Persistence of memory & 31 flavors The Avengers

[gwyn]

Thanks to a friend who's given me access, I was able to catch the first few episodes of WandaVision this weekend. It's...I don't know. Okay? I'm somewhat irritated with the pacing and I really hope that there will be less overall of the whole sitcommy hijinks of each episode and more of the sinister stuff we saw in the trailers. The few bits of sinister stuff were fun, especially the way color crept in in small spots (the light on the toaster in ep 1 and the helicopter and blood in ep 2), and Debra Jo Rupp is truly the MVP of TV comedy if you ask me. I don't know enough about Wanda as a character or have the deep background in Avengers to know if that sword logo on the helicopter was intended to be (durr SWORD, I meant, don't know why the brain blip), or if the beekeeping guy was supposed to be AIM or a character I don't know of called Swarm. But those were the most interesting bits, to me.

It was also nice to see Emma Caulfield again--I feel like I haven't seen her since her Anya the Vengeance Demon days. Paul Bettany is dead to me because of all that shit with Depp, so I was meh on him anyway but he didn't exactly make me any more of a Vision fan than I was (which was nil), but I like Wanda slightly more and so she's the one draw here for me. I'm really curious to see where Kathryn Hahn's character goes, maybe more than the leads. The umlaut on Strucker is driving me nuts. So I don't yet feel like I have a lot of deep thoughts on it, but at least it's something new to watch.

But I think the real thing I'm wondering is--and I have to rewatch that second episode to see if I'm wildly off base or not--whether or not that voice on the radio saying "Wanda. Who's doing this to you, Wanda?" was Jeremy Renner. It sure sounded like him in the moment last night, but maybe I'm really wrong about that. It'd be interesting though, right? Clint was the most protective of her, closest to her.


Since I'm talking about Wanda, I thought I'd make today's rec about her.

Pour Back the Ocean by imperfectcircle (The Avengers, 10,907 words, T)
Summary: After the events of Age of Ultron, Wanda has to find a new place in the world. Contains team training exercises, expected grief and unexpected kindness.

This came out after Age of Ultron, and gives Wanda a believable journey toward integrating with the team and finding some peace after the loss of her brother. I really appreciated its accurate portrayal of what losing a twin feels like.

Comments

[musesfool]

The commenters at the AV Club said the voice on the radio in the second episode was Jimmy Woo. I don't know if that's accurate or not.

[gwyn]

I mean, I wouldn't mind seeing Jimmy Woo some more. I guess I don't know his voice well enough but what I recall of Randall Park, he doesn't sound too different from Jeremy.

[kore]

It would be awesome if that were Clint! but I think Word of God has confirmed it's Jimmy Woo, who's in the trailers.

I think in the MCU we've now got SWORD, altho I think it's going to be the "Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division" instead of "Sentient World Observation," which makes more sense since I don't think we're getting any aliens in WV. Altho I don't know, because I think SWORD came up at the end of the last Spiderman movie with Nick Fury in a ship with a lot of Skrulls. On the other hand, if they really are setting up Secret Invasion, SWORD makes more sense as an alien response team, so I dunno (and Wiki saith the Vision/Wanda romance came up in the Kree-Skrull war. I don't think that will be a big link, but they love doing those little callbacks). Monica Rambeau is associated with Captain Marvel and the cosmic MCU, so maybe she has some connection with Fury and she's with SWORD? Or she will be? I wonder if SWORD will run through (lol) the more cosmic MCU the same way SHIELD did for the Infinity Wars movies. ....and as usual with MCU speculation it all kind of melts away for me, like a wedding cake left in the rain.

[gwyn]

I have no idea why I wrote SABRE, when I meant SWORD. ::cripes what a stupid fandom::

I definitely wouldn't mind it being Jimmy Woo, I could always stand to have more Woo. It sure sounded like Renner to me, but I suppose their voices aren't all that different. Some guys just don't have especially distinct voices--can't all be Evans or Sam Jackson, I suppose!

I must not have seen more than the one trailer, because I sure didn't see Jimmy Woo. I guess I'll have to go look for that.

[kore]

I def couldn't have been able to tell who it was if everyone hadn't been like "It's Jimmy Woo!" including Feige I think, lol. You can see him really quick in the second trailer (no spoilers in this article) https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/wandavision-trailer-features-return-of-randall-park-jimmy-woo/ That's the one tracked to "Daydream Believer." It's around the one-minute mark, after Vision says "Then let's fight for it." We also see Darcy for a hot second, so maybe she's with the FBI? Or SWORD? Or Thor is involved? (Wait no, Thor is off with the Guardians. I don't think Jane is in this series?)

That Wanda story was really neat, altho gosh was it accurate about grief. I dunno why the second anniversary of my dad's death hit me so hard this year -- no, 2020 was last year now --, altho I think part of it was thinking how much he would have liked to have seen Trump defeated. (He wouldn't have liked Biden, tho. And I don't know if he was compos mentis enough at the end to really know what was happening around him anyway.)

[killabeez]

I tried, but I couldn't make it through the first episode. Embarrassment squick activated!

[raine]

Yeah, it hit mine too, but the eps are super short (less than a half hour) so it was tolerable for me.

[kore]

Yeah, I think that happened with me too, because one big reason why I don't actually like sitcoms is secondhand embarrassment squick. And it's enough of a takeoff/deconstruction/whatever on sitcoms that it's a bit removed from reality.

[przed]

Ditto on pretty much everything you've said about WV. I thought it was...fine. But it's proven to me yet again that I'm not really that fussed about comedy, and I'm really over laugh tracks. I'm going to keep going entirely for the mysterious, creepy stuff, and because I'm very fond of Paul Bettany.