Today’s weekly retrospective on Disney’s Gargoyles revisits season one’s “Temptation” and Deadly Force,” which respectively aired November 11, 1994, and November 18, 1994. These episodes, together with last week’s “The Thrill of the Hunt,” form a trilogy of spotlights on the younger clan members Lexington, Brooklyn and Broadway.
1. “Temptation”
I don’t have much to say about Brooklyn’s spotlight, which is the bog-standard episode of every cartoon where a young impressionable hero thinks the villain may have a point, only to realize – too late – that the villain’s still a scumbag, and that they’ve let someone close to them get hurt. In this case, after Brooklyn makes a failed attempt to befriend some bikers and gets assaulted, Demona returns to prey on him with her “all humans are bad” schtick, and convinces him into stealing the Grimorum, which she uses to turn Goliath into a puppet. The only really memorable part of this episode would be Elisa realizing she can use the spell to undo itself, and orders Goliath to carry on as if he weren’t affected by the enchantment: it’s a fun spin on the “wishing for more wishes” gambit.
2. And now for a very special episode
“Deadly Force,” on the other hand, is an amazingly mature piece of storytelling for a kid’s show, tackling one of America’s original sins, the omnipresence of firearms. In this episode, Broadway watches a Western and becomes enamored with sharpshooting. He drops in at Elisa at her apartment and finds her pistol, which he starts playing with and accidentally fires at her. As she undergoes intensive surgery, Broadway wrestles with his guilt, while Goliath goes on the warpath, naturally assuming the sleazy criminal she was pursuing, Tony Dracon (Richard Grieco), was responsible.
I’m still amazed there’s a ’90s cartoon show with the premise I just typed out. This was a decade where the Spider-Man cartoon was forbidden from using the word “kill.” Apparently, the episode was only censored on repeat, meaning it was completed and aired without anyone at Disney backing out over the episode: forgive the cliche, but I can’t imagine it being pitched, submitted, greenlit, produced and broadcast today. It’s hard to believe no one at the studio objected to the shot of Broadway seeing Elisa bleeding out in her own kitchen. It’s mindboggling.
3. The Problem You All Live With
To get on my soapbox for a moment, as a British guy who regularly consumes American culture, nothing depresses me more than hearing of another mass murder in the country, or another tragic accident caused by a kid picking up a pistol. I think Broadway’s arc, when he goes from being fascinated to absolutely disgusted at the US’s self-image of a cool gunslinger, very much echoes the scales falling from my own eyes as I got older – when I realized America was not the Land of the Free, but a country where it’s better to die in a random hail of bullets than to survive and go bankrupt covering your medical bills.
Likewise, Goliath’s decision to destroy Dracon’s shipment of stolen weapons, instead of returning them to their owner, mirrors our general kneejerk reaction as Europeans to yet another fatal shooting in the States, when we just quietly mutter that you’re all irresponsible children who should be banned from using guns, farmers who need rifles be damned. (You can really tell the Gargoyles are from Scotland.)
4. Vengeance
I love how Broadway and Goliath’s different approaches to dismantling Dracon’s operation reflects their different ages. Broadway, young and guilt-ridden, lectures his enemies as much as he beats them, furious at how their murderous gun culture seduced him. Goliath, the clan leader, goes about avenging the injured Elisa coldly, but his intention to kill Dracon betrays his inner fury.
This is also the third time Goliath has been seen willing to kill, and after deeming someone responsible for trying to kill a woman he loved no less: it’s a clear sore spot for him, and a fascinating character flaw. I don’t find it repetitive that Goliath has to be kept being reminded that vengeance will bring no satisfaction as well, I like it as it reflects how often in life, we can struggle to remember and remind ourselves of what we’ve learned.
Continued below5. Elisa’s family
We meet Elisa’s family in this episode, which is refreshingly early for a cartoon show. Usually in a cartoon it’d be a while before we meet a character’s parents or siblings, and it’d turn out their family is quite small. Here, we meet Elisa’s parents and her brother, and see that they’re all in New York ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice for her (even her sister, whom we learn lives in Arizona, isn’t estranged or something contrived like that). Also we learn Elisa’s mother and brother are black, which must have been groundbreaking back in 1994, a realistic depiction of a family that must be still quite rare for a cartoon.
Bonus thoughts:
– Goliath’s tic of repeating slang he doesn’t understand to ask for clarification still makes me laugh, in this case it’s him slowly reciting “joooyriding” after Lexington and Broadway tell him what Brooklyn is up to in “Temptation.”
– This show was using Latin for magic spells way before Harry Potter: in “Temptation” it’s “Sine dubio, instantatum,” meaning “Without doubt, instantly.”
– “Deadly Force” has some great tail action, with the Gargoyles using them to sweep and dangle their prey.
Next week, “Enter MacBeth” introduces a major recurring villain and plants the seeds for some big episodes.
