Watercoolering With WANDAVISION - Ep. 4 - We Interrupt This Program (Patreon)

WELL, THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.

What’s sort of amazing about this episode is how much it both goes against and yet absolutely upholds everything I’ve been saying (and judging by the response, everyone also loved it). Because gone is the mystery box teasing! In steps direct action and function! Notice how much it helps to have a person actually INVESTIGATING the events that are going on. Again, a mystery is not presenting endless vague-ness, it is establishing a driving question, having people try to answer it, and changing the scope of that understanding based on newly evolving information. Here we finally get all that. And even more.

For starters, I already care more about Monica Rambeau than anyone else on the show. That’s what empathy building does. The opening loss hits in a kind of powerful way (I’ll talk more about the snap-back at the end). It’s powerful to watch her re-introduction to the world. And I like that it shows her curiosity and gumption. It does such a good job with her that I’m genuinely excited to follow up with her development in this show (and the parallel of her loss with Wanda feels important).

If that weren’t enough, DARCY IS BACK, Y’ALL. Fellow Darcy-heads rejoice! What I hope this also highlights is that Kat Dennings is exceptionally good at what she does. It’s not just that she brings basic comic timing to the table, it’s the way her mere presence fits in this world. From the understated way she takes no shit, to the way she commands a room by doing very little. To me, it’s the perfect kind of person you want spearheading the investigation because it matches the tone of what the audience is brining, too. It’s lines like, “Look I know it’s been a crazy few years on this planet, but he’s dead, right? Not blipped. Dead.” And Dennings makes it work because she is one of those people who passes the Pauline Kael test for actors in that: “When she talks, you believe her.” Also, everything I just said is also true for Randall Park.

Now, onto the big stuff.

I’ll admit. I didn’t expect the episode to go as far as it did in answering questions. In fact, we got way more answers than I thought we would along the way. The helicopter. The bees. It all gets answered in a pretty clean way. Hell, the back half of the episode practically feels like an answer-thon. And it of course leads to the biggest answer of all that Wanda is in control of all of this (at least we think). But I’m of several minds about it.

The first thing is that execution of those scenes were done remarkably well. The quick moment of her seeing dead Vision is horrifying. Especially because she gets to play it very real and it’s affecting. But more important is the way the show is finally go into her head. I talk ad nauseam about how good writing shows a person’s “interiority” which means you understand what they’re thinking and why. And part of the problem with the last three episodes is that we were SO outside their interiority. But here, we can go inside her head in this really meaningful way and understand her experience (which I argue, is a thousand times more interesting than any mystery question you can have). So kudos for that.

But I still have reservations. Like the fact that we could get to the “it’s Wanda” of it all after just 20 minutes and few scenes is something that shows, perhaps once again, that they had no real mystery on their hands to begin with. Meaning there weren’t any real twists and turns along the way. That’s the problem with mystery boxing. You’re taking what should be the core motivation and just hiding the most critical aspect of your story. And now, we only have two more driving questions in the show: 1) how is this conflict going to resolve? And even though we have obvious hints 2) why is Wanda doing this?

The “why” brings me to the problem with inductive versus deductive reasoning in storytelling. Put simply, I think inductive reasoning makes for better storytelling. You present scenes with new information developments, the audience goes “Oh! That would mean x!” And it works from there. But so much of the conjecture of this particular show was based around deductive reasoning. From the very first episode, people guessed “Oh Vision is dead and she’s retreating into a world of sitcoms from her childhood!” And like, yeah, you’re probably right because WHAT ELSE COULD THIS ALL BE? But that’s the thing. Was there anything ever presented to us that showed Wanda’s love of sitcoms before? Was there anything else that built us up to that idea? No inductive points were presented. We were simply given the end result. And we had deduce the obvious conclusion. There’s no work here. No proof along the way. All you really get from that is the joy of telling people “my guess was right,” even though none of us had evidence beyond the mere conceit itself. And once again, my problem is less with Wandavision’s tact and the fact that I see more and more shows in the wake of LOST making that misunderstanding.

But even then, I have what I think is a more important question: does the clarity of this mic drop episode make last three episodes worth it?

It’s sort of the age old query when it comes to process of answering questions in narrative. How much time do you get before you have to get to the point? Are you actually creating good misinformation or just cryptically teasing the same right answer with more clarity along the way? Are you actually investigating? Are you actually being entertaining? Are you just wheel spinning? And while I can’t deny that this episode at least *accounts* for the first three episodes, the truth is I probably would have come at those first three episodes differently and built a better sense of investigation, purely because I feel it needed more agency on the whole (plus, you get what it’s doing with the sitcom thing after a mere 20 minutes). But I said it before and I’ll say it again: mileage my vary. And with the core conflict finally on the table, we can get down to the core business of the show.

What is that show going to be? I don’t know yet.

But at least we know the score.

RANDOM THOUGHTS!

-Unlike the endless room to fill of past episodes, the small, tight 20+ minutes of story here just bangs along. Loved that.

-“Miss Lewis? / “Doctor Lewis.”

-“So you’re saying the universe created a sitcom starring two avengers?” When they’re not getting lost in the mystery box nonsense, the MCU is very good at what they do in terms of leveling a crazy explanation down to kinda joking human level. You may not think that is a skill, but it’s a huge one. And other places have been much, much worse at it.

-Maria / Monica Rambeau. While I love her character, I must say I’m soooooooo tired of the fact that everyone is someone’s kid or something. Can’t people just fucking be independent people and not be related to each other? It just keeps tying into all that gross eugenics and blood lines and family pressure to live up to X stuff we see in media and just needs to GO AWAY. But hey, if we keep populating Hollywood with writers who went to private school we’re going to keep getting people who think this is how the world is for everyone, just cause it’s like that for them.

-Love the idea that the government could build super command center in 24 hours. Remember how back in the 90’s they thought the government was super in control and could to respond to anything with instant ability and hahahahahahahhahah *sighs in existential*

-They make fun of Wanda’s sitcom jumping time periods “for [our] entertainment,” but even they seem to be getting it wrong a lot, which also ties into my thing that the creators didn’t really have that exactitude either?

-I love how much this episode shows that color, aspect ratio, and cinematography communicate SO MUCH to you, often subconsciously, but here turned into text. They did a bang up job.

-OK, here’s the big one. Let’s talk about the reverse snap.

I think there are few important sins of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from the way they mishandle theme, to the ever moving goalposts, to just a general lack of EVER going for the throat with most dramatic choices. But the handling of the reverse snap is the sin that might take the biggest slice of cake. Because that decision is rooted in the intersections of self-interest along with the complete lack of examination of consequences. To be clear, I understand why the reverse snap exists! It exists to have that moment of everyone coming together in a rousing way (I also wish that entire scene was filmed better, but whatever). But the “five years later” of it all… well, it’s a fucking choice. And one that needs to be lived with.

And until this point, its consequences had been shrugged off. In Far From Home we get a kid joking about his little brother, “now he’s my older brother, that’s weird!” Everyone was just completely pretending like this wasn’t a huge deal. And it was that pretending that infuriated me. Because there was no way that there COULDN’T be devastating consequences to this decision. Because it was a choice that could have been undone differently and changed so much, but Stark now had a daughter and he didn’t want to lose that (yes, I imagine there were others in that scenario, too, but let’s not kid ourselves, it was about that). Again, I get the choice, but you have to accept the complicated reality that comes with it.

Which is all to say imagine my surprise to have an episode actually engage the horror of that moment with not everyone disappearing, but everyone coming back. It would be exactly as is shown (well, not exactly, she somehow doesn’t seem to be freaking out ENOUGH about the materializing ash people). And even though they sort of left that traumatic moment in the rearview before moving onto the rest of the episode, we still know it’s part of her. And the fact that the MCU even looked at it? Honestly, it’s important. Because it feels like there were honoring a space that been ignored thus far. And hopefully leads them to the space where I think they need the most work.

To wit, I once heard a story from someone working in the MCU and they were talking about the need for the death of a certain character and how Marvel balked at the choice (thus it didn’t happen). But in discussion, their disinterest wasn’t about story or even future plans or anything like that. They went so far as to say “they seemed uncomfortable talking about the very subject itself.” It’s something that stuck with me because I see it in a LOT of the thematic spaces in the MCU. There are all these arenas of death, sex, and other things that just so glaringly stick out. They just pretend it doesn’t exist. Or when it does, it’s something that gently played with before they move on / reverse things / or move on to yet another story that has no real meaningful consequences, thematic or otherwise. Thus, that silence can be deafening.

And it is a kind of denial of death that, perhaps not so coincidentally, seems to be the very backbone of Wandavision. Which both makes them the perfect and least perfect people to tackle the subject. But what is hopefully clear by the episode’s end is that there is no more room for denial. Death is always at the door.

But finally, so is the character motivation.

<3HULK