Liz Tells Frank What Happened In...

Dear Frank,

So I can understand why you wanted me to tell you about V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic, because you probably have the same memories I do of seeing other girls read that book in elementary school and talk about how it was sooooo sexy but they wouldn’t tell you what it was about when you asked them at lunch because they were stupid bitches who can suck it. I mean, I’m assuming that’s what it was like for you. But now, having read the damn thing, I wish I could travel back in time and tell little Liz that she really wasn’t missing out on anything. Because, ugh. Ugh, this book. Ugh.

Let’s do this quick so that the dirt sticks to us less. Flowers in the Attic is about this 12-year-old girl named Cathy whose family is picture-perfect: awesome dad, gorgeous mom, cool-as-ice older brother Chris, adorable twin toddlers, lots of fancy presents. But then the dad dies in a car accident — on his 36th birthday! Oh tragic irony! That is why I rarely drive on my birthday, honestly.

He leaves the family broke, because they were in massive debt and ladies don’t get jobs, I suppose. So Mom, who’s kinda a C-word from the beginning, brings Cathy and the other kids to stay with her super-super-super-rich parents. However, as soon as they get to the fancy-pants house, it’s revealed that Mom’s parents have a major beef against Mom, and so the kids have to hide in a deserted wing of the house, basically locked up in a single bedroom that connects to the attic. By hide, I mean that they’re never allowed to leave, with meals brought to them once a day and silence and purity demanded at all times.

Purity? Oh, yeah. Grandma, who’s the only other person who knows they’re in the house, knows how to use a switch, knows how to do it often and is constantly looking for opportunities that prove that the kids are full of sin so she can punish them with religious fervor. (C-word-ness is hereditary, apparently.)

The reason for this is that — surprise! — Mom and Dad were related! Whoops! Dad was the half-brother of Mom’s father, though only three years older than her, and so when they met it was teenage love at first sight except for the part where they’re related and EWWWWWWWWWW.

Mom’s gravely ill father, who wrote her out of the will when all this went down initially, has reluctantly accepted her back into the house, but has no idea that there were any kids, and Mom’s determined to keep him from finding out as part of her “suck up to Dad and get back into the will” plan. So the kids are stuck in the attic until Grandpa dies, while Grandma, who sees any child of this union as being unclean, gets to constantly accuse Cathy and Chris of being naughty.

Eventually this becomes somewhat self-fulfilling, because thanks to the decision to lock all the kids up together for what ends up being YEARS, Chris and Cathy are forced to play mother and father to the twins and eventually start experiencing some for realz sexual tension thanks to the changes of puberty and EW EW EW EW.

Blah blah blah flagrant child abuse, attic romping and Cathy and Chris nearly fucking. Soon the kids start noticing more and more of Mom’s C-word-ness, like how she keeps saying that she’s going to secretary school and saving money to help them escape, but wears fancy clothes and jewelry and buys them fancy presents to keep them from complaining too much…

God, it just goes on forever. Frank, I’m just going to tell you the ending. After about three years of this, Mom gets married to this dude who has no idea she has four kids stashed in the attic; Cathy sneaks out one night and in a weird moment of confusion kisses her new step-dad, which makes Chris so jealous that he starts raping her, but then she gets into it so it’s not REALLY rape, which is what she tells him afterwards. So it’s not at all gross and totally consensual. DID I MENTION EW?

Then, one of the twins starts vomiting constantly and the kids convince Mom to take him to a hospital, where he dies, and while inititally they’re told it’s pneumonia eventually they figure out that their mother was poisoning their food. Also, Grandpa died like a year ago so in theory they could have been freed then, except that Grandpa added a clause to his will stating that if there was ever any proof that Mom and Dad had kids, Mom would be cut off from the family fortune forever. Hence, Mom’s motivation for… What’s the fancy Latin phrase for killing your own children? I’m too depressed to look it up.

Anyhoo, the surviving children escape use money they’ve been stealing for the last few months to hop a train out of town. At which point, according to Wikipedia, the sequels (FOUR SEQUELS, FRANK) continue the story.

Seriously, how the fuck do you pitch a series like this? “It’s like Wuthering Heights but with WAY MORE INCEST!” says the agent. “Turn that incest dial UP TO ELEVEN.” So gross.

I did not feel good reading this book, Frank! It was not a pleasant experience! Except for this one thing: I always figured the mean girls in elementary school were stupid bitches. The fact that they liked this book is, in retrospect, excellent proof.

Love,
Liz

Dear Frank,

Please pardon the lateness of this and the lack of images — my apartment is currently an Internet apocalypse.

Let’s establish something right up front — I never watched Family Ties as a kid and have no real knowledge of the show aside from the bare-bones premise (hippie parents have an ultra-conservative son!). But it’s a family sitcom from the 1980s; I feel comfortable about my ability to wade through it. And you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you wanted to know what happened in this one fifth season episode, which has always struck me as strange, so here we go!

“My Name is Alex” is a two-parter (that you can watch on YouTube), and starts off with a pretty funny scene between this kid Andy and his babysitter, who’s explaining that Michael J. Fox (it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to think of him otherwise) and his parents are at a funeral for MJF’s friend Greg, which leads to her having to explain death to a toddler. (It’s funnier than it sounds, Frank, I promise.)

Then the rest of the family gets home, and start talking about the funeral (this is all pretty en media res — nice stuff). MJF is dealing with the fact that he should have been in the car that killed Greg by going totally upbeat and manic; it’s actually kind of an incredible performance, because you can tell how close he is to breaking apart and aren’t I supposed to be watching a sitcom from the 1980s? Jesus.

Then the family clears out of the kitchen, leaving MJF alone with a hallucination of Dead Greg. “You’re dead!” MJF says. “That’s no reason we can’t be friends,” Greg replies. Greg and MJF re-enact the moment when Greg asked MJF to accompany him on the errand that would lead to his death, to which MJF said no; Greg exits to go drive his CAR OF DEATH THAT KILLED HIM. And that’s the first act of the first episode! Comedy jokes!

We’re back, and Alex (they say his name so much! It’s easier to type Alex than MJF! I’m going with it) is talking to a monk who miiiiiiiiight be played by Christopher Meloni? He looks like Christopher Meloni, but it probably isn’t because he looks like Christopher Meloni in the 2000s, and I don’t think Christopher Meloni is immortal. Anyways, Alex is considering monkhood as a solution to the existential crisis he’s on the verge of thanks to Dead Greg’s death, but is a bit held up on the “no girls” thing and it doesn’t work out.

Later, Alex is studying in the kitchen when Dead Greg shows up again demanding a sandwich. They talk about how Greg is dead and Alex is still alive and how Alex was supposed to be in the CAR OF DEATH but skipped out because he was lazy. “Why am I alive? Why am I alive?” he starts sobbing to his parents and holy shit, Frank, this shit’s getting real.

Um, wait, I take it back. This shit’s getting surreal. We’re now somewhere that’s supposed to be a therapist’s office, with the added layer of flashbacks taking place in different parts of the set, with which Alex interacts directly. Frank, because you are educated and wise, you probably know the fancy term for what’s happening; the only thing on the tip of my tongue is “artsy-fartsy theater stuff.”

The first big flashback is to when Alex was seven, which was in the year 1974, so Alex is sad that his president is getting impeached and his mom is telling him that she wishes he’d be a normal kid. (Lady, maybe not doing things like buying him a Richard Nixon lunchbox — artfully placed on the kitchen table — will help in that arena.)

And then, still in this weird black box environment, there’s a strange scene with Mallory, Alex’s sister, about how Mallory is a superficial fashion freak and also reincarnation. “No one ever dies, Alex, don’t be silly.”

The unseen therapist interrupts the scene to ask Alex “Why is it so hard to be you?” and Alex walks towards the camera and says “You know!” and that is the end of Part One! WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING, FRANK?

At the beginning of Part Two… Aw, fuck, it’s just the end of Part One again! Damn it. But we quickly get back to our black box arthouse experiment about why it’s hard to be Alex — because, we’ve just learned, he’s a nerrrrrrrrrrrrrd and didn’t like the pressure that resulted from it as a kid. He also didn’t like playing catch. WE ARE LEARNING SO MUCH ABOUT ALEX IT IS BLOWING MY MIND. (In fairness, this two-parter did give us prior warning when it was titled “My Name is Alex.”)

Wait, what? This blonde chick who’s supposed to be Alex’s OTHER sister just showed up? Oh, huh, I guess there is a blonde girl in the credits. Tina Yothers! I’ve heard that name before! (This is the first time she’s shown up in this entire two-parter, if my confusion didn’t make that clear.) Anyways, Alex talks at her for a while about life or whatever. There’s a lot of “talking at” in this.

Okay, and now Alex is talking with Dead Greg, though this time in a flashback to the second grade, when Dead Greg and Alex first met and Dead Greg invited him out to play in the snow. The moral I guess we’re learning is that living your life like a major Republican nerd isn’t the way to live your life fully?

Now we’re just kind of in full monologue mode about fate and the power of home and I dunno, whatever else is on Alex’s mind that I’m not following terribly well right now, because we’re back to another flashback to Alex’s childhood, and then another friend drops by, and Alex is rocking out to “Born to Be Wild” to show his wild side, because apparently he has a wild side? But that transitions to Alex once again freaking out about Dead Greg being dead.

Eventually, Alex monologues to a place where he’s ready to accept Dead Greg’s death as well as the fact that he needs to take more time to “smell the roses” as well as worship capitalism and embrace therapy. THE END.

This was a really cool experiment, don’t get me wrong: There’s some very clever writing and staging as the various flashbacks cross over upon each other, and Michael J. Fox is acting the shit out of it. The sheer fact of its existence is really impressive, frankly — I can’t think of another show that devoted almost two full episodes to dramatizing a character’s therapy session.

It maaaaaaaaaaybe coulda been one episode, though. Just saying.

Love,
Liz

Dear Frank,

You know, for over twenty years I’d experienced absolutely no interest whatsoever in watching the Oliver Stone film Wall Street — until, of course, you asked me to tell you what happened in it. I don’t know why I was so disinterested; perhaps my vague phobia of shoulder pads was a factor. But let me just say that having now seen it, I don’t really feel like I was missing out on anything.

This is a movie about baby-faced Charlie Sheen and how he wants to have lots of money because of his blue collar roots. Right now, he’s working the phones at a brokerage on (you bet) Wall Street, but he has big-time ambitions to play with the big boys — and the biggest boy appears to be Gordon Gekko, a deal-maker and stock-buyer and business duder.

Normally, Frank, you know I like to forgo character names and instead use the name of the actor playing them, or a character name from an actor’s IMDB past. But Gordon Gekko is a kick-ass character name, and I have decided to honor it by actually using it.

Charlie’s a hard worker — you can tell, because of the scene where he fucks this random naked chick (who we only see from the neck down, and may have Brazilian roots, if you know what I’m saying, oh you know what I’m saying) and he ignores her as she walks out of the bedroom because he has some high-tech late-night computer work to do. Like a boss.

But his big chance to impress Gekko comes thanks of his dad, played by President Bartlet (what a striking family resemblance! Such good casting there!), who, prior to serving two terms as the leader of the free world, apparently worked as a union leader for an airline crew.

Bartlet tips Charlie off on some exciting airplane news, and Charlie goes to Gekko with it — Gekko’s not too impressed, because even sans Google he’s able to find out that Charlie’s dad is an airplane union guy, but he still makes the deal.

And because he can tell how desperate Charlie is, he starts throwing him a few bones — a free meatloaf, a free suit, a free hooker date. The rich really are more classy than the rest of us.

Eventually, Gekko gives Charlie a chance to prove himself — which in this case means stalking Terence Stamp around the city and breaking into various buildings by pretending to be a part of the maintenance crew in order to gather information (I didn’t really follow what was going on here, mostly because I find plot points about stock prices to be uninspiring).

Gekko also invites Charlie to a party at his Hamptons house; this party is both simultaneously awesome and stupid, because there we get to meet Gekko’s INCREDIBLY AWESOME 1980S ROBOT BUTLER…

But we also meet Daryl Hannah. Sigh.

Here is, apparently, how to give Oliver Stone a hard-on — plug your nose and then talk like a stupid person. Both Sean Young (Gekko’s largely extraneous wife) and Daryl Hannah are congested bimbos to some degree, but it’s Daryl Hannah who especially sounds like a head cold from the inside.

At no point does Charlie show any interest in Daryl as a human being; he meets her at the party, gets told that she’s an expensive toy, and immediately decides that she is the only toy in the toy store for him, thus escalating his determination to be a rich motherfucker. This would be less of an issue if her character was more than a useless bimbo with atrocious design taste and no qualms about occasionally sleeping with Gekko… What I’m saying is that it’s an issue.

(I know, right, an Oliver Stone movie has gross attitudes towards women? So weird, how that happened.)

So Charlie’s all high-powered and doing business and dragging his lawyer buddy James Spader (who’s at an all-time low level of creepy, I gotta say) into potentially illegal doings. He’s also totally raking it in, because he now has a million fancy cooking gadgets for making pasta and sushi. That’s what screenwriting schools call VISUAL STORYTELLING.

High-stakes business dealings, (theoretically) sexy girlfriend, new fancy apartment to have weirdly-staged backlit sex scenes in… I WONDER IF SOMETHING’S GOING TO GO WRONG?

Oh, look at that, Frank! Something goes wrong. After Gordon Gekko gives his kick-ass “Greed is Good” speech to a bunch of investors or abstinence widows or something (you can tell how much of a shit I gave about the plot of this movie, can’t you?), things heat up with the airline that President Bartlet works for. Specifically, Gekko decides to take it over and break it up into little pieces, thus ruining the lives of Good Union Men but making all the suits, including Charlie, a shit-ton of money.

Charlie suddenly has some morality driven back into him — Bartlet has a little bit of a heart attack over this news, which was probably a factor — and after eating half a pizza’s worth of his feelings, decides to double-cross Gekko with some fancy business moves. (Daryl walks out on him around this point. She is not missed in any way.)

Bull! Bear! Buy! Sell! Shouting! That is what happens, and Charlie saves the airline and is once again a hero of the people!

Gekko, in revenge, turns Charlie in to the SEC. Charlie sobs as the cops lead him out of the office. Whoops! But if Charlie’s going to prison, he’s taking Gekko with him, made possible thanks to a weird scene in the middle of a rainy golf course (just the kind of place I like to go when I’m settling my business affairs). Gekko shouts about how Charlie betrayed him, Charlie doesn’t shout about how he’s wearing a wire, and now the SEC has evidence on both of them! Um, hooray?

The movie ends with President Bartlet (it was really barely a heart attack) driving Charlie to the courthouse, where he’s going to face his fate and go to jail. Same thing, we presume, happens to Gordon Gekko, except that when he goes to jail he brings a cell phone with him. THE END. Thank fucking god.

I mean, this movie isn’t worthless necessarily; as a cultural artifact, I suppose, it has value. And Michael Douglas is really fucking good in it. But, as much as I love Sally Sparrow, there really really really didn’t need to be a sequel.

Love,
Liz

Dear Frank,

TWIST! Change in plan. While I have seen Wall Street, your most recent request, and taken a great deal of notes on its specialness, I am also dealing with a crazy week at work, thus necessitating the use of a pre-written post on another of your requests. Oh, and this movie, man. This movie will fill the 1980s hole in your heart.

I mean, you never saw Ladyhawke as a kid? Really? I mean, sure, your mom wasn’t my mom, which means that your mom didn’t have a weird crush on Rutger Hauer and thus sat you down to watch this movie at least two or three times before you were 12 years old. But I’m still glad that I have a chance to fill in this grave oversight in your education.

So here’s what happens in the second-best trashy medieval fantasy epic of the 1980s (Willow being the first, and I will totally knife fight anyone who disagrees). First, there are the opening credits, which consist of a hawk flying into a wind machine set against the most ridiculous synth score ever created for a fantasy epic. It must be heard to be believed, which is why I have found this handy YouTube link!

And then Matthew Broderick shows up! He’s a thief escaping from prison, kind of working a Ferris Bueller at Medieval Times angle — which, as you might imagine, is CHOCK FULL of authentic flavor. Instead of bitching to the audience about not having a car, though, Ferris asks God for favors and (when reduced to more thievery) reminding God that God knows how weak-willed he is, being God and all. Side note: Matthew Broderick? Not a master of accents.

Apparently, the evil clergy ruling Unnamed Vaguely French Medieval Kingdom give a shit about Ferris escaping, even though he’s clearly just a common thief. Ferris’s escape from the dungeons is labeled a miracle, btw, but “I believe in miracles,” says the Evil Main Priest. “It’s part of my job.” AUTHENTIC MEDIEVAL FLAVOR IN THIS MOVIE, RIGHT HERE.

So the evil clergy’s guards go hunting for Ferris and catch up with him quickly, but here’s Rutger Hauer, NOT wearing tight leather and talking about tears in the rain but instead being a blond badass with a sword. He also has a pet hawk. NOT THAT THAT’S AT ALL RELEVANT.

Anyways, Rutger saves Ferris from the evil church soldiers, and then hauls him away into the forest to… Okay, I’m not totally clear as to why. But that doesn’t matter, because please note that every time I mention an action scene happening, that smooth synth Alan Parsons sound can be heard. I cannot describe how phenomenal this soundtrack is.

When the sun sets that night, Ferris, who’s taken on his new role as Rutger’s bitch with no small amount of bitching, meets Michelle Pfeiffer, rockin’ a cute spikey hairdo and a badass black cloak. Look, I’m gonna cut to the chase here because the movie sure won’t: Rutger is a dude during the day and a wolf at night, while Michelle is a hawk during the day and a lady at night. I will save the explanation of how this happened for later, but rest assured that it is completely sensical and not at all ridiculous.

Before we get the full rundown on this shit, though, we gots to deal with a lot of coy scenes between Rutger and Ferris about the hawk, and a lot of coy scenes between Michelle and Ferris about the wolf. The truth isn’t revealed, though, until Ferris tries to escape this crazy threesome, gets caught by the evil church soldiers, and gets liberated by Rutger again. In the process of said liberation, the Ladyhawke takes an arrow to the chest, and Ferris takes her to Drunky McEx-Priest for medical attention.

Drunky McEx-Priest is the one who explains that the reason we’ve got DudeWolf by day and Ladyhawke by night is that Evil Main Priest fell in love with Michelle, back in the day, and once jilted by her for Rutger (she and my mom have similar taste, apparently) he made a deal with the devil to create this totally awesome high-concept premise for a fantasy epic! But Drunky McEx-Priest has a plan for fixing this sucky deal — if Rutger and Michelle confront Evil Main Priest with their love during an eclipse (well, there’s a lot of malarky about “a night without day and a day without night,” but it’s a fucking eclipse, we get it), the curse will magically be broken. Like I said, it is totally not ridiculous at all.

But now we’re finally at my favorite bit of the movie, where Ferris essentially plays matchmaker for a couple who are already in love, carrying messages back and forth between Michelle and Rutger and making up some shit of his own while he’s at it. Super-cute.

Okay, maaaaaaaaybe it goes on for hours and hours, this bit. But whatever. The main purpose is to I guess convince Rutger that Drunky McEx-Priest’s plan is a good one, instead of Rutger’s current plan, which is to kill Evil Main Priest and probably die in the process. Ferris and Drunky go so far as to dump the pair of them in a hole right before sunrise, so for the first time since the cursing they get to see each other as humans for a few moments in between hawk-wolf transformations. It’s a sweet scene, except for the part where you could replicate the visual effects used to create it with a super-8 camera from the late nineties.

Even that doesn’t discourage Rutger, though — he’s determined to make with the vengeance, not believing that the eclipse plan could work (to be fair, if you don’t even know that the earth is round, the concept of a solar eclipse might be hard to buy). He even gives Ladyhawke to Drunky and tells him to kill her, which pisses me off on a feminist level and an animal cruelty level. Note to any of my present or future suitors: Yes, I’d be sad if you died, but if that becomes a possibility please avoid leaping to the murder-suicide place without my explicit consent.

Rutger has some good luck storming the castle on the day of the eclipse, and there’s a lot of swordfighting and shit. But just as he’s about to kill Evil Main Priest, Michelle in non-Ladyhawke form walks in, because Drunky and I feel similarly about Rutger’s stupid-ass plan, and that eclipse business ended up working out after all.

(Ewwwww. When Michelle shows up at the church, Evil Main Priest totally strokes the shaft of his big pointy scepter. Man, I wish I could unsee that.)

The whole thing is big and dramatic and ridiculous, especially when Evil Main Priest is all, fuck this, and tries to stab Michelle with his big pointy scepter, and Rutger totally skewers him with his giant sword. EMP dies, Rutger and Michelle make out… okay, give ‘em credit, it’s a pretty sweet makeout scene, especially the part where Rutger gives Michelle shit about cutting her hair. For the record, Michelle’s hair in this is AWESOME, short and spunky. I want that haircut. I bet it’s a bitch to maintain, though, especially when you’re a hawk all day long.

And then we get some jazz flute up in this Alan Parsons business, Ferris and Drunky walk into the sunset, and Rutger and Michelle dance the night away. HAPPILY EVER AFTER, Frank. May we all be so fortunate as to have drunk ex-priest friends who know better than to be accessories in murder-suicide pacts. Because, seriously.

Love,
Liz

Dear Frank,

Okay, we’re doing something a little different with this week’s installment. First off, we’re two days late. (Sorry about that! Change in work schedule = bad thing. Will prepare better in the future.) Second off, because I want to make sure that this gets done, this time I’ll attempt something entirely new.

Using the best application ever, I’m going to attempt writing the bulk of this week’s installment in a half hour, without Wikipedia, without video, without references of any type — just me, my time-damaged memory, and 30 minutes to write 1000 words. This will probably go badly.

So let’s talk about Gargoyles!

The 1994-1995 series Gargoyles, Frank, was the show that taught me how rewarding being a fan could be, as well as how much can be done with half an hour animated installments — provided that Disney isn’t paying too much attention to the fact that you’re packing a children’s weekday afternoon show with Shakespeare references. Gargoyles, to be clear, was the most awesome TV series I watched before I started watching The X-Files. And looking back, I think Gargoyles holds up better.

Here’s the basic deal: A thousand years ago, during the Dark Ages, there was this poky little castle in England with a bitchy Princess, an evil magician, a slightly less evil apprentice magician, and a bunch of magical creatures called gargoyles who, while stone during the day, spent their nights guarding the castle from outside foes. The leader (and hottest) of the gargoyles is Goliath, who had a mentor gargoyle, and a bunch of teen tagalong gargoyles along with a bunch of other clan members, and a dog.

One big happy clan of warriors by day, statues by night — until, whooops, the evil magician tipped off a bunch of Vikings or something, who attacked during the day so that they could destroy the gargoyles. (This seems like a strategy that should have come up before, but whatevs, I guess this is what happens when you don’t have smartphones).

Goliath, his mentor, and the teenagers escaped this fate, but the slightly less evil apprentice magician, who for some reason blamed the gargoyles for the castle being attacked (I don’t remember exactly why, except that he had a crush on the princess and thought she had died in the attack and was thus in a really bitchy mood), cast a spell on them turning them into stone permanently — a condition which would only lift when “the castle was raised above the clouds.”

Why such a strange and specific loophole? I guess the magician guy knew that in a thousand years, a bad-ass billionaire named Xanatos would hear about the spell, go to England and airlift the castle to the top of his Manhattan skyscraper. This isn’t just a bold architecture statement — by doing so, Xanatos brings the gargoyles back to life. And then they have adventures!

This was all summed up nicely by the bad-ass opening narration, which I have embedded below because LISTENING TO KEITH DAVID TALK = HAPPINESS.

The voice cast, overall, was bonkers — Keith David is a voice acting legend with countless credits, and he’s backed up by an incredible array of performers, including Ed Asner, Salli Richardson, and at least eleven former Star Trek cast members, including Jonathan Frakes as Xanatos.

Just a note, Frank: I know that you have a lovely girlfriend right now, but if you ever find yourself again on a third date, and the urge to recite the eleven Star Trek cast members who did guest voice appearances on Gargoyles strikes you, avoid it. Not that I’ve ever done that.

But what was I saying? Oh, right, so they’re in Manhattan, which is confusing enough if you’re from this century, but while Xanatos is pretty shifty from the get-go, they do make a special human friend to help them figure out basic 20th century stuff, Det. Elisa Maza. Elisa was kind of their April O’Neil, except even more awesome, because she carried a gun, solved crimes, had a mixed-race heritage and a cool red jacket and only occasionally fell off buildings so that Goliath could catch her.

Goliath and Elisa, in a bold statement for monster-human relations, were the show’s primary will-they-or-won’t-they relationship, one to rival Sam and Diane. (Except with magic and lasers and guns and Shakespeare because did I mention Gargoyles WAS AWESOME?) But things were complicated, though, because while initially Goliath thought his entire clan, save their poky little group of survivors, was dead, turns out that wasn’t the case for his gargoyle girlfriend Demona.

Demona and Goliath didn’t just hop back into the sack together, though, because of how Demona spent the thousand years between Goliath’s freezing and unfreezing struggling to survive the prejudice and hatred of humanity, which preeeeeeeeeetty much turned her full-on evil. (Demona was a nickname she got from those humans — textbook self-fulfilling prophecy, right there.)

Oh, god, I’m at over 800 words and I’ve barely explained the premise. Okay let’s see how fast we can do this: Over the course of the first season, Goliath and his fellow gargoyles got to know Elisa and New York, developed quasi-dimensional personalities (Broadway likes to eat! Lexington likes technology! Brooklyn’s kind of an asshole like Raphael! Bronx is a dog!), figured out Xanatos was pretty evil and had a big air battle with Xanatos’s army of robot gargoyles that lead to them moving out of the castle.

In Season 2, things got more complicated, mostly through the addition of a bunch of characters directly drawn from Shakespeare. I mean stuff like MacBeth, the former king of Scotland, coming after Demona with a laser pistol and a hover-scooter because the three witches from MacBeth had cursed the two of them to live forever and experience each other’s pain until they might die at each other’s hands. Normal weekday afternoon Disney animation stuff.

Oh, and then there was the episode where Demona stole a mirror from a museum containing the fairy Puck (voiced by Lt. Data, of course), who gave her three wishes — of course, when Demona tried to get rid of all the humans with her first wish, Puck just made all the humans into gargoyles, which meant that Elisa got turned into a TOTALLY HOT LADY GARGOYLE, and then the spell got reversed, which turned Goliath into a TOTALLY HOT DUDE MAN, and god, that episode was just the freaking best.

Okay, I’m well over half an hour and 1000 words now, but the more I think back over the show, the more crazy shit I remember. Like this team of TV actors/professional wrestlers called The Pack who turned out to be kind of evil and eventually became cyborgs, except for this chick Fox, who instead married Xanatos and had his baby.

Or, man, the three-parter where Elisa and Goliath end up on the mystical island of Avalon, where they meet Titania and Oberon (don’t remember who voiced Oberon, but Titania was played by Capt. Kathryn Janeway! Who was also Fox’s mom! For fuck’s sake, show!).

That part was especially insane, because it turns out the kinda bitchy Princess, who felt bad about the shit that went down with the Vikings and the freezing-into-stone-for-a-thousand-years thing, had decided to do the gargoyles a solid and take their surviving eggs to Avalon, where she and the apprentice magician raised them. And because time passes differently on Avalon, only about thirty years have passed for them, which means that when Goliath arrives he’s like holy shit, I have a daughter with Demona! Whoops!

Angela, the daughter (SUBTLE, SHOW), decides she wants to see if the pizza in New York is as good as everyone says, so she decides to leave Avalon with her dad and Elisa. But as they’re rowing away in a boat (it’s a magical island?), the magician guy’s like oh, you’re not going home, Avalon’s probably gonna send you on a magical quest of some sort. Like magical islands do.

And thus commences their WORLD TOUR, in which the Star Trek guest stars really start popping up: Capt. Sisko as an alien stationed on Easter Island, Lt. LaForge as the trickster Anazai (fucking giant spiders, ugh), Chief O’Brien as some guy in Ireland (where there was a banshee voiced by Sheena Easton), Lt. Uhura as Elisa’s mom. The Avalon episodes are occasionally awesome and occasionally annoying, but they have one universal quality: BATSHIT INSANITY.

I really miss this show.

Eventually, they get back to New York, there’s a lot of reunion drama as they’ve been gone for months, and also all of the teenage gargoyles want to bang Angela because she’s the first non-evil lady gargoyle they’ve literally seen in a thousand years. Goliath still doesn’t trust Xanatos, but Xanatos, now a new father, wants to make amends and let the gargoyles move back into the castle. This decision becomes easier for the gargoyles when their previous home, in a clock tower above the police station where Elisa works, gets blown up by a bunch of guys on a blood vengeance quest against all gargoyles.

That’s all part of this three-parter where Elisa went out on a date with one of those hunter guys, not knowing that he was on a blood vengeance quest against her buddies and secret love interest. She makes out with him a little, which Goliath sees through her window and gets all jealous about, and then later Elisa falls off a dam during a confrontation with the blood vengeance quest guys and Goliath isn’t able to catch her, which makes him think she’s dead, which sends him on his OWN blood vengeance quest, and it’s all very poignant when he discovers she’s still alive.

The second season ends with Goliath and Elisa kissing on the roof of Xanatos’s castle, and the sun rising, and me giggling hysterically because I was JUST SO HAPPY FOR THEM. (I was fourteen, for the record.)

And then there’s a third season that Disney kicked creator Greg Weisman off, and it sucks, and we don’t talk about it. THE END.

I met Weisman a few years ago at Comic-Con, and took the opportunity to tell him how much I loved the show. He took the compliment kindly, but in a kind of bitter and resigned way, a way that speaks to what happens when you think outside of the box in an genre unused to this sort of innovation. Gargoyles is barely a cult favorite now, but it and Weisman deserve so much more credit.

This was all written from memory, remember. Some details, I may be off on, some details, I may have forgotten entirely (oh, god, I think there was stuff with clones and a magical time travel device and the Illuminati?). But, oh, this show. I remember this show well.

Love,
Liz