[8.5/10] From the beginning, Gargoyles laid a foundational conflict for the series that would run from beginning to end: humans mistrust gargoyles, despite the fact that gargoyles protect them. To some extent, this all started due to enmity between two groups that thrive when working together. Whether it be Demona’s resentments or Princess Katherine’s disdain or the Captain of the Guard’s misguided attempt to honor those unduly disregarded, none of this might have happened had gargoyles and humans learned to care for and respect one another.
The beauty of “Angels in the Night” is the suggestion that, a millennium hence, that dream has been realized. The Quarryman are the modern day version of that inter-group hatred, treating Gargoyles as something to be rejected and feared. The gargoyles save a woman being threatened, as they’ve done many times before, but only receive that fear in return, prompting them to wonder if all they’ve done since awaking in Manhattan has been for naught. And Margot Yale, an aggressive D.A., thinks the worst of their kind and wants to put them behind bars, at best.
In short, the episode begins with humans and gargoyles looking more at loggerheads than ever before. And things look dire beyond that. While it’s totally schmuck bait, “Angels in the Night” begins with the suggestion that the Quarrymen have once again trapped our heroes. Only this time, it seems they planned ahead and blew them up right after Goliath and company turned to stone. I’d be lying if I said I bought it, but it does raise the stakes.
That said, I appreciate it as a device despite some cheesiness and narrative implausibility because it gives the Manhattan Clan a choice. When it turns out they’re alive, thanks to Xanatos, but the world thinks they’re dead, they have the opportunity to flee anywhere they wish. They could go to Avalon or Japan or Guatemala and commune with more of their kind rather than holding strong in New York City. In essence, Xanatos offers them the ability to give up on humanity, or at least Big Apple humanity, and leave their posts in the face of an ungrateful, arguably vengeful public.
Of course, they don’t. There’s little risk in a children’s television show of the good guys giving up the right. But what I like about “Angels in the NIght” is that it provides good reason why our heroes would want to leave, which makes their choice to stick around and continue defending the innocent meaningful.
Elisa Maza sums it up as “Gargoyles protect,” but parts of me bristles at that. It suggests protection is simply a matter of nature, that Goliath and his friends don’t truly have a choice whether or not to do this. (And in fairness, there’s precedent for this view, particularly in the Coldstone episodes.)
But I’d like to think of them as something closer to Spider-Man. He too is a hero who prowls the rooftops of New York City, and who many view as a “menace” rather than the force for good that he is. He nevertheless continues the fight, not because he has to, but because it’s the right thing to do, it’s in keeping with the ideals passed down to him by his aunt and uncle. I’d like to think of the Gargoyles in the same terms, deciding to look after their protectorate because they too believe it’s a worthy cause borne on the backs of their aspirations and principles. Good stories are built on meaningful choices. And in “Angels in the Night”, the gargoyles choose to protect.
And like Spider-Man (specifically presaging the Web-Head of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2), they earn the people’s trust by fending off the bad guys and stopping a runaway train. I like the climactic set piece. The aerial battles between the Manhattan Clan and the flying Quarryman has some appropriate visual verve to make this seem like an epic clash. Likewise, the train full of innocents about to go off a cliff is a cliché, but it’s a venerable trope for a reason, providing plenty of opportunity for heroics and daring rescues.
All of those moments land. Goliath confronts the head of the Quarrymen, proves him a coward, and subdues him, giving a measure of closure to the season’s big arc. Brooklyn proves his cleverness and fitness for being Goliath’s second-in-command, as he, Lexington, and Hudson use the Quarrymen’s jetpacks as retro rockets to put the brakes on the train. There’s a good contingent of sharp thinking and satisfaction to these scenes.
But the most important choice comes when Hudson and Angela have the chance to simply fly away and let the humans who resent them perish, but choose to stick around to help the people who fear them. It earns the respect of those on board who witness the Quarrymen’s skullduggery and the gargoyles’ efforts to keep them safe. More importantly, it changes the heart of Margot Yale.
She sees the Gargoyles not only working to neutralize the Quarrymen, but sticking around to save innocent human beings who’ve treated them terribly. She symbolizes a broader change of heart in the people of Manhattan, giving a statement where she recognizes their value and status as fellow beings. In that moment, they are celebrated, rather than reviled, and humans and gargoyles have a chance to come together as one, to make good on the hopes and ideals Goliath has been harboring since long before that fateful day in Scotland.
I expected the worst from season 3 of Gargoyles. In truth, the season is a definite step down from prior outings. But it’s largely fine and, most laudably, grapples with some ideas that have been with the show for a long time in direct ways. The Quarrymen represent a modern version of the fears that plagued Goliath’s clan from the beginning, and there is something so heartening and hopefully about his closing oratory here, which seems to finally lay those mutual resentments to rest and pave the way for a shared community of man and gargoyle alike, competing the journey Goliath, Elisa, Brooklyn, Lexington, Broadway, Hudson, Angela, Bronx, and many others began so long ago.
I will confess that, on the whole, Gargoyles is a minor disappointment to me. It’s still a quality show, one that finds particular storytelling strength in its multi-episode arcs. Michael Reaves, Greg Weisman and company do a stellar job of constructing not only an expansive world with a memorable cast of character, but in establishing a unique mythos that builds on familiar tropes while updating and remixing them to speak to modern stories and communities. The bones of the series are good.
But on an episode-to-episode basis, the series varies widely in quality. Everything from the endless Avalon boat cruise, to uninvolving interludes with The Pack, to the sporadic generic Saturday morning cartoon skirmish episodes, often left me checking my proverbial watch to see when the next major arc was coming to save me from fine-but-unspectacular standalones.
And yet, what will stick with me about the series are the triumphs of its long term storytelling, its climactic outings when it brought all that world-building together, and its salient themes. I’ll remember the slow burn affections of Goliath and Elisa, the gradual change of heart from Xanatos, and most of all, the steady, hard-won acceptance between humans and the gargoyles who swore to protect them.
So much of this series is about prejudice and mistrust among communities, but also how those things may be overcome, with enough time and dedication and most of all grace granted on both sides. “Angels in the Night” does well by those ideas, a fitting finale for a show worthy of one. Let them live again. Let them defend the night to a public who understands and admires their acts. Let them be Gargoyles.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-09-12T20:38:12Z
[8.5/10] From the beginning, Gargoyles laid a foundational conflict for the series that would run from beginning to end: humans mistrust gargoyles, despite the fact that gargoyles protect them. To some extent, this all started due to enmity between two groups that thrive when working together. Whether it be Demona’s resentments or Princess Katherine’s disdain or the Captain of the Guard’s misguided attempt to honor those unduly disregarded, none of this might have happened had gargoyles and humans learned to care for and respect one another.
The beauty of “Angels in the Night” is the suggestion that, a millennium hence, that dream has been realized. The Quarryman are the modern day version of that inter-group hatred, treating Gargoyles as something to be rejected and feared. The gargoyles save a woman being threatened, as they’ve done many times before, but only receive that fear in return, prompting them to wonder if all they’ve done since awaking in Manhattan has been for naught. And Margot Yale, an aggressive D.A., thinks the worst of their kind and wants to put them behind bars, at best.
In short, the episode begins with humans and gargoyles looking more at loggerheads than ever before. And things look dire beyond that. While it’s totally schmuck bait, “Angels in the Night” begins with the suggestion that the Quarrymen have once again trapped our heroes. Only this time, it seems they planned ahead and blew them up right after Goliath and company turned to stone. I’d be lying if I said I bought it, but it does raise the stakes.
That said, I appreciate it as a device despite some cheesiness and narrative implausibility because it gives the Manhattan Clan a choice. When it turns out they’re alive, thanks to Xanatos, but the world thinks they’re dead, they have the opportunity to flee anywhere they wish. They could go to Avalon or Japan or Guatemala and commune with more of their kind rather than holding strong in New York City. In essence, Xanatos offers them the ability to give up on humanity, or at least Big Apple humanity, and leave their posts in the face of an ungrateful, arguably vengeful public.
Of course, they don’t. There’s little risk in a children’s television show of the good guys giving up the right. But what I like about “Angels in the NIght” is that it provides good reason why our heroes would want to leave, which makes their choice to stick around and continue defending the innocent meaningful.
Elisa Maza sums it up as “Gargoyles protect,” but parts of me bristles at that. It suggests protection is simply a matter of nature, that Goliath and his friends don’t truly have a choice whether or not to do this. (And in fairness, there’s precedent for this view, particularly in the Coldstone episodes.)
But I’d like to think of them as something closer to Spider-Man. He too is a hero who prowls the rooftops of New York City, and who many view as a “menace” rather than the force for good that he is. He nevertheless continues the fight, not because he has to, but because it’s the right thing to do, it’s in keeping with the ideals passed down to him by his aunt and uncle. I’d like to think of the Gargoyles in the same terms, deciding to look after their protectorate because they too believe it’s a worthy cause borne on the backs of their aspirations and principles. Good stories are built on meaningful choices. And in “Angels in the Night”, the gargoyles choose to protect.
And like Spider-Man (specifically presaging the Web-Head of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2), they earn the people’s trust by fending off the bad guys and stopping a runaway train. I like the climactic set piece. The aerial battles between the Manhattan Clan and the flying Quarryman has some appropriate visual verve to make this seem like an epic clash. Likewise, the train full of innocents about to go off a cliff is a cliché, but it’s a venerable trope for a reason, providing plenty of opportunity for heroics and daring rescues.
All of those moments land. Goliath confronts the head of the Quarrymen, proves him a coward, and subdues him, giving a measure of closure to the season’s big arc. Brooklyn proves his cleverness and fitness for being Goliath’s second-in-command, as he, Lexington, and Hudson use the Quarrymen’s jetpacks as retro rockets to put the brakes on the train. There’s a good contingent of sharp thinking and satisfaction to these scenes.
But the most important choice comes when Hudson and Angela have the chance to simply fly away and let the humans who resent them perish, but choose to stick around to help the people who fear them. It earns the respect of those on board who witness the Quarrymen’s skullduggery and the gargoyles’ efforts to keep them safe. More importantly, it changes the heart of Margot Yale.
She sees the Gargoyles not only working to neutralize the Quarrymen, but sticking around to save innocent human beings who’ve treated them terribly. She symbolizes a broader change of heart in the people of Manhattan, giving a statement where she recognizes their value and status as fellow beings. In that moment, they are celebrated, rather than reviled, and humans and gargoyles have a chance to come together as one, to make good on the hopes and ideals Goliath has been harboring since long before that fateful day in Scotland.
I expected the worst from season 3 of Gargoyles. In truth, the season is a definite step down from prior outings. But it’s largely fine and, most laudably, grapples with some ideas that have been with the show for a long time in direct ways. The Quarrymen represent a modern version of the fears that plagued Goliath’s clan from the beginning, and there is something so heartening and hopefully about his closing oratory here, which seems to finally lay those mutual resentments to rest and pave the way for a shared community of man and gargoyle alike, competing the journey Goliath, Elisa, Brooklyn, Lexington, Broadway, Hudson, Angela, Bronx, and many others began so long ago.
I will confess that, on the whole, Gargoyles is a minor disappointment to me. It’s still a quality show, one that finds particular storytelling strength in its multi-episode arcs. Michael Reaves, Greg Weisman and company do a stellar job of constructing not only an expansive world with a memorable cast of character, but in establishing a unique mythos that builds on familiar tropes while updating and remixing them to speak to modern stories and communities. The bones of the series are good.
But on an episode-to-episode basis, the series varies widely in quality. Everything from the endless Avalon boat cruise, to uninvolving interludes with The Pack, to the sporadic generic Saturday morning cartoon skirmish episodes, often left me checking my proverbial watch to see when the next major arc was coming to save me from fine-but-unspectacular standalones.
And yet, what will stick with me about the series are the triumphs of its long term storytelling, its climactic outings when it brought all that world-building together, and its salient themes. I’ll remember the slow burn affections of Goliath and Elisa, the gradual change of heart from Xanatos, and most of all, the steady, hard-won acceptance between humans and the gargoyles who swore to protect them.
So much of this series is about prejudice and mistrust among communities, but also how those things may be overcome, with enough time and dedication and most of all grace granted on both sides. “Angels in the Night” does well by those ideas, a fitting finale for a show worthy of one. Let them live again. Let them defend the night to a public who understands and admires their acts. Let them be Gargoyles.