2 semi-serious shows about Superheroes form Netflix Month 2, who would’ve guessed?
It seems the process of adapting comic books into TV shows
has expanded beyond the Big 2, we have the reasonably interesting Locke and Key
adaptation, which I may cover at some point, the pretty decent Chilling
Adventures of Sabrina, which for various reasons I will not be covering, and
The Boys, which I adamantly refuse to watch given its horrific source material.
Among those is also Dark Horse’s The Umbrella Academy, by writer Gerard Way,
the guy who helped give us some songs by My Chemical Romance, and Also Peni
Parker and SP//dr, I’m sure we’re all welcome.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the first Season of the Umbrella Academy and see what it has to offer.
We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals
Wow, that title’s a mouth full
We open in Russia, October 1989 where some women are doing
aerobics in the water. 2 people are waiting on the poolside who clearly have
the hots for each other. The flirt for a moment before it’s reminded that for
reasons that are probably due to it being 1989, and Russia, that men and women
need to sit separately. She jumps into the pool, but before she rises, blood
starts showing at her position in the water, she eventually does rise, heavily
pregnant.
With the help of everyone at the class, she gives birth. And
we get a bit of exposition that this sudden and unexpected giving birth
happened to 43 across the planet that day, none of them were pregnant when the
day began. OK, yes, I realise this is an incredibly problematic setup. This was
originally written by a man, you don’t say… But for the sake of not bogging
down this review forever, let’s just leave it at that.
Sir Reginald Hargreeves somehow found out about this and
decided to adopt as many of the children as possible because without that we
wouldn’t have a story. He successfully adopted 7 of them, each having their own
nanny and a carriage with a designated number.
We cut to ‘today,’ as we see a violin recital, a tall guy
knocking his head on the door frame, he’s in space and we find out his name is
Luther aka No. 1. Meanwhile a violent Robbery is broken up No. 2 aka Diego. No
3 aka Allison is on the red carpet getting photographed. Seizure warning,
anyone? No 4 aka Klaus has just checked out of rehab, the guy sending off
expects to see him again soon. Luther gets a message on his space-suit that
seems to have him a little disturbed. Diego sees the story on Television after
busting up the robbery.
Allison is pressganged about the story on the red carpet, we
find out now it’s something to do with Reginald. Klaus meets up with his
dealer, and then gets a defibrillator jolt in an ambulance, he seems to know
the doctor, it’s in that ambulance he hears the news. The violinist, whose
performance has been in the background of all this is no 7, Vanya. Her performance
doesn’t seem to have much of an audience, regrettably. She sees the news on TV
screen in a shop window on her way home.
She comes to the Hargreeves Estate, finding her mother who
doesn’t seem to want to talk to her. Allison is there and the two share an
awkward hug. Diego isn’t happy she’s hear at all after ‘what she did’ though
Allison steps to her defence. Luther’s there, huh, getting back from moon sure
is easy. He’s checking the area because something seems amiss to him. The
autopsy report suggests heart failure as a cause of death, and there’s no sign
of forced entry but his monocle is missing, something he never went anywhere
without.
And we quickly get to what it was that Vanya did that had
Diego ticked off, she wrote a book about her life as no 7. She has sent one for
him to read though it seems unlikely he did. We’re introduced to Pogo, a monkey
hybrid and we hear that no 5 disappeared over 6 years ago. Allison flashes back
to a memory, showing that Reginald was not a very attentive father. And if
you’ve been paying attention you might realise exactly why I chose these two
series. Both are shows that tend to family as being a theme, both have elements
of adult material and don’t shy away from blood and violence.
It’s not just inattentiveness though, Reginald had a
specific purpose in mind for these children and was going to have his way,
their willingness be damned. This has had consequences on their adult lives and
they’ve dealt with freedom in different but often damaging ways. Vanya wrote a
tell-all book that may well have unintentionally hurt her siblings, Diego
became a violent vigilante, Allison has a messy family life, it turns out her
husband filed for divorce and got custody of her child, Klaus took to drugs and
Luther just took off, in a rocket.
Luther’s suspicions aren’t out of no-where as we hear the
last time he was in contact with Reginald, he sounded off, more on edge than
usual as if expecting something to happen to him. As it turns out, Klaus has
the ability to contact the dead and might be able to find out some answers, but
not whilst he’s high on god knows what. Given that the missing monocle is not
valuable, he suspects its theft may be personal, hence a suspicion that maybe
one of them was responsible for the murder.
We cut to a bank heist 17 years ago. The robbers have
hostages, but it seems Allison is among them and we get a demonstration of her
power, mind control through the use of the word ‘rumour’. We see Luthor pounce
on a guy and throw him out of the bank, through an upper-level window. Diego
can alter the trajectory of his knives mid-flight and No 5, who was with them
at this point has teleportation abilities. The tragically deceased Ben, No 6, I
would wager, turns into some kind of tentacle hentai behind closed doors.
Hargreeves is watching with Vanya and tells her she’s not
special, honestly among the destructive things you can tell a child. He
introduces the rest of the family to the press, I guess after getting the
police to stop wanting to shoot them.
Back in the present, Klaus tries to commune with Reginald
but his obvious lack of sobriety stops him. Luther finds his way into his old
room, Allison does the same. Klaus takes more pills, Diego lies on the sofa,
fiddling with his knives whilst Vanya mopes on the stairs. Luther finds and
plays an old record, which somehow the whole house can hear.
“I think we’re alone now” gets everyone to dance, each of
these are different degrees of embarrassing. Suddenly a storm strikes, or is a
storm? Outside they see a ball of blue energy. Luther says it’s a time-space
anomaly and out of it comes no 5. He’s literally credited as Five Hargeeves, so
we’ll call him Five from now on. Five has manages to transport himself into the
future, the problem is his consciousness and his body don’t always match so
he’s actually 58 years old, but in the body of his 13-year-old self.
He missed Ben’s death, which was apparently horrific.
Everyone comes out with their funeral designated black umbrellas. With the
android mother somehow completely oblivious to it all. Their chosen spot is
where the statue of Ben has been erected. Luther pours the ashes onto the
ground, but none of the family really have much to say, leaving it to Pogo to
give his speech. Diego interrupts about how he was a bad person, with Luther
stepping to his defence. Apparently Hargreeves sent him into space, yikes.
Anyway, this leads into a fight, no 5 leaves just as Luther throws a punch that
destroys Ben’s statue. Diego throws a knife that cuts Luther and the fight ends
with but Klaus departing. I do find rather amusing that whilst everyone else
has a black funeral umbrella, he has a pink children’s umbrella, it’s a nice
touch.
We flash back the group training, running up the stairs and
getting rather painful tattoos at a young age, all whilst Vanya had to create
hers with a sharpie. He also attached monitors to them whilst they’re sleeping.
Pogo sees Vanya off, assuring her that in his own way, she
was loved. Five searches the kitchen for coffee but can’t find any, so he
decides to take the car. That could’ve ended badly. Diego arrives and throws
shade at Allison before leaving. Klaus decides to tag along, much to Diego’s
mild irritation. Luther gazes at his
injury as Mother stares at some relaxing pictures. Wires plug into her head as
she goes into a sleep cycle.
Five goes into a dunkin’ donuts store. He used to sneak off
here as a kid and reminisces about to the only other customer who is somewhat
perturbed as of course, he still looks like a kid. Still, he pays for Five’s
coffee and upon seeing that he works for a towing service, he asks for an
address. But outside, someone holding a meter pointing into the shop. Five is
surrounded by several armed seemingly mercenaries who want to take Five in.
They decide Istanbul (Not Constantinople) was the correct
choice of song for this action scene, which is so perplexing it actually works.
He kills them all quite violently but unlike that other show it doesn’t linger
on the gory details, plus their choice of song is distracting to say the least.
Upon seeing that they have a tracker in him, he grabs one of their knives and
cuts the tracker out. Dude, that knife can’t have even been sterile, bet you’ll
get an infection.
So, turns out Diego has the monacle, and Klaus is talking a
mysterious hooded stranger in the back of Diego’s car. Diego has a police radio
and hears about the incident at the donut shop. He’s going to drop Klaus off at
the bus stop and we get confirmation that the hooded stranger is in fact Ben,
who is dead.
Vanya arrives home and enters her apartment, finding Five
waiting for her. He’s decided that she’s the only person he can trust because
she acts somewhat stable, at least compared to the others. She helps clean his
wound, kinda proving his point. When he jumped into the future, he found a
post-apocalyptic hellscape where he was seemingly the last person alive. He
doesn’t know how it happened, only that it happens in 8 days.
The show puts together a lot of interesting pieces, focusing
on 6 interesting but equally flawed characters. Its pacing seems better than
most shows of this type, though it isn’t without padding.
Rating 8/10
Run Boy Run
We open with a flashback, the mother calls dinner as a
background record of instructions of tying knots, I think, is played. Five is
agitated and asks Reginald about time-traveling, something he outright
disallows. And for totally justifiable reasons but Five isn’t having any of it,
storms off and decides to do it anyway.
Run Boy Run is the song that plays as he makes temporal
jumps, until he finds the post-apocalyptic world he mentioned in the last
episode. He tries but finds he can’t use his powers for some reason.
Burnout/recharge perhaps, I don’t know, so he’s stuck there.
Back in the present, he explains to Vanya how he survived on
whatever he could find, and is the first person to debunk the film myth that
twinkies last forever. Vanya isn’t convince about everything, it could just be
time travel messing up his mind. She makes up a bed for him and tells him to
sleep on whilst she does the same. But Five hasn’t mentioned that he has a
clue, some kind of artificial eye, made by a company called MeriTech, and with
a serial number to boot.
Five decides to forgo the offer of a bed though. Meanwhile 2
people are dropped off at a motel. Hazel and Cha-Cha. They were hoping for
separate rooms but their employers have budget constraints and decided to let
them share, though with 2 separate beds. They’re given a package to take with
them to the room. The box is filled with guns and masks and a picture of an old
guy, their target.
We cut to the diner. The police are on the scene, and the
lead detective is a woman named Patch. Yes, I’m being serious. She talks to the
worker who’s shift it was, Agnes Rofa. She doesn’t really have much to offer,
she believes the kid was of the tow truck guy and they both drove off together.
But she also mentions that another ‘detective’ had already questioned her.
Yeah, Diego somehow got their first and conducted an interview. He and Patch
were clearly lovers at one point but for now she confiscates his badge and
radio and sends him on his merry way, to the police station.
Luther wakes up the next morning, barely fitting onto his
bed anymore. We get a nice been Luther and Allison, Allison may not have liked
this place growing up, but she made sure her kid, Claire, knew about Luther.
One other difference between this and Titans, the dialogue is so much better
here.
Klaus wakes up rather too sober for his taste, he’d been
hearing screaming voices all night and finds Ben telling him to sober up in the
morning. Yeah, I can see why he turned to drugs. Pogo asks him about a certain
ornate box being missing, Klaus had sold it for drug money and discarded its
contents. Pogo claims the contents of the box are priceless and should they be retrieved;
it’ll be no harm no foul.
Vanya wakes up to find Five long gone. He’s of course at
Meritech enquiring about the eye and who it belongs to. I don’t know if he
expected just asking to work, but seeing a guy in 13-year-old’s body trying and
being somewhat successful at being intimidating, it’s just weird. Detective
Patch is told that whilst the bullets were all from the victim’s guns there’s
DNA from a pencil (or something) that was stabbed in one of their eyes that
matches a cold case from 1938.
Diego is released with a warning that if he interferes with
her work, he’ll end up in prison for construction. But here’s a nice bit of
deconstruction as she tells him his nightly escapades are basically schoolyard
fights, and he’s living in the fantasy if he thinks that they’re actually doing
any actual good.
Luther goes to a gym he believes Diego frequents, turns out
he actually works there, or at least is supposed to, getting arrested does tend
to interfere with these things. He takes a look at Diego’s workspace, a place
he rents in exchange for the work. Vanya returns to the mansion looking for
Five, and surprisingly finds him. He kinda dismisses her, claiming that she was
maybe right but in fact he’s now working with Klaus. Heaven help him.
He’s now posing as Five’s father, and is getting into the
role with an intricate backstory. The truck driver from the diner is knocked
out and tortured by Hazel and Cha-Cha. They believe he is Five, but comparing
him to the photo again, it’s fairly clear that he isn’t. He mentions the kid
and they theorise that he could’ve ended up in a time traveller’s body since he
didn’t use the case to time travel. Cha-Cha had dropped his off in the hotel,
which is against protocol just FYI.
On her way out, Vanya hears Allison on the phone.
Apparently, visiting the funeral meant that she missed a court-mandated
session, and it further threatens visitation with her child. Allison in anger
rants on Vanya, and this line hit me
“You’re an adult now, Vanya. You don’t get to blame your problems on anyone but
yourself”
Aside from this being an outright lie in a lot of circumstances who was dumping
whose problems on who here? So back to Klaus and Five, their attempts to trace
the eye fail again, but Klaus improvises and slaps Five, attempting to blame it
on the doctor. The walls are all made of glass, everyone can see you, he
further sells it by smashing his face into a snow-globe.
But there’s a problem, that particular eye has yet to be
manufactured. The person it belongs to hasn’t lost his eye yet. Klaus wants his
$20, which just have Five further frustrated. Five reminisces about his crush,
Dolores, who he was with for 30 years.
We’re introduced to Leonard, a new student of Vanya’s. He’s
a bit older than Vanya’s usual clientele and it takes a moment to adjust to
that. Diego returns to the gym and sees that Luther’s there. Luther had
discovered that Diego had been fighting when Reginald died. Diego hadn’t
brought this up because he didn’t want to.
Leonard’s violin lesson progress marginally within the
allotted hour, and Vanya assures him that she caters to all ages and it’s never
too late to learn, however odd it may seem. Turns out he’s learning to
understand his late father, someone he had a complicated relationship with…
something Vanya definitely relates to.
Allison sits on a windowsill, smoking, when Pogo comes to
comfort her. Vanya had called to check up. He shows her old surveillance
footage of the family in the monitor room Reginald had. He advises her to lock
up when she’s done. She puts in a particular tape and whilst we don’t see what
it contains, it’s clearly new and shocking information.
Five ends up in the department store and we find that
Dolores is in fact one of the shop’s dummies. Time for another violent action
scene as Hazel and Cha-Cha begin shooting up the place, wearing animal masks.
Five races to protect his shop dummy, but finds he’s reached a wall on the
number of jumps he can make. He evades them by jumping behind the cash register
and the police force their retreat.
Detective Patch finds the body of the guys Hazel and Cha-Cha
tortured before she and Diego hear about the shoot out at the department store.
Five got out of there before the police could question him but there’s another
shocking bit of news from Allison, it turns out Reginald was indeed murdered.
We cut back to stranded Five, who finds the eye in Luther’s
dead hand, he sees the bodies of Diego and Allison and Klaus soon after.
The show continues to weave intriguing details in its
ongoing mystery, whilst continuing to make the characters interesting.
Rating 7.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment