Week 109: Divide and Conquer, Make Way for... Medusa

Divide and Conquer: I'm glad that the show finally acknowledged one of the logical problems from the comics, that one burp from Black Bolt could blast a hole in the side of Attilan's outer wall and kill everyone inside. A lunar terrarium is probably a terrible place for a bunch of super-powered people to live; how many beings like Mordis have to be imprisoned in power-suppressing cells in order for the city to exist? This further damns a society that already enslaves anyone who doesn't get "pretty" powers, and makes me continue to wonder why in the hell the show thinks we'd ever root for the "good guys" here. So an intervention by Black Bolt's royal parents is the only reason why he's not imprisoned like anyone else with city-destroying powers? Not only does he fight for injustice, but he evaded it himself via nepotism? Cool cool cool.

I pick on the logic, but to be honest, the memory sequences are the only parts of the series that are remotely working for me. They're just as dumb as everything else in this show, but somehow their dreamlike quality has a way of making me not mind the details. I'm able to connect better with the emotional beats that the writers intended. I genuinely felt sorry for teenage Maximus despite his character defects. It's too bad that the rest of the series would have been unproducible this way.

Maximus goes to Crystal's apartment with another request for her help, not once offering her anything in return. If I was Crystal, I'd agree to make as public of an endorsement as possible, and use it to announce to the assembled crowd that Maximus usurped the throne and imprisoned me and is actively trying to assassinate the surviving royals; I'd probably be killed but that's almost certainly my fate under his rule anyway. Kelly laughed at the moment when Crystal agrees to help Maximus but then threatens to kill him if he doesn't keep his word: "Lady, you can kill him right now while you're alone together." During the throne room scene, I couldn't stop wondering if Phil Coulson had carved those etchings on the throne.

Kelly and I were talking about Triton, whose death kicked off this whole idiotic plot. I was trying to refer to him as the green-skinned guy from Dragon Ball Z, except I couldn't remember that guy's name and called him Pickle Joe. That's why in our house, Triton is now known as Pickle Joe.

What is with the depowering? Having superhuman abilities is the most essential element in the power fantasy at the heart of superhero entertainment, but this show goes out of its way to strip most of its characters of their powers: Black Bolt is among civilians who he cannot harm, Medusa's prehensile hair was shaved off, Karnak is on concussion protocol and his powers aren't working, Pickle Joe was apparently killed (this is comic-book stuff so who knows), Lockjaw has been sedated by the villains, Maximus's comic-book powers were removed in the adaptation to TV, et cetera. I assume that it's a combination of needing to focus on the human-scale drama as we get to know these characters and the budgetary limitations of television (even on a show that's clearly very expensive), but it makes the show feel weirdly off-kilter. It can only come up with excuses to hide the goods for so long.

To survive long-term, Maximus's coup depends above all else on the death of Black Bolt, so it's strange that the team of assassins sent to kill the royal family is not targeting Black Bolt first, especially given that he's the top news story on Oahu and finding him has to be very easy. But sure, let's take a gamble on assassinating the lowly head of security (our former boss?) who refuses to leave the area where he turned on his com-link and is thus not going anywhere. Sure.

So the peaceful surfer dudes are now bad-ass former soldiers who did tours in Afghanistan. And they dust off their cache of machine guns to risk their lives helping some hooved guy they just met find his moon-king. Riiight. Were the screenplays for this show written in crayon? (2/10)

Make Way for… Medusa: This is not just the first MCU series about aliens. It might also be the first MCU series written by aliens. Not one human character behaves in a recognizably human manner. They all cynically turn on a time to become something other than what they seem in order to further a stupid plot. Let's see, there's the surfers who are commandos, the pot farmer who's a murderer, the geneticist who's a lackey for Maximus, the farmhand and veterinarian who take care of animals together but bicker as old flames, and the lunar scientist who risks career and liberty to give an Inhuman a ride. (That last character is a two-fer, since she is also an intelligent, diligent scientist who becomes a nervous, tongue-tied fangirl as soon as she meets an alien, even one who is very rude and boring.) A friend called this a "Marvel soap opera" but that feels like an insult to soap operas; at least they know what they are and they deliver exactly what they intend. This one doesn't seem to have any grasp on what it wants to be or do.

Take the Inhumans themselves (please): In this episode, Medusa and Crystal start acting like huge assholes for little apparent reason. Sure, I guess their royal life of luxury, insulation from human civilization, and state-sanctioned orphaning is supposed to have made them this way, but I don't recall either of them acting anything like this in earlier episodes. We're supposed to like these people as protagonists, right? It's not bad enough that they rule over a slave-based society and are actively working to preserve it, nor bad enough that they callously disregard human life (Medusa shooting at cops) or human property (Medusa robbing that house); they must also treat the strangers trying to help them like dirt. At this point, I hate the main characters of this series, and I want them all to fail miserably and be killed by Maximus's goon squad. I am not joking; I am literally rooting for Maximus to end this series as king with the rest of the royal family dead. And we're only four episodes in. This series has been a near-complete shitshow from the opening minute onward. #Justice4PickleJoe

Other dumb shit: Jen's tent is practically see-through and not made for lovin'. Reno digging Ted's grave mere feet from Jen's tent without being heard or seen is nonsense. I don't even know what to make of Reno committing murder except to assume that it was a desperate cry for help from a character trapped in this terrible TV series. Desmond Hume Evan Declan turning out to be evil is not exactly a shocking revelation that no one could have predicted; it would be like him revealing (brace yourself) that he's right-handed! I do not understand why Maximus needed the Genetic Council's permission to re-Terrigenesis himself except to give him a few minutes of airtime this episode. Gorgon's scenes barely registered at all; Lucky's corpse had an equal amount of dramatic energy to anyone else in those scenes. The one and only good thing that I can praise about this episode is the hotel-ledge stunt where Medusa drops to the ground from the third story, which is cool but lasts only a single second. The rest of this hour is garbage. (1/10)