Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Feb 26, 2014 10:51:57 GMT -5
Just wanted to see if anyone was paying attention to these things . . .
SYNOPSIS
We open with a bunch of workers who are busily rigging up explosives to demolish a building, when another hardhat shows up, kills a guy, and stuffs him in his van because you can even blow up a building in Bay City without taking your life in your hands, apparently. The murderer is Mark Dante, and this is our villain of the week and we'll be seeing a lot of him and this set before the episode's over with.
Meanwhile, Dallas is off to an FBI reunion, wearing a fake mustache and contacts to win the reunion's disguise contest, and Danielle and Scandal give him a ton of shit for it. Two days later the man's wife asks him to find him. Apparently he was investigative reported looking int police corruption and so the System would not give it their best. This search leads them to an abandoned restaurant, which has a place setting that Danielle recognises and Scandal discovers was just set up for them to find. Danielle acts evasive about what this actually means. While that's going on Dallas gets a flat tire and Dante stops to help, and by "help," I mean he jams him full of knockout drugs and vanishes.
Scandal and Danielle learn that the person who asked them to investigate the case was a plant and they were set up and Scandal, who is unusually competent this episode, also picked up on Danielle's anxiety. Dante calls up to rub salt in the wound and generally sow discord and oh yeah, to let them know they have 3 hours to save Dallas from being blown up all Heathers style.
Back from the act-break and Dallas gives Dante a bunch of crap in the way of some contentious exposition wherein we learn Dallas didn't like Dante because he was a grandstander, and Dante really seems eager to kill Dallas and get revenge. Meanwhile, Danielle and Scandal try to track down the call from Dante, only he's way too good to be easily found. Scandal also discovers that Dante has been erased from all Cobra records and Danielle stonewalls him when he asks her what's going on. Dante then calls to troll them some more and offers up the little tidbit that both he and Scandal were shot in the face and what do you suppose the odds of those BOTH happening to agents Cobra was grooming?
Scandal's a bit pissed off about all this and Danielle spills her guts about Dante's grudge--he was apparently playing both sides and was assumed dead when he exploded (this seems to be Dante's thing) While that's going on, Dallas and Dante poke at each other, Dante asking Dallas why Cobra insisted on micromanaging his life and contemptuously throws him the key for his handcuffs just out of reach. Meanwhile, Danielle and Scandal check out the woman who put them up on that wild goose chase. Except that Dante's already killed her and stuffed her in the tub, and so Dante calls and trolls them a bit more. Then he does that trick of standing across the street and then disappearing when a truck goes past that every movie does when they're trying to be all mysterious. Dallas gets free from the cuffs, only to learn that Date's put several roadblocks in the way to keep him there long enough to blow up in the building he's in, which, as it turns out, was the hotel where Dante had been assumed to die.
Meanwhile, Scandal argues with a mime and Dante trolls him some more, now that he's caught Dallas and tied him up. We learn Dante was double-dealing with the people he was supposed to stop and that he and Danielle were lovers and Dante's pretty damn mad about that. Thus, that was what led him to concoct this elaborate deathtrap. Thankfully though, we're about 5 minutes from the end of this episode so we're not gonna go around the plot circle one more time. Danielle runs in and frees Dallas which gives Dante a chance to close them both in and gives Scandal enough time to catch up to him and have a fight. Scandal borrows from the Final Fight playbook and whacks Dante with a pipe for a bit with time ticking down. Dante finally realises the game is up and locks himself inside so he can, presumably, perish for real this time.
In the wrap-up, of course, they haven't found Dante's body (just in case, you know), Scandal's decided to let bygone's by bygones, and Dallas is getting his pimp daddy on in a Jacuzzi, which is easily the darkest, most horrifying thing in this episode, and naturally, that's what we button it with. Roll credits and pray you can scrub that image out of your mind.
ANALYSIS
So the episode that was bound to happen sometime (the pilot never really made it clear that Scandal was their first choice, though this episode does explain the intensity of their interest in Scandal--they wanted to make sure they had the right guy after Dante went nutty) in genre shows like this--the hero fights his evil twin/predecessor/both. Knight Rider did it with KITT and KARR (and the KITT vs. Goliath which had the double jeopardy of Micheal and Garthe Knight--twins driving twins!); Airwolf did it with Airwolf vs. Redwolf; hell, even Viper had the titular car vs. the Firehawk, and while we don't have the AC Cobra vs, say a Boss Mustang or anything, we have Scandal squaring off with Mark Dante, the top agent before Scandal got here and, well . . .
. . .it could be better. The episode is never quite what it needs to be to be good. We're promised a fight with Dante and Scandal, but we never quite get it, we're promised some sinister shading with how Cobra picks agents and it never quite comes together (Scandal just sorta shrugs it off) Danielle and Dallas angst about it for a couple scenes, but never really bother to carry it through. Part of this is the problem with the show itself--it's not really serialised enough for this to work well, and that we've been asked to muse about the workings of Cobra as an organisation, it's only insofar as "they have deep pockets and can succeed even when THE SYSTEM HAS FAILED" so any questions that get raised in this episode will be forgotten by the end credits and never brought up again, and that's a bit of a shame, as there was the seed of a good idea in here, which if Cobra were a different show or made a couple years after when it was made, they would have made more of it.
Danielle's connection to Dante is supposed to be tragic and bittersweet, however, as we learned with when he reels off some flashback about being kidnapped or her parents being murdered, Danielle is oddly disconnected from stuff that would be brutally triggering for anyone else, and that she's not MORE het up about her former lover and renegade agent returning from the grave for vengeance is only a mild inconvenience. She's not alone in this--Dallas is upset for a bit about Dante's return, but eventually shrugs it off because Dante's jammed full of crazy. Scandal's annoyed that Cobra messed him about in much the same way they did to Dante, but gets over it with a shrug which which, yes, 15 episodes in, you would expect that that would be the case, but still feels a little pat.
As it is, it's passable, and has sufficient energy to carry you over the weaker bits (like the fact that oh my god are they locked into that abandoned building set or what) and the fact that in general, this is a bit of a reprise of Hauser's plan from "The Gnome"--troll everyone until you lure them into an inescapable deathtrap that everyone still manages to get out of because it's five minutes to the end and our heroes have to be here next week, so THEY ain't gonna die.
Dante is played by Rex Smith, who I only ever knew as Jesse Mach from Street Hawk (it was like Knight Rider with a motorcycle, had the snicker-worthy power of HYPERTHRUST) , and that he played Daredevil in that Hulk TV movie with John Rhys-Davies. Apparently, according to his wiki entry, he replaced Andy Gibb on the TV show Solid Gold, and I will have to take wiki's word for it, as while I am certain I watched Solid Gold frequently when I was younger and unsophisticated, I have completely forgotten what it was like to watch Solid Gold. And yet I can remember with prefect clarity watching RollerGames. For all that Dante is somewhat underwritten and lacks sufficiently concrete motivation, Smith actually does a decent job of making him seem like an interesting character with a legit grievance against the people he feels wronged him and imbues him with a quiet sort of despairing angst. He's pretty decent and rises above the thin gruel of the material.
He also has the most amazing permed mullet of all time. Seriously--It's like the golden ringlets of Apollo.
It's an episode with a lot of potential, but they don't really give it the oomph they need to put it over the top.
DAD WISDOM/THE QUOTABLE COBRA
"Sensitive? You didn't even notice my mustache!"
"Sure I did, I was just too sensitive to mention it."
"I don't have friends any more than Millie Grant has a missing husband"
"You noticed the contacts!"
"Sure I did. The mustache was just a distraction, right?"
"As a field operations manager, I think you should . . .well, I think you should die. That didn't take long, did it?"
"Normal people don't go blowing up their ex-bosses just to make headlines. Or is this your way of applying for a job at the post office?"
"Go suck on your Glock, Mr. Dante!"
"Save it. I just hope the next guy who works for you knows about me."
"He seems like he could go over the edge so easily! Why do you suppose that keeps happening to all of your agents?"
"They hired you and didn't even tell you you weren't their first choice! That takes some kinda gall, doesn't it?"
"You expect me to apologize?"
"NO, Mister Cassell . . .I expect you to DIE!"
NEXT WEEK
Huh. We're at the end of Disc Three already? This is so bittersweet, we're really almost done. Anyways, next week, a guy explodes underwater and a byzantine plot revolving around Not Sea World unfolds. Cobra displays its commitment to recycling by literally remaking an episode of Stingray (as opposed to just nicking the b-roll footage) It's "Death Dive," in seven!