[7.4/10] A great deal of “Eye of the Beholder” is just people (and/or gargoyles) fighting a werewolf. Many of those fights are cool! The design and audio teams do a good job with FoxWolf, making her dark with red outlines and giving her a truly disturbing roar. She’s an appropriate monster for a Halloween episode, all snarls and swipes and atavistic fury. But at some point, you reach diminishing returns from the fight-struggle-escape routine.
Still, there’s a few elements that elevate this one despite the preponderance of Monster mash involved. The first is the texture. I’m a sucker for a good Halloween episode, and I like how this one gives the gang an excuse to stroll the streets in public for the first time since they awoke. The scenes of Brooklyn, Lexington, and Broadway walking through the Village Halloween Parade don’t add much in terms of plot, but they make up for that in character, conveying to us how liberating it is for them to be able to show their faces in public at least once a year.
Also, color me amused at the show nearly going full-on Beauty and the Beast with Goliath and Elisa. Elisa’s Halloween costume is, true to Gargoyles’s corporate ownership, a near-direct copy of Belle’s from that movie. I’m not huge on her and Goliath as a pairing, but I do appreciate the way the show has slow-played their attraction rather than super-charged it, and their late night promenade dance together is quite sweet.
And yet, the most compelling element of this one is Xanatos. He’s not exactly on the side of good here, but it’s clear that he cares about Fox beyond the charade that the two of them are putting on. His willingness to work with Goliath and Elisa to rescue her, and stop Elisa from hurting her, add dimension to the character. He’s grown attached to Fox despite everything, a type of love he might consider a weakness, but which makes him a more interesting character for not being as purely mercenary and transactional as we’ve seen to date.
Overall, I got tired of the werewolf-punching after a while, but the fun of Gargoyles out on Halloween and an unexpectedly protective and caring Xanatos make this one worth watching regardless.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-07-06T21:24:14Z
[7.4/10] A great deal of “Eye of the Beholder” is just people (and/or gargoyles) fighting a werewolf. Many of those fights are cool! The design and audio teams do a good job with FoxWolf, making her dark with red outlines and giving her a truly disturbing roar. She’s an appropriate monster for a Halloween episode, all snarls and swipes and atavistic fury. But at some point, you reach diminishing returns from the fight-struggle-escape routine.
Still, there’s a few elements that elevate this one despite the preponderance of Monster mash involved. The first is the texture. I’m a sucker for a good Halloween episode, and I like how this one gives the gang an excuse to stroll the streets in public for the first time since they awoke. The scenes of Brooklyn, Lexington, and Broadway walking through the Village Halloween Parade don’t add much in terms of plot, but they make up for that in character, conveying to us how liberating it is for them to be able to show their faces in public at least once a year.
Also, color me amused at the show nearly going full-on Beauty and the Beast with Goliath and Elisa. Elisa’s Halloween costume is, true to Gargoyles’s corporate ownership, a near-direct copy of Belle’s from that movie. I’m not huge on her and Goliath as a pairing, but I do appreciate the way the show has slow-played their attraction rather than super-charged it, and their late night promenade dance together is quite sweet.
And yet, the most compelling element of this one is Xanatos. He’s not exactly on the side of good here, but it’s clear that he cares about Fox beyond the charade that the two of them are putting on. His willingness to work with Goliath and Elisa to rescue her, and stop Elisa from hurting her, add dimension to the character. He’s grown attached to Fox despite everything, a type of love he might consider a weakness, but which makes him a more interesting character for not being as purely mercenary and transactional as we’ve seen to date.
Overall, I got tired of the werewolf-punching after a while, but the fun of Gargoyles out on Halloween and an unexpectedly protective and caring Xanatos make this one worth watching regardless.