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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/viewer-log-ep-2-144418889
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment