TV Review: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 2

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 2 “The Star-Spangled Man”

Director: Kari Skogland

Starring: Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Clé Bennett, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, Daniel Brühl, Erin Kellyman

Rating: TV-14

Runtime: 47 minutes

Spoilers follow:

The main thing holding the first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier back was the lack of scenes with Bucky and Sam together, so it’s natural that the second installment, which is packed with delightful banter between the two, is stronger.  But the buddy comedy is only a part of what makes “The Star-Spangled Man” great.  It also features more awesome action and deepens its work on the existing characters while also adding several compelling new ones and ties it all together with a plot that expands the MCU while also looking at some of its established tenets from important new angles.

We pick back up with John Walker in a locker room preparing to film a segment for Good Morning America (where he’s interviewed by real television reporter Sara Haines) on his old high school’s football field, which is packed full of excited spectators.  Walker is nervous about the appearance specifically and taking on the Captain America identity in general but his wife Olivia (Gabrielle Byndloss) and military buddy Lemar Hoskins (Clé Bennett) both offer effective support.  This sequence is meant to humanize Walker while maintaining an ominous tone around him and Russell’s performance strikes a good balance between those competing ideas.  He makes Walker seem humble and gracious and the locker room scenes indicate that he is at least somewhat genuine in his desire to live up to the storied mantle he’s taking on but there’s always a subtle instability about him that becomes more apparent as the episode goes on and suggests he might be more of a threat than a hero in the end.  Haines gives some exposition on Walker’s decorated military record and his impressive physical abilities.  Although he is said to have not taken any kind of super-soldier serum Haines describes how Walker’s physique and intelligence were both tested by MIT which found that they were off the charts.  The comics use this idea of a “peak human” separate from someone with genuine superpowers all the time but I’m not sure how well it’s going to translate to live-action.  The way Walker moves suggests actual powers and the distinction might become too thin and confusing for casual viewers.  Then again, with the way the plot is headed it’s possible he’ll be made a genuine super-soldier, or indeed be revealed to already be one, so the point might become moot.

Sam is heading to Germany to investigate the Flag Smashers when he’s confronted by Bucky, who angrily rebukes him for giving up the shield, which allowed it to fall into the hands of someone like Walker.  There is some genuine tension to their conversation, with Sam pointing out that of course he’s upset but can’t publicly change his mind, but when the topic shifts to Sam’s mission it quickly devolves into the one-upmanship and quipping we’ve come to expect from these two and it is glorious.  Sam mentions how the Flag Smashers are possibly one of the “Big Three”, which he defines as “androids, aliens, and wizards.”  Bucky believes there are no wizards (clarifying that Doctor Strange is a sorcerer, which Sam says “is just a wizard without a hat,”) and asks Sam if he really thinks he’s going to fight Gandalf.  When Sam is surprised at him making a Tolkien reference Bucky smugly explains that, “I read The Hobbit.  In 1937… when it first came out.”  Michael Kastelein’s script brings the perfect level of absurdity to the dialogue and the actors are just as much fun bouncing off each other as they were in Civil War.  Stan definitely holds his own, with the Hobbit line delivered particularly well, but Mackie’s performance really lights up with the comedic material.  You can tell he’s having an absolute blast and his enthusiasm has an infectious, joyous effect on the viewer.

The goofy squabbling continues throughout much of the first half of the episode.  The guys arrive in Munich to find the Flag Smashers smuggling medicine and chase after their trucks when Sam detects what he assumes is a hostage.  Bucky leaps onto the truck and rips open the back door, coming face to face with a teenage girl (Erin Kellyman) that he believes to be the hostage but is actually herself an enhanced Flag-Smasher.  She attacks Bucky and two of her compatriots drag him up to the roof, where they continue beating on him.  Sam swoops in to help but he and Bucky are at least evenly matched and the girl destroys Redwing.  Soon after, a military helicopter arrives and Walker, in his full “Captain America” regalia and Hoskins (in a suit of his own as “Battlestar”, as he will later tell Sam and Bucky, to their annoyance) join the fight.  This was another absolutely delightful action sequence that again highlighted the show’s cinematic production value.  It’s always fun to see the shield bounce around like crazy (even if it’s currently being thrown by the wrong guy) and the high speed of the vehicles brings an additional degree of intensity, with the whole thing feeling like the superhero take on a Fast and Furious scene.  But what I liked most was how the creators worked in beats of humor and character into the fighting, such as Bucky, clearly pissed at having to hand the shield to Walker, Sam taking a second to make fun of Bucky for being overcome by a “little girl”, and Walker using a gun, something Steve barely ever did after WWII.

After the Flag Smashers escape, Sam and Bucky reluctantly accept a ride back to the airport from Walker and Hoskins.  Walker tries to convince them to all work together but Bucky loses it when Hoskins tells them his “superhero” name and he and Sam storm off.  Although Sam and Rhodey are both well-handled, autonomous characters it was always somewhat awkward that the MCU’s two main heroes (Cap and Iron Man) had what were essentially black sidekicks, and the use of Hoskins here is a nice, pointed critique of that trope.  I can just picture a government focus group deciding to have Walker accompanied by a black man in the hopes that it would take the heat off him for replacing Cap’s planned, black successor.  So far Hoskins seems to have drunk the Fake Cap Kool-Aid, as he appears happy with his position, but I hope going forward the show can bring up how he feels about being used as a token black guy.

Upon returning to the U.S., Bucky takes Sam to meet with a contact he believes might know how a version of the super-soldier serum could be available to the Flag Smashers.  In Baltimore, they talk with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), an old black man who served as a super-soldier in the Korean War, during which he battled Bucky, who, as the Winter Soldier, killed several of Isaiah’s fellow soldiers.  They ask Isaiah if he knows anything that could give them a lead on the Flag Smashers but Isaiah becomes deeply angry, telling them how he was imprisoned by the government and Hydra for 30 years so they could experiment on him, before kicking them out of the house.  In his rage, Isaiah throws a box, embedding it in a wall, demonstrating that he still has at least some degree of super-strength.  Lumbly’s performance is striking and the character brings a profoundly tragic emotional charge to the show, so I hope they make another appearance, which I assume they will.

Outside, Sam is outraged at Bucky for never having been told about a black super-soldier, and soon after a bunch of cops pull up in response to the argument.  This scene was another well-handled recreation of something that’s all too real for African-Americans and Mackie’s performance portrays the perfect tired rage that the experience invokes.  Bucky’s reaction was also realistic and in-character, as while his inherent good nature is still on display, he doesn’t react in a way that’s at all helpful.  When the cops start asking for Sam’s ID Bucky first tells him to give it to them but when they become more aggressive Bucky gets angry and yells at the cops, asking if they know who Sam is.  When one of them realizes who they are they become sheepishly apologetic, recalling the scene with the banker from the premiere.  The whole thing serves to exacerbate Sam’s frustration at American racism, and it does so quite well.  The one unrealistic aspect of the sequence is that Bucky winds up being the one who gets arrested when the cops see he missed therapy, but this contributes to the plot so it’s not that egregious a choice.

At the local precinct, Walker gets Bucky released because he’s too valuable an “asset” to be lost but Dr. Raynor (who also knows Walker) insists on meeting with Bucky and Sam before letting the former go.  This leads to another comic highlight when Raynor makes the mistake of trying to use a couple’s therapy technique on them.  The guys emphasize the ridiculousness of this by moving uncomfortably close to one another and interlocking their legs before proceeding to blow the whole thing off and have a staring contest.  This is exactly the kind of interaction I wanted to see on this show and Mackie and Stan’s chemistry is off the charts.  But while it starts off hilarious there’s also some serious content in the sequence.  Bucky eventually comes clean about why he’s so upset with Sam for not becoming Captain America, stating that it makes him think Steve could have been wrong about Sam and “If he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me!”  This is probably the best line the show’s delivered so far and Stan’s tormented delivery is perfect, making it cut like a knife.  Bucky obviously has a tremendous amount of respect, maybe even affection, for Sam, but right now his guilt has become so all-encompassing that it’s confusing all his other emotions, and Steve’s absence only makes it worse.  Sam isn’t ready to be quite as open yet but does say that he doubts Bucky or even Steve will ever be able to understand his reasons (implying again that race is involved with them) but that he did what he thought was right before deciding that he’s had enough and leaves, with Bucky following soon after.

Outside the building, the guys confer with Walker and Hoskins and they agree to share intel, though Sam says that he and Bucky will continue to work on their own to avoid red tape, after which Walker warns them to stay out of his way, hinting at a more sinister nature.  Before they separated, he did give them the name of the head Flag-Smasher, Karli Morgenthau (Kellyman).  Karli and her compatriots get shelter from a grateful European family before Karli receives a threatening text from someone who says she stole from them.  Later they are boarding a plane when cars full of armed thugs the Flag Smashers believe work for “the Power Broker” arrive.  One Flag-Smasher sacrifices himself, staying behind to give the others time to escape.  Their ideology still needs to be explained more fully but the show continues to portray the Flag Smashers much more sympathetically than is common for villains and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a twist where they wind up working with Bucky and Sam toward a common goal later, if only temporarily.

In the closing scene, Bucky, suspecting a connection between the new super serum and Hydra, says that they need to talk to Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl), who is shown in a jail cell. Brühl made Zemo a fascinating character in his Civil War debut but that movie’s cast was so large that he didn’t receive a ton of time to shine so his return here is most welcome.  Confronting Zemo again will certainly make the story even more personal for Sam and Bucky after what he did to the Avengers and using the idea of using the character in a role like Hannibal Lecter’s in The Silence of the Lambs is a lot of fun, making this a great note to end a great episode on.

Notes:

• There are a couple of different Power Brokers in Marvel Comics, none of whom are really major characters.  One of them could definitely be used here but I also think it’s possible either an established MCU character or someone more high-profile from the comics will be revealed as the MCU version.
• Another scene the internet is loving for its homoerotic vibes is when Sam saves Bucky from falling off a truck and the two of them wind up rolling through a field and land on top of one another.  A lot of fans believe Bucky is either gay or bisexual and while I wouldn’t be shocked if that was eventually revealed to be the case, I think the “romantic” aspects of his relationship with Sam are included solely for humor and it works.
•  Outside the police station, Walker gets Bucky and Sam’s attention by briefly using the siren on a cop car, which was a nice little way of emphasizing how toxic he is and how he doesn’t understand privilege.
• Isaiah’s grandson, Eli (Elijah Richardson), who has his own big Marvel destiny, is the one who lets Bucky and Sam in the house.
• The Raynor character still isn’t working for me but I suspect her history with Walker means there could be a twist related to her coming.  And I don’t understand why she felt she had the authority to force Sam into therapy.
• I do wonder if it would have been more effective just to end on the Zemo name-drop, and let his first actual appearance come next episode.  It might have added to his mystique.
• There are so many great quips to choose from but my favorite after the wizard bit had to be when Sam started teasing Bucky for his attempts at stealth, saying, “A little time in Wakanda and you come out White Panther,” to which Bucky replies “It’s actually White Wolf,” confusing Sam.