For a show that through its first three episodes was somewhat fast-paced, silly, and crass, episode 4 brought somewhat of a change of pace.
*THE EPISODE MVP – FREDDIE STROMA
Indeed, the botched mission that ended the third episode last week has taken a toll on everybody, most notably (and hilariously) Vigilante, who is now a de facto member of the group. Stroma plays this character as sort of a Coke Zero version of Deadpool, and to me, it’s more than welcome.
He had a rather sizable number of great scenes this week, from the passive-aggressive car ride with Peacemaker to him trying to get arrested in front of the police officers to get into prison, to the conversation with the white supremacists once arrested and inside the prison.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
*PEACEMAKER VS JUDOMASTER
Everything involving Judomaster has been pretty good so far in the show. He reminds me a lot of Mad Dog’s character from a movie called THE RAID REDEMPTION. (Please see that if you haven’t already, by the way) As we saw in last week’s episode and with this fight with Peacemaker, he’s possibly the most physically formidable character on this show.
In the fight scene, you can see how badly Peacemaker wants his revenge from the thorough ass beating he took in the third episode, and he still can’t get it. Poor Adebayo just killed her first-person and is somewhat traumatized by it, and Peacemaker couldn’t care less because she took his win away. Perfectly fitting for this show.
(Geeky wrestling shout-out here. Watching this fight took me back to the amazing WWE title match that Cena had with Rey Mysterio back in 2011. if you like wrestling at all, it’s a borderline masterpiece of a match. Couldn’t help but to bring it up. I apologize in advance)
*THE BATMAN DISCUSSION
When the next-door neighbor tries to check Peacemaker on whether he’s a superhero or villain, a conversation about Batman ensues that spoke to me personally given that I have played the role of the Peacemaker in this regard.
Do I (like Peacemaker) believe that Batman is a “P****” and a “Jackass”? Certainly not. But the conversation can be had about how many people he’s indirectly murdered from not doing the thing that Peacemaker regularly does to his adversaries. I’ve had that conversation many times…indirectly shaking the foundation of many of my friendships.
*THE PRISON CONVO WITH POPS
“I saw you come out of your mother’s @#&+#, and I should have slit your throat then and there.”
With just one quote, we now fully understand why Peacemaker is the way he is and that we’ve established that the White Dragon is on that list of the worst TV dads along with the likes of Tywin Lannister and Frank Gallagher. Robert Patrick has been aces in the role of Peacemaker’s father. It’s been a wonderful contrast to see over the past four episodes, and I’m glad he’s getting more shine after they locked him up. I thought that was going to be the end of his character honestly.
*QUOTE OF THE WEEK
” Okay, so that’s MY turn… Which one of you dumb, sister-f******, tiki-torch-carrying, Sloth-from-The-Goonies-looking, pieces of s*** wants to go next?”
-VIGILANTE-
THINGS THAT BOTHER ME
*EVERYTHING INVOLVING HARCOURT
Here we are in episode 4 of 8, and Jennifer Holland really doesn’t have a lot to do other than look really hot and be mean to people.
Not saying that we haven’t had any backstory for her; we kinda have. It is building to.. something, I believe. But we are halfway through the season as of right now, and we have a good idea of who quite literally everybody else is and how important they are to everything going on, except her. And she’s like fourth billed on this show.
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Overall this was another very good episode that ends on an excellent cliffhanger. A cliffhanger that has encouraged me to go ahead and predict that they might have revealed who the true villain of this story will be.
(I might be seriously wrong about that, but I’m going to go ahead and have some courage in my convictions here)
The end montage is both hard to watch and somewhat depressing. Yet I can’t really criticize it all that much because I feel it was necessary to give more depth to the Peacemaker character. Sure, John Cena is nowhere near as effective dramatically as he is comedically, but having Peacemaker be a wisecracking rampaging douchebag for eight different hour-long episodes can get pretty old very quickly. This episode was needed to slow that down a bit. Glad they did.
PEACEMAKER is on HBO MAX now
