So starved for grist are the infinite screens of the Entertainment Beast that it must churn up the icons of a distant age, consume them, and disgorge them anew. Most of the time, it doesn't work. They've fucked up something, or misunderstood something; they take an opportunity to make a tin can telephone between generations and jam it down the shitter. Occasionally, very occasionally, you get Voltron: Legendary Defender.
When I talk about missed opportunities, The Powerpuff Girls is the first thing that comes to mind. They've completely fucked this show up. But it doesn't matter as much, because the old show is still rad and makes sense. It's sophisticated in some strange ways, but I can aid my brood in the digestion of these materials in the classic manner of an avian parent - I can't take them back to the original Voltron and and expect them to parse it at all. There are large questions and there are small questions, but at the end of the day the realities of its production - essentially a show made from the equivalent of found footage - mean that, you know, there isn't much of a premium placed on linear time.
This show is purpose built exclusively from the parts most people still remember, which is to say, that there is a kind of malevolent space asshole who hangs around with a lady who double-majored in "engineering" and "witchcraft," a skillset that must really make your resume leap off the page. They are countered by a princess and the five friends she deputizes for universe protection duties in a suite of mystical, multicolored cyber-lions. It's funny-serious, exquisitely so, which isn't a huge surprise given its pedigree but generally when it comes to serving Masters you're going for less than Two Masters. Just sort of as a rule.
Video evidence obtained by secret cameras reveals that I mouth the words "form feet and legs, form arms and, depending on when the episode aired, either 'body' or 'torso'" when shit starts to go down in this show. Nobody actually says it. Well, except me. And maybe you?
(CW)TB out.
