User blog:Tewn Lonk/Avengers Assembled is Garbage

Avengers Assemble is the new ‘main’ TV cartoon based primarily around the Avengers, as the name would suggest. It follows the footsteps of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”, but offers little in the way of a spiritual successor. This episode I’m reviewing is “Nighthawk”, which, as you may have guessed, introduces and revolves around the eponymous character. The episode starts off with a robbery of sorts at a museum, which, according to S.H.I.E.L.D. intel, is holding the Norn Stones. The stones are not explained at all, but they are basically magical artifacts with various powers. The museum’s reasoning for holding them is also not explained, and never really is. They’re just there because the plot needs to start somewhere, and do something to some people which I’ll talk about soon.

Iron Man orders Hulk and Thor to stop the immediate threat inside, while the rest go do… stuff. Except Falcon, who is delegated to crowd control. Obviously, this disheartens Sam Wilson, which would have made an interesting reasoning for the plot’s gimmick. In this episode, the Avengers are picked off one-by-one by a mysterious new villain. As we soon find out, Falcon is the one who designed all these contingency plans. Why? I’ll get to that soon.

Inside the museum, Thor and Hulk smash some nameless, faceless robots who are also completely unexplained. One of the robots throws a Norn stone at Thor’s hammer, which it attaches itself to. Thor tries to remove the stone, but rather than hurl the hammer or smack it against the wall, he just… waves it around in the air. Hulk proceeds to smash the robot, and is covered in slime in the process. This slime is seemingly harmless at the moment. However, Thor is in trouble. Since he could not comprehend the concept of slamming a hammer on the ground, Thor is teleported somewhere, which we later find out is all of the Nine Realms. We even see Thor encounter Surtur, the infernal fire demon fated to destroy all the worlds in Ragnarok. Yet, here he’s delegated to being a big generic monster to appear for five seconds.

Outside, Cap, Widow, Stark, and Hawkeye are doing stuff, when Hulk stumbles out of the museum. As Falcon grimly explains, the slime is specifically designed to make Hulk looney and then pass out. As funny as it is to see Hulk act like a drunkard, it’s an incredible ass-pull; of all the villains the Avengers have fought so far, NONE have figured out that this mystery slime conveniently turns Hulk into an irresponsible 17-year old on prom night? Yet we’re supposed to believe that Falcon figured this out while he was merely training at S.H.I.E.L.D.

Next, Black Widow hears someone talking on her comm line, and is visibly tired for some reason. After all, it’s not like she did anything particularly excruciating so far. She passes out, and Falcon realizes that she was told her Russian sleep codes. First off, how did Nighthawk even manage to connect to her comm line without anyone, particularly Stark, noticing? How did Falcon of all people figure out her Russian “kill codes”? Why would a trained spy and assassin just keep on listening to a mysterious man talking on her comm without questioning who it was or maybe she should tell someone as soon as it happens?

Now we’re down to Stark, Cap, Hawkeye, and Falcon. Now we finally see Nighthawk himself, and right after Falcon admits he’s created all these contingency plans. Yes, even Hawkeye has a plan. No, it doesn’t involve just shooting him or, I dunno, just doing whatever you would do to catch a normal, albeit peak physique human. (Is Hawkeye even peak human in this universe?) No, Falcon’s brilliant strategy is to shoot a missile at Hawkeye and knock him the hell out. Why? Why not just ambush him, or develop an anti-arrow weapon? Nevermind the fact that this missile doesn’t even burn his face off or damage him at all outside of knocking him out.

At last we have Cap and Stark, y’know, the most popular characters on the show? Falcon explains his plans to defeat Cap and Stark; a bomb that does thingamabobs to Cap’s shield and somehow traps him in a bubble, and an EMP missile for Stark. Stark dodges the missile, but learns that Falcon came up with a spray to attract millions of insects to swarm Stark’s armor and chew out the wires. At hearing this, he ditches his armor, and Cap ditches his shield. Oh and somehow Nighthawk took out JARVIS as well. No point in asking, it’s never explained.

Suddenly, Nighthawk attacks Stark and Cap. Cap jobs to Nighthawk and gets bodied, using absolutely none of the martial arts prowess he’s known for, and just slugs it out like a drunk brawler. Somehow Nighthawk also got a bomb that turns Stark’s Arc Reactor into a magnet. Strong enough to pull a giant table, but not his armors, somehow. I guess Stark made his armors magnet-proof but not EMP-Proof? Oh, and Stark totally gets slammed by a table and doesn’t suffer any injuries whatsoever. Cap also gets hit by the anti-shield bomb as well, despite being told not to use it.

Nighthawk kidnaps Falcon, and it seems as though he’s won. What’s his endgame, anyway? Well, he managed to take control of Hyperion’s ship and plans to use it to destroy New York if his demands aren’t met. What are his demands? Who knows!

Nighthawk continues to be a generic evil Batman when suddenly Iron Man, Cap, Hawkeye and Widow arrive! Stark explains that Falcon managed to bring back JARVIS in the knick of time, who used Falcon’s notes to revive the team. How? Who knows! I mean, who knows how longs its been since Hawkeye was knocked out, and who knows how Stark got all that stuff off of him? And who knows how they got Cap out of that magic bubble, and who knows how they figured out Widow’s release codes? Oh and Hulk returns, because who knows? Thor also flies back in, but once again is too stupid to just smash the Stone and waves it around like a dumbass. Hulk smashes it for him, which he could have done to begin with, but then Thor would have been unstoppable, and we definitely needed to see all the possible ass-pulls the writers could use instead.

So then Nighthawk jobs. Sure, he has no chance against Thor or Hulk, but he even gets his ass handed to him by Falcon and Widow. Don’t forget he basically manhandled Cap earlier. And now Nighthawk is beaten, and back in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. For some reason this high-caution, super advanced security corporation lets it’s prisoners wear their costumes and not, y’know, strength dampening prison outfits. And apparently there’s no radars on the helicarrier either, because Superman goes and bust’s Batman’s ass out of jail in less than five minutes. Wait, I meant Hyperion and Nighthawk. Totally different characters.

The episode ends with Falcon expecting to be kicked off the team, but instead is welcomed and praised for his genius. Stark even asks Faclon for help to track down the Infinity Stones, and the episode ends.

This episode is incredibly lazily written. The plot is one big gimmick, and rather than actually put tension and logic behind the Avengers’ downfall, they just get hilariously picked off in like, three minutes back-to-back. Falcon is written as this infallible genius, and his motives for creating these strategies; which could have been very personal and shown how insecure Falcon really feels, instead is explained as essentially a school project. This, along with Stark’s desperation for his help really makes Falcon feel like a perfect character. He does nothing wrong, even when he endangers his teammates. No one reprimands him for plotting against them, or not even telling them when he joined the team, “Hey I did this when I was training, maybe look out for these things incase someone tries to use it against you.” Thor is once again written as a bumbling idiot who really seems redundant with Hulk around, and everyone else does basically nothing. This episode, which could have showed the true flaws of the team and their lack of caution due to always succeeding, was instead a thirty-minute dick-stroking for Falcon. And Nighthawk is basically irrelevant as a character. The episode is named after him, yet you could call him anyone else with some level of intelligence and it wouldn’t change anything. His motives are entirely generic, he has absolutely zero depth, and the one thing he’s supposed to do – hold the key to the team’s defeat – is irrelevant as soon as the big team-up is shown.

This is an extremely poor and utterly boring episode. It’s very representative of the entire show itself, really. I give this episode a 1/5; It succeeds in absolutely nothing. The action is bland, the characters are either non-existent or Mary-Sues, the tension is extremely manufactured and underwhelming, and the character depictions aren’t even tolerable. The best thing I have to say about this is that Hulk’s “drugged” scene is kind of funny, but that’s absolutely it.

wow, that was really long. Sorry if this seems really random, I had to get it off my chest. I totally wouldn't watch this shit show if it wasn't for research, though...