Good to see you! We’re back with episode three of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off in which “Ramona Rents a Video”. Because I’m still obsessed with the change I wanted to use these five thoughts to see what we get when we’re off in uncharted territory, which obviously means there will be spoilers all over.
1. I forbid you from fighting Ramona Flowers
In terms of character directions, we get to see a great new side to Anna Kendrick’s Julie here. Her scenes in the coffee shop are gold. It’s a new environment that brings out a bit more for the character, similar to when Gideon shows up on her door. A nice, smiling Julie is just a bit worrying.
I thought a lot of the design at play in the show goes a long way towards building out that character direction as well. For one, the show chooses to let its characters look like their comic counterparts, instead of some actor-animation amalgam like we’re seeing more and more often. It keeps these characters feeling more removed from our boring reality, which in the case of Lucas Lee or Envy Adams keeps them feeling larger than life.
The best display of new sides to familiar figures this episode though is undoubtedly the fight between Roxie and Ramona. I think the whole ‘fighting in different dimensions with different animated styles’ is becoming a modern trope, but I’m a sucker for Cuphead so it lured me in with the vintage animation, and then I stayed for the schlock straight-to-DVD backdrops. It worked really well using the melodrama of old movies to eke out personal drama. It’s maximalism to highlight the most natural parts of the scene, which is exactly what superhero stuff should be. That’s why X-Men is a soap opera, it’s arguably the entire point of Spider-Man.
2. You live and you learn
We get a lot of backstory in this episode, which is fun to see brought from page to screen. For one I loved all the character designs it lets the creative team play around with, college era Ramona is a highlight. Seeing a bit more of her right as we transition into this ‘PI Ramona’ character arc definitely helped round her out. It’s always made sure that we knew she was sharper than the rest of the cast, and in other media it did make her slightly aloof, here it’s just a skill being applied for dramatic purpose, she’s the new sheriff in town with skeletons in the closet. It really pays off her emotional resolution by the episode’s end too, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Ramona cry before, so dropping it in the third episode is crazy.
Kim also gets a bit of the retrospective treatment. Her high school flashback is a cool new spin on the original Scott Pilgrim animation, I did find it weird that they got Finn Wolfhard to play a teen Scott Pilgrim, but kept Allison Pill for teen Kim Pine, maybe it means there’s an extended sequence later between regular and teen Scott where they want us to be able to differentiate? Or they just need a Stranger Things kid to appear in every Netflix series at some point. Speaking of Kim, her kiss with Roxie at the end is pretty funny, a good ‘fuck it’ attitude on both sides.
3. “I couldn’t even get a reservation at McDonalds”
This episode has such a breezy joy to it, bouncing between its new plotlines with notional explanations of what is actually going on at any given moment. Sometimes it’s not that important to know the important stuff. For example, I think the explanation for a character cheating death should always just be “someone grabbed him and pulled him into a portal”. It’s really only matched in sci-fi melodrama by “I left my past behind and levelled up”. Daniel Day-Lewis wishes he could drop a line that powerful.
That tone really holds up in the video store fight, it truly carries the culture memory of a simpler time when Blade II was the coolest movie ever released, with people fighting indoors with rain at a Blockbuster using katanas. Roxie even sounds like early-2000s cultural icon Ash Ketchum, it weirdly helps her fuckboy demeanour.
Continued belowAside from the Y2K-at-play, there are just so many fun flourishes here. There’s a bit where Kim is walking in the video store with this super exaggerated step and it’s great. It feels like the equivalent of an inspired line delivery, you appreciate it in the moment it has already disappeared. They’re constant flashes of fun the show doesn’t try to overshadow itself with.
4. It’s the Naughties, man
All that passive nostalgia feeds into a certain tone for the season so far. I think the pace of Takes Off has a very naturalist, shoegaze feel to it that just fits the feeling of deadbeats fitting their social lives into an awkward balance with their deadbeat jobs. Never have I felt so vicariously happy in customer service, or at least not since the glory days of record store movies like High Fidelity and Empire Records.
That John Hughes sparkle over everything permeates especially well in the jamming session between Kim and Knives. Once again, it’s an example of the animation engaging with music in a way neither of the previous two media could to this degree, despite their valiant efforts. Animation always has a quality to it that makes its engagement with music special.
5. The Game Is Over 2 blues
I think I’m willing to give up the theory that the animation is still trying to follow a version of the original plot chain, and that this episode would somehow mirror the Lucas Lee section of the book or film. But with that dead theory comes the freedom to admit I have very little idea where this is going. I think the theme of this show is gonna be proving the exes aren’t so evil. What a nice, mushy way to do it, but I am going to miss just barreling through them all.
Oh by the way I have no idea what’s up with Young Neil’s screenplay, but I do like that even he calls himself Young Neil. Anyway, be well behaved until next week, I’ll seeya then.
