Not a Toy.

When I was in high school, the show Ducktales changed networks and aired within a two-hour block of other shows collectively known as The Disney Afternoon. Familiar characters comprised new shows, and every year the roster of four shows rotated, old ones moving out to make room for new ones. When I was in college, something decidedly different and far less geared toward children debuted. Gargoyles was dark and complex, and while it was an action show reminiscent of the sort I watched as a child myself in the eighties, it didn't feel like a half hour commercial for action figures. Toys were made, since merchandising is always a factor, but the show existed first, and the story and characters were the focus. It was an epic tale, where gargoyles of stone came to life at night to defend their castle and maintain an uneasy truce with humans. Betrayed by one of their own, a group that survives an attack that wipes out the rest of their race fall under a spell that will keep them in their stone forms, until an impossible day when their castle rises above the clouds. One thousand years later, a greedy and corrupt industrialist(voiced by Jonathan Frakes) learns of the legend and uses his fortune to purchase their castle and have it mounted at the top of his skyscraper, where the spell is broken at nightfall. At first Goliath(Keith David) and his clan trust Xanatos, the industrialist, but eventually they learn of his true intentions, and that the only human they can trust is police officer Elisa Maza.

I caught most of the episodes in the first season, but my schedule at school and my assignments didn't leave me much time to keep up with it. One of my college buddies was kind enough to lend me his tapes of the second season, though the episodes were incomplete and out of order. Still I caught most of them, and picked up watching again when the series moved to a new network on Saturday mornings, rechristened The Goliath Chronicles. It wasn't as good, and the show didn't last past its third season. Since then, I've only occasionally seen the first five episodes aired as a movie on weekends from time to time but now, a little more than a decade later, the show is available on DVD, for now just the first season. I've been marveling over these episodes in between other things this past week, and while many are familiar, the episode Deadly Force was completely new to me, and with good reason. It only aired on cable, and in an edited form, and never in syndication.

After the initial five part introduction, the next three episodes each focused on one of the three younger members of the clan. Each of them learn painful lessons about the modern world they have woken up to. The first learns that not all humans can be trusted, and that television sometimes lies. The second is deceived by one of his own kind, and learns that trust isn't defined by species. The third, the Bill Fagerbakke-voiced Broadway, learns perhaps the hardest lesson of all. Broadway was the overweight comic relief of the group, so the serious tone this episode took was VERY unexpected for me. Excited after watching a western movie, he flies to the apartment of their friend, Detective Elisa Maza. While Elisa throws on a steak for him in the kitchen, he finds her gun hanging on a coat rack and takes it from the holster, play-acting a scene from the movie he just saw. Between Fagerbakke's goofy voice and the characters movements, it's a comical scene to watch—until the gun goes off.

Even describing the scene I'm getting a chill. We don't SEE what has happened right away, but we suspect even if he doesn't yet, which makes it all the more poignant and tragic. As he continues talking to her, apologizing and saying he hopes he didn't break anything, the apartment is eerily silent save for the sizzling steak. He looks up finally when he realizes she hasn't responded to the last few things he's said, and cautiously calls her name. The kitchen is shown with no sign of Elisa, and the “camera” follows his point of view as he slowly walks around the counter to see her lying on the floor in a pool of blood. It was a serious subject to tackle and the animators pulled no punches, though as I mentioned earlier the episode was edited when it aired. From what I've read, they zoomed in on her face in the edited version.

Broadway flies her to a hospital and takes off, not able to reveal his existence to other humans. The other gargoyles learn of her fate, but everyone thinks she was shot by a gun-dealer she was seen arguing with earlier. Goliath and the others mercilessly hunt down the criminal, even as Broadway wanders, attacking an armed mugger with rage over the weapon he carries. A scene between the doctor and Elisa's parents and brother also strides into more mature territory, as he describes in detail how the bullet ricocheted off her collarbone, punctured a lung, and lodged in her spine. Very little about the story FEELS like a typical Disney story. There's no magic healing spell, no animals breaking into a spontaneous musical number.

Broadway's path and that of his clan lead them to the same arms dealer. As an enraged Goliath is ready to kill him, Broadway comes clean and explains that it was his fault, that it was an accident. The dealer's life is spared and he's left to the human justice system, as Goliath and Broadway visit the hospital to check on Elisa. She's weak but in recovery, and as Broadway apologizes she admits that she shouldn't have left the gun out. It's a hard, real-world lesson, and sadly things like that did and DO still happen.

Cartoons often have lessons and morals for children, but this episode was courageously done in that it sugarcoated nothing, and pulled no punches, and I salute them for that.