Picoreview: Falcon & Winter Soldier

Picoreview: Falcon & Winter Soldier: I liked this show a lot the first time I watched it, and I think I like it more the second time. The storyline I’m more invested in is Bucky’s, because I am a SUCKER for a good redemption story, but Sam’s arc is a really good one, and the eventual payoff of the title changing to Captain America and the Winter Soldier was emotionally really satisfying.

I now recall how much I despised the extreme closeups on Bucky & the shrink in his sessions in the first episode. For Bucky, ok, I guess can see an argument for “getting so close you can’t see anything” as a metaphor for him blocking things out. I mean, I hate it as a metaphor, but ok, I can see it.

I guess doing that with the shrink too is sufficiently distressing & uncomfortable to watch that maybe that’s the point, it’s how Bucky feels, but it’s taken me a second watching to think that instead of JUST hating it & I STILL HATE IT. A LOT. Making viewers (or idk maybe it’s just me) really uncomfortable and hating to watch the scenes, though, really seems like it’s defeating the point of television. Also why would you make it hard to see THAT FACE, PEOPLE, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING

Anyway. o.o

As I said, I liked this show a lot the first time I watched it, but my favorite thing about it is that we really get to see that Bucky IS a super soldier.

I mean, yes, obviously we see it in Winter Soldier & Civil War, but really a great deal of what we see in those is his magic arm in action. He sticks some superhero landings and he does the motorcycle trick, but an awful lot of his super stuff is based around the arm. F&WS gives him a great deal more supersoldier action – speed, bouncing off walls, superjumping, etc – and it’s the first time I really felt like we got to properly see that. So it’s probably overall my favorite thing about the series.

And then. Then we have Isaiah Bradley, who may be my second favorite thing about the series. I cried, guys. When they brought the character in, I cried, because the MCU could easily have gone without introducing Bradley into the storyline. And it would have been a shame, partially because Carl Lumbly provided an absolutely devastating performance, but even more because I think Bradley as a character, as a concept, is incredibly important to the shape of the entire super soldier project. Obviously one of the strengths of the F&WS story is that they do dip into racial politics, and Bradley’s story is…more real, if you will, than the Steve Rogers story. And he’s made a criminal for doing exactly the same thing Steve does: goes against orders to rescue his men. Except in Bradley’s case, they’re actually HIS MEN, whereas up until that point Steve’s a performing monkey with no connection to the missing men except Bucky’s one of them. Every minute of Bradley’s rage is more than justified, and Lumbly’s performance is so good, and the effect it has on Sam is meaningful and profound. I’m so, so glad they brought that story in.

Moving on from Bradley… to my surprise, I’m more sympathetic to John Walker this time. The guy’s a good soldier, but he’s not a good enough man to be Captain America, or certainly not good enough to take a serum that enhances everything in a person, good and bad. And of course that ties into my entire theme, doesn’t it? (I didn’t mean to have a theme when I started out, but I’ve clearly ended up with one.) Steve was never a good soldier; he was a good man, a righteous man. Walker’s a good soldier—”You built me,” he says, and he’s exactly what he was built to be, but that isn’t what makes a good Captain America. Stanley Tucci’s scientist in The First Avenger understood that; Tommy Lee Jones’s general wanted a man like Walker, who was not, I think, a bully, but followed orders even when those orders were wrong.

Which briefly leads me into the idea that Walker probably has PTSD, which I don’t think occurred to me the first time I watched it, and that makes him taking the serum a TERRIBLE idea, like holy shit. And the results of that are obviously incredibly tragic (and also provide the fantastic image of Captain America standing there with the bloodied shield, which, whew!). (Also, poor Walker: “The Dora Milaje have jurisdiction wherever the Dora Milaje find themselves to be.” / “They weren’t even supersoldiers.” His feelings of inadequacy are so, so strong, paralleling Sam’s but with such incredibly different results.)

And in the meantime we’ve got Sam, who was a good soldier in ways Steve wasn’t (Steve really was bad about taking orders), but whose calling after he gets out of the military is as a support group leader, and he’s really good at it. Sam’s first impulse is never to solve things with violence (unless the violence has already started), and that really stands out both in this and Brave New World. Now, the reasons why a Black man opts to not try to solve things with violence are way beyond my picoreview levels here, but they’re addressed within the show, too, implicitly if not explicitly. I think, though, that ultimately Sam is an idealist in much the same way Steve is, but coming from a much more difficult place to be one from. So watching Walker fall and Wilson rise is a really nice crossing of the paths there.

I would have SWORN there was so much more time spent with Bucky and Sam in Louisiana than what we saw. Like it felt like half the entire show, in a good way. But in fact it’s one episode and despite the SIZZLING HEAT between them it turns out Sarah and Bucky only exchange about ten words. WHAT A TEN WORDS, THOUGH.

Sarah and Sam’s relationship is so good. She’s kept everything together for years and her wretched idealist brother is so sure he’s right about how the world will step up to help them…and he’s right, in his way. It’s just that he starts by looking to the white man’s world—within the rules, if you will—and ends up getting help from the local community. I think the barn-raising (or boat-fixing, but it’s the same principle) is really the point at which he stops playing by the rules other people have defined for him and begins to step into his own. And it comes from a place of the heart, of the home. It’s very well done.

As is Sam coming into the shield. The conversation he and Bucky have while they practice with it is… I mean, all else aside, it’s like a poster child scene for non-toxic masculinity. It’s really good. But Sam’s confidence growing, and his eventual donning of the vibranium wings, and finally his coming to New York to try to stop the Flagsmashers is all done on his own terms. He’s not just not taking orders; he’s specifically refusing orders. And if FUCKING SHARON CARTER DON’T YOU PUT THE NAME AGENT CARTER IN THAT FILTHY MOUTH OF YOURS hadn’t shot Carly to protect herself, Sam’s non-violent approach might have won. (Maybe. Carly was in a bad place by then, and actually I bought her radicalization to a greater degree in this watch-through, which made the whole show work better.)

And of course in the end it’s Sam’s words that change the world. His speech to the GRC isn’t quite up to a Steve Rogers speech, maybe, but it’s longer and has more actual impact on most of the world than most of Steve’s do – with the exception of the Winter Soldier “Captain’s Orders” speech, Steve’s mostly preaching to the choir/psyching his buddies up. It’s a really satisfying conclusion to Sam’s arc of taking over the shield.

But. BUT. The thing that I remember vividly, now, from watching the series the first time, the thing that make me go “BUT!!!!!” is there’s a quite good scene between Sam and Zemo. I may have the order of this mixed up a little, but the whole conversation works out to something along these lines:

Zemo’s view on the serum is that anybody who takes it is inherently a supremecist. Sam’s said he wouldn’t take the serum if he could, but points out that Steve Rogers wasn’t corrupted by it. “Ah,” Zemo says, “but there’s never been another Steve Rogers,” and Sam has to concede that’s true.

And it is.

But.

BUT.

There is a Bucky Barnes.

There is very little, possibly nothing at all, to suggest that Bucky was corrupted by the power of the serum that he was given in the 40s. Hydra/the Soviets had to brainwash the ever-loving shit out of him repeatedly (and use Robert Redford, an incredibly handsome blonde white man with blue eyes, as his handler ::thoughtful face::) to keep him on point. And yes, yes yes afaik Sebastian Stan’s still got 2 maybe 3 films left on his contract and they might yet finish Bucky’s redemption arc with this very point, but I find myself EXTREMELY PASSIONATE on the topic! I want to see this played out! I HAVE BIG FEELINGS, GUYS. BIG BIG FEELINGS.

Okay, this one got very long indeed but it was a whole tv series, not just a movie, to review. And I barely touched on so much of it. Getting to see Bucky’s recovery from the brainwashing. Virtually everything with Zemo. The Power Broker storyline. Carly’s radicalization and the clear distress of her followers as she became more and more ruthless and violent. It’s all really good stuff, honestly, and I’m glad I rewatched it.