Mr. Fly Fly and the Ice Man, Episode 3

 Hoo boy.

I was tempted not to write a post this week about Disney Plus' The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (which I maintain is an awkward title, but what are you going to do?) The reason is that, well, it was a hot mess.

Of the first three Disney + MCU forays, I'll confess that this the show I was least excited about, but in its first two episodes, the show managed to hit some good notes: focusing on its leads as people, touching on themes of the meaning of America (one of the biggest themes of the Captain America movies that this show follows from) and the dangers of lacking self-criticism (John Walker's Captain America represents an unnuanced, jingoistic vision of what the Cap represents that flies completely in the face of what Steve Rogers actually was - remember that it wasn't badass soldier Steve Rogers who got picked, but shrimpy kid with heroic conviction who was chosen for the role.)

I think that, in a lot of way, this show seems to suffer from being, well, intended to be the first out of the gate.

Wandavision had its issues - it tried to stuff in a few too many arcs (Monica's great and all but I think the show would have worked without her and we could have had Photon/Spectrum simply introduced in Captain Marvel 2) and the final battle felt a little simplistic compared to what the show had been doing previously - but ultimately I think its biggest success was that it was allowed to focus primarily and... nearly exclusively on Wanda - her grief was the big bad all along, and Agatha was just an opportunist. Wandavision got to be weird and work on its own pace.

But this episode blew through what could have been two or even three separate episodes. Nothing had time to breathe. The pacing was all over the place, and even individual scenes were weirdly shot and paced. Last week we learned that Bucky was willing to go talk to Zemo to learn more about Hydra stuff, but Zemo is out of prison in literally like five minutes.

Then we go to Madripoor, what feels like it could be set up as a really important new location, but we're already out of there by the time the credits roll. Sharon Carter, teased as a major player in the series, has entered and left the narrative (it seems) with just a kind of depressingly cynical turn as a stolen art dealer.

Toss in another scene of Walker and Lemar once again cribbing Sam and Bucky's notes (and a weird outburst by Walker that, yes, sets up his villainous turn that we all expect, but also felt a bit out of nowhere) and Karli going from heroic revolutionary to coldblooded killer for no really clear reason, and...

Well, the episode was a bit of a mess.

We're now halfway through The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and I'm sort of wondering if this show has been given the runtime to actually pay off what it has set up. It seems like there's too much plot to get through to focus on the show's biggest strength, which is the dynamic between Sam and Bucky.

We'll see how it turns out, and to be fair I think episodes 1 and 2 were a lot better. But there do seem to be some signs of the show suffering from trying to stuff too many things into it, possibly in order to fulfill franchise needs.

Anyway, let's hope this episode was a fluke.