REVIEW: Marvel's Inhumans "Make Way For...Medusa"
Episode four has just aired which means we’re officially half-way through this mess of a series. There’s no clear sign of where it will end, not like there was one before. However, a small silver lining emerges in the distance: plot progression.
For an episode that has Medusa’s name in the freaking title, the story is still as divided as ever. That’s not entirely a criticism since I couldn’t care less about Medusa or her plot, but for a general show it is. I understand the number of people in this cast, but a focus episode should, you know, have focus. 60% might be enough for them, but when it’s a plot as bland as “Medusa works with person to find Black Bolt,” it feels surprisingly small.
Actually, all the plots are starting to feel a lot smaller on second glance. While the supporting characters are still vastly superior to the main one, even they are starting to drag. We’re diving into a romantic subplot for Karnak, maybe another one for Crystal, and Gorgon called a group of strangers his new family. Oh boy. I didn’t think there could be more clichés. They are clichés with actual personalities, but nothing we haven’t seen before. I guess clichés will be all over the place whether we like it or not.
Meanwhile, Maximus’s motivations seem to be all the things on their own. First, he wanted to be king. Okay, that’s fair. Now he wants to kill the rest of the family. A stretch, but a logical progression, I suppose. Now, he’s working with a human geneticist to create a way to become Inhuman and tries to encourage the Genetic Council to approve it. When that doesn’t work, he just kills them. Not only is that a total waste of time, where did this come from? Him having no powers could be a decent inspiration, but this added wrinkle just feels contradictory. He’s already king, so what’s the use of having powers or trying to sway a council. We wait 45 minutes before we finally get the appropriate answer of “screw you” which is 44 minutes 30 seconds too long.
In other strange developments, was the geneticist working with Maximus supposed to be a twist? Usually that’s signaled by putting the scene at the end of the episode, but this was smack-dabbed right in the middle like nothing. And since Black Bolt escaped him, none of that even matters. It’s a shame since that’s a waste of an admittedly worn trope that would have added some substance to the plot after learning more about the man. Now, it’s this random man who has a random agenda with Maximus. There is zero investment.
Good grief, has this show heard of the phrase “show, don’t tell”? The flashbacks at this point could be replaces with title cards telling me a backstory and it would give me the exact same result. Now it just feels like an insult to my intelligence. Surely, someone should expect me to be able to follow more than that. At least, something that expects me to continue for eight episodes should expect better than me.
I also shouldn’t call this a total lost cause since the plot moved more forward here than it ever did in the previous episodes. It’s almost too fast for a Marvel show, since it took almost the same length of time for the Defenders to officially team up. Why is it that the awful show seems to understand that lesson more than the successful ones? If people really watched this, they might learn something, but then they’d have to watch the show. I suppose they made the right decision.
Anyway, Black Bolt and Medusa finally reunite in a dreadfully awkward slow-motion kiss. I guess that means we accomplished something. Now all we have to do is reunite with all the other characters and their teleporting dog. With the pace this story is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened next week, and I think I’m looking forward to it. Anything to end this sooner. I wonder if they’ll earn a slow-motion scene or if that’s only reserved for boring characters.
So there we have episode number four. I congratulate it for moving forward in its tired plot. Maybe if it makes similar strides in this direction, there could be something worth remarking by the end of the season. So far, I’m still waiting.
