As Shazam has settled into a rhythm, a few things have become clear, but some giant questions remain: how do Mentor and Billy afford this lifestyle? Why aren’t the police called on them for loitering or trespassing every place they roll up? We’ll examine these, and more, in our discussion of these five episodes.
The first of the batch, “The Treasure,” sees a couple of young looters digging up Native American artifacts in the desert and selling them for profit. This, obviously, bothers the Native Americans who live there, and they attempt to stop these folks.
Well, unless stopping them means going to the police, as Danny, the younger of the two, refuses to do.
This sets up a theme that we see happen about 1/3 of the time with this series, thus far, which is that there are very simple solutions to problems, usually involving calling the proper authorities, that aren’t taken. Both this episode and the next, “The Boy Who Said No,” would just require people seeing crimes perpetrated to call the police, and they’d both have been over pretty quickly.
That said, this episode had a more organic than normal reason for Billy and Mentor to get involved, with Adam, one of the Native Americans, flagging down their camper for help. “The Boy Who Said No” also was more natural, as Mentor being beaten up/robbed set the story in motion. What was weird about “The Boy Who Said No” is that, even though Mentor is the one who got the shit kicked out of him, Billy is the only one who seems interested in pursuing this thread. Mentor keeps wanting to eat lunch which is both relatable and silly. They bought sandwich supplies for lunch. Take 2 minutes and make a sandwich for the road. You live in an RV, and you’ve never eaten while driving? Who are you, man?
Both of these episodes represent either a bump in budget, or a line producer making friends with someone at a local airport, as both have insane aero-vehicular sequences. The two metal-detecting goons from “The Treasure,” who look to be about 19 at best, have an airplane (!) that they are ‘airlifting’ the artifacts out with. How did these two bros in their late teens get an airplane? And what sort of janky airport is it that they’re taking off from, that they can just pop in the cockpit and go?
In “The Boy Who Said No,” there just happens to be a helicopter on the property of the boy who witnessed the robbery, and the crook makes the kid’s dad – without a weapon to threaten him with – take him in the helicopter to go off to God knows where. This leads to Captain Marvel hanging on the landing gear of the helicopter far longer than you’d expect he should.
It is tricky to determine which is the most absurd of these three episodes, but “The Doom Buggy” definitely has both the best title and the most nagging premise. Through, again, a relatively naturalistic meeting, Billy and Mentor encounter a kid who’s a hot shit mechanic, and wants to drop out of high school to be a mechanic full time. While everyone makes good points for why he should stick in school, he’s not into it. While I get why his girlfriend/sister/relation of undetermined origin is on his case about it, Billy is a real pill about the kid’s desire to drop out. Again, a high school/liberal arts education is a protection against a lot of things, but you just met this kid, and are taking life and death situations and turning them into object lessons for a well rounded learning experience. Cut the kid some slack, Billy.
This episode also reveals the umpteenth car in this series to not have a roof, whether a convertible, a jeep, a dune buggy, or some hybrid of two or more.
“The Brain” begins like, I’d imagine, most days for Billy and Mentor, with them parked on a beach, creepily watching some high school kids play football. This leads to an encounter with Jim Carter, not the 39th President of the United States, but a dweeb nicknamed ‘The Brain’ who tries to make friends by dressing up like some sort of Seventh Seal meets London After Midnight creature and scaring one of the girls. Billy and Mentor find out this weirdo is really into, get this, books!, and eventually gets him to befriend these pigskin tossing locals instead of haunting their dreams.
They want Jim/Brain to be ‘initiated’ into their…lives?…and Billy and Mentor know that this is a bad idea, as no initiation, whether into the Masons of a gang, ever is worthwhile. Mentor instead offers to pay for everyone to have a ‘picnic supper on the beach.’ All we see, in the right of the frame, is a jar of pickles, but I presume that mentor bought a deli spread or some hamburgers to grill on the hibatchi. This begs the question, where the hell do these two wandering dogoodnicks get their money from? At the end of most of these encounters, does Mentor make the [rubs fingers together in the international symbol for give me money] gesture, or does Billy have a pre-written speech, like a local missionary, about how they get by from the support and generosity of others? If so, why are they wasting their limited bread on a picnic dinner for a bunch of burnouts?
The final episode, “Little Boy Lost,” is the least memorable of the bunch, even if it involves the biggest stunt in the series thus far (a house falling on a mineshaft’s opening), a premise that sounds even more insane than it reads on screen (a little boy, temporarily mute, steals a puppy and almost drowns before his dad falls into a mineshaft and a house falls on top of it), and maybe the saddest situation yet (the boy is temporarily mute from guilt over a friend’s injury). Maybe it is watching five of these in one sitting, or maybe I just need more from my Shazam stories than actual people in need.
