have our honorable Magus. Poor Magus. He faced unrequited love from his lifelong partner, Katherine, and yet he stuck around like a faithful guardian because of his guilt towards Goliath's clan before sacrificing himself like a champ, rested on the same bed Arthur woke up from as Goliath thanked him for his service and Katherine cried over him. I teared up a little bit too.

Overall, more bad than good. Kinda disappointing, but not a total letdown.

This is another episode where the pacing and mood felt familiar to the comic book setting, though that might be me reading too much into Greg's comic book career by this point because a lot of "moody pieces" appeared in other episodic TV shows as well. That said, it does kick-start the World Tour arc, the arc that's supposedly one long setup that didn't get much payoff because of Greg's departure in season 3 - and that definitely felt like a comic book problem. Sometimes, Greg's comic book writing habits ended up with convoluted plot points that went nowhere, but other times, you get brilliant self-contained mood pieces like this.

It's a pretty haunting mood piece too, especially after the lackluster Avalon arc. Nothing too PG, even for this show's usual mature tone, but just creepy enough with Goliath's PTSD-induced visions and zombie-goyles to be effective.

Plus, we get yet another payoff for yet another bunch of old characters from the start of season 1: Hakon and the Captain of the Guard. I had to rewatch a couple of scenes to check whether the Captain's fate at the end here feels earned or not, and you know what? It does. Nothing in his dialogue here is extreme enough to contradict what he did at the end of the episode, so it works, and it's pretty satisfying.

Bonus points for letting Goliath have closure to the Wyvern Massacre. Not a bad start for the World Tour arc so far, but it's a deja vu moment because that's what I said today about the Avalon arc.

Western media seems to have an obsession with overcorrecting their ancestors' mistakes. The term for it is called "white guilt," and it can be seen in a lot of problematic portrayals of Native Americans such as this episode.

I'm not Native American, but I always appreciate it when a medium takes the plunge to explore a culture outside its comfort zone, be it from the western side or from the eastern side. But unfortunately, the writing is just not good enough to justify said exploration. The Grandmother is written like a typical wise non-western sage (at least Dr. Strange corrected that problem with Tilda Swinton's Ancient One, even if I'm annoyed they didn't just cast an Asian actor but strip away the stereotype and caricature), just sprouting platitudes without bothering to explain why Natsilane and their people had to fight Raven generation after generation, merely that it's tradition and strange mysticism... woooooo... spooky. And Raven is no better, a generic Loki type who quips and acts all smarmy instead of possessing the depth the real Raven from the Haida mythology (a trickster called the "Yáahl") might have possessed. This is the same kind of shallow reading the MCU did for Norse and Greek Mythology. Disrespectful and annoying. It's cultural appropriation dressed up as "progressive diversity," if I want to be cruel about it, but it's more likely just unintentionally tone-deaf.

But at least we get some small character development here. Like very small. Angela gets to show her smarts by figuring out Raven's plans. That's it.

An episode that's a little busy, but I blame Greg's comic book writing attitude, though I wouldn't even really call that a "problem." He likes to string together several plot-threads together in a convoluted way like you would with comic book issues, but on a television format, even a serialized one, that's a little harder to pull off as smoothly. I do think that the Mutates' storyline was a little underdeveloped as it might have been nice to see how Talon is actually helping the homeless vagrants (especially given how the Mutates would undoubtedly relate with the city's forgotten), but as it is, it gave both Brooklyn and Talon a nice theme to connect as fellow reluctant leaders struggling under the weight of their responsibility.

Hudson's subtle attempts at nudging Brooklyn along are particularly noteworthy, showing once again the veteran's wisdom that comes with his age, not to mention adaptability with his newfound attachment to Cagney (I'm a cat person, so this was adorable).

Xanatos is beginning to lose his touch though, the way his defense system easily fails. That's the problem when you set up a villain to be so brilliant; every little flaw in his schemes gets magnified and scrutinized. He's starting to feel less like a threat that plans ten steps ahead and more like a passive-aggressive smuglord that occasionally annoys.

Though I didn't really care much about the Mutantes' fates before this episode, I think it's a nice effort to check in on how they're doing, further expanding the lore as always. It's just unfortunate that, much like the "effort" to diversify the lore last episode, it feels half-arsed.

In this episode titled "Monster", we got to meet the real monster of Scotland: not the friendly Loch Ness Plesiosaur that went Free Willy on Angela the female gargoyle, but the Tim Curry-voiced mad scientist who kept creeping on Angela the female gargoyle with questionable age that he almost went Free Willy on her. Subtlety is not thy name, episode.

Seriously though, there's not much else to say here because the "main plot" of the episode feels like every animal-related plotline on kids television ever: evil men try to abduct animal, protagonist bonds with animal, protagonist rescues animal. The only difference here is the addition of mustache-twirling rapey energy Severus was channeling, touching Angela's hair and grabbing her chin while monologuing about having his own dungeon... Irk. You wouldn't see that from the poachers on The Wild Thornberrys.

We do have an important revelation about Angela's relation with Goliath though, but that should be pretty clear by now what it is. It is nice that it's thematically connected to the Loch Ness Monster's reunion with her family... but Greg had to ruin it all by commenting that he saw them more as mates instead of family. Granted, it does make sense on some level. Biologically speaking, the male species is usually larger than the female one as presented here in this episode. That said, when it's presented in this context, when the theme of family can be easily interpreted due to Angela's reunion with Goliath... yeah, it's an unfortunate implication, Greg's comments, piling onto the other creepy vibes of this episode.

Still, I have to give some credit. As far as cultural icons go on this World Tour arc, a Gargoyles episode featuring Nessie is pretty neat in terms of one mythical creature meeting another. It's just unfortunate that the World Tour seems to be an excuse to sum up each culture to its most shallow and surface level icon. What's next? Goliath and the gang visiting the Great Wall of China? Do they fight a ninja in Japan? Maybe head down to the South and meet Cowboy Tanaka? This is just getting to be Xena level of embarrassing in terms of cultural appropriation.

"M-m-m-m-monsters!
Monsters rule!

I was transported to a faraway land
Into the world where monsters rule
I played the game like an ace
Now we’re in this place
To save the monsters from the evil Moo

Monsters rule, Monsters rule
Monster Rancher, Monster Rancher

Pendent shows the mystery disk
We’ll take it to the shrine
We’ll redeem that fabled mystery disk
And release the Phoenix inside
I was transported to a faraway land
Into a world where monsters rule"
- my head watching this episode

Click to expand...

And our world tour of questionable cultural appropriation continues. Look, I appreciate both this show and Xena's attempts at highlighting non-American cultures that weren't commonly portrayed at the time, but if we've learned anything from Star Trek: The Original Series, it's that if you're gonna explore a culture, you better do it justice or risk either minstrelization or oversimplifying the culture, the latter of which is the case for the Jewish culture here and the pogroms that had occurred.

Max Loew came off like a generic Chosen One type instead of possessing any characteristics that reflects the culture and heritage he grew up in, merely "mystic dreams" that sounded like the kind of noble savage portrayals on Star Trek: TOS. And the golem felt less like a historical spiritual guardian of the culture and more like a mindless robot, ironically less sentient than the other iterations of the mythology in Monster Rancher and Pokemon (Digimon also had a golem, but it's more a walking curse of malice than an ancient guardian, so take that as you will).

The problem is that it felt a little too busy, because we also had Renard reappearing here with a crisis of mortality and using the golem for his own machinations, going against his code of honor. Instead of handling Renard's plot with the depth it needs though, he just gets talked down to like it's an after school special. So we neither have an engaging Renard plot nor an in-depth look at the Jewish heritage and its relationship with the golem, merely a culture hijacked for a middling character development.

I guess that's the best you could ask for from this cartoon so far, despite its amazing depth in the first season and the first-half of season two. At least the kids will get to learn about the golem as a guardian while seeing some random mob attack people in 1580 Prague without the context it needed.

Ah Paris, the city of love. It makes sense then you have the episode set in this city thematically linked with the concept of love. Get it? It's French, it's Gambit saying mon chéri (except it's Dominique saying it to Macbeth this time). Do you get it yet? Do you?

To be fair though, unlike the previous episodes of the World Tour, at least this time, it doesn't feel as culturally insensitive, but probably because the focus here is more on the character development rather than some misguided homogenous attempt to explore the diversity of other cultures (without actually exploring said diversity). Here, Macbeth and Demona's human alias, Dominique Destine, have decided to hook up in the city of love, but unfortunately for Macbeth, he once again gets the short end of the stick as surprise, surprise, Thailog is back, Goliath's evil clone.

Now that Xanatos has taken a backseat (possibly permanently) as the brilliant schemer that once drove the series' momentum, I suppose Thailog taking over that role is fine, seeing that he possesses the worst traits of his three fathers, Goliath, Xanatos and Sevarius. Not satisfied as being just a cunning strategist this time, he also turns up Sevarius' creep factor on Angela, whom he called a spunky young thing (ew). In a way, despite being repulsive, it also manages to paint him as a sinister threat worth taking seriously, especially when he lacks the pragmatism of Xanatos that kept Goliath and his clan from being destroyed during daylight.

What trips him up though, as shown in the fight with Goliath this episode, is his ego. Whereas Xanatos is brilliant enough to see past his own hubris to plan ahead, Thailog is too busy savoring the lust that stems from his sadism and greed, just smugly outplaying everyone and perching himself atop a pedestal of pride, even naming himself "Alexander" this episode (as in "The Great") despite the fate of the historical figure.

I like how it all plays into the themes of love this episode though, particularly the more tragic elements of it. Thailog is obviously an abuser, but Demona attached herself to him possibly out of blind love as Goliath observed, so obsessed with her quest for vengeance that she's willing to be blindly used by someone like Thailog.

Similarly, Angela has her own form of love that affected her judgment, namely her parental love for Goliath and her struggles to figure out what Demona means to her. Goliath is not happy with this development, however. As it was said in previous episodes, gargoyle culture in this world has no recognition of parent and child, merely clanhood. That culture isn't explored nearly enough to justify Goliath's annoyance though, at least at this point in the series, so I hope that will be corrected in the future. Besides, I think Goliath's irritation stems more from the fact that to recognize Angela as his daughter would mean to recognize Demona as her mother, his mate that spawned their child together, the woman that betrayed him and the clan.

The most tragic element of the love shown here is probably Macbeth, but at the very least, as Goliath told him, he has the advantage of seeing clearly now instead of being blindly led on like Demona did. He might share the same spiritual bond with Demona, but she clearly does not share his enlightenment.

It's not all doom and gloom, however, as the episode also spends a little time playing on Elisa's romance with Goliath, with the latter hinting at her being his true love. It's perhaps appropriate that even in an episode full of angst, love itself provides a sanctuary against the darkness in the city of love.

Side note: I know that Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame" was only released a year after this episode's airing, but man, such a missed opportunity for a crossover. That movie was amazing and underrated, its musical numbers having the same larger than life Shakespearean grandiosity that Gargoyles possesses ("Frollo felt a twinge of fear... for his immortal souuul!"). Ah well. Probably better off.