[7.2/10] I get why “Leader of the Pack” is the season premiere for Gargoyles. It has lots of actions, plenty of explosions, and a couple of crazy twists. If you’re trying to lure people into a thrilling season of television I understand starting your story with this level of flashiness.
But it lacks the thing that have really impressed me about Gargoyles so far: story and character. There’s not much of a plot to this episode. It’s pretty much just “The Pack breaks out of prison and the Gargoyles fight them.” Sure, we get some reveals about Xanatos’s inovlement and the larger game that he’s playing, but they’re side dishes to the episode making an excuse for our heroes and villains to punch each other.
On the character side of things, the only throughline here is Lexington champing at the bit to get revenge on The ePack for misleading him, to the point that he goes off half-cocked without a plan. It’s not a bad tack for the show. The problem is that it’s barely there, with a couple of quick exchanges between Lex and Brooklyn on the subject, and one overzealous pounce on The Pack.
Instead, the bulk of this episode sees Lex, Brooklyn, and Bronx fighting The Pack (with new leader Coyote) and losing, until the rest of the team shows up on a tanker to rescue their friends and subdue the escaped criminals. These fight scenes and set pieces are all done well enough. I particularly liked the scene where Hudson is surrounded by three pack members, only to stand tall and find a way to win. There’s also some cool art direction when Coyote uses his sound waves or reality-warping powers to mess with the heads of man and Gargoyle alike, and some excitement when Goliath manages to resist it.
But I’ll admit that I often found myself zoning out during a lot of these endless dust-ups. The explosions are cool and the combatants are sufficiently burly, but I can only take so much of that sort of thing separate from story and character before it ceases to have a lot of meaning to me.
Ironically, I did appreciate Xanatos here, and maybe it’s because he has the most character-driven part of the story. I’ll confess to guessing pretty early that Coyote was Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes has a distinctive tone and cadence even if you modulate his voice.) But the whole robot duplicate thing caught me by surprise. His plan is a good one though, staging a prison break of The Pack that Fox doesn’t participate in, thereby earning her way out for good behavior. I quickly tired of The Pack, but Xanatos’s byzantine-yet-clever schemes keep me intrigued, even if they only get revealed at the last minute.
Overall, this one was a little underwhelming, especially for a season premiere, but the baseline quality of the show and a few good moments and twists shine through.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-06-28T23:27:32Z
[7.2/10] I get why “Leader of the Pack” is the season premiere for Gargoyles. It has lots of actions, plenty of explosions, and a couple of crazy twists. If you’re trying to lure people into a thrilling season of television I understand starting your story with this level of flashiness.
But it lacks the thing that have really impressed me about Gargoyles so far: story and character. There’s not much of a plot to this episode. It’s pretty much just “The Pack breaks out of prison and the Gargoyles fight them.” Sure, we get some reveals about Xanatos’s inovlement and the larger game that he’s playing, but they’re side dishes to the episode making an excuse for our heroes and villains to punch each other.
On the character side of things, the only throughline here is Lexington champing at the bit to get revenge on The ePack for misleading him, to the point that he goes off half-cocked without a plan. It’s not a bad tack for the show. The problem is that it’s barely there, with a couple of quick exchanges between Lex and Brooklyn on the subject, and one overzealous pounce on The Pack.
Instead, the bulk of this episode sees Lex, Brooklyn, and Bronx fighting The Pack (with new leader Coyote) and losing, until the rest of the team shows up on a tanker to rescue their friends and subdue the escaped criminals. These fight scenes and set pieces are all done well enough. I particularly liked the scene where Hudson is surrounded by three pack members, only to stand tall and find a way to win. There’s also some cool art direction when Coyote uses his sound waves or reality-warping powers to mess with the heads of man and Gargoyle alike, and some excitement when Goliath manages to resist it.
But I’ll admit that I often found myself zoning out during a lot of these endless dust-ups. The explosions are cool and the combatants are sufficiently burly, but I can only take so much of that sort of thing separate from story and character before it ceases to have a lot of meaning to me.
Ironically, I did appreciate Xanatos here, and maybe it’s because he has the most character-driven part of the story. I’ll confess to guessing pretty early that Coyote was Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes has a distinctive tone and cadence even if you modulate his voice.) But the whole robot duplicate thing caught me by surprise. His plan is a good one though, staging a prison break of The Pack that Fox doesn’t participate in, thereby earning her way out for good behavior. I quickly tired of The Pack, but Xanatos’s byzantine-yet-clever schemes keep me intrigued, even if they only get revealed at the last minute.
Overall, this one was a little underwhelming, especially for a season premiere, but the baseline quality of the show and a few good moments and twists shine through.