S01.E05: Truth

[arc]

On 4/16/2021 at 4:36 PM, Cerulean said:

I’m very confused by the physics of the shield. It can wedge itself into a tree, but bounce off some padding.

My totally unofficial headcanon is that the shield has half the rim as a cutting edge and half the rim as the blunt edge and the thrower has to calculate how much spin to put on it for the desired effect.

(In real life, future basketball hall of famer Chris Paul says he sets up his shooters by passing them the ball with exactly the right spin to put the ball in their hands with the seams lined up how they individually like it. This sounds crazy to me but he is very skilled and famously attentive to detail so I want to believe.)

On 4/17/2021 at 1:04 AM, Check Sanity said:

Also, I'm not sure why everyone is under the impression that Walker would heal that quick. He doesn't have the same serum as Steve or Bucky.

Nagel said he had perfected Erskine’s serum.

On 4/17/2021 at 2:02 PM, Spartan Girl said:

I just thought of something: if the Contessa was telling the truth about the shield never being government property...then Sharon didn’t commit a felony by stealing it back for the gang in CW.

My take is that the original shield is clearly US government property, but it was shredded by Thanos in Endgame. I assumed Val meant that the replacement shield’s provenance is unclear and thus the government’s claim to it is unclear. (Though if the Smithsonian is part of the government, then whatever its origins, if we assume Sam had clear title to it, he donated it to the museum and thus it became government property at that point.)

BTW, whatever the insanity about having non-powered superheroes like Natasha and Clint sign the Sokovia Accords, Walker is now actually superhuman and should have to sign, right?

On 4/19/2021 at 2:04 PM, blackwing said:

That made me wonder why in all the fight sequences he is often using his right hand or his feet which are not enhanced.

He’s got some kind of super soldier serum. He’s outraced cars in Civil War and in ep 2 of this series. The metal arm is probably even stronger than the meat one and definitely more durable, but he’s superhuman all over.

This probably wasn’t Val’s intent but I am laughing about John Walker’s wife and him having to answer every unknown caller because they’re waiting for her call. 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

44 minutes ago, Perfect Xero said:

There's a huge difference between standing beside someone who commits a crime you couldn't have foreseen as a probable outcome of your actions and what Nico and the Flag Smashers were doing.

If Lemar hadn't got back in time and Karli had succeeded in killing Walker, would the rest of the Flag Smashers be innocent of murder because they were just standing there when Karli killed him? Would Sam and Bucky be saying: "Well I guess that Karli is a bad egg after all, but poor Nico here should be free to go, he was just holding John's arms when Karli killed him. Is that even a crime?"

Regardless of the circumstances, what I don't think is that Bucky or Sam would have started hitting Nico or anyone else and then kept on hitting them until they were dead. It's not about 'poor Nico' or if you have sympathy for him, it's that as a representative of law and order, John shouldn't be going around clubbing people like baby seals. "The Flag Smashers were trying to kill John" as a defense for him running Nico down and bashing him to death is the exact same argument as blaming Ayo for the earlier fight, even though he didn't get so much as a bruise except to his pride, and he'd been agitating and putting his hands on everybody all episode anyway. I said it way upthread; John Walker might be able to lose his shit, but Captain America is not, not without consequences, and Walker's dodged most of those as it is. He's not in jail. His wife is by his side. He might not have the shield anymore, but if Countess Val is true to her word something else is in the works for him. Even if Lemar's parents and sister don't believe what he told them, they accepted his lie at face value, and his mom even said her son had felt honored to have John as a friend.

Hypothetical: Let's say John didn't take the last vial of serum, that he pitched it or threw it away instead of dosing himself up. Because everything Zemo told Sam about Karli can now be applied to John, that with one exception the serum corrupts everyone. He's already killed one person and escaped most of the punishment, if only because the morons who gave him the shield were publicly embarrassed. Even if that final vial of serum just amplified John's violent tendencies to where he couldn't control them, what should be done now before he kills whoever else that isn't Karli? If Zemo was right about Karli being unsalvagable because she's 'corrupted', then John's no better.

[Kel Varnsen]

1 hour ago, arc said:

Nagel said he had perfected Erskine’s serum.

The funny thing about the super soldier serum is that of all the powered original Avengers Cap's powers are probably the closest to something we have in the real world. We don't have anything close to an arc-reactor powered Iron man suit, there are no Norse gods flying around, and high levels of gamma rays can cause death. But we have performance enhancing drugs, but in the MCU 80+ years later they are still trying to duplicate the serum.

[Perfect Xero]

23 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

Regardless of the circumstances, what I don't think is that Bucky or Sam would have started hitting Nico or anyone else and then kept on hitting them until they were dead. It's not about 'poor Nico' or if you have sympathy for him, it's that as a representative of law and order, John shouldn't be going around clubbing people like baby seals. "The Flag Smashers were trying to kill John" as a defense for him running Nico down and bashing him to death --

I've already said that Walker should have stopped his attack on Nico once he had rendered him unconscious and no longer a threat. To be clear I believe that Walker should be in prison for what he did.

Up until that point, however, Nico was a super human murderer and terrorist who is capable of running faster than a car and can easily kill with his bare hands and has already shown himself to consider the murder of helpless people justifiable. Nico never surrendered and, thus should be considered a threat to lives of everyone around him as long as he is conscious and unrestrained. Sam and Bucky should 100% be doing everything they can to pursue and capture the super human murderers and terrorists rather than letting them escape to kill again.

The argument isn't that John is justified in killing Nico because Nico is a murderer, he isn't and wouldn't have been justified in killing Karli either if it was her that he had caught up to and it had played out the exact same way. The issue is that the show is depicting the situation as if Nico is not responsible for Lemar's death when he is, which is simply legally and morally wrong and also implying that John is the wrong because he killed an "innocent" man and is going around lying about it, when the reason that John is in the wrong is because had seemingly neutralized Nico as a threat and then killed him anyway, rather than taking him in to stand trial for the murder.

[AKA...CJ86]

Well, not too much to add, but all I can say is, nice to have a live-action Contessa, no matter how brief, to erase the Lisa Rinna version from the late-90s Nick Fury TV-film.

[swanpride]

Quote

If Lemar hadn't got back in time and Karli had succeeded in killing Walker, would the rest of the Flag Smashers be innocent of murder 

Nobody talks about "innocence". The point is that there is a difference if you are the one pulling the trigger or not. And while Karli is actually guilty of murdering those people in the exploding building, what happened to Lemar is more along the line of manslaughter than pre-planned murder. In Nico's case he is mostly along for the ride which again, doesn't make him innocent and would lead to a high punishment because of what he supports, but that doesn't change the fact that Nico himself didn't murder anyone himself and, for all we know, never did so in the past either. (Honestly, Karli and her people are surprisingly stable after taking the serum compared to what happened to other people). 

And the point is, the Walker KNOWS deep down that there is a difference, or he wouldn't continuing to portray his actions as him killing the murderer of his friend. This is not about the level of guilt Nico might have carried or not, this is about Walker doing everything he can to justify the unjustifiable. And it says a LOT about him that he obviously thinks that his actions are more okay the more guilty his victim was, not realising that his actions wouldn't have been okay if he had Zemo personally under his shield. 

It's a lesson T'Challa learned, and it is a lesson, Bucky, Steve and Sam never even needed to learn. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, swanpride said:

Nobody talks about "innocence". The point is that there is a difference if you are the one pulling the trigger or not. And while Karli is actually guilty of murdering those people in the exploding building, what happened to Lemar is more along the line of manslaughter than pre-planned murder. In Nico's case he is mostly along for the ride which again, doesn't make him innocent and would lead to a high punishment because of what he supports, but that doesn't change the fact that Nico himself didn't murder anyone himself and, for all we know, never did so in the past either. (Honestly, Karli and her people are surprisingly stable after taking the serum compared to what happened to other people). 

And the point is, the Walker KNOWS deep down that there is a difference, or he wouldn't continuing to portray his actions as him killing the murderer of his friend. This is not about the level of guilt Nico might have carried or not, this is about Walker doing everything he can to justify the unjustifiable. And it says a LOT about him that he obviously thinks that his actions are more okay the more guilty his victim was, not realising that his actions wouldn't have been okay if he had Zemo personally under his shield. 

It's a lesson T'Challa learned, and it is a lesson, Bucky, Steve and Sam never even needed to learn. 

In at least U.S. law, there is a concept called "transferred intent." If A intends to shoot and kill B, but C jumps in the way of the bullet, A is still guilty of murdering C even if A never intended to do C any harm.

There is also a concept called the felony-murder rule, which holds that if A and B are committing an inherently dangerous felony (say a bank robbery) and someone dies during the that crime, A and B are guilty of murder. That is true if A kills the person, B kills the person, a cop kills the person, the person, the person who dies is a fellow criminal C, and various other scenarios.

Also "premeditation" when it comes to murder does not have to be an elaborate scheme. The intent to kill can be formed in a second.

So operating under those principles, Karli's killing of Lemar is nothing but murder. She was trying to kill Walker and hit Lemar instead. Giving her the benefit of the doubt that she wouldn't have intentionally tried killing Lemar, it still doesn't matter.

Had Walker been able to control himself and simply captured Nico, there's no doubt that he could have been tried for murdering the 11 people at the base Karli blew up and that he should be found guilty.

As to Walker's understanding of Nico and his complicity, there's a few possibilities, and I don't know if there's a concrete best one:

1. Walker truly believes that Nico personally caused Lemar's death and thus his actions in killing Nico were justified. He told the Hoskins that he got Lemar's killer because he actually thinks he did.

2. Walker understands that Nico did not personally cause Lemar's death but is talking about Nico being guilty because he is an accomplice. He tells the Hoskins family that Nico was the killer either to spare them pain or him embarrassment.

3. Walker understands that Nico did not personally cause Lemar's death and but tries to put the blame on Nico as part of a coverup/spin control that starts with Bucky and Sam and continues with the Hoskins family.

[swanpride]

It's clearly number 3, considering how he reacts to Sam and Bucky pointing out that Lemar was killed by someone else. 

[Absurda]

With regards to Sharon;  Even if the shield isn't government property, she also took Sam's wings which were.  Also, she aided and abetted 3 international fugitives; that's a pretty big no-no.

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, swanpride said:

It's clearly number 3, considering how he reacts to Sam and Bucky pointing out that Lemar was killed by someone else. 

Walker's reaction to Bucky saying "he didn't kill Lemar, John" was a scoff and shaking his head.

That could equally go with each of the categories I laid out above. 

1. He could be thinking, "These guys think I'm the crazy one, but Nico totally killed Lemar!"

2. He could be thinking "I can't believe these guys are going to argue semantics and technicalities, when Nico is obviously an accomplice in killing Lemar."

3. He could be thinking, "Damn, my gaslighting didn't work. Time to change the subject."

[johntfs]

On 4/16/2021 at 7:09 AM, tv echo said:

Live thoughts while watching...

It still surprises me that Bucky isn't winning these fights easily, even against other super soldiers, given his decades of experience and training. It should not have taken both Sam and Bucky to defeat Walker. I actually thought this opening fight scene was a hallucination in Walker's mind, until it turned out to be real.

As the Winter Soldier Bucky was trained to be coldly ruthless when fighting.  To kill as efficiently as possible.  Bucky doesn't want to kill anymore.  So he's not fighting as "efficiently."

[Chicago Redshirt]

I should add: a reasonable jury could find Walker guilty of murder, voluntary manslaughter or not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, or even (although it would be jury nullification IMO) not guilty because of justifiable homicide.

The argument for the latter would go something like: 

Despite the seeming appearance of helplessness, Nico is a super soldier who could bench motorcycles. He was wanted in connection with various terrorist acts, including the murder of 11 people. He had just come off of being complicit in the murder of Lemar Hoskins. Experts will tell you that regardless of what he was saying and how he was acting, Walker was right to suspect that Nico was playing possum and remained a threat even while on the ground. 

[paigow]

Does Bucky wear combat boots all the time? He could easily get a shoe deal with Nike...

[Ailianna]

If you've never worn them, combat bots are ridiculously comfortable. Plus, if you never know when you're suddenly going to be involved in a drag out fight, they are super practical too.

[Scarlett45]

I am a bit late to the party, and everyone has posted so many thoughtful comments I cannot do much but get on the shallow bus. 
 

Is Anthony Mackie doing his own stunts? That training montage- yummy!!

[swanpride]

It was clearly not him in a lot of the training montage. 

[Check Sanity]

On 4/21/2021 at 6:09 PM, arc said:

Nagel said he had perfected Erskine’s serum.

My take is that the original shield is clearly US government property, but it was shredded by Thanos in Endgame. I assumed Val meant that the replacement shield’s provenance is unclear and thus the government’s claim to it is unclear. (Though if the Smithsonian is part of the government, then whatever its origins, if we assume Sam had clear title to it, he donated it to the museum and thus it became government property at that point.)

Nagel had his own idea of what "perfection" meant and it wasn't the same as Erskine's serum. His serum on appearance allowed the Super Soldier to keep their physical appearance, who know what that means for how long the appearance of injuries would last. 

On 4/21/2021 at 7:21 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

The funny thing about the super soldier serum is that of all the powered original Avengers Cap's powers are probably the closest to something we have in the real world. We don't have anything close to an arc-reactor powered Iron man suit, there are no Norse gods flying around, and high levels of gamma rays can cause death. But we have performance enhancing drugs, but in the MCU 80+ years later they are still trying to duplicate the serum.

Performance enhancing drugs have been around for decades now and still have some gnarly side effects and no one (that we know of) is going to genocidal lengths trying to hide or destroy the patent on how to make them or actively trying to stop scientific progress on them. Unlike with the super soldier serum.

4 hours ago, Scarlett45 said:

I am a bit late to the party, and everyone has posted so many thoughtful comments I cannot do much but get on the shallow bus. 
 

Is Anthony Mackie doing his own stunts? That training montage- yummy!!

I made the mistake of pausing during that montage and fully saw the doubles face, so no, Anthony Mackie isn't doing all of his stunts. 

Edited April 24, 2021 by Check Sanity

[Scarlett45]

6 hours ago, swanpride said:

It was clearly not him in a lot of the training montage. 

Thank you. 

 

5 hours ago, Check Sanity said:

I made the mistake of pausing during that montage and fully saw the doubles face, so no, Anthony Mackie isn't doing all of his stunts. 

Thank you. I didn’t think of that. 

[Kel Varnsen]

On 4/21/2021 at 5:58 PM, Perfect Xero said:

The intent of the show is pretty clearly that John is lying or delusional since Bucky and Sam disagree with him, but that doesn't support the reality of what they showed Nico and the Flag Smashers doing. Lemar was not murdered by one person, he was murdered by all the Flag Smashers because they were acting as a group.

I watched the episode again yesterday with my kids. And in the opening fight Walker uses the phrasing "he was the one that killed Lamar" not he was one of several people involved, that he was the specific one. So I think that Walker is trying to convince others and maybe himself that he had justification.

[arc]

Too bad the government didn’t make fake Cap wear a body cam.