Gargoyles

"Clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared. [...] It was just a matter of knowing the secret of all TV shows: at the end of the episode, everything's always right back to normal."

- Futurama, When Aliens Attack

 

I miss Gargoyles.

 

"To kill in the heat of battle is one thing, but not like this"

 

Well, OK, I couldn't sit through it all now, but I miss being twelve years old and finding a show that transcended children's entertainment as I understood it. Aside from Animaniacs the '90s were weak on comedy cartoons, but they hit a gold-mine of heroic drama. Even amongst the Batman / X-Men hits though, Gargoyles stood out for giving its young audience more credit than the industry as a whole was wont to. Complex antivillains like Demona or Xanatos kept the episodic plots from being too linear. The unusual emphasis on gliding physics got you thinking three-dimensionally. Shakespearean characters dove in and out of various plots with surprising grace, neither completely dumbed down nor too pedantic. Most of all, Gargoyles could at times be unabashedly, pointedly, bombastically, roaringly, operatically gritty and dramatic, above and beyond what you'd think Disney (of all companies!) would permit.

However, I'd missed one particular oddity, lacking the greater context of television in general back then. While some continuity had been sneaking into TV shows over the previous decade, it was still assumed the audience could not be credited with a real attention span, much less an audience of children. Shows defaulted to unrelated, episodic plots reinstating the status quo every single week, and when some like The X-Files tried building longer, more complicated intrigues the results were... let's say unpolished. For the most part, you'd occasionally get at most a two-parter, and when ST:TNG dangled its Locutus cliffhanger, it pretty much broke its fans' brains. The villain of the week still ruled supreme.

Gargoyles starts with the five-part Awakening storyline, which establishes not just static character quirks but backstory and original phlebotina like the stone skins, tears down its status quo twice, shuffles heroes and villains and generally kept knocking you over the forehead to see if you're paying attention. And sure, it was still a children's show and often gratuitously goofy or cheesy... but damn, it also carried a rare implicit statement that utterly despising one's audience is not integral to the creative process.