Soldiers on a Boat

A change of writer brought a big change of tone in last night's new The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. A mostly mellow, contemplative episode, it had some good ideas on display and one or two tragically silly ones.

The episode picks up where the previous left off, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) still raging about his friend's killer. This episode becomes very much about the war veteran experience, something that was central to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and I like how they still refrain from making John a two dimensional loony. In fact, he's arguably been the most interesting character on the series. His hearing scene and the scene where he talks to Lemar's family are loaded with tension.

Except when Julie-Louis Dreyfus unexpectedly shows up. It was kind of amusing but felt like a scene from another movie. I've never seen Veep but even so I feel like Dreyfus may be carrying too much over from that comedy series to gain traction with a character that's supposed to be really threatening. I guess time will tell. As it is, it kind of feels like Carol Burnett randomly popping up in Full Metal Jacket to do shtick.

The second best part of the episode was Sam (Anthony Mackie) meeting with Isaiah (Carl Lumbly). Lumbly gives another searing performance, giving Sam some historical context on how black soldiers have been treated in contrast to their white comrades.

It led to a nice dichotomy between the pessimism and resentment of Isaiah's perspective and the positive environment Sam finds himself in when a whole community rallies around his family. It was nice because it seemed like the writers really thought about what would make Sam a good Captain America--he can acknowledge the demons of America's past while also recognising and embracing the great things in the heart of the country. Sadly, this culminated in a scene between Sam and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) redolent of phoney Twitter racial politics. The last thing Bucky should be apologising to Sam for is telling him he shouldn't have given up the shield. The whole series has made it abundantly clear Bucky was right.

The episode was written by Dalan Musson, a man with a very short resume. He wrote Iron Sky 2, of all things. I saw the first Iron Sky, an appreciably bananas Sci-Fi action comedy about Nazis from the moon. The president in it is a Sarah Palin parody whom my European friends assumed was a Hillary Clinton parody. It looks like Iron Sky 2 was more of the same kind of humour, nothing to suggest the likes of last night's Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He seems to be a versatile young man.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is available on Disney+.