This week’s Gargoyles retrospective looks at “Protection” (which aired November 13, 1995) and “The Cage” (November 16, 1995). These two episodes seemingly wrap up two personal storylines for Elisa, the former bringing back her gangster nemesis Tony Dracon for another round, while the latter finally reunites her with her mutated brother Derek aka Talon.
1. Undercover Monsters
“Protection” sees Elisa going undercover to infiltrate Dracon’s gang, which has gone berserk in this episode, bombing businesses that can’t pay protection money. As part of her cover story, Elisa’s subjected to allegations, that lead to her getting suspended without pay, and I imagine kids were as confused as the Gargoyles as to what was going on. It’s all pretty adult stuff, as is Elisa’s hilarious Bad Girl outfit:
This episode takes a while to get going, as it takes halfway for Goliath and Broadway to intrude on Elisa’s meeting with Dracon, like a pair of kids walking in on their busy parents, and promptly begin undermining him in their own way. The episode does a great job of illustrating how different Gargoyles are from humans, coming across as more morally sound in some respects (“Money and power sound… very appealing,” Goliath unconvincingly intones when agreeing to ally with Dracon), and less, well, human in others: eventually, Goliath, who must be as sick of Dracon as we are, puts the fear of God in him by dangling him in mid-air, while lecturing him that he won’t drop him because “gargoyle justice is not human justice!” It’s an awesome moment that also demonstrates Goliath has fully come to terms with his place in modern society.
2. “Jalapena!”
“Protection” ends with a laugh-out-loud note when Broadway offers Goliath one of the jalapeños he swiped from Dracon’s office. On tasting them, Goliath, clearly finding them too spicy for his Scottish tastes, exclaims more loudly than ever before, “Jalapena!” You can tell this episode aired out-of-order, as I had heard Brooklyn yelling out this curse word in “The Price,” and it was a bit random to say the least. I’m glad I know what that was all about then.
3. Goliath the Protector
Both these episodes explore whether Goliath can be too protective of Elisa: at the end of “Protection,” when musings on why Dracon would be so as gullible to believe she would turn to his side, Elisa remarks, “I guess the corrupted are the first to believe that somebody else can be corrupted. And it’s not impossible. None of us are perfect, that’s why we need protection, even from ourselves sometimes.” Grateful that his need to look out for her did not prove too intrusive, Goliath romantically responds like an old movie hero, “Then I will protect you, you will protect me, and together we will protect this city.”
Goliath’s coddling quickly resurfaces at the start of “The Cage,” when Elisa learns he hasn’t disclosed Talon’s return, as he didn’t want to raise her hopes of bringing him home. Furious, she orders him to take her to Xanatos’s castle, so she can finally explain that Sevarius is still alive and the billionaire is lying to him. As Talon is unconvinced, Goliath kidnaps Sevarius to work on the cure he promised. Amazingly, his backhanded scheme proves to Talon that Xanatos had betrayed him, which does strike me as a missed opportunity: I would’ve liked to have seen the fallout from Goliath’s paternal instincts backfiring. I imagine the writers felt they’d explored this character flaw enough and just wanted to wrap up Talon’s story already.
4. Shadow of Thailog
“The Cage” does spend a lot of time building tension by having the identity of Sevarius’s kidnapper be a mystery at first. It becomes pretty obvious it’s Goliath who has kidnapped him quite early on, as he disappears from the Clock Tower, and Talon expresses fury that he can’t find Sevarius. I can’t help but wonder, since this episode relies on the events of “Double Jeopardy” (when Goliath and Elisa found out Sevarius was still alive) as it does on Derek’s last appearance in “Metamorphosis,” that Thailog could’ve been involved in this episode. Perhaps the episode was relying on the possibility of his return as much as the one of Xanatos sending one of Sevarius’s other creations to keep him quiet. Ultimately, I just wish we had got more of Thailog and the mutates by this point.
Continued below5. Running Out of Time
We meet Elisa’s sister Beth for the first time, having dinner with her and their parents at the start of the episode. She shows up again at the end with them to be reintroduced to Derek, and they seem surprisingly chill about him becoming a winged black panther in a ThunderCats outfit. It’s a rushed coda that encapsulates how truncated Derek’s storyline has been: I can scarcely believe it was only covered in two episodes, and wish he had been mutated earlier in “Her Brother’s Keeper.” Did the writers wrap up the Talon storyline so soon because they were unsatisfied with how it turned out, or the drastic status quo change coming in “Avalon” (which I’ll be looking at next week) force them to conclude it sooner than later? Guess we’ll find out: at least the Gargoyles have one less enemy to contend with now.
Bonus thoughts:
– “Protection” was the third appearance of storekeeper Mr. Jaffe (after “Reawakening” and “Eye of the Beholder”): poor guy, keeps getting subjected to trouble because he had a regular voice actor (the late Charles Hallahan) and character model.
– Talon’s eyes seem to permanently glow from stress.
– Did the Mazas really give their daughters (Elisa and Beth) the same name? Gosh parents are corny.
