The Final Episode #56: Gargoyles (1994 - 1997)

 

We finally go back to the well of the Disney Afternoon. I am surprised I have not covered every single show that was on that and the One Saturday Morning block of shows because they were all a big big big part of my younger years. The Disney Afternoon's origin's start around the mid 1980s when Michael Eisner became CEO of Disney. He got them into TV animation and when they had enough shows to make a two hour block of programming that could be syndicated they did just that. That year was 1990. The shows were The Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Duck Tales, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers and TaleSpin. They were all great, well I wasn't too keen on TaleSpin as a kid but I've grown to appreciate it. I've grown to appreciate anything half way well made from the past as an adult in this scary shitty bad world of being an adult. It's no fun.

The Disney Afternoon would change shows all the time. Darkwing Duck took out Gummi Bears. Goof Troop took out Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers (or was it Duck Tales? I'm old and I do not remember.) and on and on. The Disney Afternoon ended in August of 1997 JUST in time for One Saturday Morning. The last two shows put on the Disney Afternoon were Quack Pack, an abysmal Donald Duck series that was quite possibly the most 90est thing to exist within that decade. At least the 90est cartoon. It was just not very enjoyable Donald Duck content and I love that guy! and The Mighty Ducks, a show about space ducks who fight Tim Curry and Megabyte from Reboot. It's not as cool as it sounds. I will talk about those shows in more depth and yes it will be a miserable time for everyone involved.

Gargoyles came out in 1994 close to the end of the Disney Afternoon and it was one of the best series in the blocks history. In fact I honestly believe it was the last good Disney Afternoon show. The rest of them were of poor quality to be quite honest. Gargoyles however kicked fucking ass. It was without a doubt one of the best shows Disney ever produced and one of the best shows of the 1990s. It was dark and moody but could also be funny. The characters were all incredibly fun to watch do their thing. The show was an ongoing story really not like say Darkwing Duck which while a great and fun show was just random adventure after random adventure. Stuff from one episode of Gargoyles impacted on other episodes. Even if it were just minor points. You had to see every episode and holy shit I was there. It was something I would not miss. 

I must also talk about how GREAT the voice cast of his series was. I usually don't do this but this show has people worth talking about. Not a single person cares about the cast of Denver the Last Dinosaur, not even me the self proclaimed single fan of Denver the Last Dinosaur. Yes I will review Denver the Last Dinosaur.  The show had like every person who ever appeared on Star Trek the Next Generation. I'm not exactly a huge Trek fan but they really work for every single character they voiced and it's a neat thing to point out. Keith David, the smoothest voice in the history of smooth voices voiced Goliath, the main hero Gargoyle (and his evil clone Thailog... yes). Also Mr. Lou Grant himself, Ed Asner voiced Hudson the old Gargoyle. I love Ed Asner's voice acting so much. It's what I think of him before movies like The Slender Thread or Mary Tyler Moore Show, despite the quality of those things. He was Hudson from this show, J. Jonah Jameson from the 1994 Spider-Man show and Cosgrove from Freakazoid. His deadpan delivery of every line in Freakazoid is hilarious. 

The Final Episode of Gargoyles was apart of the The Goliath Chronicles at least that's what they called it originally. The episodes I watched literally just use the same Gargoyles theme song from the first two series. Season 3 had some different stuff changed. David Xanthos had become a good guy after the Gargoyles had saved his child Alex. Macbeth had given up his grudges against the Gargoyles too. I forget why because It's been a while since I sat down and watched this entire series. They brought in a new gang of bad guys called the Quarrymen who are just Klansmen who hate Gargoyles because they are bigoted. This season does a lot with the concept of peoples bigotry of Gargoyles. Not a bad idea I think. Most people really don't seem to like this season but I like it honestly. I even rewatched the first two episodes of this series and I think it gets too much flak from people because Greg Wiseman wasn't Story Editor anymore.

The Final Episode was "Angels in the Night" which involved the Quarrymen trying to frame the Gargoyles for blowing up a building. A building that the main Quarryman owned. They think the Gargoyles had died except for Angela (Goliath's daughter) and Bronx (the dog Gargoyle). Angela and Bronx are taken into custody because the Gargoyle hating Assistant D.A. was buying the building being destroyed even when you think about it it makes no sense. How the hell would the Gargoyles even create a bomb? Why haven't they done it before? Was there nothing of the cage the Gargoyles stuck in that explosion? It was a pretty fucking big cage? You ever watch something and enjoy it but when you go to talk about it on your dopey little blog and think about it too much you find all of weird stuff that doesn't really work?

Anyway apparently Xanthos? Is that how you spell his last name? I dunno. He has a spy on the Quarrymen team and he had his spy pay the person developing the cage a bit more money to add in a secret passage so that they can replace the actual Gargoyles with fake Gargoyle rubble (I should have mentioned somewhere that the Gargoyles turn to stone at sunlight). The D.A. somehow lets Eliza Maza (a friend of the Gargoyles and the only police officer I trust in this day and age.) come in on the moving the Gargoyles up to Albany (this show takes place in New York!). It sounds at least to me during the dialogue that she thinks Eliza Maza is gonna help the Gargoyles escape and she now doesn't care. Weird character angle I guess.

So they are all going by train and The Quarrymen find out about this stuff  the Gargoyles and the Quarrymen fight. The train gets put into danger because of the main Quarryman guy John Castaway. He and Goliath get into a tussle which he clearly loses because he doesn't even have his fancy Quarryman hammer to fight with. The people in the train see the Gargoyles actually helping them and now believe the Gargoyles are heroes. Yes. All the people of New York were on that train and apparently now love the Gargoyles. I mean Goliath goes on about how now the people support them. Man Cary Bates wrote this episode and I really gotta review something he did that I like. The man was good I promise!

FINAL VERDICT:  I didn't really go into it but Nelvana (yes the Canadian cartoon animation studio I will probably end up talking about some time) put some not great work into this Final season. I did still like the first two episodes of this series and they clearly put some effort into them but I guess by the end of this series they realized they weren't going to be brought back because of One Saturday Morning and just phoned it in. Not the way a show as cool as Gargoyles should go out. I hope my nitpicks sound like they were worth pointing out and not in the YouTube way of "OH I GOTTA NITPICK EVERYTHING" This was a show where they clearly put in a ton of work and even Cary Bates wrote several fun and great episodes for the show. This one just didn't work very well. I promise to Cary who I know is a big fan of my blog that I will review a Captain Atom comic he did with Greg because those were awesome and a lot of fun.