Lebanna

Predictions: The woman on Wednesday will turn out not to have cancer (a life expectancy predicted at 4-6 years seems weird). She lied to get her daughter off her back about the drinking and it didn’t work. Thursday, Phil will decide that the violent kid being violent is mostly his mother’s fault. Men being violent on this show is always portrayed as fundamentally wrong but also mostly women’s fault. The social-media obsessed mother on Friday will blame her daughter for the baby dying because at some point pre-pregnancy the daughter had an abortion or took drugs. Phil will try to persuade the daughter to forgive her dreadful mother anyway.

Just a reminder that there are 6 hours left if anyone else was going to pledge and forgot. I mean, they’ve already got past the total, but it’s just nice to be a tiny part of bringing more weird happiness to the world.

I think for me, I’d be kind of disappointed to see Captain America lose his right hand(ed) man at this point since Bucky’s been such a big part of the mythology of the title and has now been inherited by Sam. I’m sure, like in this series, we could see Sam working alone and with buddies as the story calls for. At the same time, they’ve got a new Falcon sidekick all lined up in Joaquín Torres as well, so hopefully we can get a new version of the team that Steve put together. And Bucky can be snarky at Torres if he doesn’t feel like ribbing Sam for some reason. I mean, it’s iconic, it’s fun and enjoyable to watch. Why not? I do feel like we need to see a bit more of Sam in isolation. Apart from seeing him with his sister and family, a little bit of him as a counselor, his love of Marvin Gaye, and a teeny tiny flirtation with Black Widow (now sadly deceased) we don’t know anything much about what he does when he’s not being epic. Where does he really live these days, still in DC, or what? I mean, in the words of Peggy, does he... dance? There’s a bunch of stuff still to find out. Having The Winter Soldier or The Latin Falcon (sorry) showing up in other stories would be great too. Since Bucky’s been around for a bit, if they do anything else with flashbacks, he’s sure to be there killing someone. If they were to make a Winter Soldier movie, in isolation, I wonder what it could be about? They’d either have to give Bucky a lot more connections in the present time, like a family (wouldn’t work if he got with Sarah, as she and the boys are Captain America’s family too) or a team of his own to fight for. I suppose in the future Bucky could use his spy skills for good this time and join up with a future Black Widow team. That might be fun. And of course, there’s Wakanda although I don’t think he’ll ever really be made a major player in stories set there. Definitely his favorite vacation destination, though. As a great Easter egg he could be randomly CGI’d in, cheerfully milking goats in the background in Wakanda, as other people who actually live there discuss epic things. An of course, if there was ever an existential threat to Wakanda, I’m sure we’d see him... lend a hand.

We are getting a movie! Captain America (and presumably the Winter Soldier) 4! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/captain-america-4-in-the-works-with-falcon-and-the-winter-soldier-showrunner-malcolm-spellman-exclusive

Of course I don’t believe he’d ever use it to get the loan, but Sam has publicly shown that he has a bunch of Vibranium assets in his possession now worth many millions. The bank would consider him potentially rich.

I knew they were going to make me cry. I didn’t expect it to be quite so many times. The damage of the past is something that both the guys can put back together piece by piece, but they aren’t going to write it off or wipe it out. That history all happened and it was all wrong. What if, like Bucky, you were a part of atrocities? How do you learn, if you tell yourself it never happened and if it did, who cares? These two do care. Sam put Isaiah in the Smithsonian and made his story unforgettable. It doesn’t undo anything, but it does something new. That moment when Sam wraps his new Wakandan wings around the cop on the bridge was something significant and magnificent. He looks like an Avenging angel and it’s gorgeous. The speech to the officials might have been a bit preachy, but the world needed someone to preach it. It was so obvious, it is always so obvious, and no one ever seems to just say it. Batroc, you say you’re not, but you are just so Canadian. And so is your pronunciation of ‘vraiment’. Little Redwing is back! I love that little guy. Sharon, we all knew it was coming, but what are you doing? Peggy would kick your arse six ways for this. It was nice to see Bucky immediately turn around somewhat on Walker once he did something good for humanity and lost the shield. It seemed right that he in particular would try to give Walker a fresh chance. But USAgent doing a little dance of happiness while his proud wife looks on had the potential to be quite heartbreaking at some future point. Do they think he’s working for the government? Who have they decided Val is? Because she certainly hasn’t told them. If he wanted to find his place among the heroes, Sam and Bucky would have done him right, but instead... His arc still looks like it’s going Greek, and not in the fun way. Good to see Steve’s notebook left behind. It did its job, for both of them. Steve and Bucky both found a place and a family, in the end. Loved that scene of Sam taking selfies and Bucky delivering cake and silliness. The guys on the dock, amongst family and friends, brothers.

I actually did like that pairing a whole bunch, (especially as I was always a Steve/Peggy shipper) so I can’t speak for others, but I wanted Bruce and Natasha to be all kinds of cute and interesting. But instead it was a painful mess, and that was just the writing. It wasn’t the mentioning of the graduation ceremony anyway, it was how she seemed to think that it had devalued her. It was a horrible moment and a horrible message, for a fantastic, heroic woman like that to think that her sterilisation meant that she should be seen as less important or worthy in any way. She was putting infertility in the same bracket as being an out of control giant green rage monster. It was frankly weird and even perhaps kind of insulting to both characters. It only made any sense if viewed through the lens that there is something fundamentally wrong with women who put career (ok, in this case not a good career) ahead of becoming a traditional birth mother. And do we really think that graduation from the Red Room is going to turn out to be a totally free choice where one can simply walk away? So the only other way to look at it is that this was imposed on her. Neither option belongs in the same bracket as ‘monster’. And then it was obviously even weirder considering that Natasha and/or Bruce could have found other ways to have a kid, if they had really wanted to. But at that time clearly neither of them did. After all, this is a universe with robots, aliens and wizards. I mean, the whole rage monster thing might be a sticking point, but you have to think someone could have got them on a list somewhere. So why was this conversation even in the script? Why would Bruce even mention that Natasha would definitely want kids? Imagine if last episode, we’d had a scene where Bucky told Sarah that he would always be a monster because he has one arm? Who would ever want to watch that? What kind of terrible message would that send out to the audience about how even heroes view disability? But despite the fact that he is also an ex-assassin whose body was altered to make him ‘efficient’, no-one would ever write that scene. At least, I hope not. Such bad writing.

Much love to all the characters of Guardians and Loki, but if we can’t imagine someone like Zemo using an anti-Black racial slur towards and/or insulting Sam or T’Challa’s masculinity in this universe, why did those lines survive the editing process? Yeah. And if we want to think about it deeper, both of these roles are played by minority actresses who had those insults chucked at them in the script, so there’s no differentiation there. Is it just seen as ok to insult women? Is the idea that such verbal violence inspires sympathy in the audience for a female character that a male character would enjoy anyway, or are the writers not even aware of the possibility that women could get through a verbal confrontation without a male character referencing their genitals? Both Loki and Drax may be anti-heroes, but they are also really likeable and popular. The Marvel universe, as has been shown by this series, is becoming a lot more thoughtful about some important social issues all the time. Hopefully this will be an area they think about next.

I think in light of recent revelations about a certain director’s attitude to women (among other groups), everything related to Natasha and her relationship with/revelations to Bruce in that movie is now very widely considered pretty sexist and a huge mistake. It’s a pity.

Having seen the Great Recession and then the pandemic play out in succession, the first thing I’d expect from the snap is that landlords (or their heirs) would immediately want to fill the empty units, whether residential or commercial, on their hands, so you’d see lobbying for a lot more people in need of rentals able to move into cities. So yeah, the movement of people across borders, especially inside the EU is logical. Actually, in most of Europe as a citizen you have the right to live wherever you like already, and there have recently been vast movements of people right across the continent with relatively little disruption, so that really wouldn’t be where the worst problems would happen. For example, the idea of a bunch of Sokovians showing up in Germany or Spain wouldn’t be a shock to anyone, even though Sokovia doesn’t seem to have ever been in the EU. Ignorant people would mostly think you were Romanian or Polish or Bulgarian half the time. But what if you were a family from Ghana moving to a little village in Former-Sokovia with no other previous black residents? Would you be welcomed or shunned? Jobs everywhere, especially essential professions, doctors/nurses, social workers, police, street cleaners etc would need to be filled as even with a lower population, as there would be more antisocial behaviors. A lot of people would be feeling like the anarchists might have been right. A lot of people would have been incredibly depressed. Perhaps this is where Bucky’s therapist got slightly burnt out? Vast numbers of orphans, the older ones left without families permanently, but also vast numbers of adoptions of young kids, the new parents never expecting to have to hand back that child to what, to them, would be a stranger. The remaining superheroes would certainly have been kept busy. I would expect a few power plays, a few minor wars, nations seeing nearby neighbors with their dictators snapped would be inspired to overthrow their own leader. Lots of invasions of neighboring countries for resources, or just because a powerful figure is now missing. Half of Vice Presidents/heirs to the throne would now be head of state. Wakanda would presumably have been regented by Ramonda in the meanwhile, although who knows? There would be a huge lack of new stuff. How do you make ongoing TV shows or even news shows? Forget the White Wolf, what happens on CNN when Wolf Blitzer has been snapped? How does Disney make a new Obi-Wan Kenobi show when Euan McGregor is suddenly missing half way through filming? How do basketball teams continue with half their famous players? So distractions would be in short supply, or depressing because you assume there’ll never be a sequel now half the actors are gone, or your favorite player is missing. And meanwhile, everyone is completely personally distraught, anxious, terrified, broken. Half their family/colleagues/friends/teachers are gone. Everyone unsure if they too might just disappear tomorrow. Cults and other sects springing up everywhere, lots of people think some kind of rapture happened and they got left behind. Lots of unsuitable relationships, lots of carpe diem, lots of suicides and long term addiction that can’t be undone. Most distraught fathers and mothers would make possibly even worse choices than Clint. Lots of anger. Lots of crazy defense plans involving vast numbers of nukes. Actually, thinking about it, Marvel has really toned this thing down. It would have been a total clustershow.

Whaaaaaaat? Melinda will have things to say.

As long as it’s not Pepper’s head, I’m happy.

This! This post is so good. I love how this episode really showed that Sam is a much better therapist specifically for someone like Bucky (and probably would have been to Walker too, if he ever got the chance) than the ‘official’ therapist we have seen. She was really trying, playing by the book and doing all the correct things, but it didn’t work. I mean, we were all watching her, making the guys sit with their legs intertwined thinking, ‘yeah, you’re really not getting why and how this relationship could work...’. It’s so true that she never saw Bucky as much more than a monster she had to try to reform. She didn’t get that as a person given choices, he never was a monster. He doesn’t have to learn any of those lessons because his actions are already tearing him up. As Sam says, now he just has to be useful to those he damaged. I love that Sam had a real job that he was talented at, helping his community when he came out of the military. And I love that now we see how he became the man who wants to help. Sam knows exactly who Sam is, even when he doesn’t know who Captain America should be. He’s never going to be anyone except Sam Wilson. That’s the tragedy of John Walker, that somewhere along the line, he never learned that just being John was good enough.

This was the episode I’d really been waiting for, where we finally circle back to the beginning of the show and all those things that seemed so important at first - because they were more important to the characters than all the international covert hijinks. It’s too easy to feel bad for BadCap, he’s clearly quite mentally ill and he’s quite right - they take wonderful people, break them and then ex-military personnel are left with nothing so often. Just look at how many veterans end up in prison or otherwise institutionalised. It’s a disaster that no one likes to talk about. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t really need to be stopped. The echos of that with Isaiah, who escaped and broke his men out and brought them home, just as Steve did for Bucky and the others. But Steve was given a medal for it (even if he didn’t bother to collect it) and Isaiah was imprisoned, tortured and had his whole life ruined forever. How awful, to see the golden boy praised and idolised for doing exactly what you did. Even Sam can’t quite imagine what life was like for a Black man at that time, he believes they can fix it. He is still full of hope. When Isaiah said they were lied to about the serum... of course - The Tuskegee Experiment... That’s still a thought in the minds of many Black people around the world when thinking about vaccines and other medical interventions. How can you be sure that they are telling you the truth, this time? When they have lied so often. In this fictional universe it was always easy to see that what had been done to Bucky was horrific, to take an ordinary person and without their consent to cut them up, to torture them, to steal their whole life, to break their minds, to experiment on them, to force them to do horrific things. What kind of country does that? If you want to know, just look out the window. It was wonderful to see Sam back home, taking care of business. He’s such a hometown boy, it’s lovely. Bucky is really getting his groove back as well. So many flashes of who he used to be, especially flirting with Sarah (who was totally into it, they were all kinds of adorable) and watching Sam’s nephews playing, he looked almost peaceful. It was hilarious that he went straight for Sarah, a strong woman and the most important woman in Sam’s life - he went right for Peggy as well, as soon as he saw that Steve thought she was great. It’s a bit of a personality tic. He wants the women his friends think are amazing, especially when said friends want him to back right off. That town must feel almost homey to Bucky as well, despite his being a city mouse. It’s been left behind by time a little bit. The slow motion scene of Bucky on the dock, where life is slower, brighter, mellow. And Sam has so many ties to everyone there, he is a real part of their lives. He’s someone to be truly proud of. Sam venerates history, his family, his people, he appreciates it all but he doesn’t want to sugarcoat it. Bucky finally recognised that his anger with Sam came in no small way from feeling that Sam was abandoning their mission. He lost his family for a little bit, but he’s got it back now. Recognising that Steve and he had a conversation where they agreed that the shield and Bucky would both go with Sam after Steve left, but that Steve should have thought more before he just handed over the shield with no real explanation except that Sam was a good man too... never understanding the position he was putting Sam in. Being a good man is no use if the world is blind to who you are. What do people see, when they see Black men? Loved watching Sam messing up so often with the shield. It was like a mini-blooper reel. And the acrobatics were great. He really doesn’t need the serum to be awesome. He’s going to show the world that they won’t get to do to his nephews what was done to Isaiah, ever again. Wakanda are giving Sam back his wings, right? He’s going to be Captain America flying on African wings. And I am going to cry.

I really want Bucky and Sam to meet Deadpool and his X-Family. Especially since Deadpool thinks Cable has a Winter Soldier arm, and would probably point out that Bucky has way too much backstory in common with his archnemisis Wolvie. I think Sam would find them all really confusing and upsetting and Bucky would probably just kill Deadpool a bunch of times in interesting ways for entertainment while everyone else stood around watching and eating snacks. It would be amazing.

I’d assume that it’s kind of like the private life of any celebrity - unless you were a bit of an obsessive fan or it was some kind of public event, most people who spot someone famous in real life just leave them alone. Except maybe staring at them a little bit or trying to take a long distance photo. Especially in New York or other major cities. It seems to be kids who can’t usually keep away from the Avengers when they’re out in public, but in this episode even the kids were incredibly underwhelmed with Sam and Bucky. So maybe everyone’s now just a bit sick of them in general. Kind of like how in the US being an astronaut started out as a really cool, celebrity job where people learned all of their names and asked for autographs and then over time it became seen as just another relatively normal profession.

I think the general idea is that yes, you are responsible for fixing whatever you can in these situations. That’s your job because you are able and because you understand what was done, while they may not. It’s just that it was never your choice, not that you should therefore have the right to walk away. In fact, absolutely not, since you’ve both been victimized by the same person. When you are out of the control of the guilty party and psychologically or physically able to help, your responsibility remains with the next injured party. However, they really haven’t explained that philosophy as clearly in this show. Recommend the documentary, anyway. It was interesting. Pretty sure that the magic of Steve waking Bucky up was supposed to be related to how they were brothers from another mother. Love, as the stories say, has the power to wake the deepest sleeper.

Well, Wanda, much as we might love her, had choices. She could have walked away from her lost love and home. She chose not to when she poured out her grief and ate a whole town. According to this universe (although not current mainstream psychological understanding), brainwashing is a real thing that can turn people into unconditional obedient slaves. And then there is the electroshock treatment that they were using to wipe Bucky’s memory of the horrors they had accomplished through him. In this version, Bucky wasn’t using his powers at all until Steve woke him up. He was more or less just a service droid. Watching a documentary about cults recently (Seduced) a councilor basically explained it like this - if you are pushed by a stranger into someone else and you knock them down and hurt them, you may feel responsible for the damage that your body hitting them has caused, but you are not guilty of the act. The person who pushed you is the guilty party, and all you can do now is try to help the person on the floor.

Well, ya know, that was the alternate title. We should all be grateful that in the end, wisdom prevailed.

It’s kind of fun that Zemo’s view of supersoldiers is exactly the same as the utopian Federation in Star Trek, after that whole thing with Khan. I’ll do anything for progress, but I won’t do that, seems to be the general moto.

It was the right color and design for a 500€ note. No idea where you could spend it, as everyone is super suspicious of those. In fact, the 500€ notes are still legal tender but the central bank doesn’t even issue them anymore and hasn’t for a few years because they are too easily used for dodgy dealings. Which... yeah. That makes sense.

Totally agree that this was the first episode that really pointed out why the idea behind the Flag Smashers isn’t intrinsically bad, like most big ideas, it’s all about how it’s done. People don’t sign up to horrible ideas, they sign up to good ones about peace and love and sharing and rights and freedom, that then are pretty much always warped into authoritarian nightmares. Zemo makes some great points as well. Supersoldiers, as we see with everyone except Steve, don’t naturally tend towards sweetness and light. I adore how they are pointing these things out. There’s this poem by anti-fascist writer Michael Rosen that goes: Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you... This show is doing such a great job at showing how easily we fall into darkness when we think we are reaching for the light. Poor Lemar. That crashing, snapping sound as he hit the pillar was horrible. He was so much more reasonable than Walker, it’s not surprising that Walker broke as soon as he was gone. Lemar was probably a big piece of what was holding Walker back from total meltdown. Loved watching John Walker get beaten up by women. But I also loved that, although that was clearly in his mind, he didn’t say anything about them being women. He doesn’t want to be the guy who rages about things like that. He knows that would be pathetic. He doesn’t want people to see him that way. He loves that people see him as noble and good, but he exploded his own pride and reputation in public when he murdered the guy who used to be Captain America’s biggest fan. What a walking Greek tragedy he is. Speaking of walking tragedies, I am loving how much Bucky in this series is reminding me of Wolverine just now, and not just because he’s the White Wolf. Maybe it’s the black leather, the perma-frown, the metal and the fact that from some angles Stan looks quite Jackman-esque, but when he was handling the blades in this fight, or when he was suffering by the campfire, I really saw it. I mean, the characters’ backstories carry so many similarities as well. Both old soldiers named James who lived over a hundred years, both cut up, tortured and experimented on by evil scientists, both full of regrets for bad deeds they were forced into, both have a love-hate relationship with their beast-mode, both are total sweeties deep down, both are snarky. Both have a close yet complicated relationship with a teammate who wears red goggles... Since we’re definitely not getting Wolvie back for many, many years, I’m glad we get to keep some of those elements in the Marvel-verse. As long as they never (ever, please *rolleyes*) have Bucky and Sam fight over a woman, the Winter Soldier might even be an improvement on the archetype. Also, how great to see Bucky being freed from his years of slavery in an eternally free African nation. That was a really beautiful touch. Sam is just such a good guy. He’s so like Steve in that he can see inside people and understand their motivations, and he cares to do it, even when it is hard. For him, violence should always be the last resort, not the first step. He sees other places and people as just as important as his own. But Steve, because he was warrior trapped in a physically weak, somewhat disabled body, did want to change himself. Sam doesn’t want to change anything about himself. That’s a fundamental problem here, because to be Captain America, he would have to change. In the context of the earlier Gandalf conversation, in this episode he’s also Tolkien’s Sam, he’s the guy who never wants the power, who would never go there even at the end of everything, because he doesn’t need it to know who he is. Which is why he has to be given all the power he can handle.

‘Haz un currywurst, por favor’ oh, man. Forget Spanglish. That’s so cute. Total respect to Daniel for taking Robert to a Spanish-German restaurant. Patatas bravas con currywurst, with a bit of a Ferran Adriá knock-off thrown in. Really, what more could anyone want. I mean, you might explode, but it would be so worth it.

It’s actually got some pretty dark connotations, because that’s basically what happened to most people who were put in concentration camps or interned during WW2. They came back out, thinking they could get their house, car, shop or kids back, only to find that after all those years things had moved on. There’s also the connection that Sam and Bucky should have to that experience, they were both deployed (for varying lengths of time, obviously) and after that there’s a big adjustment to coming back and picking up where you left off. I know from family experience that it’s something you sometimes never quite get over. Everything you’ve missed and the anger/distress of those who you left behind, even if they don’t mean or want to be upset, because you did leave them and they missed/needed you. Being snapped is kind of a metaphor for their entire existence and a piece of the military experience that people don’t often want to talk about. Being a veteran comes in many different forms. Civilians can be veterans of war too, in effect, after a defeat when they are left to resist and have to fight back. After Thanos abused and traumatised the whole universe, everyone is going to carry some damage. People like Sam and Bucky are really the only ones who could tell them it’s ok to be hurt.

Oh. My. Crow. You. Guys. Let’s bring this thing back from the dead more times than Buffy.