Today’s edition of our Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles retrospective looks at “A Bronx Tail” (aired October 5, 1996), and “The Dying of the Light” (October 26, 1996), which respectively star Bronx and Hudson.
1. Meh
“A Bronx Tail” sees the dog-like gargoyle accidentally stowing away on a freight train to Pennsylvania, where he befriends an Amish boy. Some wannabe Quarrymen come a-knockin’, and so they flee back to New York: during the pursuit, Goliath, Xanatos and Elisa appear in a helicopter, and retrieve Bronx. It’s not a bad episode, just a thoroughly bog-standard remnant of the post-Witness fascination with the Amish that could’ve easily been an episode in any other cartoon. The denouement, where Matthew, the boy, tells a reporter he was initially frightened of Bronx until he got to know him, is an apt encapsulation of the story and its sweet but predictable message.
2. Lex Could’ve Drowned
Bronx gets spirited away to Amish Country because the Sun rises and Lex – his caretaker – falls into a river while trying to get him. When Lex resumes being flesh-and-blood at night, water would’ve entered his lungs when his stone shell shattered, killing him. It’s reflective of how contrived the set-up is: why does Bronx apparently love hanging around the freight depot so much huh? He’s a dog-gargoyle-thing, he’d probably enjoy digging for bones at Central Park instead.
3. Some of These Character Models Are Just Ugly
I know season 3’s crew probably wanted to make the wannabe Quarrymen ugly and intimidating, but seriously, they look like caricatures who belong on another show. Compare these guys to the previous thugs and criminals in the series:
Is this Attack on Titan? Yeesh.
4. Much Better
As befits its Dylan Thomas-inspired title, “Dying of the Light” is a much better episode, where Hudson leaves the Eyrie after he starts developing glaucoma in his one good eye. However, his friend Jeffrey Robbins (the blind author from “A Lighthouse in the Sea of Time“) brings him to the hospital, where Hudson successfully undergoes surgery to fix his eye. The Quarrymen find out, and Hudson’s eye is still healing – fortunately, the duo work with the staff to subdue the terrorists with some booby traps. Overall, Ed Asner and Paul Winfield are an engaging lead pair, and there’s a lot of great messages about not being afraid to ask for help, or that you can still be helpful if you’re disabled (even momentarily).
There’s a great moment demonstrating both of these when Jeffrey reveals he sussed out Hudson was a gargoyle long ago, pointing out the late night visits, and the smell of “old leather and concrete.” That description, from screenwriter Julia Lewald, is so good, to the extent Greg Weisman wound up using it in the comics, which sums up how much this was one of The Goliath Chronicles‘ better half-hours.
Except the part when Hudson makes a “more than meets the eye” pun while filling in Goliath and Angela about what happened. Gah!
5. You Are Not Alone
Speaking of great messages, “Dying” introduces the People for Interspecies Tolerance (or PIT crew), who are trying to promote peace between humans and gargoyles. Naturally that leads to the Quarrymen attacking, but still, it’s a reminder that as much attention as bigoted loudmouths get, there’ll always be people who oppose and speak out against narrow-minded imbeciles.
Bonus thoughts:
– It’s weird how Elisa tells the Quarryman she arrested that at least there’ll be one less of them to worry about, when Hudson and friends nabbed so many.
– The episode’s storyboarding is generally solid, but the animation’s perspective is often off, and the frame rate is choppy.
See you next week folks, when we reach the season’s midway point with some Goliath-centric stories.
