We’re back with a second week of Shazam weirdness! This time around, we get a two-parter, as well as an even bigger invasion of privacy than before! Say the magic word, and we’ll begin.
Go ahead, I’m waiting.
As weird as this show is, I’ve sort of figured out the best way to describe it is an extended after school special. Unlike its contemporary Wonder Woman, which attempted to get grown ups to watch, this is clearly aimed at kids first and foremost. That’s how they can pull out a baggie of white powder and identify it simply as ‘drugs,’ or set up a situation where a drug dealer has a space in an office park on the outskirts of town where he handles his business from.
When viewed through this lens, some of the odder decisions make more sense, but I have two young kids and have seen enough kids shows to know that not all of them play so fast and loose with logic. For instance, how many times can you recall two kids being involved in the theft of a police car who were able to go back to their normal lives, without being questioned or even suspected of it? That’s what happens here, when the world’s sleaziest drug dealer, seen in the featured image, sneaks up from the side of a mountain and steals a police car with two of his young accomplices in the back seat.
The show also has a very flawed view of how cars/brakes work, unless cars in the 1970s were basically always losing their brakes and, not having been born yet, I was just totally unaware of it? But in these three episodes, we see a car drive off a road, another not able to slow down (twice), and a narrowly averted accident involving a bike and a tractor. I know that a runaway car is a fun idea in concept, but the series is really leaning into it, and since all the episodes so far take place in the mountains, it adds an extra layer of peril, even when it’s not really needed.
So in the first pair of episodes, we see two young kids who get caught up in a drug dealing scam, one of which is very doubtful/remorseful about his situation, and the other just a right shithead who’s fine with it. This leads Billy and Mentor to attempt to get Gary, the righteous kid, to pull off the world’s most ill advised sting operation in order to ‘get evidence’ to convict Brock, the dealer. This ignores the fact that he stole a cop car which, I would think, is likely a bigger deal than having some booger sugar in 1974.
Much like my other current TV gig, Adventures of Superman, Shazam uses Captain Marvel as a last resort. I’m pretty sure if Cap dropped Brock off at the police station and said “This dude is using kids to sell drugs,” he’d never see the light of day. But no, Captain Marvel can only be summoned to grab onto a car’s bumper when its brakes fail, or to trap Brock inside a car by putting boulders on either side of it.
Cap actually shows up quite early in the third episode, “The Athlete,” in order to save Kellie from being thrown off a wild horse. This is the second time a young girl on a horse has been the recipient of Billy and Mentor’s help, and both times they got more involved than they probably should have. This episode sees Kellie trying out for the boys track team at school and meeting resistance from a couple of guys on the team, one of which has such a hard on for the idea of a girl on the track team that he not only runs her off the track, scares her horse so he bucks her off, but also plants test answers in her locker.
Mentor and Billy are pretty progressive for 1974, all but arguing for Title IX in this episode, but everyone else they meet is dead-set on Kellie being more ladylike and not running track. This is absolutely bizarre, as I would never think of track and field as an overtly macho sport. It’s not like she’s trying to be the quarterback of the football team, which seems like it may cause more strife, but even then, shut the fuck up. It’s high school sports, and the best athlete should always make the team.
Billy and Mentor basically stop doing whatever they are on Billy’s ‘vacation’ from ‘the network’ to be full time cheerleaders for Kellie, including shouting her name as the show does a weirdly gratuitous slow-mo of Kellie running in a white tank top for what feels like 3 hours. Captain Marvel in this episode is used more as messenger and traffic cop than for any of his powers, which hopefully isn’t a trend that continues.
