Television 

Five Thoughts on Jupiter’s Legacy‘s “Paper and Stone”

By | May 14th, 2021
Posted in Television | % Comments

1. Another Mediocre Episode

Damn you Jupiter’s Legacy! I want to like you so badly but you refuse to let me. “Paper and Stone” is a lot like “By Dawn’s Early Light” in that it isn’t good despite having all the pieces in place to be at least compelling. In this episode, though, that lack of followthrough is even less acceptable. Many (maybe even most) series have shaky first episodes and some have shaky beginnings in general but this is an 8 episode season. That means that we’re a quarter of the way into the season and there hasn’t been more than a sliver of a moment of quality at a time. Plus, there’s no reason to think that it’s going to get better! So much for the biggest superhero story of all time.

2. This cast must be a whole bunch of vegetarians…

…because they just cannot handle any of the most meaty parts of the show. Give me a moment to take this analogy too far. They can totally kill the lead up. Throw some salt and pepper on it. Add on some spices. In some moments, you get hopeful because they toss the meat on the grill and it seems like they’e on the right track. But even then, they just can’t handle it. In my last review, I said I liked this cast and I stand by that. When the material they’re selling is more low key, they can sell it. Josh Duhamel and Elena Kampouris do solid work with the first part of Chloe and Sheldon’s conversation at Chloe’s apartment. They manage to have a kind of touching heart to heart; Sheldon shows some humility and Chloe proves that she can be mature. Then the scene pivots to tackling some deeper history between the characters, dials the tension up a couple of notches, and the whole thing falls apart. That same issue is present throughout basically every are of the episode. There is one exception to the rule- Ben Daniels rocks it as Walter Sampson. Every scene that he’s in, he brings a calm mastery to the material. In a cast full of people who just cannot rise above the mediocre material, Daniels manages to make it seem like decent material.

3. Kill The Past

Every single time a flashback starts I let out a heavy sigh. The thing about straddling two time periods to tell one story is that the things happening in the past should feel vital to things happening in the present. With the flashbacks we’ve seen so far, each event feels like the most boring things that we could possibly be learning about. It’s not that the 1929 financial crash, subsequent suicide of Sheldon and Walter’s father, and later collapse of the family steel company don’t help to inform the characters we’re watching right now at all. Seeing how Sheldon and Grace met is kinda nice, I suppose (and Grace being an adversarial reporter is actually very fun). It’s just that nothing we’re seeing is relevant enough to feel any more effective than some lines alluding to those things would be. Sheldon’s visions might as well have been the start of the origin story we’re seeing unfold in the past because they’re actually, you know, an important part of the origin. So despite the fact that they will not stop happening and actually have the most potential for improvement of any part of Jupiter’s Legacy, I’d like to state that watching the events of the past is boring and I don’t want to do it anymore.

4.Jupiter’s Legacy Needs an Infrastructure Bill

The world building on this show is just plain bad. It seems to think that it’s good because there are a lot of random superheroes referenced and news reports play in the background while other things happening. That isn’t sufficient more making this world feel full and real, though. They reference events which is great but without anything to tie us to those events, it’s no better than reading a textbook. The worst of it is the way Steven S. DeKnight and co. have chosen to portray the wider superhero community. Outside of the Sampson family and The Flare (if we can even count her), not a single hero gets any real attention but they seem to carry some importance. It’s central to both Chloe and Sheldon’s argument about Sheldon only seeing superheroes, not people, and the funeral scene. The funeral is undoubtedly the worst offender here. When they’re trying to communicate that the dead heroes are people, they flash to some drinks they had in a bar at some point. When was this? Where was the bar? Was there any significance to this specific night out? Those are all questions that don’t get and will never get an answer. And so the scene that is clearly supposed to land means nothing because we never actually saw any of that and they didn’t sell the characters well in their very few seconds of screen time in the pilot. It’s a shame because despite their looking like they were designed for a Sketchers commercial, these heroes could be a rich source of energy for the show. There is one thing in the world building that I love- public polling. That there are polls conducted on how heroes should hero and those numbers are brought up at superhero press conferences is great. It’s one of those things that doesn’t require further explanation, doesn’t bring up any questions that can’t be answered, and makes this feel like a universe that could actually exist.

5. What’s the Deal with the Moral Quandry?

So it feels pretty clear that Brandon was right to kill not-Blackstar. In fact, it seems to be clear to every single person other than Sheldon. That’s not necessarily a big problem except for the fact that, uh, nobody has to listen to him. Obviously he’s supposed to be the biggest superhero in the world but that doesn’t actually mean that he’s in charge of everyone. So while the core question the show was asking in the first episode is compelling, the question of whether or not a hero should ever be okay with a villain being killed is more straightforward. There’s no reason that this should be a point of tension. If over 70% of Americans to agree that superheroes should be doing their jobs differently it’s possible that fit might be true. This isn’t the same as police brutality even if the show wants to make it seem like that the case. If everything else is going to be as lackluster as it has been, it would be nice if the show could at least get back to the most interesting thing it has going for itself.


//TAGS | Jupiter's Legacy

Quinn Tassin

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