"Long Walk Home" – Swamp Thing S01E08 Review

"Long Walk Home" focuses more on the major characters and has decided to at least sideline some of the "lesser" main stars, if not drop them entirely. So no Madame Xanadu or Liz this week. Heck, even Alec and Maria don't show up.

Not that there's much room for them. "Long Walk Home" focuses primarily on Swamp Thing, Avery, and Abby. And Jason, oddly enough. Kevin Durand as Jason gets more to do acting-wise than most of the main stars. Which is kind of odd. Durand gets a "Special Appearance By" credit, so I guess that means he's special. Or at least his agent thinks so. But it's still strange to see him featured more than Maria Sten or Jeryl Prescott Sales. But if he is, good for him. Durand chews the scenery like no one else's business. Will Patton's Avery gets to smirk and rant and scheme, but Durand's Jason is the one driving things.

Which brings us to what Jason and Avery do this week. Avery has survived last week's shooting and river dive, staggers into the swamp, and has a vision of Lucilia shooting him with a shotgun and then growing a face full of vines. I guess this is the Green trying to kill him, but it seems a roundabout way to do so. The Black was dropping trees on Abby last week and we get another vision later of the Green having its vines drag Avery's father Burritt (Steve Wilcox) into his own fire. Why not just off Avery the same way?

Swamp Thing eventually finds Avery and treats his gunshot wounds with healing moss. He tells Avery he saved him and reveals he's a transformed Alec Holland. He then directs a boat to arrive so it can pick up Avery and take him back to Marais. When Avery gets back, he goes to Jason to get his wounds checked. Avery tells Jason about Alec aka ST, and while Patton has Avery's eyes light up with dollar signs, Durand does a much more subtle job of having Jason's eyes light up with whatever the scientific-breakthrough equivalent of dollar signs are. Test tubes?

Since Jason has already had a meeting with Nathan (Michael Beach), who promised him more resources, Jason takes some hunters out into the swamp and they freeze ST with nitrogen. Which loosely parallels his capture in the comics, in Saga of the Swamp Thing #20, when ST was shot up and then frozen so he could be studied.

Meanwhile, Abby gets to the CDC and, as I predict in last week's review, this week spends most of the episode getting her back to Marais. She has a new boss, Dr. Palomar (Adrienne Barbeau, who also appeared in the 1982 Swamp Thing movie). Palomar is either working for or otherwise in deep with the Conclave. The Conclave kidnaps Harlan (Leonardo Nam) off the streets after Abby tells him about Alec transforming into ST.

Palomar claims Harlan has been transferred to Bangladesh, but it's pretty clear the Conclave "extracted" the information from him Abby passed on. Nathan and his flunky, Flores, then meet Abby at the CDC, and Nathan makes it clear Abby better play along or else. She refuses, walks out, and goes to Marais. Abby goes out to the swamp and finds the patch of ground where ST was flash-frozen.

The only other major plot is Lucilia tells Matt things will work out, but he isn't having any of it and is snappish at her and some poor deputy. I don't know where this is going. There is a scene where Matt checks the healing knife wound in his shoulder, which looks pretty well healed. He's put in transfer papers to a police department outside of Marais, and if he leaves the show I won't be sad to see him go. Granted, everyone is leaving the show in a sense, since Swamp Thing is cancelled after its first season of 10 episodes. But it's the thought that counts.

There's no sign of Xanadu, Liz, Daniel, Phantom Night Fisherman, Maria, or Alec. Maria and Alec at least get name-checked.

In "Long Walk Home", things happen. The Conclave starts acting all... conclavey. Although one wonders why Nathan initially acted so disinterested in Jason's research, if the Conclave had its tentacles into the CDC. Judging from this episode, they have a pretty big organization that easily moves into control of the CDC and starts doing eeevvviiilll big organization stuff. Presumably the ending events of last episode happened the night before Avery washes up in the swamp this episode. So that's some pretty quick reaction time.

The Conclave and Jason now have ST. Avery didn't turn into an avatar of the Black. Yet. Instead, he had the vision/flashbacks to Lucilia shooting him, and then one of watching his father get pulled into his own campfire by the Green after said father hacks away at an old tree. Presumably the latter actually happened. And we hear a lot about how Avery hates the swamp for killing his father and daughter, and he's been poisoning the swamp, and the Green hates him. So... why doesn't it just kill him instead of torment him with visions? That's the problem with having big omniscient elemental forces as bad guys: there's no one around to clarify their motives. Unless they have an avatar like ST. However, ST tells Avery that he's disobeying the Green by saving Avery's life.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Swamp Thing feels small. And it doesn't feel like the creative team can or wants to go big. Maybe it has to because of the aforementioned problems with portraying massive elemental forces. There's nobody like Trigon or Mr. Nobody to put a "face" on the Green and the Black. There could be, and the issues involved don't seem insurmountable. But the creative team so far is uninterested in giving those two forces any faces.

Instead we get Avery and the Conclave, and the Lucilia/Matt/Avery triangle. And whatever unknown "mission" Daniel and Xanadu and Phantom Night Fisherman are on about. Jason will probably end up turning himself into the Floronic Man after exposing himself to the serum he's working on. Avery might or might not turn into an Avatar of the Black. Yes, it'll be a very hammy Avatar of the Black. But it beats the non-entities of Shawna and Munson. Assuming Shawna was an Avatar of the Black. It's still not clear if that was the case, and if so, why the Black wanted Abby dead. Or for that matter Maria dead, since she ended up promoting the Conclave and Jason, who seem to be doing what the Black wants, too.

Or does the Black want Jason developing his own serum? That would turn him into the Floronic Man, which puts him in the Green's camp. Sort of. See what I mean about how these motives are all over the place? Who is the Black backing in all of this? Why does it want Abby dead?

The creative team so far has done best at handling really "small" stuff: character moments. Andy Bean, Crystal Reed, and Derek Mears are probably the main cast's best performers, and when the creative team remembers to have them go through the whole doomed romance elements, the show works best. Ditto for the Arcane/Cable square with Avery, Maria, Lucilia, and Matt. They don't seem to have much to do with the battle between the Green and Black, but it's entertaining to watch them go at it.

Even Jason is most interesting when they just focus on him and his wife, and how his efforts to develop a serum are driven by her Alzheimer's.

But it when it comes to the "big", there isn't much there. You've got a lot of mixed-motive forces: the Green, the Black, and the Conclave. I don't know what any of them are doing. Avery knew about the Conclave and was apparently working with them, and then they show up as a new face in Marias. The Green creates ST as its avatar but he mopes around with Abby. It's not clear if the Black even has an Avatar: ST finished off Munson pretty easily and Shawna seems to have disappeared by the simple expedient of... ST carrying Maria out of a river.

And then we've got the mysterious "mission" Daniel is on, that Xanadu and Phantom Night Fisherman are setting him up for.

And finally, that raises the question of what is the end game of the season? Or rather, what was the end game since it's being cancelled. In the comics, eventually the transformed Alec Holland is revealed as being dead from Day 1, with ST being a plant creature that thinks it's Alec Holland. But if the creative team goes that route in the show... so what? We haven't learned that much about Alec Holland to feel the tragedy of it being revealed he never really existed. And Swamp Thing so far is founded on the concept of Abby and ST having a doomed romance, and Abby trying to find a "cure" for Alec. But if Alec is dead and ST is just this plant elemental that thinks it's Alec... it can't be "cured".

The whole ST-is-a-Transformed-Alec-Holland concept is the basis for the two Swamp Thing movies, and the 90s TV show. And for the current Swamp Thing. If they go the comic route, they undermine the whole Abby/Alec/ST romance as they've established it. But if they go the standard route, it's just Alec as a scientist transformed into a big green galoot. Granted, the creative team won't have to explore the ramifications of that since the show has been cancelled. But they don't seem interested in exploring that.

One gets the impression it's almost a good thing for the creative team the show was cancelled. They were stuck in a creative corner: they couldn't turn Alec into Plant Elemental Creature without undermining TV base concepts of romance and hero-vs-evil-corporations. But if they went with the standard transformed scientist shtick, Swamp Thing doesn't emulate the comics and retreads the ground walked over by its predecessors.

Since the show is cancelled, the creative team can either ignore all of this. Or do some big final "Ooh, look, ST really isn't Alec and Alec died back at the end of episode one!" cliffhanger and not have to make that dramatically appealing for season two. As much as I'd like to see Crystal Reed in Daisy Dukes eating yams that let her have mind sex with Swamp Thing. :)

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?