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
11th 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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/viewer-log-ep-5-144635545
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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