This must be the age of villains as we just had not one but two great TV shows focused on some truly evil folks. While very different in tone and look, both deal with the nature of power and what you have to give up to get it. It just be the season of the witch because we are talking about Agatha All Along and it must be winter because, The Penguin? I don’t this cold open got away from me. Just roll the intro.
Before we get into what these shows have to say in tandem, let’s look at them individually first, starting with Agatha. I admit I was skeptical of this show at first. It’s an odd case of being a spin off of a spin off and those rarely work out. I was afraid it would be WandaVision (which I liked by the way) season two without the main characters. That assumption wasn’t entirely off base. In the first episode we are reminded of the framing device that I liked so much in WandaVision, trapping Agatha in a police procedural. But the show quickly takes a turn into it’s own territory onto a path of being completely it’s own thing. Although, I still don’t think I could recommend this to someone who hasn’t seen WandaVision first. Much like the rest of the MCU, this interconnectedness is both its biggest flaw and greatest strength. It’s the price you pay for continuity story telling I guess.
That one small gripe aside, if you could even call it that, I loved this show. To start with the obvious, the cast was stacked and everyone, including folks I was unfamiliar with beforehand, brought their A game. It seems to me it’d be easy enough to just get that Marvel check and phone it in if you’re a big name like Aubrey Plaza, Kathrine Hahn, Patti LaPone, etc. But no one, as far as I could tell, did. They all seemed like they into it and having a ball.
As for the show itself, it was so well thought out and precisely written. The twist and reveals were so well sprinkled throughout the show and wrapped everything up so satisfactorily, I was honestly shocked by how expertly all is revealed. From Audrey Plaza being Death to the witches road being a construct of Wiccans mind, it was beautifully executed. This is something I harped on in the last episode of Pitch Please on this channel (which you should go watch) but this is why you need to know your ending when you start. You can tell these creatives knew where they were gonna end up and worked backwards from there to sprinkle in just the right amount of foreshadowing and connections to tease their way to a satisfying prestige, if you will. The divination episode I found to be especially great as it wove its way though the rest of the previous episodes bringing context to something that at first glance seemed only to be a bit about the weird fortune telling witch. You know I liked that an episode because I normally hate tarot and all that other mystic shit.
This show is also gay as hell and I love it for that. Not to poke the toxic fanbase or anything but, as a straight white cis dude, I’m so bored of seeing shows about people just like me. Representation matters and not just because it’s good for folks to see themselves onscreen and not just because it’s good for little folks who look like me to see folks different from them on screen and realize they aren’t so different, therein building empathy for others, but also because, rather selfishly, I’m tired of only seeing my perspective on stories. I know what it’s like to be me. I wanna see new angles on the world, both real and fictional. I don’t recall there being a straight white dude in the whole show and honestly, it’s refreshing.
I think my only nitpick with the show is again not really with the show but with the MCU as a whole and that’s that I like these characters but who knows when we will see them again. It seems reasonable to assume that Marvel is racing towards a Young Avengers, which has probably only accelerated since the Jonathan Majors debacle, but who knows how many years away that is. The MCU just has too many loose ends and cool characters floating around, waiting to be brought back. Because of the break neck pace of the last few years, Marvel has signaled they are gonna slow down and put out less stuff, which just means long times between seeing these characters. I’m very much in favor of Marvels slowing down though. We only had two Marvel related things this year (What If Season 3 is coming soon as well) and both of them are great. Focusing on quality of quantity wins the day again but it seems for 2025 Marvel is ignoring that signal and barreling through with five shows and three movies. I’m excited for them but I do worry. If they have another rough streak as they had recently, t might be the death of the MCU. So cross your stretchy fingers Fantastic Four pans out true believers.
Moving from the happy go lucky world of Marvel over to Gotham, let’s talk about this amazing first season of The Penguin. I loved The Batman for nailing the gritty realist take on a character that so many other superhero films fall short of and had high expectations for anything based on it that this show consistently met and exceeded. Much like Agatha, every actors and every department absolutely crushed it. This show truly is a high bar for genre television. Every episode flew by, with no filler, that it really could have been an eight hour movie and. Would have been fully invested. But I’m also one of those sick freaks that likes 8+ hour movies.
The star of the show is obviously Colin Ferral as Oz Cobb, which I personally think is a dumb name and not really a change that was needed but whatever, who, under heavy makeup, gives a stunning performance. The whole of the show is set up to portray Penquin as a sympathetic villain only to subvert that in the end by showing his true colors as someone who is truly evil. In fact, that perception of him as an everyman underdog is just another tool he uses to obtain the power he is so desperate for. His speech to the other gang leaders sounds so much like a spiel I’d give to get people to unionize it’s frightening. The way the character uses the truth to weasel his way to power should be studied by organizers so they can keep watch for those that use all the right language but are not actually interested in revolution but just their own personal power. If we can’t recognize people like that, we might just find ourselves and any movements we are apart of in Vics shoes. Unceremoniously smothered once these so called leaders have what they want.
Speaking of Vic, what a performance of such a tragic story. Here’s a kid that just wanted a life a little better than he had and Gotham just kicked him down at every turn. Then, just when he thinks he’s found his ticket to everything he wants and he’s traded any morals he had to hitch himself to that horse, he’s dumped like trash, dead in the park. He acts as such a great audience surrogate because he is not interested in power for power sake. He just wants the forgotten people of the city to get theirs and for that, he has to die because the people can never get the power they deserve. If they did, there’d be none left for the Penguins of the world. And I’m sure I’ve said something similar about other shows but, when the girl you’re into and is obviously into you, says to come with her to Cali, you get your ass to Cali. Will Hunting didn’t end up face down in the dirt, did he Vic?
I think the only real qualm I have with the show is something that has been floating around the internet, the absence of Batman. It didn’t really cross my mind for most of the show, which shows you how engaging it is, until the bomb went off in the underground drug lab. Then I thought, Batman might have noticed that. But then again, as we saw in the preceding film, he’s new at this. Maybe he’s just too busy chasing down small time bliss peddlers to find his way to the big fish in time. After all, he doesn’t yet know the city as well as the gangs if, like in the comics, he left to train for his formative years. So it wasn’t so far fetched that he was no where to be found. It was really strange not to have some interaction with Gordon though. At least a press conference or something. But this is a very small gripe and I better cut myself off here because I could praise this show for hours.
I used a word a lot so far in this review and that is because both of these shows ultimately revolve around it, power. Both shows are about villains obsessed with obtaining power at all cost. And no matter how much power they have, it’s not enough as long as someone has more. In Agatha, we she how power affects women. All the witches realize men have to power in society and look for ways to get some back. But as they do, they are punished and cast out from society to maintain patriarchal order. The only one of their coven that starts with power, subconsciously punishes them for obtaining their power, and ends the journey with any power is a man. A gay man, but a man none the less. Some women hope to obtain power to help uplift and protect other women but there are those like Agatha who, although they recognize the power imbalance, still only seek power to hold others like her down. She hopes to become part of the system and not to abolish it.
In the end, Agatha doesn’t get what she wants and finds a slight hope of redemption. Oz on the other hand gets what he wants and loses everything worthwhile. He is so blinded by his psychotic pursuit of power that any humanity he has must be killed or locked away. Sofia, on the other hand, is born into that power and thinks she’s above it, that i’s unimportant, until it’s turned on her. Then she realizes just how devastating it can be and even just by association can stain your soul and tarnish your humanity. Even then, she is addicted and tries to use what’s left of her power to escape and get some revenge as she climbs out of the cesspool and back on top. But that stink never comes out. The problem isn’t these people, but instead the systems of power (both in these fictional worlds and our real world) that are inherently based on exploitation. Can power be used for good? Yes, obviously. But only when wielded properly and horizontally. Otherwise it is a corrupting force that harms those exploited by it and those wielding it.
Anyway, I should probably wrap this thing up. What did you think of these shows? Excited for more? Comments, questions, concerns, critiques, death threats, they all go down below in the comments. Subscribe and all that jazz and, as always, death to the algorithm.
No comments:
Post a Comment