…Or there’s something about le Fou
With all the expected letdowns this show has dealt out thus far, I was impressed that they finally got a character right. It was a one-shot throw-away villain, but at least they got it right… right?
You’ll see what I mean.
The comparison…
There is nothing to compare. Pierrot le Fou isn’t a thing until Session 20 and is only after Spike because our guy witnessed him offing members of a secret branch of the ISSP.
In this contrived session, Viscious, who has never had a problem getting his hands dirty, hires le Fou to kill Spike. You read that correctly. Vicious hired a hitman.
In Session 20 of the anime, we find out le Fou is genetically altered to be the perfect killing machine, but his mind broke during the process causing it to regress without stopping. The entire time the experiments were going on, there was a cat watching.
In Session 7, he goes through experiments that include being spliced with dogs to the point where he can use the dogs to spy on people and communicate through them. Sound far-fetched to you, too? Yeah, me, too.
In the anime, he flips out when he sees a cat because they trigger flashbacks. In the live-action, you guessed it. It’s dogs. I have no clue why they twisted it this way.
Jet spends most of the anime trying to find out who le Fou is only to give Spike the information too late. In the live-action, they have to rhyme a plan to remember it and defeat le Fou. Yeah, that happened. I don’t get it.
Vicious gets an audience with the Elders. He is disguised as one of his allies. He then proceeds to kill the guards and all the Elders save one. This is where he finds out Julia made a deal to have him killed.
Characters:
From Denethor to Caliban, still an asshole.
There are enemies that need an explanation and those that don’t. The mystique of the Elders was the fact no one knew who they were. They were faceless, timeless, and that made them respected through fear. When you take off the mask and reveal who they are, you ruin it.
The fact they keep pulling in recognizable people in this show tells me they knew the show was crap to a degree, and they had to make sure people would watch.
I have to give it to him, John Noble makes a really good abusive asshole. He is very convincing. He wasn’t on screen for very long, but you did get the impression that he never acknowledged his son as being anything but incompetent. This mirrored the portrayal of Denethor in Jackson’s Lord of Rings movies.
They got someone’s appearance correct? YUP.
I was shocked when the final iteration of Pierrot popped onto the screen. Now I know he isn’t rotund like the anime, but the depiction impressed me. They got the insanity right. The bloodthirsty part was on point. The costume was right on the money. Too bad they changed his back story. Oh, they also didn’t have him in his iconic suit until the end of the show.
Vicious…
So now they have him seeking validation from his father. You’ve already castrated him by making Julia the mastermind. You have to denigrate him further. This is crap.
The Fight scenes…
There is nothing to say except they haven’t improved much.
In Conclusion…
This is another time jump episode that really didn’t need to jump the timeline. It’s more filler and more castration of a strong character in order to prop up a female character. The only thing that impressed me was le Fou’s final look and the loose adherence to his origin, and I do mean “loose”.
When the only thing positive about an episode is a costume and an origin story, I can only give it one espresso shot out of five.
This is painful. They could have had something really awesome, if they would have just stayed true to the original.
See you later, Space Cowboy
Anissa “Maddy” Walker
House of Geek 