this little psycho

Wow. Just wow. Episode 1 is such a perfect story in so many ways. The character intros, the cinematography, the soundtrack, the storytelling, weaving present day with flashback so carefully.

Sure, some of the acting is a bit rough, the cast clearly hasn't melded yet (but the siblings haven't seen each other for years, so it works), haven't humanized the comic book characters yet...but then oh my god the dance scene.

I recall hearing sometime that they filmed the dance scene on the first day and wow just....every single cast member just blew it out of the water. Luther forgetting how big he is and punching the ceiling, Allison with her boa, Klaus dancing with the urn, Viktor in the stairwell and Diego basically closing the door in his face (so grateful to whoever first pointed out that detail to me, it's hilarious) so he can do his private lil dance in the living room.

And then Five shows up, and the whole dynamic of the siblings just gets even more chaotic.

One thing I hadn't noticed before about the back half of the episode is Fives coffee arc: he complains about coffee, goes out for a cup of coffee, doesn't get to drink it at Griddys for obvious reasons (I'll get back to this in a sec), and eventually goes to Viktor's...who offers to make him coffee. That was nice, and a subtle little narrative foreshadowing to Five that hey, maybe what you're looking for (a decent cup of coffee/person who ends the world) is right in front of you all along (Viktor, in both cases).

Of course, Five completely misses that message, because that's the idiot he is and we love him for it.

Okay back to Griddys: I truly forgot how much I loved this scene. If you hadn't read the comics, you don't really know much about Five at this point, just that he's a smartass kid insisting some mumbojumbo about him being 58 and stuck in the future. (Clearly his siblings don't believe him, so why should we, the audience?) So when he turns out to be not only telling the truth, but there being so much MORE going on...not only is he from the future but he's being hunted, knows he's being hunted, and is able to easily take down a cadre of goons with automatic weapons with a butter knife and a tie, and then smirks at the end of it....well that's insanely cool. What a way to build up a character.

(And don't forget that in e2 they immediately cut him down to a scared kid traumatized by his dead family....Five your s1 character arc is both top notch and sad beyond belief).

And if you had read the comics...well...it's even better because you get the anticipation of seeing those goons walk into the store, knowing that nothing less than batshit craziness is about to go down. And then... it does.