Echo, Amputees, & Intersectionality • Rebroadcast

as well, felt like a great thing to rebroadcast. We're still finishing up with the holidays. We'll be back to you with new episodes next week. For now, hope you enjoy this, Hope you had a very happy holiday, and looking forward to talking to you in the new year. Hello, and welcome to this special bonus episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends were, for the most part, keeping to our bi weekly schedule, but a show came out that is so important to me and that I really loved and I

really wanted to watch and talk about. And my good friend Will Freeland, Marvel Comics expert extraordinaire who's been on this podcast a bunch of times, is back to talk with me, and we're probably gonna do a number of different episodes about this show because it has topics and characters that really just like Echo through all of the things that I love, and I promise that will be I can't say the last bad pun I'm gonna make about Echo, but probably one of them, hopefully it'll be

the last one, because there's really so much for me to talk about here. Let's talk about Echo. It just came out. My friend Will Freeland has watched it as if I will welcome say a bit about who you are.

I'm seeing my self on screen. I'm seeing the issues I go with from like the larger stuff, but just the moment to moment stuff that most people don't think about. I'm seeing that on screen, and then they're gonna go online and hear you know, from deaf people, from Native people, from women, from so many others who saw themselves in this.

In many ways, I feel like this is a kind of a masterclass on intersectionality in terms of what we got in this show, and we'll talk about all that, but also it was I've seen shows that try to be like, we're going to be social justice and we're gonna check this box and this box and this box, and they forget to actually be a good show. And this isn't that, Like from the moment, like. The fight scenes are very well choreographed, the history and background is

interially done, all of the characters are engaging. Yeah, I just everything about it. And I will admit I've had some superhero fatigue recently, and even some I know, hard to say to some folks out there, but some Marvel fatigue. I haven't watched it Invasion, I haven't watched Loki season two. Some of the other stuff that i'd seen was the I've heard Loki season two is pretty good. I just didn't like Look season one. That's a whole other matter.

But uh yeah, I just more than anything, I think I walked away from this thinking the Marvel Netflix universe is back, you know, not that it's quite the same. And I we can talk about continuity in a minute, because I think they made it pretty clear that this is not the same continuity as the Marvel Netflix universe, but the tone of it. Kingpin felt much more like Kingpin than he did in the Hawkeye show freaking as Daredevil was back, which I granted from a small scene,

but I had no idea. Yeah, this just it felt like Marvel, like the spirit of the Marvel MC the Netflix MCU was back.

on tech. And the fact that they had that, and it's just like it doesn't even they don't have to explain that this epatch with the blue light on it is superhealing and all that kind of stuff and and and like that's the world of the MCU and Marvel that I want to live in. Tony Stark is the only one that flexes tech. It doesn't have to be an Iron Man or a Spider Man show to have tech that like shows the world is advancing in ways that we just don't in ours.

am not deaf or heart of hearing. And while there's a lot of overlap between deafness and disability, a lot with a lot of deaf folks don't say that deafness is disability. So I'm speaking about how that scene hit me as a disabled person. I'm not deaf, so so take all this with a grain of salt, and if deaf people have very different feelings about this, I'm happy to listen to that. But for me, that scene made

me cry so much. First for all the king the Kingpin reasons, Wilson Fisk reasons, but also because you've probably heard me talk about this. A lot of my fans

have heard me talk about this. I and a lot of other disabled people are often very frustrated by if we appear in science fiction or fantasy, yes the character might be disabled, but very quickly the science, the crazy science, technology, or the magic is able to basically erase the disability to a point where like and that's an interesting story idea, But then at that point, the character is no longer someone, that that person's life is no longer something that like

disabled folks relate to in any way, and or like

many of us. Again, I'm trying to speak not in generalities, but just these ideas I'm talking about are widely understood by a lot of other folks in these communities, and so like to have it where there is this incredible technology, but it's not technology to make her hearing, because you know, if you remember, even in Hawkeye, she actually says to the Hawkeye like that he re lies too much on technology, and that's kind of a critique he has, and that

she clearly like she is deaf, that's who she is. She doesn't want to fix that necessarily. So what the technology does is to allow him to better communicate with her using sign language. And it is clearly like sci fi technology, at least as far as I know, it's possible that someone's actually coming pretty close to inventing that already, and if they haven't, you know, go ahead and do it,

because it certainly seems like it would be possible. But so just seeing that moment to me, that felt like people who understand these concerns and issues are very involved in making this show because it was you know it to me, it's kind of like the difference between technology that would fix a person and it like fixes a word of using a huge parentheses, because that's part of the point is that it's not people don't need to be fixed, but like you know, you could give someone like, oh, hey,

your proalysis is fixed, you're no longer in a wheelchair, or like if they gave them like their wheelchair had nanotech so that whenever they were at a step, they could like instantly generate a ramp. You know, like that would be like awesome science fiction technology that's about still helping a person who has the disabilities. So it just that moment hit to me on that part. At least I'll talk about it wasn't fisk thing in a minute,

but you just kind of respond. It was just like every time I complain about like Yoda dropping the cane and bouncing around and all this kind of stuff, or like Avatar and all the ableism of that, like this is what I mean, this is what we want.

and weave it into the storytelling. It felt like seamlessly. That was that was so impressive to watch as an able bodied hearing person.

you haven't done the work. And I thought that was to me, that was a moment that said so much about Wilson Fisk, because what I noticed was, I mean to kind of go through a couple of points here to as a larger thing, but let me start with this and see if you saw it the same way.

I felt like the show made it very very clear without any doubt that yes, he is manipulating her, Yes he is using her as a tool in his army, but his feeling of familial love towards her and like treating her like a daughter is one hundred percent real, absolutely, And the because one of the things I noticed was that, like the first scene where we see them kind of really interacting as the story goes forward, not that's more flashbacky stuff where she's gotten in trouble with the law.

I think she was like stealing a motorcycle or something and he shows up just like you know, it's kind of like, you know, he hears about her in trouble, and he goes to her in the middle of the night, and he has with him an ASL interpreter who clearly he to some extent, trusts not to talk about the things that they're going to say now clearly doesn't trust entirely. As we learn, she does not come to a good end.

But part of what that told me was that he had already thought about this, and like, I don't think that he is the It's not that he said, oh, yeah, she's deaf, but I'm gonna forget about that and not really care much about it. I think he very clearly had gone to great lengths to say, a member of my family is deaf. I want to make sure that I'm able to deal with that and to communicate with

that at all times. But also just the way he approaches the world is not I am going to like take time away and sit in a classroom and learn, but I'm going to throw money at this problem and fix it. Yeah, And to me, like, you know more about the character in comics, but from what I've seen in just the MCU shows, that felt like a perfect illustration of who Fisk is.

Like plumbing. I don't know plumbing. I'm not going to put in the work to learn plumbing. I'm gonna throw some money at a plumber to go and do that for me, right, uh, And so like Fisks and then and that's another freaking parallel between me and Fisk that

it's stressing me out. But like he's he saw you know, he he adopted this young girl who is deaf in an amputee and instead of learning how to asl he throws money at the situation, gets an interpreter, and then and down the line he has more money, and.

That scene was one of like the thing about Fisk is, particularly the Daredevil show, particularly in season one, it's like fifty one percent a Daredevil origin show and forty nine percent of Wilson Fisk origin show. A kingpin because you met Vincentinafrio manages to make him so incredibly compelling and so incredibly sympathetic in ways where you're like, there are times in my life where I feel red hot anger and there's a part of me that wants to use my fists and go out and fix the problem that

I'm seeing. And A I'm not very good at fighting, so it'd be a very bad idea. But also like I just think morally, that's not the right thing to do.

And like so when he gets out of that limo and it was just shot so perfectly to build the suspense and he starts walking towards that ice cream guy, I had this really uncomfortable mis of dread and exhilaration because I was so afraid of what he was going to do to that ice cream guy, and I so badly wanted to see him utterly kick the ass of the ice cream guy.

loses it. So you see someone who is belittling and disrespecting his chosen family, Yeah, that's gonna that's gonna bubble up also, But that scene was it didn't go where.

her to some of that. But yeah, and I want to talk a lot about her character to be sure, but just because we started with the Kingpin, for me, it's that, like, I think you're right, it's that he's upset that he sees her disrespected, but more even more so, I think it's that he sees the pain on her face. And you know, obviously this is a daughter, not a mother figure. But I think it really highlights that for Fisk,

his central motivation is protection. He wants to protect the people he loves and cares about, which then becomes and and then we see in that brilliant end scene, becomes all the people of his city, you know, And that's a to me. That's also where him and Daredevil are so is like, you know, you always hear about the superhero being like, this is my city, and you can't do this in my city. And I think that's Fisks

motivation as well. Oh you can't do you can't do this to my mother, you can't do this to my daughter, you can't do this to my city.

One thing they also did in this is to say, yes, these are the same characters, but this is a different continuity, this particular universe, and it may well be that, like they've added now the other MCU Netflix shows to the official timeline on Disney Plus, so it may be that they're saying that, like in a different continuity, because remember we're in the multiverse, so that all those other shows are cannon just not in this universe, but that this

particular Wilson, Fisk and Daredel we were watching are not the exact same ones from the other one. And and the things that really stood out to me about that were it's very brief, but they show him looking at that white picture, the one that he buys in Netflix to when he meets Vanessa. That one was horizontal. This one is vertical, and it's a little bit different, and it's just there's just such an interesting change that felt to me like it was very specifically being like, no,

this is not the same, Yeah, exactly same but different. Yeah. And then again the timing of it, he is now doing his mayoral run when it already happened in those Uh, to me, it just was like, yeah, this is this is this is a different continuity.

side character. She's only been on She's only been a title character I think twice most recently, like this last year was Daredevil, an Echo and I and she's been like she's been an Avengers, but on the New Avengers, you know, she was involved in Secret and Asian and the other stuff, but she's she doesn't have a whole lot of like primary screen time, and so they kind of had they kind of had a blank slate to work with for the MCU and bringing her in, and yeah,

everything they've done so far has been fantastic, but it's all very original, and I don't I don't even think there's a character reference for them to pull from as far as like this chocked out legacy and stuff that that is completely original to the best of my knowledge.

as we talk about them, and so to start with like super mystical thing, I was like, did I watch start the wrong thing or something? Turned out obviously it did not, And I wound up really loving it because you said you got kind of the Eternals vibe from it. I admit I watched Eternals once and have now mostly blanked out of my brain, so it's very possible the same.

What I got, though, was some echoes of the I'm gonna say Atlantean because I don't remember the pronunciation of the I think Adalon the Native the group that is referred to as Atlanteans in Black Panther Two, who are also based very much in Native indigenous communities, but of Central America. And what I really loved was that it felt to me like, you know, like if you take like tribal myths from like Spain and tribal myths for like, you know, Sweden, they probably are going to bear some

connection to each other. That's a lot more than like they would have to something from Japan, but they're still vastly different because they're on, you know, thousands of miles apart. Sure, this felt to me like it had a little bit of some of the same and again, I'm not a visual person, so I might be completely making this up

or I was like projecting it. But it felt like it had a little bit of the same kind of idea in terms of the visual construction of it, but was still very unique and different, very you know, to these two different like communities that that MCU is introducing that are are based in you know, our own world's understanding of you know, the the myths and stories from native indigenous Native American communities and indigenous communities. So yeah, I really liked that and I but I was definitely

very confused. I was like, where are we going with this? And because I didn't I I didn't see it coming

at all, that Echo would have superpowers. And I really loved the way that they did it and this kind of slow build and the fact that they the introduction of each of these different chalk Taw legends everything from the like you know, the creation myth to hey, by the way, lacrosse is a sport based in something from Native Americans, which, by the way, I believe that in the upcoming Olympics, the Iroquois nation, which has members of

both American and Canadian citizenship, are gone because it's but yeah, so the acknowledgement of like, yeah, it's not exactly lacrosse, but it's clearly the sport that our modern day sport of lacrosse was based in to the whole thing about the light horsemen and the significance of the braid, which they never commented on, but you know they in the film they say, you know, braids were supposed to be

for warriors, and that's not for women. As the show goes on, Echo is wearing more and more of her hair in a braid until by the last big fight scene, or actually I think it was when she comes to her family after, it's a braid all the way down. It was just I just loved it. And I thought the way that they weaved her story into those creation stories and legends of her people was just utterly fantastic.

of the past. I loved the way that her mom was just like you need to be you need to be brave and it has you know, the episode one flashback, you need to be cunning, like the episode two flashback, and just the way that just in the way that they chose to tell the story worked so almost flawlessly to keep everything wrapped up into one coherent.

and not like something. If this had come out weekly, I'd be so scared that by episode five something would have been like reshot or changed because of se feedback and just it was, man, it was it felt like a like a complete thought, and I hope that they feel like the showrunners feel like they did what they set out to do, because it felt like, yeah, no, I.

And just one more thing on her as well. I love that one of the things that is praised about her and said, this is something you embody from your ancestry is her ferocity, because I think ferocity is something we often think of as a negative thing for a hero because it's about, you know, like Kingpin is ferocious, Like it's about like being able to almost kind of like berserker rage is what comes to mind from that, and so to me, it is still balanced with healing

and the fact that she's she has two different opportunities to kill Fisk, or at least one to actually do it, one to try and both cases she doesn't, and then the second one she literally tries to heal him, which doesn't seem like it worked, which is something we'll talk about later, which was curious. But yeah, I just thought that like naming her ferocity, but also showing that unlike Fisk, she can keep control of it, I think was a really beautiful thing.

your powers? And your powers can be superpowers, your powers just can be your fighting ability. Your powers can be your money or your political influence, whatever. But are you using the power that you have to protect the things that are personally relevant to you you which can be yourself, your family, the people you love and care about, or are you doing it in a more altruistic way to protect like people? Are you working to protect people you

don't know basically? And you know? So for me, like I think that most of the Netflix people are heroes, and I think that's kind of the thing for Jessica Jones is when she's the most reluctant hero of them

in some ways nick Cage. But when she goes from like I'm just gonna like look out for me and my sister too, I'm going to look out for like others, you know, she should grumpy and reluctant about it, but that's when she becomes a hero, Whereas like Punisher to me, never become because Punisher is always about his own personal revenge quests and I love his character, to be clear,

but I just don't think he's a hero. I think he's a villain in a lot of ways in the MCU at least, But to me, I feel like she hasn't quite crossed that line. Like she kind of protects all the people at the even there, like it's her family who protects everyone else at the pow wow. And I admit, I don't really know why Fisk wanted to like kill all the people at the pow wow, and that's a whole other thing. I think it was mostly just to like cause a disturbance so that he could

get to Echo. But yeah, I think she's she is heroic in many ways, and she has great power, and she uses that great power and she resists killing her enemies when they're you know, not in the middle of a fight, which I think is heroic. But yeah, I think she's still very much a gray character who the heroes can be gray. But like, I don't know where

she's gonna I think she's gonna be. My sense is that she will be an antagonist to Daredevil and maybe by the end take Like I don't know if this is actually a comparison that people have drawn before, but I can see her very much becoming the Catwoman to

Daredevil's Batman. You know, Catwoman is never quite a hero, and in some ways you're like, Batman, did you treat her more like a villain, less like a villain because she is, like you think she has a purer heart, or because she looks so good in those tight leather pants, and certainly about the writers, but like you know, she takes hero turns. She helps Batman, but often for like

all right, fine, I'll help you kind of reasons. And yeah, so, I don't know if that's a comparison that's been made before, because I know her and Daredevil have relationships in the comics. I imagine she will wind up teaming up with Daredevil in some very reluctant way against King Penn in the show, kind of like Electra does. But I think she will remain some kind of Morley Gray, not quite heroic figure.

Here's why I felt this way tearful reunion. You know, I think the grandmother is clearly wrong and does a horrible thing by kicking out her, her son in law and her daughter, but also the pain she feels is like I have not lost a child. I can only imagine what it's like. But it's not like I think, oh, she must be a monster. I can very much emotionally understand where she was coming from in all and the way she is both defending it but also showing with all this guilt how wrong she was, and the way

that echo isn't willing to just forgive that. At first, it felt very very real. It's not just everything about the family was so well done. All the characters were interesting. So let's again, there's so much we could talk about. And I think we're gonna do more episodes. And I will say on the MCU cast, which is for the strand of Pana Network, which I'm a huge fan of used to be a part of, they're doing episode of B episode coverage. Definitely recommend people check that out. It

is phenomenal. It's gonna be phenomenal. I'm sure we're not gonna try and do that. It's not gonna go through everything. But I wanted just to kind of move back to this conversation of representation and the like and talk a bit about what it was like for There's great people who are talking about definitis in the show. Greet people talking about Native Native representation in the show. Uh, the Chalk drawn Nation like they specifically say it was very involved.

There's a lot of chalk Tak and other Native creators who've been talking about this. I want to talk about what the show is like for me as an amputee and the larger question of representation. And I want to start by asking you actually will and as I say this, it feels like I'm setting you up. There's no right answers to any perspective you have go for. But I'm curious, what what is your feeling about representation in these kind of shows.

much by seeing their representation. I would say, so, I'm African American, and I feel like classically African Americans are the only ones that get that, like, oh hey, we've been represented here, and so like when Black Panther happened, it was a big deal, but like it didn't feel like such a big deal to me because we've had representation before, Like we we have our Blade and Wesley Snipes, and we have our famous black actors that have done

amazing things and have all these accolades and accomplishments, and so.

gave her bionic arms. And then Misty Knight is another famous arm amputee that almost every single time it's replaced with something that's a high tech replacement and it's an upgrade and not a This is the real world application of what would actually happen and for them to keep it for Maya it being someone who's non ampute, I think I appreciate it, and like I don't want to say it's novel because I don't want to like trivialize the impact, but like I really like seeing it initially,

and then I go to the Internet and and people are just loving it. And and I've seen like posts from you and other and other people saying, you know, as an AMPTT, this is one of the greatest things I've ever seen, and and that's so exciting to me.

I love that the same way that like representation of homosexuality, like on Shit's Creek versus other gay couples in other shows, where like it's a plot point and it's and it's like they embrace it in a way that's a comedic way, and and it in Shit's Creek it's just natural.

are are feeling similar to this. I should also say, like a terminology issue, there are people who in the same way, there's like deaf and hard of hearing, and the exact definitions amputee, I think is often used as a catch all phrase for people who use prosthetic legs. That's not actually accurate because some people are born without a limb for whatever reason, in the same way someone could be born deaf, they will often still use a

prosthetic leg. They are not technically amputees. I think. I think the term that is well that we look this up and the two terms that I saw they're used most often. One is limb deficient, which is utterly awful and talk about like super ablest, like you're not what it should be. The other is uh, okay, the the other is unipod or uniped, which is fine and like

you know, uniped versus biped. My understanding from Latin that I studied twenty five years ago and never got above us B minus in so it could be wrong is that for the single it should be pod not ped. But it could be wrong. Personally, I prefer monopod or monoped instead of by instead of uniped, because then it can be shortened to moped. But that's just my own thing. I know. Sorry, bad jokes, that's what you're gonna get

with me. I will, though, say, like, so I'm gonna speak in that perspective, but it's not a univocal community. Like I posted a couple of things online about this already, and in one conversation there's someone who's also an amputee who's like, I hate representation, blah blah blah blah blah. You know, I don't want to see myself on screen like this. I don't need that. Granted, this person also

thinks wokeness is the worst thing happening to America. So we're not really seeing things in the same way in a lot of ways. But I want to acknowledge that that's another amputee who feels differently about this, and I'm sure he's not alone, or they're not alone. I think he,

but who knows. It's a Twitter person. So with all those caveats, the first moment that I knew, yes, this is going to be honest to my experience and to the experience of other amputees, to the leg amputees people whose arms obviously, and that's a different thing, but I

think related. She gets out of the hospital and she and her father are getting ready to go to New York because the grandmother is kind of kicking them out and saying like, you're not welcome here, and she doesn't have a prosthetic leg yet, because like when most people lose their leg in a traumatic accident of some kinds like sometimes it's an amputee and it's planned, like with

diabetes or something like that. Even there, though, I think it can still take a while to heel, but especially if it's a traumatic accident, it can take weeks or months to the point of like any contact on that part of your limbs possible, because often they need to do like skin grafts or muscle graphs or other things like that. So when like Misty Knight gets this badass prosthetic arm two days later, it makes her a cool story.

You know, get me wrong, Misty Knight's an incredible character, But that doesn't speak to the to the like ampute experience, at least not it's an arm. It's not my experience. But like I think a lot of people at the time said, like, that's that's not realistic. Sure, So the fact that she's leaving the hospital it's probably been like a couple of weeks or at least a week or so, and her stump is still fully banged up. She does not have a prosthetic leg. I was like, yes, that's it.

The fact that her grandfather, who's clearly very good at machinery and stuff like that, But it's not a prostheticist himself, and it's certainly not like a Tony Stark level inventor. Yeah, when she breaks her prosthetic because it gets stuck, which is a very real thing and can certainly happen. And when I saw that, I was like, if aprosthesis is fine,

I'm gonna be so mad. But it clearly wasn't, and she was like limping on it afterwards, and then they make her one that again it's not a perfect fit. She has to limp some and because it's going to take time for him to fix this and to do it right, all of those things, I was like, Yes, this this is what. This is much more accurate to the ampute experience, certainly the leg one, and there are times where she can do things with her leg that

I absolutely cannot do with mine. And like the combat, like the way my leg fits, it fits pretty well. But if I start to do like lots of kind of crazy footwork things like the hold between my leg and my stump is not perfect, and it's gonna start to wiggle around some and be a problem. And certainly if I like impact it in very hard ways, it will like it could have come off or certainly it will you know, become loosened and also be very painful to me, and certainly if I dropped from a height

and land on it. I tried rock climbing, and granted this was like ten years ago, when I have prosthetic technologies advanced a lot, but I tried rock climbing ten fifteen years ago and I dropped like five feet and it was incredibly painful because because it was like you know, you know, and I think the one she has has much better shock absorbers than the one I had back then. The one I now have has shock absorbers that are better than my cars. But still, I for me, I

imagine it would be painful and difficult. But the fact that it is literally a an actress with her own prosthetic leg doing those things, and you mentioned before that

she's not an amputee. In the Comics Awesome part of the story, they were looking for a native deaf actress who also can do fight scenes, and as it happened, the one they found was an amputee, and so instead of trying to like always keep her in pants or something like that, they were just like, fine, our characters amputine now as well, right, which is just like talk

about wonderful representation. Like there's the intentional like we want a deaf character, so we want a deaf actress, but oh hey, the actress has an amputation, so let's just make that part of the character as well. That's also just awesome. But you know, and from all the and things that I've seen, I am convinced that for the most part, some stuff's probably an exaggeration, because fight movies are always an exaggeration of what physics can actually do.

You know. Even Bruce Lee, you know, use sometimes wires and stuff like that for the incredible scenes. I believe that, so certainly many martial arts movies do the point of all this being the fact that it was a lococox doing it. I think I'm pronouncing her name right, and if not, please let me know. Fans told me that I could trust that these are things that a person

with a prosthetic could do it. But it's funny also because at first I was wondering that she have a very different like does she have it, like really strapped into her leg? No, the like I think you've seen me. I just have a rubber thing that fits on my stump and it has a pin at the end of it, and then the pin plugs right into my prosthetic. And there's one moment where it's half a second and you might miss it, but she puts her stuff into her leg and it doesn't click immediately and she has to

kind of adjust and push her leg down again. And I was like, that's that's my experience. I've seen that, So yeah, I just thought all those stunts, all that stuff. Yeah, some of it's EMCU movie making magic, and that's fine because I do it with everyone else. But there was never a time where it felt like that's that doesn't fit what an amputee could do, what a person with a prosthetic leg could do.

you guys, is to bonus content. As I mentioned, we're gonna be starting book clubs definitely for Star Wars universe, probably for superheroes as well, once a month episodes that will be only for members, So definitely check those things out. Please become a member. It's a great way support us all the informations in the show notes. But before we wrap up, will any of the last things you wanted to bring up or talk about, or any of the last like plot points or characters or story beats we

haven't gotten into. There's comparisons with the comics.

to me every time it happens. And that was like my least favorite part of the show because it took me out of it. But I don't know. I don't I've never cut brakes on a car. I've never had a car. I've never driven a car with breaks the brake line cut, So I don't know if that's accurate, but it just it feels weird anyway.

And I have zero familiarity with the Native American ties to that, but like when I think of Echo, I think of that circle triangle design and I love that. Sorry my dog, and I love that they had that in there, and it's it's like my favorite part about Echo as a character.

know their comics. Remember that Will started by saying he doesn't really know that much about like Echo is not like the one he really knows that well, and that level of detail that you would just pulled from memory like is just like, yeah, sure you like listen to this man and his buddy Steve talk about comics on the Hype is My Superpower podcast. It is phenomenal that goes so deep. They really talk about the kind of ethical questions we love, but also just the awesome fight scenes.

They're very critical of things. They're not just hype men for it podcast name notwithstanding. Definitely check out that podcast. But yeah, I just like it is now. I guess just kind of a point that all of these superhero shows have to hit. And I wouldn't mind if every now and then we skipped it of here's the emotionally important story or just the funny story of how they

get their first costume. But I did think that the whole story for this and like her grandmother making it, and that's kind of reconnecting with her grandmother and the power there. I have seen little things about it online from people talking about how yet is very authentic to the chalk Talk community and things like that, and I can't like you, I can't speak to it, but it was but it was just it was just so beautifully done. I will also say, as someone who worked in car

repair for a while, this is good. My understanding is was told to be by the way, who so I think we're also just yet like clear, but is like you can do things to damage the break so that they will slowly wear down and not be a problem until you're going at high speed. Sure, and I think cut the break line is kind of just like movie, you know, TV waving your hand over a much larger complicated thing that thirty seconds of break line technology wouldn't

be what the show needed. But also, yeah, I was a little throne by that was a little more thrown by is But again in the kind of like it's a superhero show where she's gonna heal people with her hands. I'm not gonna worry too much about the exact physics of it. As far as I understand, there hasn't been a windshield built in the last fifty years that would break in such a way that a huge piece of glass would on its own fly. You know, break, They shatter.

just anything happens to sever. I think it's the femeral artery, but whatever's the artery in your thigh and your limb basically loses blood, even just for a couple of hours, it may often have to be amputated because just the loss of blood in just those few hours can can be incredibly damaging. So all of that makes total sense. The fact that it's a big piece of glass.

could you possibly do this. I've had two people come to me and be like, as an amputee, aren't you so offended by how badly this was done? And I'm like, no, absolutely not. The physics of it perfect, No, should anyone in the right minds actually care? No, Like, I'm never gonna be the person who well, that's probably too offensive.

If you really care about granular details like that, and that's how you enjoy something, I'm not saying you're wrong, But if you then claim that everyone should should focus on those granular details and not enjoy something if the granular details aren't right, I think that is it's just a really jerk position to take.

And then I literally had a moment of like wait, is this some like you never see the dead body. We kind of saw the dead body, but like, if this can survive being shot in the head, maybe the mom can. Like I thought the mom was literally alive, And yeah, I wish there had been a little bit of like forced ghosty like something to show that this was a spirit or this was like I don't think

it's in her head. I think it was a real vision she was having, but something to show that this was like a vision of her mother or her mother re out through I want to say through the veil, but that's a very kind of Western phrase of it. I don't know what would appropriate language, but like.

Their comment was like, well, I didn't hear the music.

all these other things going on. And I am super happy to get more entries into this expanded lore.

that movie. I think it's gonna be really good. I just I've been very with COVID being bad again and stuff like that. I don't want to go to the theater, but I'll probably you know, pay for it as soon as I can on Amazon or something like that. And yeah, I just this makes you feel a lot better about the MCU. I feel like the last couple of things that left me to be probably disappointed, this feels better. I'm gonna just do a quick run down of a couple of last things I had, and then we'll close and

do a member section My Baby as a centerfold. It's just a classic classic eighties song that I absolutely love that the lyrics, like most eighties songs, have not aged well,

but it's still a great song and I love that. Like, you know, I think we often do think of like deaf people as being completely like I think it can be just like there is it's like getting mute on your computer, but oftentimes there's still like you can be aware of vibrations or you can hear as you said, sound is like it's like it's turned all the way down but still there. So the fact that the song was playing just made my eighties kid heart so happy, and the fact that she was aware of it. I

thought it was a really nice character beat. I did comment early that I thought that we were seeing with Bonnie check Off's firetruck, because they made a point of showing that Bonnie as a firefighter and she's there with her fire truck, and I was like, oh, so, clearly he's gonna be a major fire and she's gonna show up Later. It turned out it was not Chekhov's fire truck, so that's fine. But I will say that the acting

throughout this was top notch. One of my favorite moments maybe Bonnie translating as someone is saying that he's going to kill Maya and Bonnie herself, because I'm trying to imagine what that would be like to be like trying to act as the dispassionate like, you know, I'm not here as part of the conversation. I'm just acting as the translator. But the words that I'm translating are utterly terrifying. And horrifying to me, and just nothing like it would be so hard to not get that right. It's so

easy to not get that right. And I felt just her acting there was utterly phenomenal love. But you kicked him. Love thee sister tech and just as one little character beat. And this is the last thing I'll say. Oh two of the things, I'll say, sorry thinking. And then just two last things. One it was very blinket you miss it.

But at the pow Wow they had the American flag, and they also had the pow Mia flag, which, like from again my very limited understanding, is a very important I mean, it's important in a lot of communities, but like there were an awful lot of Native Americans who went into the military and were drafted or you know, wound up doing it because there's so little economic opportunities and are part of that community of people who were

never found from Vietnam. POWs are missing in actions. And I you know, from the few other Native gatherings I have been to and from those who I've been friends with, they've often talked about how important that flag is in

some of those communities. So that was brilliant. And then the last thing just is because there was no commentary about it, but it was so perfect having Wilson fisk be connected to the Chalk Talk casino because oh, and again I might be projecting a lot here onto it, but I know that, particularly in some of the areas I've lived in, like New York State and Wisconsin, but also in others, the fact that a lot of these casino a lot of these tribes have opened casinos where

the promise is that it's going to bring real economic vitality to everyone in the in the tribal community. I think that happened sometimes, but a lot more often a few people wind up getting a lot of the economic benefit and instead and then it's wanted to feeding gambling addictions among people who are already very poor, disadvantaged, and and there's been a lot of commentary by Native American activists about like are these casinos actually good for us?

And is it mostly like white investors who are benefiting? And so again I'm projecting all kinds of things, but to me, I read that as of course, part of how Wilson Fiske would have first got connected to this community is that he's an investor in their casino, like it just fed so perfectly to me. Yeah.

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seem like he is still out there. So the two theories that I had was either one that it didn't work because she doesn't have that power enough, or be that she got him over his own like personal vengeance stuff enough that he's able to let that go and to start trying to be a helper. But that now instead of just trying to beat people up, he's going to try and become the mayor. But he is still gonna be like he hasn't like like like she's kind of like gotten him to another step in his advancement.

Of letting go of the pain of killing his father and the abuse of his mother. But he's still not totally like a happy good guy because he's still going to be a villain, just a very different kind of villain. What what do you think happened?

what I'm that's what I'm thinking. It's gonna like maybe he'll even cry at a at an in an interview of like so why you, and he'll like make a reference to his terrible upbringing and it'll actually bring a tear to his face. Instead of just like it's like this controlled anger on his face. I beat didn't see if he still has his twitch as post.

of mine, reading articles, like I know it comes up a lot is letting go of trauma, in part because when it has been just such a major part of your life, it's kind of terrifying to be like, what what would that be like without it? You know, and it's it's just like you know, it's this bad thing, but you've never you know, since before the trauma or in many cases before you can remember like you know, you know, what's your life like without it? And so to me, yeah, there could be that in him kind

of really wrestling. That's the kind of what have you done to me? One thing that also occurs to me, though, is that in Daredevil he starts out already somewhat civically minded in that he does want to clean up his city. We haven't seen any of that so far in this version of Kingpin, and that it's always just been a kind of that hero thing of like I just want to like protect my family, want to protect the people who matter to me while becoming economically, you know, incredibly successful.

And I wonder if that's the kind of like this is the next stage of his healing and that he's kind of like because the other thing I think this really comes up is he does have a lot of guilt and grief. And I think when he offers Maya the hammer and says you can kill me, I think that is one hundred percent legitimate. I don't think that's a fake out where he's like I'll stop her because of a bad fight, not at all. And I think it's because he still carries an incredible amount of guilt

about what he did to his father. Oh my god, Actually, as I'm saying this, it comes a better way. What if she allowed him to forgive himself for killing his father, which then but then it doesn't become the therefore I can be a good person. So it could be a big good person, but it's instead I used my violence to protect my mother. I should and I shouldn't feel guilty about it. Oh my god, So now he shouldn't

feel guilty about it anymore. So in some way, it's like it's the super villain origin story for him, and now it's like I should protect more people using the powers that I have, which is my money, my influence. Because I saw it like he has the cops completely under his thumb, that that scene was so well done,

but oh god, yeah, what if that's really like? And so now she has to deal with like this is who I created, my bad sorry, because the other way I was thinking about that before that occurred to me is and again, like Matt Murdoch, very Catholic. Catholic guilt is a huge part of his story, especially in the

Netflix shows. I think another very interesting direction would be if he is really trying to like go the straight narrow, but Daredevil doesn't believe it, and so there's some level of like he does fall back into criminal ways and like, maybe that means Daredevil's right that he was always going to fall back into it, but maybe it's because Daredevil won't like believe that he could be a good person. Oh yeah, I like that They've left it in a

way that we could speculate forever. But there really are so many different directions that could go, and all of them could be awesome.

in that to some extent? You know, how do these other avenger level people who are very connected to New York City, Even like Kamala Khan, she lives in a New York City suburbs, so she would not be directly affected by this law. But like having lived in the New York City area for most of most of my certainly at least half of my life, more than half of my life. Like, I know that like what happens in New York City politics absolutely affects like Northern New

Jersey politics, in Westchester politics, and Long Island politics. So I I don't think they can do that story without it becoming a without it feeling like a repeat of Civil War, but also without it being like that. Yeah, the avenger level people do have to pay attention to it, and even it might be like you know, like maybe in The Doctor Next Doctor time, doctor Stranger is in a movie like Wong is like, oh yeah, what do

you think about the mayor? They're like, come on, the president, when when when the nation tried to when when they do the United Nations tried to do this, it didn't work. I don't care about what the mayor does, like, but but I think they have to actually deal with it in some way. So yeah, I love the idea in comics, I kind of don't know if it could work without Wilson Fisk kind of becoming the big bath of the next Avenger stuff, which like if you're dealing, well, they

can't do they can't. They might not do Kang anymore. So maybe it's gonna be that instead.

that stuff in the Civil War movie. Yeah, I'd love to say that, but I don't, you know, but you can have a cute little story like yeah again, it'd be one episode of like he tries to do this and like Matt Murdoch brings up Civil War and all this stuff, and at the end, Sam Wilson like appears to be like thanks for taking care of that. I didn't want to have that fight again, you know, or something like that. Yeah.

We got the mid credit scene. But what I was hoping for since that thing in episode one was that possibly Daredevil, but even more so, I wanted Foggy or Karen to show up at the end in the end credit, and just just sit down with Maya and say something like so here we have a friend in common, or like, you know, like so I feel like you're also not fond of mister Fisk, you know, just anything like that to like and maybe that'd be setting the ground too much for the next.

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