Yo-ho, Yo-ho, a Skiff Pilot’s Life for Me!
Hey, crew, after The Price, we’ll have sailed through 33 episodes of Gargoyles! That’s impressive. I’d like to thank everybody who’s read, and a double thanks to commenters. It’s been a wild ride!
Here’s the deal: We’re slam-bang in the middle of the series. The next story arc is the Avalon World Tour saga. Basically, Goliath, Elisa, Bronx, and a new character, a female gargoyle named Angela, take a magical skiff from the magical fey island Avalon on a magical tour of the world. Avalon transports them to various places around the globe to deal with certain problems. We meet new antagonists, learn more about the secrets of the Gargoyle-verse, and move the plot of the whole series forward.
That’s the good. Here’s the meh:
It’s an interesting concept, but it goes on for 22 episodes, which is frankly 12 episodes too long for me.
There’s hardly any of this:
And even less of this:
There is a bit of this, though:
We see a few other familiar antagonistic faces too, but largely these are one-shots. Episodic isn’t something we normally see in Gargoyles, but this chunk of the series leans and often falls on its face into Stand-Alone Land. There are some good plots, but there are a number that make my head hurt. Those “huh?” episodes lack our fave villains who give us that warm, fuzzy, I-think-I-may-be-allergic-to-this feeling that makes us overlook the plot holes.
Bottom Line
In general, my thoughts about this chunk of eps until we get to #56 – excluding a few excellent eps – are summed up by Grumpy Cat:
Audience Participation
So, how excited are you about this World Tour? As I’m decidedly not excited, I’m strongly considering dropping to one post a week, with about 2500 words. This will return to two posts a week for the eps that I like. …Yes, mainly the ones involving Demona or House Xanatos.
What are your thoughts? Namely, what episodes do you really enjoy? I’ll do two posts for those. Any other random comments, concerns, etc?
Ulterior Motives
Cutting down on posts will also give me more time to work on my of thriller/post-apocalyptic/action-adventure/horror/zombie novel series, Wolves of the Apocalypse. FYI, the main characters bear a passing resemblance to my favorite guys from Gargoyles: Xanatos and Owen. You Resident Evil fans will enjoy it too, as there’s dash of Wesker and a ton of BOW-fighting action.
Well, I enjoy the Tour, but… the episodes that warrant two posts a week. Let’s see.
I think the Avalon three-parter itself, does. I’ll list the rest.
Shadows of the Past
Sanctuary (this one is a given)
Grief (more of the Pack and the Emir is an interesting one-shot villain).
The Hound of Ulster (Banshee/Molly is fun)
Pendragon (Macbeth’s final appearance before the comics)
The Green (I enjoy Jackal and Hyena. Plus Vogel’s role is interesting)
Cloud Fathers (I probably shouldn’t have bothered to list it. ;))
Ill Met By Moonlight (Oberon and Titania on stage at last)
Future Tense
Those are some of the best eps of the Tour. Basically they’re the eps with our old favorites or with ground-breaking new characters, like Arthur. And of course the Children of Oberon are always fun! I’m going to do two on Kingdom, because the Mutates are interesting, and it has Xanatos and Owen in it. Walkabout will be another, because Fox and Anastasia – and Dingo. Monsters I like because of Sevarius.
So that doesn’t leave many 1-post eps, but we’ll see.
Thanks for the picks, btw!
At first I was like “The Avalon series? That drags on forever!” And I’m not wrong. But then I went to look at the list for episodes to recommend and kept saying “But I like that one. Ooh, and that one’s good too!” Turns out there’s only about 5-6 episodes that I’m lukewarm on.
My two cents on eps that warrant two posts a week:
Avalon 1-3 (seeing the payoff of the Wierd Sisters/MacbethDemona arc)
Shadows of the Past (Back to the place where everything started)
Monsters (not my favorite, but we do see Sevarius)
Sanctuary (what happened to Demona, Macbeth, and Thailog)
Walkabout (checking in with Fox and Dingo)
Pendragon(King Arthur! Macbeth!)
Eye of the Storm(This is one of my favorites. Seeing protagonists turn to a villainous version of themselves is always fun)
Cloud Fathers(Pretty much what GReg posted above :P)
Ill met by Moonlight(Finally meeting Oberon and Titania)
Future Tense(Puck! And setting us up for The Gathering)
Basically the eps that deal with the villains we already know. Maybe also Kingdom, as that deals with what’s going on back in NYC
That said, I also love The Hound of Ulster, The New Olympians, and Sentinel. I wish the show had gone on longer so that we could have seen what the last two eps might have expanded into.
You have me excited about your book, btw.
It does indeed go on and on and on!
Hah, it’s interesting how we all chose pretty much the same eps. Does three people liking them make them fan favorites? We’ll say it does.
The New Olympians and Sentinel were not my favorites. They opened cans of worms. Rant: I know Greg W wanted to go on and have a series 200 years in the future, and the aliens would play a major role in it. I’m not on board with that. I and probably most people do not appreciate a series changing genres on us. Gargoyles is about science, yes, but it’s heavily into magic. I don’t like the idea of mixing aliens and magic. Plus, I just don’t like aliens in most series (clicheeeee). They’re fine in SG1, or ST, or SW, but those series are different.
Long story short, don’t hold your breath on getting two posts for those eps. 😉
Thanks for the feedback!
Also, thanks for the excitement! I’ll do an announcement, but the release will be probably around the end of June, I hope. If you like TWD and the antags from Gargoyles, you’ll enjoy it.
I won’t hold my breath. Just as long as I still get my weekly fix of your recaps and get to laugh at your captions. 😜