(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. A few clips from WandaVision are briefly shown as well)
Doug (vo): It's funny. WandaVision seemed to really polarize people, they either seem to love it or hate it. Marvel's follow-up show, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, seemed to have the same reaction with everyone, and that was, "It was okay." My opinion? Um...I think it's a little better than okay, actually. It kind of had the opposite effect of WandaVision, where with that, I started off really liking it and then kind of got sick of it after a while, where with this, it started off a little slow, but got more and more interesting as it carried on.
Premise[]
Doug (vo): Falcon is handing over Captain America's shield. Even though Captain America trusted him with it, he doesn't feel he has the responsibility or the strength to take it on. But as the saying goes, if great people won't step up to the challenge, others will. So a new Captain America is chosen with John Walker, a decorated member of the Army that seems like a perfect choice, but I think we can all put together is not going to be. Meanwhile, the Winter Soldier, Bucky, is finding it difficult to adjust as well, living so many years as a brainwashed assassin, trying to have a normal life and still do good while everybody sees you as evil, and, yeah, maybe you still got some of those old habits in you can be very difficult. But things heat up when a terrorist group known as the Flag-Smashers want things to go back to the way things were before Thanos snapped half of humanity out of existence. Not that they wanted to see people disappear, but for five years, half the population just wasn't on Earth, and when they suddenly come back, a lot of problems arose. Jobs, economy, food, suddenly all these things that were around for half the population now have to be doubled. Falcon and Bucky team up together to try and take down the Flag-Smashers, while also trying to see if they can reason with their leader, while also trying to stop the new Captain America from making things worse.
Review[]
Doug (vo): The first thing I really like about this show is that it feels like a Captain America show. Every time a Marvel movie comes along, it has kind of a unique identity, like Guardians of the Galaxy is not gonna be the same as Iron Man, Thor is not gonna be the same as Hulk. The Captain America movies did establish this very clear identity, and that identity is here. This feels more like a "spies and espionage" show, there just happens to be superheroes in it, and...yeah, they have some kick-ass action scenes. But there's actually a lot more sitting down and talking in it that you would imagine, and even when these scenes can be a little boring time to time, there was something I appreciated that was taking the time to just sit down, talk, discuss strategies, and really let the magnitude of the mission that's about to be performed sink in. As you'd imagine, there's cameos and surprises and backstabbing, and all the good stuff you would hope for in a Marvel spy show.
(Clips focusing on the show's primary villain, Karli Morgenthau, the leader of the Flag-Smashers, are shown)
Doug (vo): With that said, there are some inconsistencies. For starters, the villain kind of goes back and forth between this really dramatic "I'm only doing this because I have to" kind of character and then kind of a psycho who smiles before she kills someone. She's mostly very straightforward and no-nonsense, and the few times she does smile, it didn't seem in-character, like, she was having fun, but nothing about what they told us about her indicates she would be having fun.
(Clips focusing on the main characters, Sam Wilson/Falcon and Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, are shown)
Doug (vo): I also feel, for a show called Falcon and the Winter Soldier, there is a huge imbalance between Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Now don't get me wrong, a lot is set up with Bucky. He's gonna try and go out on a date, he's seeing a therapist, he befriends this guy who knows somebody he assassinated. Man, this is a lot to take in. In the majority of the show, it's not looked at. It's more him and Falcon trying to get along like a buddy cop movie, which is fine, it's done well. But for so much interesting setup, there wasn't a ton of payoff, at least not continually through this show, they more just kind of shoved it into one episode. Falcon, I will say, I never had much interest in the movies, but I did find myself really liking him in this. I'm not gonna lie, the idea of him becoming Captain America seemed kind of lame, because I didn't know anything about him. But when they cleverly show you someone who's bad at being Captain America, it's kind of hard to say, "Yeah, this other guy wouldn't be better", but he's a little bit more than that. He's very reserved, but he's not boring, and I think doing stuff like having the family and this boat that they're trying to get, and other little details that can be charming but also a pain in the ass in life, really do add up. (Beat) Maybe a little too much. After a while, I kind of got sick of that goddamn boat, I didn't really remember the names of any of the family members, I kind of got a little bored seeing what his wife was going to yell at him about this episode. These are usually scenes I love in a show like this. I love seeing more of a superhero's personal life. But I feel like they just kind of did the bare minimum with them. They're not bad, I didn't want to see anything happen to them, but I didn't find them super-memorable either.
(Clips focusing on the Flag-Smashers are shown)
Doug (vo): The idea of a terrorist group coming from after the Snap, I think is very interesting. You don't usually think about the social economical consequences of what happens in superhero movies, and I like when a film does that. They did that in Civil War, and they do it once in a while in these Marvel films if it matches the tone. And it definitely matches here. But again, a touch inconsistent, because they make it look like everything was awful five years after the Snap, so it's a little weird sometimes to try and sympathize with someone when you were shown for five years everything was miserable.
(More footage focusing on Sam Wilson/Falcon, specifically his struggles over choosing to either accept or deny Captain America's shield and his new superhero form as Captain America, is shown)
Doug (vo): But, okay. Here's the real reason I love this show, and this is gonna sound really weird, but this is the show where the importance of this finally hit me: the shield. I know that sounds really superficial, but whenever I see someone with a Captain America T-shirt with just the shield or someone had the shield hanging on their wall or something, I didn't fully get it. I liked Captain America fine, but, come on, you got Batman and Wolverine and all these other kick-ass superheroes. What does Captain America have? Well, to put it bluntly... (An image of the old man from Denny's Red, White and Blue Pancakes commercial is shown as Doug mimics him) ...America. When I saw how everyone treated the shield and how they looked at it, and, yeah, sometimes they would talk about it, but the majority of the time, it was just the stare they would give this thing, it finally hit me its importance. When I see Falcon throwing that shield around and practicing with it, I got chills. It hit me how long that thing had been around, how long it'd been gone, when it came back, how important it was, what it survived. When I saw Falcon's kids playing with it while he was waking up, I kind of got this really weird feeling, like, "Hey, don't touch that. It's a relic." But it's also this symbol that kids can really look up to and be proud of, and, yes, a lot of those virtues are challenged in this, too, when they talk about race and so many other things that can be a problem in America. And, naturally, when you see someone misuse it as well, it's very jarring.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): Maybe you can chalk it up to me just realizing something that everybody else realized decades ago, me being a dumbass not putting together what a great symbol this really is. But this show did make me realize it. And it wasn't just through people talking about it, it was through people really letting it sink in, seeing it pass from place to place, used in different ways, and the power of that image really leaving a big impact. I know that's kind of a weird reason to say I think that elevates this show from being just okay to pretty damn good, but for me, that's a big reason. I don't know if other people felt the same way. Maybe I'm the only one who didn't put it together, and if so, fair enough. This is just my experience. But even if you didn't make the connection the same time that I did, it's still a very good show about exploring it, the responsibility of it, who it goes to, who it belongs to, who it doesn't belong to. Will you have the same revelation? I don't know. But either way, this is still a very well-put-together show, even if it can be a little inconsistent. Fly on in and see why something seemingly so simple can be so important.
(A shot of Sam Wilson/Falcon and Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier walking into an area is shown)