Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 7

 White Dragon is on the hunt.

Last time on Peacemaker, the Butterfly got out of the jar… metaphorically and literally. It was revealed that Murn is a Butterfly, the sole dissenter of his people’s plan to invade earth and take over the planet. Harcourt figured this out when Murn survived a bomb blast to the face, Economos figured it out at some point as well but is in denial about it, but now Leota knows, leaving just the costumed vigilantes in the dark. Speaking of them, Detective Song got an arrest warrant for Christopher Smith and lead a team to arrest him. Chris and Adrian are able to escape his trailer but are unable to escape before they’re surrounded.  Adrian falls out of a tree, smashing the jar that held Goff’s Butterfly. It infects Song, a violent process that is definitely fatal to the host. Chris and Adrian are able to escape thanks to Captain Locke, Murn’s plant in the police department. In the search of his trailer, the cops find the fake diary, which Locke pockets. Pressed for time and wanting to remove Peacemaker and company, Goff-Song calls in a bunch of Butterflies. She infects the Evergreen police and prisoners in mass, turning hundreds into their thralls. After, the now infected Locke reveals Peacemaker’s diary and says that the police around the US’s number one priority is capturing Peacemaker. Oh, and Auggie is out and has decided he’s going to kill Chris. He gets his White Dragon and his skinhead legion prepared. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 7: Stop Dragon my Heart Around

 

We open with Chris and his brother Keith rocking out to music. After they vibe for a minute, one of their dad’s goons comes in and says that they’re ready for them. This is the point where we learn that one of Auggie Smith’s revenue streams was pitching his children against each other in a bareknuckle brawl. Folks would take bets and the Smith brothers would beat the hell out of each other in a sand pit. We hear Auggie yelling slurs at his sons to encourage them to fight harder. We come out of the flashback to see Chris standing over the bathroom sink and looking like he’s about to throw up. We return to the flashback where Chris gets a real good hit on his brother’s nose, knocking him down. Keith immediately starts having a seizure and dies before anyone can help him. Auggie immediately blames Chris for what happened, casually deflecting that the only reason his sons were fighting was because he told them to do it. Prick.

 

Adrian checks on Chris and Chris acts like he wasn’t having an existential crisis a minute ago when he comes out. He tells his little buddy that they need to get out of there, now. He realizes that Leota must have planted the diary at his place, as she’s the only one of the team that ever stopped by. He goes to grab a go-bag, and discovers that Judomaster has escaped. He decides not to care about it, though, as he has bigger fish to fry at the moment. He grabs his bag of helmets and heads out. Back at Auggies house, we see him showing his minions that he’d bugged all the helmets to track Chris’ movements. A cluster are at the police station, so he safely assumes those were taken in the raid of Chris’ trailer, but the other big group is moving and must be where Chris is now.

 

Chris and Adrian start loading up on weapons. Economos comes in and asks about the diary. Chris again vehemently denies having a diary and asks Economos if he really looks like the type of guy to do collages and stuff to put on a diary. Economos shrugs and says he wouldn’t have originally but after getting to know Chris he feels like it’s actually exactly what he’d do. Chris admits to doing some collage work, but says that if he’d done this for the diary he wouldn’t be so angry about it. Economos asks where they’re going and Chris says that with the new time pressure they may as well go out and kill this Cow now. Economos says no to going but immediately follows them after seeing Eagly coming too.

 

Leota is watching the report as well when Harcourt storms in and accuses her of planting the diary. Leota admits it, saying that Peacemaker’s conspiratorial thinking, violent mood swings, and history of instability made him the perfect choice for a set up. Harcourt is furious at this, saying that Leota is an asshole. They have an argument over who is the bigger asshole, Leota for betraying ‘one of their own,’ or Harcourt for killing that security guard that begged for his life. Leota says she’s not made for this sort of thing, so she’s leaving. Harcourt incredulously asks what was she even doing here if she’s going to flee now, and Leota drops the bomb that it’s because she lost her job and her mom offered her a new one. Harcourt is really thrown off by this idea that Leota is Waller’s daughter, I think I would be too. I’ve seen that woman in multiple series and I’d think it more likely Amanda Waller would birth some sort of lizard person than like an actual human. Murn comes in and tells them they have to go. Harcourt tries to drop the bombs she’d learned on him, but Murn already knows. Well, he know Leota was Waller’s kid, he did background checks on all of them, and he figured the diary was her. He says that Leota probably shouldn’t have done that or at the very least should have waited until the mission was over. He tells them Locke was his operative, so he’s compromised and since Butterfly’s inherit their hosts memories, he knows where they are, so they need to drop what they’re doing, grab their shit, and meet him in the lobby. Harcourt leaves with Murn, but pokes her head back in to yell at Leota that she’d trusted the other woman.

 

We cut to a pair of guys heading to a convenience store where they get jump-scared by Judomaster standing by the door and eating chips menacingly.

 

Harcourt calls Chris and when she gets his voicemail tells him to call her.

 

Chris, Adrian and Economos head out in the van. The two costumed killers rock out while Economos drives. He asks if maybe they’re being too nonchalant about this, and Chris asks if he really thinks there is a right and wrong time to rock. The Aryan Empire have tracked the helmet down and Auggie in his White Dragon Armor rams the truck, knocking it over. He breaks into it and then shoots plasma blasts at them. Vigilante forces him back with a P90 and a grenade. He says there’s no wrong time to rock before the explosion goes off. Chris calls out the Vij, how nice he has a nickname, but Economos drags him back and they run. White Dragon was knocked back but largely unharmed, so he and his empire start chasing Peacemaker’s helmet. We see that Adrian is still alive, but his suit is badly shredded from the explosion and he’s bleeding.

 

Economos asks how they tracked them, and Chris realizes the helmet has a tracker. The empire follows the tracer. They hear Eagly screech, and the skinhead girl says they’re moving fast. They look over in time to steal Adrian stealing one of the cars, one of the skin heads browbeating the other for leaving his keys in the car. White Dragon tells them to forget it and keep moving.

 

The two guys head for their car, only for Judomaster to attack them. He knocks the two out. He looks into the convenience store to see the clerk give him the thumbs up. I guess he hated those guys too. He steals the car and drives off.

 

Murn enters his room just in time to see the cops start pulling hip. Harcourt just barely escapes notice when Goff-Song and the others pull up on Murn’s room. Someone grabs Harcourt, and she almost screams, but it’s revealed to be Leota, who she tells to shut up and hide.

 

White Dragon and company close in on the helmet, one of them complaining that Peacemaker is running like a spaz. We see Economos hiding behind a tree as a raccoon walks by, the helmet tied to its tail. The raccoon runs off and the Aryan nation follows it. Chris sits up, his face covered in cuts and says that Raccoons are hard core. Economos shrugs and says that’s about what he expected to happen to anyone that just grabs a wild raccoon. Eagly lands by them and the three start running. We cut to Adrian, who is driving around. He’s clearly concussed though, he only has enough time to take off his mask and put on his glasses before going off the road.

 

Murn radios to Leota and Harcourt, Leota brought the radio, and tells them to go. He says that he was proud to have them on his team and for them to finish the job. The Butterfly cops burst in, Murn shoots two but is grabbed by the others. Goff-Song asks how he knows about the cow. Murn tries to give a heroic speech, but Goff-Song isn’t interested in listening and shoots him. She says that they need to get the teleport equipment to the Ranch, now, but before they leave, Murn’s butterfly leaves his body. Goff-Song catches it, recognizing him as Ik-Nobe-Lok. She says he could have just joined them, and crushes the Butterfly. Fitz-Butterfly says that she murdered him, but she shrugs. She says that without him the other’s have nothing, they’re a couple rejects and two clowns in costumes. They storm off, and Harcourt and Leota go to check on Murn. Leota confirms Murn’s body is dead, and Harcourt finds Ik-Nobe-Lok. They have a touching moment when they touch hands… finger to grasper, and he dies. Harcourt asks what they’re going to do without him. Judomaster then rushes in and knocks out Leota. Harcourt and Judomaster brawl, the spy doing extremely well against the martial artist. They go around smashing the room up, Harcourt getting a towel and wrapping it around his wrist before Judomaster gets her to the ground and starts punching her face. She starts laughing despite the hits, and when he stops, confused, she says “Rope-a-dope, you dumb shit.” The towel was to take away his agility, allowing Leota to sneak up and tase him. She zaps him a few more times for good measure.

 

White Dragon and his crew corner the Raccoon. They’re rather disappointed to find the angry procyonid trying to get the helmet off its tail. White Dragon tells his men to fan out, but the skinhead girl says she’s got something. Chris and Economos find Adrian and rose him enough to get the door open. Chris gets in the driver seat and Economos gets in the back with Eagly. The bird is pecking him very aggressively for some reason. They start driving off and Adrian asks about how they got traced. Economos tells him about the helmet trackers, and Adrian gives Chris an “oh, I f-ed up bad” look. Chris stops the car, pops the trunk and finds his duffle full of helmets. Chris goes to throw the helmets but walks right into the White Dragon cult. They rush him, he tries to get back to the car, but they overwhelm him. Economos sees and runs, he runs into Adrian who was taking a whiz. White Dragon arrives to back up his men. Eagly tries to attack him, but he knocks the bird out of the sky. This royally pisses off Chris, who throws off the skinheads and knocks his dad over, saying he’ll kill him. White Dragon knocks him over and to the ground. He puts a boot to Chris’ chest and delivers a sermon to his cult. He calls Chris unworthy, spoiled, impure, for doing things like listening to rock music, killing his brother (Chris is able to choke out that was Auggie’s fault), for ‘polluting’ himself with non-white women and men, and prepares to shoot. Adrian rushes in and stabs White Dragon in the back, saying there are gaps in the armor. He throws Adrian off and the skinheads prepare to shoot. Economos comes out and shoots them all. White Dragon tries to shoot him, but the stab damaged the suit too much. Chris grabs his dad, knocks his helmet off and throws him onto the car. He agrees with his dad he’s a POS. He’s a POS for listening to him for so long, for not killing him in his sleep, and for letting him kill Keith. White Dragon says he hits like a girl. Chris grabs a gun and points it at him. Auggie isn’t scared, saying that he controls Chris, that he’ll never get away from Auggie because he made him… and Chris shoots him in the head. Auggie drops, Chris drops and starts to sob. Adrian tries to reassure him, after Economos tells him that Chris isn’t doing face exercises, but it’s awkward.

 

Back at the hotel, Leota lies to Keeya about what’s going on and says she’s just doing paperwork. She helps Harcourt clean some of the cuts on her face. Harcourt asks what her what she used to do. Leota says she used to work at a dog shelter. She thinks Waller sensed her moment of weakness and so offered her this job to get her into spy work. Leota says that she isn’t cut out for this, but her mom insisted that she needed someone she could trust on the team. Harcourt says that Waller doesn’t trust anyone and Leota agrees. Harcourt says that she knew Leota was hiding something, and Leota says that she knew that Harcourt knew and that’s why they had tension. She says she just wants to finish this job and go, but Harcourt says that would be a waste as she’s good at it. And they need all hands on deck to kill this cow. Leota isn’t sure they could even do that, but their talk is interrupted by a call from Chris.

 

They rush over to the local animal shelter, Economos lets them in. He says that the staff here kindly stitched up Eagly, but now Vigilante is being a psycho. Adrian says they have to kill them to protect his and Peacemaker’s identities. Economos asks if they really have to kill these people. Harcourt says no, they can just tie them up, and by the time the morning staff come in they’ll be gone. Adrian agrees to this but says they shouldn’t use tape as that’ll hurt their skin when they tear it off. Economos is flabbergasted and asks him if he’s compassionate about tape use but not brutally murdering people, and Adrian just says ‘yes.’ Leota misses a call from Keeya and goes to call her back. In the hall she sees Chris on his knees praying to Gd to not take Eagly from him. He apologizes for leaving him with his dad and should have been a better friend to his bird. He says the bird is the only one who loved him besides Keith. Eagly gets up and hugs him with his wings. Leota is deeply moved by this and walks off. Chris carefully grabs his phone and gets a selfie. Leota calls Keeya and tells her about seeing an eagle hug a man. Keeya is also surprised by this, and Leota thinks it might be a sign.

 

The team reconvenes. Harcourt asks about Leota’s wife and she says that she’s upset but understands. They wonder how they’ll do this without Murn, with Leota nominating Harcourt to take the lead. Harcourt spells out the situation, I’m sure the vets are all very confused by what they’re saying. The Butterflies can breathe and drink here, but they need the cow for food. They know that the cow is in the caverns under the Coverdale Ranch. They just have to kill the cow to stop them. We see the Butterflies arrive and prepare their teleportation equipment to move the Cow. Peacemaker, Vigilante, Leota, and weirdly the vet staff are all in. Economos is lukewarm but willing to go. They tell the vet staff that they’d die immediately, so they’ll need to stay, but that they’re taking their truck. The vets watch them go, the doctor saying that they’re surprisingly nice people, considering. One of the nurses agrees but adds “except the guy in blue,” and the vet agrees that he’s a mess.

 

On the drive out, Leota tries to apologize but Chris says that he doesn’t care. She said they were a team and that was obviously a lie. So, they need to go in, finish the mission and leave, so he doesn’t have to see her face ever again. We cut to the cavern under the ranch and learn that there was definitely something lost in translation when the Butterflies translated their word for this creature to Cow. Their ‘cow,’ is a blue whale sized worm with multiple eyes that they milk for its fluid. I’m thinking killing it is going to be tough… Hope they’re ready.

 

This was a fine penultimate episode for the first season. The stakes were appropriately raised with the death of Murn and the Butterflies prepping to move their cow. The cat and mouse game that Chris, Adrian and Economos had to play with White Dragon was an excellent way to slow down their effort. Props to Robert Patrick, he really sold the idea that he’s an absolute dirtbag of a human being and a parent. He’s just such a scumbag to Chris who clearly only ever wanted please this guy. His speech about how Chris was a failure in his eyes was also good, in that it was passionate and fitting for a leader of skinheads to deliver. He was objectively wrong in his assessment of his kid. His suit was well designed too, just needed to be said. While Chris was the one to finish his dad, as he should, I do like that they made sure Economos and Adrian got to show off a little too. Adrian shooting at White Dragon and being willing to blow himself to kingdom come in an attempt to kill White Dragon was so cool. And Economos mowing down the lesser goons was super on brand for him. And the fight between Harcourt and Judomaster was really well choreographed. It showed off both characters hand to hand skills, and it was neat to see her in real time prep their strategy to beat him. I laughed hard when Leota started tasing him and didn’t stop until he was out-out. So, the team is off to face a cow, they’ll find a worm, and who knows how they’ll make it out. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Have a good night! 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 6

 Bugs are raising up!

Last time on Peacemaker, we finally learned what the hell Butterflies are. They’re a race of alien insects that can enter a host through an orifice and take control of their body, greatly enhancing their strength and speed during the process. The team found the Glam Tai bottling card at both locations and are sent to Glam Tai to check it out to see if it held the alien’s food supply. The group bond a little on the drive up upon discovering that Chris and Economos share a love for the Finish Glam Metal band Hanoi Rocks before they investigate the plant. Chris uses his X-ray vision Peacemaker helmet and confirms that the whole staff at this place are possessed by Butterflies. He, Leota, Harcourt and Adrian start killing minions left and right before facing off against Charlie, a Butterfly infected Gorilla. Four on one odds are usually great for the four, but the Gorilla is way stronger than them. They’re only saved by Economos coming in and killing the Gorilla with a chainsaw from behind. This seems to heal all issues between Chris and Economos, as the former starts calling the ladder a stud. They celebrate a job well done, Harcourt renames the employee group chat the Eleventh Street Kids after a song by Hanoi Rocks, and Murn congradulates the team for a job well done. Meanwhile, Auggie tells the cops to recheck his fingerprints, and this causes the whole chain of lies protecting Peacemaker to fall apart. Murn tries to put the case on ice by replacing the Police Chief with an agent of his, but Song goes over his head to get a warrant from her judge uncle. Chris gets dropped off at home by Leota, the two share a few more beers, and Leota tells him if he stopped being a dick as a defense mechanism, he’d have more friends. While alone when Chris goes to pee, Leota stashes the fake journal in Chris’s house. Feeling wired she goes back to the office and plays with Chris’ X-ray helmet, learning that Murn is a Butterfly in the process. Well damn. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 6: Murn After Reading

 

We open with Murn catching Leota in the rain and disarming her. To her surprise he says “stop,” and says he’s not going to murder her. Harcourt arrives and confirms she knows that Murn is also a Butterfly. She gives Leota back her gun and the three go inside. Harcourt says that she figured it out after the Goff house, where a bomb went off in Murn’s face without doing much damage to him. This coupled with his knowledge of the Butterflies tipped her off something was hinky so she confronted him. Murn explains that his people came to Earth because their world was dying. He was content with just living his life as an intelligent bug, but the others wanted more. Goff’s Butterfly was their leader and she started what he calls “Leeching,” taking a host body. He claims he was the sole opponent to the plan, the other Butterflies called him over sensitive. Leota calls him a murderer, pointing out he killed the ‘real’ Murn when he took him. Murn doesn’t deny this, saying that he had to do something, so he took the worst person he could find. Murn says that he knows that even with how vile Murn was, he took away his ability to change and that disgusts him. Leota asks if Economos knows, and Harcourt says he does but he tries to ignore it. He’s afraid of the repercussions if Waller finds out they’ve kept stuff from her. He says that she can’t tell Waller either for fear it’ll slow their investigation. He says they need to get the cow before the others move it. Yes, a Cow is involved.

 

We then cut to Peacemaker giving a Q and A presentation to a group of kids at a school. He’s doing Jamil the Janitor a solid, something I’m sure Jamil is regretting as Chris Smith should absolutely not talk to kids. He answers a few questions, though the big one is Jamil’s daughter asking him if he has an origin story. He has a flashback to the death of his brother. We see his father accuse him of killing Keith, young Chris looking at his bloodied knuckles in shock and horror before seemingly praying for forgiveness. He comes out of the flashback and just mutters ‘Not in the Traditional sense.’ The last kid he takes a question from says that he might be her biological father, but the teacher cuts off that line of questioning real quick. After, Jamil thanks him for doing this as his daughter was stressing out about Show-and-Tell.

 

Auggie is released, makes a racist joke, and leaves. Captain Locke stomps in and demands to know what is happening. Song tells him that she took the evidence to a judge who gave her a warrant for Christopher Smith, their new prime suspect in the murder. Locke storms off, saying she has no idea what she’s messing with. Song and Fitz head out to get Peacemaker. Auggie is picked up by a goon. The goon asks what next, and he says he wants to get home, do some things, and then do something he should have done years ago, kill his song. Chris is completely unaware of this happening, he happily feeds Eagly and Goff bug.

 

At the office, Leota asks Harcourt how she can trust Murn and she just shrugs and says Murn has helped them too much to be plotting against them. Economos comes in and learns that Leota knows, and we see he literally shoves his fingers in his ears when Murn = Butterfly comes up. Leota shows Harcourt some footage, saying that every three days a delivery of a giant canister happened, the two of them reason that that is the raw goo being delivered for processing. Harcourt says that’s good, but they need to know where the goo is coming from to matter. Economos has an idea and starts looking something up. Leota gets a text from Keeya saying that she’s worried.

 

The cops suit up for their raid on Peacemaker’s trailer. Song warns her people to approach the trailer with caution, to shoot if threatened because Peacemaker is a trained killer and will do the same.

 

Adrian stops by Chris’ and is shocked to see he still has Goff’s bug. Chris shrugs and says that he thinks he’s dealing with his masculinity issues by keeping a very dangerous pet. Adrian says to knock it off with the introspection, that bad thoughts are things you run from. Goff’s bug takes some of the goo that was poured on it earlier to draw a Peace Sign on the side of the glass.

 

As the cops head out, Locke calls Murn to warn him.

 

Adrian and Chris try to communicate with Goff, setting up the classic one tap yes, two taps for no set up. They have an argument about what questions to ask, as Adrian seems to not understand that it’s yes or no questions only. Their argument keeps Chris from seeing Murn trying to call him. The cops arrive and begin closing in on his home. When Murn can’t get a hold of Chris, Economos suggests calling Vigilante. They do and when Chris takes the phone from Adrian, is told to get out of there. They grab Goff and Chris opens his skylight for Eagly. He grabs his bird and throws it onto the roof. Song tells Chris to come out with his hands up. Chris gets to the roof and pulls Adrian p just in time as the little weirdo took a few minutes to tap Goff’s jar to his hip to have his hands free. The cops conclude they’re gone and start sacking Chris’ place for clues. Chris and Adrian watch from the roof before slipping away through the trees. As they do, one of the cops finds the forged diary. It’s full of crazy gibberish and occult drawings in it. Chris tries to call Eagly to him, but the bird doesn’t react until he whistles, drawing Song’s attention as well. She remembers Chris’ pet Eagle and heads back to investigate. The duo climb into the trees and try to slip away. Chris whispers to Adrian where he parked, Adrian reveals he got an Uber because he assumed they were going to get wasted tonight. His pantomiming getting drunk causes him to slip off the branch, fall, and shatter Goff’s jar. Goff escapes and infects Song. I’d wondered if there was any way to recover from Butterfly infection, but the blood Song coughs up as the bug burrows into her makes it clear she’s not walking that off. The cops find Chris and Adrian over Song’s body and they start running.

 

Chris and Adrian run through the woods, aided by Eagly who keeps maiming or killing cops as they go. Adrian says, “holy shit, Eagly is hardcore man.” They’re eventually cornered, but Locke arrives and executes the last cop standing. He tells them there’s a car nearby and to get going. As they walk away, the see Locke go through and executes the surviving cops. Goff-Song gets up and demands to know where Peacemaker and the buffoon went.

 

Chris and Adrian drive off. Chris tries to call Harcourt with his phone, but Adrian throws it out of the car, saying that they can be tracked. A righteously pissed off Chris says that was a secure, untraceable phone. He’s super pissed as that phone had tons of cute Eagly pictures on it, and he never figured out the cloud, so they’re gone forever. Adrian asks what’s going on with him as Adrian has noticed that he seems to have decided all life is sacred or something. Chris demands Adrian hand over his phone.

 

Goff-Song and Fitz find Locke over the bodies of one of the cops, the fake captain saying that he was too late to help. Fitz goes to examine the bodies. Fitz asks what happened, and Locke tells him that he saw a man in a striped shirt, red tie, black mask and fedora run off after killing the cops. Goff-Song turns and marches off, Fitz following and saying he’s pretty sure that Locke just described the Ham-Burglar. Goff-Song doesn’t seem to care, as she has figured out that Locke is working with Peacemaker. She takes her car and drives off, saying she needs to contact some friends. One of the uniform cops sees Locke and gives him the diary. He suspiciously takes the diary and sends the cop off.

 

Back at the office, Harcourt says that Chris and Adrian are almost there. Murn comes in and asks anyone if Peacemaker keeps a diary. Leota curses to herself but doesn’t answer Murn. He says that his man on the inside has the diary now, so maybe that’s the last they’ll hear of it. Chris and Adrian arrive, they reveal to the group that Chris kept Goff, that Goff escaped, and is now possessing an Asian cop. There’s an argument about offensive terms, which causes Murn to tell everyone to just shut up. Chris demands to know why he sent a psycho to help them out, and Murn is visibly shocked to hear how Locke executed several cops, including one that was unconscious. They’re distracted by Economos saying that he thinks he’s figured out where the raw amber goo is coming from.

 

Back at the police station, Goff-Song modifies her computer with Butterfly tech and ignores Fitz’s questions as she works on something. Still with blood on her face. Fitz says that she’s not even typing words when he looks at her screen, and she tells him to forget it. She stops and looks at him, saying that she sense that Song was fond of Fitz. She says some creepy stuff, the worst of which being “Smiling is different on every single head. Every time you have to relearn it.” Locke comes in and stores the diary in his desk.

 

Economos was able to track the truck that made the goo deliveries via traffic, highway and security cams back to a ‘Coverdale Ranch.’ Harcourt thinks that the one little barn is too small to store whatever makes the goo in that amount, but Murn says Butterflies burrow, so the majority of the facility is underground. Destroy it, and the Butterflies starve. Chris senses something is weird, and accuses the others of thinking that he and Adrian are too dumb to notice. Leota tells him about the cow, a creature that makes the goo for the Butterflies and they’ll starve without it. Chris is visibly hurt that no one seems to trust him with all they know, and it’s clear that Leota feels like an asshole for not telling him more.

 

Goff-Song waits on a hill and a moment later a hundred Butterfly ships land and unleash their bugs. Goff-Song greets them with a roar chittering. She leads them back towards the police station. Every cop, inmate, and civilian in the station, including Fitz and Locke, are infected. Meanwhile, Auggie has finished prepping and goes to put on his White Dragon suit to lead his Ariyan nation. I’ll admit, his suit looks sick. Goff-Song leads her horde of new minions down the halls of the station, all of them smiling like they’re in that Smile horror movie.

 

Leota sees Keeya and tells her that she’s sorry and that she feels terrible for betraying Chris. She admits she’s not made for the double life of a spy. She can’t tell her team or her mom without betraying someone. Keeya says that if she’s not happy with the situation she should get out. They’ve got other options for money, and they can go back to Gotham.

 

Chris comes into the office and finds Harcourt engraving a P90 for him. He asks if Leota is avoiding him, and Harcourt asks why she’d do that. She gives him the gun. He says that she did something wrong so the gun will be lopsided. She starts to walk away, but Chris blurts out that he really doesn’t care about the engraving, he just wants an excuse to not kill people anymore. Harcourt tells him this is kind of the worst time for this crisis, but Chris says he’s fine killing the bugs, he’s just not happy killing humans anymore. Harcourt apologizes for calling him a total POS, amending to say he’s 85% a POS, but that remaining 15% is okay. They say goodnight, Harcourt telling him that her first name is Amelia. When alone, Chris goes to an old piano stored in their office and starts to play. Who’d have thought Chris Smith had classical training? Adrian comes in and says that he thought that Chris said he didn’t keep a diary. We see that the now possessed Locke has the forged Diary that implicates Chris in the 35 Butterfly killings he’s been a part of since the series began. Well, shit.

 

Honestly, I am a bit bummed that Song was taken over. I liked her, she was a fun character. Her actress Annie Chan did a good job with the switch from Song to Goff-Song, there’s not much different in her speech but there’s just a little something… off about her delivery. Her cadence is off just enough to make her speech sound a little unnatural. Turning all the Evergreen police and prisoners into her legion was just a very efficient way to get some cannon fodder for Peacemaker and company to shoot through in the last two episodes. Again, I appreciate seeing how the Butterfly possession works. While I intellectually know that a creature entering the human brain is going to cause a lot of damage, the pools of blood the victims cough up really take any ambiguity away. These are bug piloting walking corpses. Chris finally admitting that he’s having trouble killing ordinary people now was a nice character growth moment. I liked that he started out with the dickish lie but immediately takes it back. It makes the honesty feel all the more genuine and spontaneous. And I like the fact that Harcourt amends his POS rating. Chris Smith still is an asshole but the dude is trying to be better, so him getting points for it is nice. I like that Leota is having this crisis of faith in her mom’s plan about the diary. It’s clear that the strategy was to blame the Butterfly killings on Peacemaker, make it seem like he had a psychotic break, or that the conspiracy brain of his dad seeped into him. I’m not sure if this is to protect Murn or Waller herself somehow, but I’m sure that’ll be made clear soon. So, the team has got bug infected cops on one side, and the White Dragon and his white nation on the other. This’ll be fun to watch. But probably not to live through. See you tomorrow. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 5

 King gorilla in the his-ouse. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Chris learned that his daddy got sent to jail. Chris visited his father and did his best to apologize, while pleading with his dad to keep his mouth shut for a few more days so he could finish his business. Auggie is a colossal dick to his son, saying he never loved him and should have killed him when he was born. Leota, having been told to find a way to fix this situation, suggests to Adrian that Chris would be better off without his father hanging over him. Adrian almost immediately gets himself arrested and tries to goad the racist Auggie into attacking him in the cafeteria. Auggie is too smart for that, but Adrian takes out two of his goons singlehandedly. Judomaster wakes up, frees himself and beats the shit out of Economos. Chris and Leota arrive to save him, Chris and Judomaster get a rematch. The two are reasonably matched, Judomaster’s skill and dexterity hitting hard against Chris’s brute force. Judomaster tries to tell Chris something about the Butterflies, but he’s shot by Leota. He survives, but barely. After Leota tells the team about her plan with Adrian and that pisses Murn off. He realizes that Adrian is in serious danger of being killed by the White Dragon and there’s a very real chance they’ll lose both of their hired guns over this. He has Economos sprint Adrian and Harcourt picks him up. We also learn that Chris lied about taking out the Goff’s Butterfly, he actually stole it and a jar of the honey like fluid the bugs love. Leota finds a connection between the Goffs and Chris’s hookup Ashley, both groups had cards for the Glan Tai Bottling company. She calls and relays this to Murn, who says he’ll be right it. Just before revealing himself to be a Butterfly to us, as he uses the proboscis tongue to lap up some of that honey goo. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 5: Monkey Dory

 

We open with Chris Smith preparing a raw egg yolk to drink because he’s that kind of fitness weirdo. He adds some tabasco sauce, salt and pepper to it so he’s not just drinking it straight, so that’s something. He also feeds the Butterfly by pouring some of the goo into the jar. After, he sits on his front step and looks really depressed. Eagley flies off and brings him a dead weasel to cheer him up. He’s thankful but tells the bird that he’s not going to eat it. It’s kind of sweet his relationship with that bird.

 

Leota rushes around her apartment getting ready for her work. Keeya stops over and tries to talk to her about their situation, but Leota is rushing to get things done. Keeya tells Leota that she’s grateful for her taking this job to help them get back up on their feet despite not wanting to, but from her perspective, it looks like Leota is choosing the job over them. Leota insists she isn’t, but she has to get to work. At the office she gets a text from Waller asking if she’d planted the fake Peacemaker diary in his house yet. She tells mommy dearest not yet.

 

Murn has either decided he’s tired of dodging Chris’s questions, or with Adrian that two new people are enough to give a briefing on the situation, either way, he gives his team a presentation on the Butterflies. He says that a year ago a business tycoon and a international singer died in a plane crash and they were discovered to have these bugs in their brains. They assume they’re alien, which, ya, I get that conclusion. They enter through an orifice of the body, make their way to the brain and seize control. There’s an argument about if the bugs could do that by entering through the anus based on an artistic interpretation by Economos, and Chris claims that Superman has a poop fetish. Harcourt demands to know where he keeps getting these weird rumors from, and Chris says it’s from Google. Murn ignores them, and continues the presentation, stating that the Butterflies in the brain cause their host to get significantly stronger. He goes on to explain that the alien goo that they’ve found at every Butterfly home seems to be their only food source and is completely alien to anything to us. He tells them that Leota found the Glan Tai connection and that this is their best lead. Chris mocks Economos’s Power Point for the fifth time and this leads to the two of them finally having it out about Economos framing Auggie. Economos insists that Auggie was the only one he could think of, and Smith gives him an exhaustive list of random other people that he could have changed the records to instead of Auggie. Murn finally snaps at him to shut up and focus. He tells his team they’re taking a trip up north to the bottling plant, and that he’s staying back to handle the White Dragon situation. Chris shows Economos a note he wrote, “Eat a Dick, Dye Beard,” and Economos storms off.

 

Song and Fitz are brought back in to speak with Auggie. He tells them that he didn’t do it and that they should rerun his fingerprints. They’re skeptical as the car is registered to him and they’ve two witnesses that said he did it, but he insists. When Song asks who did it, then, Auggie says it was his ‘shit head f-ing son.’ Cat might be out of the bag.

 

Back at the office, Leota tells Chris that he should ease up on Economos a little. He thinks he’s just being funny, and Adrian comes in and says that being a bully is just in Chris’s nature. We then learn that in high school he gave all of his friend’s nicknames based on the shape of their penises. Just a… classy guy. Adrian says he wasn’t bothered by his, Thimble, but other guys would go into the other room and cry after getting a nickname. Leota is confused by this and just asks him to ease up a little.  

 

Auggie gets re-fingerprinted. And continues to be racist to Song. Because of course he does.

 

The team heads out in the truck for the bottling plant. They argue for a bit about music choices, because this is a James Gunn project, before Adrian asks if they should have a search warrant or something before investigating. Harcourt and Leota explain that any time folks have looked into the Butterflies before, someone higher up in the government shuts it down, so Waller made this black op team to handle it. Chris is shocked at the thought that the five of them are all that stand before an alien invasion. Leota points out that Murn makes six, but Chris says he already counted Murn, it’s Economos that doesn’t count because he thinks he’s useless. Economos reveals that he’s into a Hanoi Rocks, a Finish Glam Metal group, which earns him points with Chris. He puts on one of their songs as they pull into the bottling plant.

 

Murn is visited in his apartment by Casper Locke, an old acquaintance of his. Murn hires him to ‘take care’ of a situation.

 

At the police station, they compare the fingerprints and discover that Auggie Smith’s don’t match, but Chris Smith’s do. Song and Fitz head over to the Calaterra’s to reinterview them. Evan answers the door and breaks within five seconds. They don’t even ask any questions; he just says it after being stared at long enough. Amber calls him a wimp. The Calaterras flip on Chris, though Amber tries to lie before Evan tells her to stop. He admits Chris is a pretty nice guy all things considered (confirming to me he doesn’t know his wife banged him), and that like, the guy they locked up for it is some kind of nazi, so what’s the harm? Fitz asks if they’re really releasing the White Dragon, to which Song says, ya, if they want to charge Peacemaker they have to.

 

At the bottling plant, they load up for an assault. Harcourt questions Peacemaker bringing a huge rifle in, and flat out says no to Vigilante grabbing a chainsaw. They split up, Harcourt losing the rock-paper-scissors game, so she has to take Vigilante with her to check the back. Leota and Peacemaker head in the front, Leota asking him to be chill for this. Chris agrees but then activates his new helmet’s X-Ray vision mode. He immediately shoots the receptionist; having seen she’s a Butterfly. He starts mowing through employees that he also sees are Butterflies. Leota radios into Economos the fact the place is crawling with Butterflies. In the back, Harcourt finds crates full of the goo. She thinks that this might be the distribution hub for their whole operation.

 

Peacemaker and Leota start slowly working their way into the back, killing Butterflies as they go. Chris telling a nervous Leota that she doesn’t have to shoot them after h’s already killed them. Vigilante and Harcourt make their way to the bottling machine itself, but are immediately caught by a Butterfly. He pulls a Donald Southerland from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and does that screaming point that he does at the end of the movie. They flee and shoot Butterflies as they go. They’re cornered in a computer room in back. Harcourt radios their location and Peacemaker and Leota head their way. Peacemaker shoots a guard, who lives long enough to say that they’re with ‘Charlie’ and they don’t stand a chance. Peacemaker asks who that is and the goon says “Our Guardian angel.” We learn that Charlie is in fact a Butterfly infected Gorilla. Ya, that’s not good.

 

To clear out the goons, Peacemaker throws missile with a grenade tied to it at them. The massive explosion it causes liquifies the goons and almost kills Peacemaker and Leota. It also tips off Economos that something bad is happening. The four agents battle the Gorilla, who throws them around easily because it’s a Gorilla with super strength. It throws Peacemaker to the ground and almost crushes him, but Economos comes in and kills it with a chainsaw. Chris gets up and calls him a stud. The group head back to the city, super jazzed and have a dance party at the back of the truck as they go. Harcourt pulls out her phone and gets a group shot of them, which is real sweet.

 

Back at home, we see Auggie being taken back into his cell, the man pitching a fit as they take him. Song asks what’s happening and the guard says that Auggie just found out he’s not getting out. The guard was sent the fingerprint analysis that says that Auggie did it. Song is confused by this and goes to talk to the captain. She’s surprised to see her captain was replaced by Caspar Locke, who says he took over because the Mayor wasn’t happy with the old captain’s performance on this case. Song tells him her evidence that Auggie was framed, but Locke ignores it, saying that the White Dragon is more than capable of intimidating witnesses into changing their story and faking fingerprints. He orders her to take the night off. Locke calls Murn and tells him it’s handled.

 

The team meet up with Murn and tell him what happened. He’s impressed, he tells his people that they’ll need to see if they can figure out where the Butterflies food comes from, but that can wait until tomorrow. He tells them to take the night off.

 

Song and Fitz decide to go over Locke’s head. She knows that Locke won’t do the right thing, so she’s going to a judge that she knows she can trust to get a warrant for Peacemaker’s place. The judge is William Judy, her uncle. He greets them warmly, but gets serious the moment Song mentions Peacemaker.

 

Leota takes Chris home. We get to see everyone smile as they learn that Harcourt changed their group chat name to 11^th Street Kids, the Hanoi Rocks song they were grooving out to earlier. Leota drops him off, saying she’ll pick him up early tomorrow so they can start going through the computer flies they stole from the Butterflies. Chris is still feeling pretty good and invites her in for a drink. She’s nice about his home, and notes a picture of him and his brother, who we learn is named Keith. The first drink he serves is gross, so they switch to beer. As they drink Leota tells him that she isn’t sure if Harcourt and him could work, but she’s heard stranger things. She tries to encourage him, saying that if h stopped being a dick to push people away, people might actually like him. She thinks if he just be nice, but not too nice, everyone will respond well to it. Chris is overwhelmed by emotion, so says he needs to take a piss. When alone, Leota stashes the diary, moving it a few times to find the right spot for it. I can’t imagine that the fake diary is going to be good for Chris. Later, Leota calls up Keeya as she drives home. She leaves her a voicemail saying that she’s sorry, this job is messing her up, but she loves her and will talk to her tomorrow.

 

Leota finds Murn in the office. When he asks why she’s there, she says she couldn’t sleep. Leota finds Chris’s X-Ray helmet and decides to give it a shot. She turns on X-Ray vision mode and is impressed by the effect. Right up until she looks up at Mr. Murn and sees the Butterfly in his brain. He immediately realizes what happened and rushes her. Leota tries to run, but Murn catches her, knocking her gun away. Well, damn.

 

Well, that was a rollercoaster. The action was nice, with plenty of gore that I feel is lacking in most Superhero media. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see Superman coated in blood or anything, but I prefer realistic representation of what happens why you cut someone. If you slash someone, there should be blood. The reveal of the Gorilla was pretty cool. They actually hinted at Charlie last episode, as the new report that Chris saw on his dad’s TV was of the Gorilla’s mysterious disappearance a week or two ago. Economos killing that thing with a chainsaw was not something I’d have guessed before seeing. Damn, it was brutal. I really enjoyed seeing the team bond on the drive back, with Peacemaker and Economos burying the hatchet and everyone grooving out to the Hanoi Rocks. James Gunn obviously loves music and using it in his stories, so I was expecting this, but I give him credit for Chris and Economos having a love for a specific Glam Rock band. And it was incredibly sweet to see Harcourt commemorating it with renaming the text chain. I’m curious how the cop plot will be resolved, with Song and Fitz homing in on Peacemaker despite Murn’s best efforts. I do appreciate the work ethic that keeps Song from just letting Auggie rot, despite the fact the man is objectively terrible. I’ll be curious to see how Leota’s plot, both the planting of the Diary and getting caught by Murn is going to go down. Feels like she in particular is stuck between a rock and a hard place. But more on that tomorrow. Have a good night, everyone. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 4

 Vigilante is on the hunt. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Smith and co headed out on their first (official) Butterfly hunt. They set up a sniper blind, Smith and Harcourt manning it with Leota, Economos, and Murn working as tech support. The Goffs arrive home, but Smith can’t get a clean shot of the Senator that wouldn’t go through his human bodyguard, so they’re forced to wait. The two snipers bond a little due to their similar life stories, but are interrupted by Vigilante’s arrival, who Murn says they have to keep an eye on rather than risk him screwing up the mission. Eventually, the Goffs, who act extremely robotic and uncanny when not in line of sight, get up in the middle of the night and start drinking a honey like substance using proboscis that they extend from their mouths. Despite confirmation that every member of the family are Butterflies, Smith can’t take the shot. He’s been having a crisis of faith, I guess, about his vow to kill anyone to achieve peace. Vigilante takes over and blows the brains out of three of four Goffs, but they’re interrupted from killing the senator himself by his specialty bodyguard, a fella called Judomaster. Smith and Vigilante are captured, Goff unmasks Vigilante and tries to torture him to make Smith talk. Unfortunately for Vigilante aka Adrian Chase, Smith is a bit of dick and isn’t willing to spill anything. The rest of the team find a hidden door to the basement and use a small explosive to break through the glass wall. The explosion helps Smith escape, and he’s able to finish off Goff. Judomaster almost escapes but Economos hits his car with their repair truck and then disables the injured martial artist. When the dust settles, we see one of their computers finishing a scan and confirm that there are A LOT of Butterflies. Globally. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 4: The Choad Less Traveled

 

We join Project: Butterfly as they drive in their van. Harcourt asks Smith what happened with the Butterfly, and Smith says that he shot it into little pieces. She scolds him for not trying to capture it for study. Adrian is very concerned that he won’t be able to walk right now, based on his very incorrect believe that the pinky toe is the most important toe for that. Leota explains that if he lost his metatarsal that’d be bad, but losing the toe isn’t a big deal. Their debate is interrupted by an unconscious Judomaster falling over. Harcourt asks what they’re going to do about him, and both costumed killers pull their guns and prepare to shoot him, but Harcourt and Leota tell them to back off.

 

Back at their office, they start moving some of the stuff they stole from the Goff’s into their office as Murn joins them. Murn gives Adrian the keys to Adrian’s car as a casual dismissal. He orders Harcourt and Leota to go over the records they stole from the Goffs for any intel. She complains and asks why Economos isn’t on it, but Murn says his job is keeping Judomaster alive. He orders Smith into his office. Murn starts chewing him out for choking on the mission. He tries to play it off as not having the Dove of Peace on the weapon screwed him up, but Murn isn’t buying it. Smith admits that while he will kill any man, woman or child to have peace, he won’t just kill kids because that was his order. Murn hopes that is all that is wrong and admits that this mission needs a SOB and Smith is the only one he has. Him and Vigilante now. Smith asks if he’s sure about that, and Murn basically says ‘we need all the help we can get.’ He briefly distracts Murn with a story about Matter-Eater Lad, his power is what it sounds like, eating an entire restaurant. He asks one more time what a Butterfly actually is, but Murn just dismisses him to get some rest. He and Adrian leave.

 

Leota and Harcourt keep going through files. Leota apologizes for freezing, explaining that she hadn’t even shot at someone before last night, and elaborating that she’s a pescatarian, so like she doesn’t enjoy or endorse killing mammals at all. Harcourt chews her out, saying that her hesitation made the guard’s last minute of life the most terrifying minute ever and that if she wants to do covert ops like this, she must have zero hesitation. Leota excuses herself for a ‘bathroom break’ aka crying just a little bit. Coming out of the bathroom she sees Economos setting Judomaster up with an IV and is weirded out that they’re just kinda holding him hostage. He says that if they just let him go, he’ll nark on them. He tells her not to take what Harcourt says too personally, as she really doesn’t like anyone. She thanks him and says she just has to show Murn and Harcourt she can handle things.

 

On the drive back to Smith’s place, he asks Adrian to drive him over to his dad’s place so he can grab another helmet that he thinks could be useful. Adrian admits that he was a little mad at Smith for letting him get tortured, or he was until he decided that Smith was just trying to train him to be tougher. He ‘thanks’ him for it. But Smith senses the underlying anger Adrian is clearly feeling and tries to confront him about it, but Adrian keeps being passive aggressive. They pull up to Auggie’s house and Adrian asks about the upside-down flag. Smith says he’s not sure, it’s a ‘deep state’ thing, but Adrian says that maybe it’s a racism thing. Smith gets very defensive about his dad, deflecting the conversation to the fact that Adrian’s dad left his mom for another man. Adrian seems weirded out by this attack, saying his dad and his dad’s boyfriend are deeply in love. Smith makes a crack about Mr. Chase pretending to be gay to get away from Adrian before rushing up to the house and trying to break in.

 

He goes in, seeing the TV is still on but the house is empty. He opens the door to his dad’s lab and grabs a bunch of the helmets. He looked like he’d only take one but decided better of it. In his helmet grab, he sees his dad’s White Dragon outfit. He’s joined by Adrian, who took off his Vigilante gear to be inconspicuous, who asks how the room is so big. Smith says it’s a quantum space, bigger on the inside kind of thing. Adrian is impressed by it, but once again points out that Auggie is a racist and that if Smith is working with him, he might be one by association. Smith shoves him out. They’re met outside by Auggie’s old neighbor who picks a fight about if Smith is a supervillain or not. He reveals to Smith that Auggie was arrested after Smith unleashed a tirade about how Batman’s no kill policy gets innocent people killed.

 

Smith calls Murn and demands to know why they framed his dad. He offers to have Smith come in so they can talk like adults, but he refuses, saying he’s going to see his dad. After hanging up on him, Murn goes to watch his team from his office window and glares at Economos. Smith apologizes to Adrian for not being compassionate about the torture thing, and that he knows his dad is a racist. Adrian asks if that means he should kill Auggie too, but Smith is obviously weirded out by that. He says that he and his dad hate criminals and that’s about the only thing they agree on. He needs to see him.

 

At the office, Murn tells Leota to go see Smith and convince him to not see his dad. She’s confused by this, but Murn insists that she’s the only one that Peacemaker trusts. She says that he trusts Harcourt the most, but Murn disagrees, saying that he wants to have sex with Harcourt, that’s different. Leota heads for the door. Murn stops her to say that her lack of a resume made him hesitant to take her on, but Amanda Waller insisted, so he trusted her judgement. He tells Leota to prove Waller right. In the back office, Judomaster wakes up and tries to get free. He can’t break the chains but starts moving his hands back and forth.

 

Leota meets Smith and Adrian at the front of the jail. She tries to convince him not to go in, explaining about what happened to get him in there. Smith is pissed at Economos. They have an argument about the desire to believe that parents are flawed but ultimately good people, considering her mom I’m sure she’s wrestled with this a lot, and how that might be true most of the time but isn’t true here. She implies Auggie has done a lot of messed up stuff to Smith on top of the racism. Smith still has to see him. Adrian shrugs and says that he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Leota immediately figures out that he’s Vigilante and his attempts at hiding it make him more guilty.

 

Auggie is pulled out of a poker game to see Chris. Chris explains the situation to his dad, who is rightly pissed off. He goes so far as to say that he should have killed Chris when he was born, and that he never loved him, not like Chris’s brother. Chris tries to convince Auggie to just keep quite while they work and that once the mission is over he’ll turn himself in. Auggie says that he won’t rat him out right away but the first chance he gets he’ll spill the beans.

 

Outside, Adrian asks Leota if they’ll arrest Peacemaker. She says she hopes not, and that she thinks both him and Adrian are good people. She very clearly sets the idea in Adrian’s mind that Chris won’t be happy so long as his dad, who is a very bad man with no redeeming qualities, is around. Adrian excuses himself to do ‘something.’ Smith comes out and Leota offers to take him home so he can sleep. Smith wants to keep eyes on Vigilante, but Leota tells him that it’ll be fine. On the drive back, Leota gets Smith to unburden himself a little by telling him that she doesn’t hate him.

 

Adrian goes behind the police station and awkwardly moves a trash can towards a window while the cop’s watch. He smashes a window in front of them to get him arrested.

 

Economos goes to change Judomaster’s IV and finds him gone. He calls up Leota and tells her Judomaster got loose. While he’s distracted, Judomaster comes out of a closet and attacks him, knocking him into a desk and shattering it. Smith and Leota arrive and find Economos wheezing. Leota gives him a hit from his inhaler and he points Peacemaker to the hallway window. Smith leaps out into the parking lot and challenges Judomaster to a rematch. Judomaster leaps onto him from the top of a truck and the two start to brawl. It’s a match of Judomaster’s superior technique vs. Peacemaker’s strength. After a few smashes, Judomaster tries to explain to Peacemaker what Butterflies really are, but Leota shoots him in the chest before he can talk. He’s still alive, somehow, so they have to get him back inside.

 

Adrian gets pulled out of his cell by a guard. He walks through the other prisoners that try to intimidate him, but he’s unphased. He enters the cafeteria and locks eyes on Auggie.

 

While that was happening, back at his place, Smith opens his backpack. He reveals that he’d stolen some of the goo the Butterflies were eating and that he’d kept Goff’s Butterfly… or the Butterfly that is Goff. Eagly flies in and knocks the jar from his hand, but it doesn’t break and the bird can’t get at it.

 

Back at the office, Economos sets Judomaster up with another IV drip while Leota freaks out a little. Harcourt joins her and compliments Leota for not freezing this time. When that clearly doesn’t help, Harcourt goes on to say that after her first kill, it messed with her so bad that she didn’t have her period for three months. Leota asks if it gets easier, and Harcourt tells her no, but that’s probably good. Because if killing becomes too easy, you end up like Amanda Waller, who uses people like chess pieces. Leota admits that she manipulated Adrian into killing Auggie… and Harcourt goes to tell Murn.

 

Murn chews out his whole team for continually making stupid decisions without his saying so. Leota says that she was just trying to make the hard call and keep Auggie from telling the cops what happened with the frame up. While he’s angry at potentially losing Peacemaker’s trust again if he hears about this, he’s more upset at the thought of losing Vigilante when the WHITE DRAGON murders him. Harcourt says it’s more like losing half a man as Vigilante is a psychopath. Murn says that they’re four people fighting an invasion, they need a psychopath or two with those odds. Murn asks if they can get him out of the system before he screws things up worse than they already are. Economos is able to find him with just a little help from Leota’s description of him, and Harcourt recognizes him as their busboy from the first episode.

 

In the prison, Adrian attempts to make his move on Auggie. He inserts himself into their poker game with his classic awkward energy. He tries to set them off by complimenting black people and then insulting them to their faces. Two of Auggie’s goons try to attack him, but Adrian takes them out in no time flat. He tries to goad Auggie into attacking him as well, but he’s too smart to fall for that. He knows that Adrian is going to get off lightly since he got Auggie’s goons to throw the first punch. Adrian calls him a bad dad, and as Auggie is dragged away he demands to talk to detective Song.

 

Smith meets Harcourt at her bar and asks her what his file says his dad did to him. She pretends to not know much, but when he asks again, she says that it says that his father trained him to kill from a young age, that his brother died when he was young, and that he may have been involved. He thanks her and goes to leave. She’s shocked that that’s all he wanted, and he does take a moment to compliment how her boobs look in her top, but not in a sexist way, before going.

 

At his house, he puts on some music and smokes from a bong, blowing the smoke onto the Goff bug. Adrian is released from prison. Economos looks after Judomaster. Leota ignores a call from her wife. Murn decompresses by watching a comedy. And Harcourt picks Adrian up from prison. He tells her that Auggie is still alive, that his name is Adrian, and admits that he may have made things worse. As Chris dances to his music, he flashes back to when he was a child, and his father made him kill a man by stabbing him multiple times with a screwdriver. He remembers killing Flag again and falls to the floor, Eagly and the bug rolling over to look after him. He flashes back to a happy moment hanging with his brother before jumping to another memory of him dying from a seizure.

 

Leota goes through the belongings of the Goffs and Ashley, finding that they both had a card for Glan Tai bottling. Not sure what that is. Leota calls Murn, and tells him that she found something. He says he’ll be right over, before grabbing a bowel and unfurling a proboscis to drink from it. Well, damn.

 

Well, that’s a hell of a twist to end on. The capabilities and plan of the Butterflies are still up in the air, so this raises a lot of questions. Was Murn always a Butterfly or has he been possessed? If possession, was he taken over before the start of the show or has he been taken over recently? Is this whole operation a pretext to take out rivals amongst the other Butterflies? Were the comments about his change in behavior a sign he was taken? The plot has truly thickened. I liked the scene with Adrian in prison. While the show has gone out of it’s way to show us that he is a very disturbed, destructive individual, this is probably the first time we saw how smart he is. Well, in a manner of speaking. Was getting himself arrested in an attempt to assassinate Auggie so that Peacemaker would be free of his influence stupid? Yes. But he really played Auggie’s men from the moment he sat down. The dude is awkward as hell, but he got those guys to make the first swing despite them being longtime inmate and thus more than likely knowing how this would look if they threw the first punch. And he was self-aware enough to know that he definitely made the situation worse by acting rashly. That’s growth right there. Getting some of Chris’s background was interesting. It’s one thing to hear about how Auggie messed him up as a child to make him a hardened killer, it’s quite another to see a pre-teen stabbing a man to death while his father laughed behind him. I’ll be curious to see how his brother’s death factors into things. I’ve seen enough stories to know that it’ll be more complicated than ‘Peacemaker killed his brother,’ but not by much. And it was incredibly sad to hear Auggie say to Chris’ face that he never loved him. I have a very loving relationship with my dad, so this whole exchange is foreign to me, but I can think of few things he could say to me that would be more damaging than that. I’m not sure Leota was wrong in trying to take him out, just for Chris’ mental health. But ya. Butterflies are everywhere and Chris is rightly pissed. I wonder where this’ll go. We’ll see next time. Have a good night! 

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Bluesky:@basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 3

A stakeout, how exciting. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Chris had to deal with the fallout of his very bad decision to pick up a bargirl. He called Harcourt and got the Project: Butterfly crew to come bail him out as the cops’ rush to investigate what happened. Harcourt and Leota arrive in a car and are forced to wait for Smith to gather his stuff and get to the damn car. Smith stole a bunch of stuff from the bargirl and tried to escape. As he fled, he briefly held a couple hostage and flirted with the wife, Amber, much to the annoyance of her husband, Evan. He ends up leaping out a window down a series of balconies to the lower building. He’s almost caught by the cops, but Harcourt comes out and hits them with knockout darts. They flee and report back to Murn. To help cover Smith’s tracks, Economos hacks the police database and alters the registration of Smith’s car and his fingerprints to that of his father, Auggie. Murn chews him out for stupidly picking Auggie of all people. Back at their office, operatives try to figure out how a Butterfly, Annie Strurphausen, found Smith. They argue for a bit but don’t come to any conclusions. Smith heads back to his house and has a sobbing fit to try to process the fact everyone hates him and he just exacerbates everything. He’s interrupted by Vigilante, his self-proclaimed BFF. They decided to celebrate his freedom by shooting a bunch of appliances, their favorite pastime. Meanwhile, Leota bribes the couple to say that Auggie was the one that kidnapped them. Auggie is arrested and we learn that he's actually a former supervillain, the White Dragon, and has a lot of minions in prisons. In the last few minutes of the episode, we see Smith, Vigilante, and Amber after a three-way. While sharing a blunt with Amber, Smith plays with a device he stole from Annie’s apartment, and it’s revealed to be a small spaceship. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 3: Better Groff Dead

 

The episode begins with Peacemaker meeting with the other Project: Butterfly crew and filling them in about the tiny spaceship. Smith tells the others that he hates homunculi and/or tiny beings, including Dollman, a villain who can shrink. Murn asks about the tiny spaceship and Smith says that it’s at Leota’s desk under his lunch. While Economos goes to get it, Leota clocks Vigilante very obviously watching them from behind a dumpster. Harcourt tells him to leave, and he stays to be obstinate. Smith asks him to go, and he agrees, but not before telling Smith that none of his current coworkers would ‘work’ as a friend for him. Especially not a best friend. But he should try to be friendly with Leota, because of all the racism rumors. He runs off. Economos points out that Vigilante is wanted for multiple counts of murder, but Murn tells him they’ve got bigger fish to fry and they should focus on killing a US senator.

 

We see the crew are driving in an Ex-static Electrical truck, swerving in and out of traffic and otherwise driving dangerously to get to their mission on time. Murn informs us of the mission perimeters, their target is Royland Goff, he’s mostly known for being vocally against climate change. Smith thinks they’re killing him because Climate Change is fake, but he’s corrected. Murn tells him that Goff is a Butterfly and that he’ll need to take him out. There’s a brief digression when Leota accidentally pulls up an… explicit pic that her wife sent her and her having to explain how the hell that happened. WhatsApp added it automatically for some reason. Getting back on task, Murn says that Goff is traveling with his family, they don’t know if the wife and kids are Butterflies, but if they are Peacemaker will have to kill them too. Smith is visibly shaken by this. Harcourt brings up his ‘vow’ to have peace no matter how many people he has to kill to do it. Smith is against killing kids, his concerns are noted by Murn. We learn that Goff is traveling with a bodyguard that goes by Judomaster. He’s short but dangerous according to Murn. They head into the mission.

 

Smith gets his sniper rifle ready and is annoyed when he finds out they didn’t engrave the gun with the “dove of peace” the upside-down bird that he has on his chest and all his other weapons. He says he’s not sure he can kill someone without it, so Leota gives him a sharpie. He draws a lopsided bird and looks real disappointed. Economos asks why they don’t just tell Peacemaker what a Butterfly is, and Murn says it’s because he doesn’t trust Smith. He tells Economos that Peacemaker had a deep-seated desire to belong and they need to use that against him. Economos asks about Murn’s past, and he confirms that he's done bad things in the past and he’s trying to make up for it now. They set up a camera to help with their spying.

 

That night, Peacemaker has his rifle set up and is watching while Harcourt eats some trail mix that she shares. Leota, Economos, and Murn watch from the truck. They report to their field team that the family is inbound with Judomaster and an additional bodyguard. There’s a brief argument over the pronunciation of the Berenstain Bears before Murn says for them to shut up. Murn orders Smith to take the shot, but he can’t get Goff in his line of sight as the big bodyguard keeps getting in the way. He asks Murn if he wants Smith to just drop the normal bodyguard, but Murn says no. Watching from a window, they see the family acting weird once they’re out of line of sight. They walk in a creepy single file line to another part of the house. Smith isn’t happy about any of this, not the situation, not the lack of a dove of peace, none of it. Murn tells him to be patient. He says they aren’t killing anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and that he’s not Amanda Waller.

 

As the night goes on, Smith ask Harcourt what got her into spy work. They both confirm their dads set them on this path. She gives him the bullet points about how she got into spy work right out of college, got recruited by Waller, and is now out here preparing to kill people. She asks him to take monitor duty while she takes care of something. She walks off and Vigilante comes out to chat. He seemed to think that it was safe to talk to Smith right now, despite being around several spec ops guys. Murn is annoyed but says that Vigilante has to stay with the field team as Murn doesn’t want him screwing this up. Leota pulls up a Berenstain Bears book cover to win the argument about how it’s pronounced, but Economos tells her that it’s clearly photoshopped. Sometime later Vigilante asks why they aren’t just killing everyone, and Harcourt tells him they’re not killing the guards who’re just doing their job. They detect movement and see the family heading into the dining room. Mrs. Goff pours some honey-colored goo into bowels for them. Murn confirms they are Butterflies. Which is confirmed a minute later when they sit down to eat the goo and reveal that they’ve got some kind of proboscis in their mouths. Murn orders Smith to take the shot but he freezes. Vigilante ultimately takes over and easily kills the wife and kids as he’s an amoral sociopath. He hums a little song while he does. He goes to kill Goff, but they’re attacked by Judomaster. As his name implies, Judomaster is an excellent hand to hand fighter, he quickly disables all three of the field team, knocking out Harcourt by shoving her onto a rock and beating the other two up. Murn takes Leota to back them up. He orders Economos to do everything in his power to stop anyone from leaving and reporting this. He asks what he’s supposed to do, and Murn shouts at him to do whatever he has to. If the Butterflies catch wind of what’s happened, they’re screwed.

 

Leota finds Harcourt being held at gunpoint by one of the bodyguards. She wants to let him live as he doesn’t seem to know anything, but Harcourt says that doesn’t matter because they’ve seen them. She ends up grabbing the gun and killing the guard. Leota apologies, saying she’s never killed anyone before. Harcourt says her streak is ongoing and for her to check to make sure he’s human. They regroup, confirm Peacemaker is still alive and head inside.

 

Smith currently is tied to a chair and having an intimidation fight with Judomaster, who is calmly eating Cheetos. Smith asks for some and Judomaster uses them as projectiles to smack him in the face a few times. Goff joins them and he has Judomaster prepare Vigilante for interrogation. They tie his hands and hook him up to some jumper cables. Goff tells Judomaster to head out and warn the others. Upstairs, the squad discover that Peacemaker is in a basement of some kind. They search around for an entrance, Leota finding a wall made of some kind of green glass behind a painting.

 

Goff unmasks Vigilante, who is in fact Adrian Chase. Goff starts electrocuting Adrian to try to get Peacemaker to talk, but Smith isn’t effected by his only friend’s screams of agony. Upstairs Murn pulls out some kind of device from his wallet, telling Leota to peel the back and put it on the door, saying it’s an adhesive explosive. Outside, Economos sees Judomaster preparing to escape. In the basement, Smith finally realizes who Vigilante is. He compliments Vigilante on improving his physique, and tells him not to worry as Smith won’t say a word. Goff decides to move on from pure pain to threatening to cut off one of Adrian’s toes. Smith refuses to talk, and Goff starts taking off the toe.

 

Upstairs, they try to use the remote explosive, but it doesn’t seem to work. Goff has a hell of a time taking off Adrian’s toe and wonders why it’s not coming off. Adrian, screaming in pain, says it’s because the knife is dull and asks why he doesn’t maintain his torture equipment. Murn goes to examine the explosive, and right on that obvious cue it goes off in his face. It also knocks Smith forward, as the glass wall was directly behind him.

 

Judomaster tries to drive off, but Economos hits him with the repair truck. Smith frees himself from the chair and he and Goff fight for a minute. He gets Goff’s shotgun and tells him “Peace out, Mother F-er” and blows his face off. Economos checks on the car and sees Judomaster has pulled himself from the wreck and is trying to crawl away. He hits him several times with a crowbar until he finally stops moving. He hits the guy like he’s trying to crush a spider, it’s pretty funny. The wall itself was broken but mostly intact, Leota and Harcourt having to clear the rubble to get inside. Smith helps Adrian get free, even giving him back his mask to hide his face from the others. As they work, they see a large alien insect escape from the wreckage of Goff’s head. It flies up and Peacemaker finally gets the name “Project: Butterfly.” We cut back to the van where one of the computers finishes an analysis and shows potential Butterfly locations. There are Thousands, worldwide. Well damn.

 

This was a fun stakeout episode. As such, there was a lot of waiting and preparing without much action until the end. I liked Smith and Harcourt having some time to chat, her dislike of the man is completely justified but it’s nice to see where their lives overlap ever so slightly. I like the fact that they’re sticking to this idea that Smith is having trouble being as amoral as he used to be. Part of me wondered if this would just be a lot of him saying that killing people is hard for him now without a lot of him doing, but his inability to take the shot does suggest he’s legit. And it was kind of chilling as hell to see how easily Vigilante does it. Like, the show has gone out of its way to say he’s a violent killer too, but the whole ‘humming a tune while he blows heads off’ bit was disturbing. Honestly, it seems like Project: Butterfly should have him on staff. The reveal that Butterflies are some kind of alien bugs was well done. The proboscis drinking was a big clue, but the actual alien bug climbing out of the… meatsuit I guess was even better. And I’m with Smith at this point that ARGUS is terrible at naming operations. Nhut Le was good as Judomaster, he put his whole voice into those Kias. He was the just right amount of obnoxious while holding Peacemaker captive. I hope he’s not a one and done because that character seems like he’s a lot of fun. So… ya, there are a lot of Butterflies out there and it’s looking like Peacemaker is going to have to work overtime to take them out. Fun times. Have a good night, everyone.

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 2

Peacemaker has to escape the apartment complex. It goes about as well as you'd think. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Chris Smith struck out on his own. After surviving being shot in the neck by Bloodsport and crushed under a building at the end of The Suicide Squad, Smith spent about six months in intensive care. He after getting a clean bill of health from his doctor and deciding he doesn’t want to go back to prison, he attempted to flee. He’s tracked down almost immediately by Project Butterfly, a subdivision of ARGUS. The group’s leader, Mr. Murn, is said to work directly under Amanda Waller. Murn gives Smith the choice to work for him hunting down ‘Butterflies’ individuals that he will not elaborate on but insist need to die, or jail time. Smith chooses going back to shooting people. He takes a quick stop to pick up some gear and his pet eagle Eagly from his POS father Auggie before having Dinner with the Butterfly squad and getting his first assignment. After that meeting, he spies Harcourt, the attractive woman that is supposed to be his handler and follows her into a bar. He tries to very awkwardly suggest they hook up, which disgusts Harcourt even more than Smith had already and she storms off. Smith picks up a bar chick after that and… celebrates his freedom. Things take a turn for the worst, though, when Bar chick is shown to have super strength and a desire to kill Peacemaker. Smith fights her off while in his undies, ultimately electing to leap out a window to escape her. He gets one of the helmets he got from his dad on and uses it’s sonic boom feature which turns the bar chick into ground hamburger and destroys all the cars around him. At the same time we meet Leota Adebayo, the other new recruit to Project: Butterfly. She insists she’s no one special and is just doing this job to help her and her wife get back on their feet. But it’s revealed by the episode’s end she is in fact Amanda Waller’s mole in this group… and her daughter. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 2: Best Friends for Never

 

We cut to Harcourt asleep at home when she gets a call from someone in her contacts that is listed as Dumbshit. She answers and ya, it’s Peacemaker. Smith demands to know what Project Butterfly is, and quickly and crudely explained what happened with the bar chick. He tells Harcourt he’s running up to get his stuff from the apartment. Harcourt quickly dresses and says she’ll meet him there, following the tracking chip in his skull. Harcourt rushes over to Leota’s hotel room and tells her that she’s driving.

 

Peacemaker makes it to the apartment and starts grabbing stuff as the record player starts up on its own. He quickly gets dressed, despite the suit being really hard to get on in a hurry, cursing his dad’s design as he does.

 

Harcourt calls up Murn, who meets with Economos at their headquarters. He reminds her how important their operation is and she insists she has it handled. As Leota drives, Harcourt scolds her for having ‘someone’ in her room and how dangerous that is. She also assembles a gun of some kind as she does. At their office, Murn asks Economos if he can change Smith’s car’s registration on the fly and Economos confirms he can.

 

Cops have arrived at the scene and are baffled by the intact opossum at the center of the explosion. One of them, the Asian woman, says that she knows this has to be some kind of ‘cape shit’ and that this is another headache for her on top of some psycho named Vigilante.

 

In the Apartment, Smith quickly gathers his dossier… no I don’t know why he brought that into the apartment of what was obviously a hookup. And a… souvenir of the encounter.

 

The cops find what’s left of the bar girl’s face as Leota and Harcourt pull up. They wait for Peacemaker to meet them, Harcourt scoffing at the idea that Smith hooked up with a Butterfly. Leota points out that after four years in prison, she can believe there’s not much he wouldn’t want to screw at that point. They’re distracted by a slight argument about whether its weird that Leota dresses up one of her dogs, before Harcourt angrily asks where the hell Peacemaker is.

 

In the apartment, Smith basically steals all of the bar chick’s records and other cool shit he can find. The dude is a villain, I suppose. He sees some device that looks like a space themed Alexa that pings when he goes by it and grabs that too. Harcourt calls him and wants to know what is taking so long. He doesn’t admit to stealing stuff, saying he’s grabbing important stuff. Harcourt tells him he can’t go out the front as there are too many cops outside now. He asks her to try to find Eagly, telling her to crinkle a bag to trick him into thinking she has chips. He looks out the broken window and is immediately spotted by the dozen or so cops out there. The cops are told there are only two ways in and out of the building, so they cover both and head in. Harcourt tells him he’ll need to make it to a balcony on the second floor and jump. Smith grabs the knife and runs.

 

Peacemaker tries to flee but he comes out as the cops come up the stairs and elevator. So, he runs higher, one of the set of cops follows him while the other check out the apartment. Smith knocks on a random door and forces his way inside when the guy answers, though only after he makes up an incredibly stupid fake name. He gets in and locks the door, holding the man and his wife hostage with the knife. The cops knock on their door, but Peacemaker has the couple, Evan and Amber, stay quiet until they leave. Smith checks the balcony situation and seems to decide it’s too far to jump. He goes back in and tells them that he’ll need some twine or rope to tie them up. Amber gets some twine, and she and Smith have a moment bonding over the album Cinderella. The couple start fighting because Smith and Amber start flirting, the cops hear and prepare to bust the door in. Smith leaps one apartment balcony down as they break the door in. A kid watching cartoons sees him and waves. He does another leap, and lands badly on the railing of the next balcony. More cops arrive and start covering the whole building. Smith makes one final leap to the lower building, hits the roof hard and clearly screw up his shoulder.

 

Harcourt, feed up with this, heads in to save him. Leota wants to help but she’s told to stay behind and keep the engine running. The cops corner Smith on the lower roof, but Harcourt hits them with her gun, letting him escape. Smith and Eagly get into the car but not before it’s shot several times. Harcourt says Eagly better not shit back there, and Smith shrugs and says you can’t house train an eagle. They all have a celebratory cathartic shout as they drive up.

 

At the office, Economos tells Murn that he was able to change the registration of Smith’s car and the fingerprint information that they got to someone else. That someone else is revealed to be Auggie Smith. Two of the detectives, Sophia Song (Annie Chang) and Larry Fitzgibbon (Lochlyn Munro) go to his house to ask a few questions. Auggie is racist and they ask him where he was the night before. He says he was at home and tries to slam the door in their faces. Fitz stops him and asks if he’s ‘playing dress-up’ again. Auggie tells him to screw off. They ask about the Comet found at the scene, and Auggie immediately rats out that car belongs to Chris. He tells them to get off his property, calls Song ‘Chopsticks’ and slams the door. Song calls him a ‘fork,’ and she and Fitz debate whether calling him a spoon would have been more demeaning. They switch their focus to the news Peacemaker is out of prison.

 

Murn starts yelling at Economos for doing the incredibly stupid thing of picking Chris’s dad to frame. Economos insists that he had to work fast and he did do something borderline supernatural to do it. Murn calls him an idiot just before the others come in. Leota is super jazzed from the adrenaline rush of being shot at. Economos starts stitching Smith’s wounds. He asks about the Butterflies again, but Economos is mum on the subject. Smith makes fun of his beard, again, and Economos gets incredibly mad, listing off the other super criminals he’d rather spend time with than him. The list includes Harley Quinn, Weasel and Bat-Mite. When Peacemaker asks who that last guy is, Economos explains that he’s a two-foot-tall imp that stans Batman, and they both shake their heads at the absurdity of their universe. Murn and the other two watch, and Murn asks how this bar chick could have found Peacemaker when he kept this as on the DL as he could.  We learn that the woman’s name was Annie Sturphausen. They try to figure out how; Harcourt suggests that it was Waller. She pitches the idea that Waller tipped off the Butterflies to set them at this team to get cover for the operatives she actually trusts. Leota says it isn’t and Murn agrees, but after the Corta Maltese situation Harcourt’s trust in Waller is low. Harcourt lists off the impossibilities, she knows she’s not the mole, she knows Peacemaker isn’t because he was the one almost killed, and that Murn wouldn’t be it as he’s the one that tipped ARGUS off to the Butterflies in the first place. She suggests maybe it’s Leota. Leota denies this but is still vague about her past when Harcourt starts grilling her, which, ya know, looks suspicious. Smith suggests it’s Economos. Harcourt says he’s too much of a wimp to do that. Smith pitches the idea that maybe he didn’t do it intentionally, but while talking big at a strip club or something. Bold to keep mocking the dude who is stitching you up. Leota suggests that maybe Annie picked him up specifically to bang him. Harcourt then asks why she’d try to kill him after. Smith has a flashback to finding Annie looking at the Dossier when he’d been in the bathroom and that’s when the energy between them changed.

 

Murn yells at Smith for bringing highly classified dossiers into the apartment of some rando hookup. Smith says that he thought it was safer with him than in the car and asks if he should have dropped it off at home first. Murn shouts “YES!” at him and that the fate of the country is on this mission. As Murn takes a call, Smith has a very minor panic at the thought that he might get some sort of Butterfly VD from his hook up that no one really pays attention to. Murn comes back and asks why he didn’t say there were more witnesses. Smith admits to kidnapping a couple for a few minutes. Murn tells Leota to handle it. She asks if he means ‘take them out’ take them out or bribe them, and he confirms bribe them and for her to go, now. As Murn and Harcourt go to handle something, Smith asks if he’s a Dick Vampire. Economos tells him no, he’s just a dick.

 

Peacemaker goes back home and looks through his stolen records. He puts one on the Firehouse and has a cathartic cry. He goes so far as to punch his bad shoulder and yells at himself that everyone hates him.  He even admits that Economos could be his friend but he pushes him away like everyone else. He repeats Flag Jr.’s last words, “Peacemaker, what a F-ing joke.” His sob session is interrupted by Vigilante standing at his window asking him what’s up. They have an argument about whether Vigilante is pleasing himself to Peacemaker crying. Smith plays off his crying as face strengthening exercises. And Vigilante asks if Smith could show him those exercises.

 

Leota meets with Amber and Evan, who are still fighting. She tries to subtlety offer to bribe them, but when they don’t get it, she just flat out says, “Yes I am trying to bribe you.”

 

Vigilante and Smith hang out. Vigilante does some tidying up as they banter about secret identities. Vigilante asks how he got out of prison, and Smith admits he’s working as a contract killer. He admits that he’s been feeling weird since Corto Maltese and lately he’s been feeling like a psychopath. Vigilante says gives him a pep talk, saying that they’re born killers but what separates them from other killers is that they only kill bad guys. Unless there is a mistake. Vigilante suggests they celebrate his freedom. Smith says no, he has to study the dossier, but then Vigilante says that he’s been buying appliances since Smith got arrested. They head out into the woods and have a montage of the two of them destroying appliances with various weapons. They shoot them, throw dynamite and grenades at them, and just in general have a good time.

 

Amber and Evan tell the cops that Auggie did it and they head out to arrest him. On the one hand, frame jobs aren’t great… on the other Auggie probably does deserve to be in prison for something.

 

At her hotel room, Leota floats the idea to Keeya that maybe her and the dogs should get out of town while she’s working on this job. Keeya doesn’t take it particularly well.

 

We cut to Smith, Amber, and Vigilante post coitus. Guess Amber was *extremely* mad at her husband. Smith and Amber share some weed, with a grumpy Vigilante (who is still wearing the mask) saying that he doesn’t do that stuff and would have killed them if he’d caught them smoking pot three years ago. Smith grabs the Alexa, touches some buttons on it and it unfolds into a spaceship.

 

Auggie is brought into lock up. He goes over to a young prisoner and tells him to move out of the spot he’s sitting as that’s where Auggie likes to sit. The kid asks what happens if he doesn’t move, and Auggie tells him he can sit there and find out. A half dozen other prisoners are paying a weird amount of attention to the exchange and the kid moves. Auggie sits down and the other prisoners gather around him. Song, who’d been watching from the control room, says to the guard that she thought all capes got sent to Belle Reve or Arkham. The guard says that they’re overcrowded, so he’ll be here until his trial. The other prisoners bow down and give him the Nazi salute, saying “Hail the White Dragon.”

 

That was a fun episode. The extended chase scene through the apartment complex was neat, watching Smith have to think (badly) on his feet to escape the place while it’s swarming with cops was well done. I do find it interesting that Smith insists that he is a hero despite doing the very unheroic thing of stealing from a dead person. Like, I can kind of understand how he twists being a killer for hire as a ‘good’ thing, but theft is just about always frowned upon. All I’m saying. Though I suppose his kleptomania did get him the tiny spaceship, which is probably important. I think I’m on Murn’s side that fingering Auggie Smith for the crimes of Chris Smith was a dumb move, but the man clearly doesn’t thrive under pressure, so it is on Murn for not giving him orders on who to frame. The scene where Chris is alone and starts sobbing because everyone hates him and he knows it’s because of his attitude is… just so damn sad. He puts on a brave face and a smug attitude so well that it’s genuinely surprising when he lets go of the toxic masculinity for a bit and lets himself cry. It’s a bit weird to do it to a stolen record, but hey, a fella’s gotta feel. I enjoyed his interaction with Vigilante. While Chris isn’t any nicer to him than anyone, it seems like Vigilante is his emotional support guy. Dude cleans his house, listens to him vent a little, and then takes him out to shoot stuff as part of a pick-me-up. And like, he’s got to be a reasonably good friend if you’re going to have a three-way with him, just saying. So ya, the plot thickens just a bit. We’ll see what the tiny aliens have to do with things next time, me thinks. Have a good night. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social