1. Adjustment issues
Y’know, for such a genius, Xanatos is a pretty socially inept guy. He knows a good lie needs a bit of the truth, but his decision to let the Gargoyles roam free, causing chaos in his kitchens, get spotted by Elisa, and not having her escorted out of the building following her investigation into the battle at his skyscraper is peculiar. (Then again, look at Elon Musk.) He’s clearly too business minded to believe Elisa would leave or to realize the younger Gargoyles need a minder.
Anyway, the clan spend much of Part 3 and 4 getting to know the modern world and Manhattan, to mixed results. Brooklyn, Broadway and Lexington’s slapstick antics are too broad (no pun intended) for me as an adult, and push my suspension of disbelief quite a bit given how often they break Goliath’s rule to not show themselves to civilians. More successful is how they pick up up on modern slang, often to Goliath’s confusion: I often laughed out loud whenever he asked the young clan members to clarify words like “cool,” “dude,” and when Elisa mentions the New York Giants (“Giants?!”).
Similarly, Hudson and Bronx’s forlorn attempts to adjust to the present are very endearing, particularly the hilarious and adorable moment where they both get startled and flee after turning on the TV during a hair metal performance.
2. The Two Women in Goliath’s Life
These three episodes fully introduce Elisa, and reintroduce Demona, whom Goliath believed was dead this whole time. Elisa and Goliath are so much like the title characters of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, from her snooping where she shouldn’t, to his size, build and jawline (small wonder Xanatos models all the Steel Clan Gargoyles on him).
More importantly, we’re not just told Elisa is brave, smart and selfless, Part 4 spends a significant amount of time demonstrating that with her own dedicated action sequence, where she outwits Xanatos’s mercenaries all by herself during the daytime (when Goliath has turned to stone and is utterly helpeless). She also gets a few genuinely funny lines, when she describes her petrified protector as a “lawn sculpture,” and calls the toyetic looking mercs “comic book rejects.”
Demona meanwhile, is reestablished as Goliath’s love interest through telling (not showing) how she survived all these centuries. That alone should warn us Demona and Xanatos are being dishonest, and the episodes continue to demonstrate how distant they’ve actually become, with her having become bitter and callous about the lives of humans. In the end, Goliath has to choose between his tragic, fallen old love interest, and his new one, and he makes the only choice he can, because it demonstrates how, unlike her, he can move on from his distrust of humanity.
I haven’t much to say yet about the show’s racial subtext (it’s too early for me to declare for instance, that the show is actually about the immigrant experience), but it is noticeable that Demona is voiced by the English Marina Sirtis, while Elisa, a Latina woman, is voiced by Salli Richardson (who is of African American, Native American, Italian and English descent). Read into that what you will.
3. One-off characters
Speaking of the cast, as an adult it’s pretty obvious which are of the main performers are playing one-off characters. During the scene where Goliath and Elisa stop a car robbery, it’s so obviously Keith David is putting on a more nasal voice as one of the thugs, while Sirtis is putting on a faux Noo York accent as the car’s passenger. It somehow bothers me, even though Jeff Bennett is already voicing his fair share of characters on this show. Perhaps this was considered a single episode and so they simply couldn’t afford more voices?
Continued below4. Literacy
I love how literate this show is, from dialogue references to Dracula and the Bible, to the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, it shows kids that the stuff they’re encouraged/forced to read have a relevance beyond school, that they provide a reference point for our lives (even though we sadly live in a world where Gargoyles are just statues).
Eliza’s aforementioned description of the mercs is also a great acknowledgement of how much this show owes to comic books and adaptations like Batman: The Animated Series. The heist in Parts 4 and 5 in particular takes us to locales strongly reminiscent of the Helicarrier and Triskelion (though this was years before the latter debuted in the comics).
5. Xanatos Gambit #2
I find Xanatos and Demona’s decision to replace the other Gargoyles with the Steel Clan rather random and poorly foreshadowed. Fortunately there’s enough drama in Part 5 to overcome the hollow action padding the Steel Clan provide in the episode, but the Steel Clan’s presence is easily the weakest part of this entire five-parter. I also have to wonder what reason did Elisa give to her colleagues to get Xanatos arrested? Insurance scam?
Bonus thoughts:
– I’m surprised that the Gargoyles, who place so little importance on names, are literate enough to read and adopt place names in Manhattan.
– Gargoyles can’t fly, only glide (which is smart, given how small their wings are). We’ll see how much the show stays bound to this rule.
– The scratch transition marks in Part 4 are very unusual – I don’t recall them being used in any other episode.
– The Gargoyles should’ve expressed confusion that floppy disks are actually squares. Perhaps the technology was too familiar to the writers at the time for them to consider the gag?
Join us next week as we look at “The Thrill of the Hunt,” and possible more episodes (depending on how much I get out of them).
