Our weekly retrospective on Disney’s Gargoyles looks at “The Thrill of the Hunt,” which aired November 4, 1994. The sixth episode of the show focuses on Lexington, the youngest member of the Wyvern Clan, and introduces the Pack, a gaudy gang of mercenaries/reality TV stars who see the Gargoyles as their next big challenge.
1. Xanatos Gambit #3
Despite being incarcerated for his actions in the opening five-parter, Xanatos still owns Castle Wyvern, and has not deigned to evict Goliath and his clan. Sure, it’s not like he can do much from jail, but he could have made forbidden access to Elisa (who only briefly appears in this episode to update Goliath on the devious billionaire), or outed them to the public. Instead, he prefers to lull them into a false sense of security, and employ the Pack (who turns out to have been secretly created by him) to kill them, implying he still has need of them for some purpose that he doesn’t want any potential rivals to know about.
2. Comic book rejects
The Pack comprises of Fox (Laura San Giacomo, who allegedly went uncredited because her agent didn’t want her associated with a cartoon), Wolf (Clancy Brown), Jackal (Matt Frewer), Hyena (Cree Summer), and Dingo (Jim Cummings). They’re an incredibly ’90s bunch, with their ridiculous hair, shoulder pads, and claws, that you have to wonder if they’re a parody of the Extreme comic book heroes at the time.
I think it’s more likely the show’s creators were synthesizing characters like Spider-Man’s nemesis Kraven the Hunter (the campest Spider-Man villain, and yes, that is saying a lot) with wrestlers and glam rock stars, characters you’d usually expect be idolized by kids (in contrast to the monstrous Gargoyles).
3. Skepticism
Appropriately, the Gargoyles watch the Pack on TV and assume they’re heroes like them too, that the “evil ninjas” they battle aren’t trained acrobats. There’s something endearingly naive about how they believe what they see on TV – for them there’s still a difference between magic and smoke-and-mirrors, whereas today all of our “magic” is dedicated to crafting illusions on our screens. You have to wonder if the clan is so old that they don’t even know what theater is.
4. Stranger danger
Ultimately I think the episode is trying to teach children to be skeptical, and to not assume strangers can be trusted. Poor Lexington, who is the baby of the group, is just lonely though, and assumes the Pack would want to be his friends due to his inexperience with such things.
I think the end conversation with Goliath does a good job of redress the balance, reminding him it’s ok to make mistakes sometimes as well, lest the audience grows up to become too paranoid.
5. Plausible deniability
The show still does strain my suspension of disbelief though, given my age now. From the start, I wondered how does no one hear the Gargoyles roaring back to life that night? (I’ve been to Manhattan, it’s loud but it can’t be loud enough to drown them out, right?) Anyway, the latter half of the episode is a great chase sequence depicting the Pack’s pursuit of Goliath and Lexington, which gets undermined by the following:
- The civilian family assuming the Pack are filming a TV show, without any cameras.
- The Gargoyles hiding among actual statues to turn the tables on their foes, statues that are as big as they are.
- A photographer only capturing images of Fox holding a model hostage, and not the burly winged bruiser she’s addressing.
The first moment particularly bothers me, given the episode is asking children to not believe everything they hear, yet undermines that message by having characters refuse to believe what they see in front of them. It’s too realistic in the age of fake news, when someone prefer to listen to conspiracy theories over the testimonies of real people in pain.
Bonus thought:
– Why do the Gargoyles’ clothes turn to stone, but Hudson’s dagger doesn’t?
– Perhaps Xanatos claiming the Pack’s failure was informative is just him being too proud to admit they suck.
Next week, Demona returns in “Temptation,” and maybe we’ll cover the topical “Deadly Force” as well.
