The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV Program)

If you came for the action, you probably finished the series satisfied. If you came for the characters, maybe not so much.Season 1, Episode 6: ‘One World, One People’What was the best part of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”? Was it the action? The first episode kicked off with an aerial fight sequence exciting enough to be in a Marvel movie; and throughout the series, even when the plot was less than gripping, the director Kari Skogland and the stunt and special effects teams could pep up almost any episode with some high-flying, hard-punching, shield-flinging thrills.The series finale, “One World, One People,” leans hard on the big action set pieces. More than half of the episode is dedicated to a multistage, multilocation battle between the heroes and the violent anti-nationalist organization the Flag Smashers. Sam — now clad in his new hybrid Captain America/Falcon costume, complete with both shield and wings — performs phenomenal feats of strength and agility as he battles the kickboxing mercenary Batroc, chases a helicopter and saves a truck full of hostages from plunging to the ground.Meanwhile, Bucky, Sharon Carter and John Walker all cross paths out in the street, fighting directly against Karli Morgenthau and the Smashers. Before the melee is done — ending with Batroc and Morgenthau shot dead by Sharon — we see motorcycle stunts, martial arts, and superpowered combat.So, yes … if you tuned into “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” each week to see big-budget super-heroics, then you should have been pretty pleased by this finale. But if you watched this show for the characters? You may have been disappointed.As I mentioned in last week’s recap, the writers left themselves a lot of work to do in their final chapter. This show about Captain America’s legacy ultimately had five or six major characters, each with an arc to complete in a way-too-crowded finale: Sam, Bucky, Walker, Sharon, Morgenthau and Baron Zemo.Bucky’s story is perhaps the cleanest and most heartening. He gets to deliver a touching warning to Morgenthau, letting her know she will be haunted by the people she kills, no matter the reason. After the fighting is done, he completes his list of amends, finally confessing to his neighbor Yori Nakajima (Ken Takemoto) that the Winter Soldier killed his son. In a sweet montage of life in Louisiana at the end of the episode, Bucky seems at peace, playing with Sam’s nephews. It’s nice!But it’s harder to know what to make of the endings for Zemo, Morgenthau and especially Sharon. The Baron’s presence in this episode is almost an afterthought as he remotely engineers the bombing of a surviving cadre of Flag Smashers. As for Morgenthau, even before she is killed she has begun to lose the faith of her people, who question her bloodthirsty win-at-all-costs mentality and her apparent need for martyrdom.Neither Zemo nor Morgenthau has a particularly strong finish, in large part because of the big twist in this episode: revealing that Sharon has been the series’s real villain, pulling the strings as the Power Broker. This doesn’t come out of nowhere. Sharon seemed pretty shady when she first appeared back in Episode 3, and that never really changed — all the way up to this finale’s mid-credits scene, which showed her worming her way back into the U.S. intelligence services with plans to exploit her new access for profit.Still, given that she wasn’t prominently featured throughout “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” it is an odd choice to center on Sharon at the end. It makes the show’s entire thematic and narrative focus feel misdirected.Sebastian Stan in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”Marvel Studios/Disney+The episode’s credited writers, Malcolm Spellman and Josef Sawyer, are on firmer ground with their two Captains: Walker, who gets rebranded at the end of this episode as U.S. Agent (just as that character did in the comics), and Sam, who shakes off his doubts and critics and figures out what kind of Captain America he wants to be.Walker is such a fascinating character: a fiercely honed and doggedly faithful warrior, nurturing resentment toward the superpowered people who get all the headlines. When the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine reappears in this episode, promising to put him to work representing the interests of the powerful in a complicated post-Blip world, that’s a fitting fate for a man so committed to a “might makes right” worldview that he dosed himself with a dangerous, destabilizing serum.In fact, Walker’s lingering problems probably should’ve been recognized more in this finale. But the character works well here (as he did in the comics) as a contrast to Captain America. Again, this episode too quickly resolves some of the series’s thorniest themes about who should and shouldn’t try to represent American ideals. After all his soul-searching, Sam finally claims the Captain America title with a tidy speech, in which he says he is choosing to fight for his home and for the rights of the marginalized.But Sam’s off-the-cuff manifesto is very much in the spirit of Captain America, who from the comic book pages to the multiplex has nearly always been both a champion of the underdog and a force for fairness. Having a new Captain America with no super powers — who can tell the world, “The only power I have is that I believe we can do better” — makes sense.There were a lot of different paths “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” could’ve followed to get this point where Sam finally claims the shield. I think the show meandered too much, shoehorning in too many side characters and too much Marvel mythology. Nevertheless, it was a rush in Episode 1 to see the Falcon zooming through the air. In the end, it is even more satisfying to see the new Captain America doing the same.The all-winners squadI appreciated the callbacks to earlier episodes, as when one of the spectators calls Sam “the Black Falcon” and another says, “I thought Captain America was on the moon.” Some of this show’s best moments involved the nonheroes, trying to live their lives while supernatural phenomena and property-demolishing super fights happened around them. It made me think that a TV version of Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s “superheroes as seen by ordinary folks” comic book series, “Marvels,” would work really well.We got another look this week at that amazing Captain America museum exhibit, which included a section dedicated to Isaiah Bradley’s super-soldier service. This exhibit was first featured in the Captain America movies. It has always impressed me with how much it looks like a real museum installation, complete with video-screens and memorabilia. One of the great pleasures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — including this TV version — is the level of fine detail, indicating that no expense was spared.One last thought on this largely enjoyable if scattershot show: Unlike the Marvel movies, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” ends with so many unresolved and newly generated story lines that I have no idea what Marvel Studios is going to do with all this material — if anything. Will we ever see the U.S. Agent again? What about Sharon? Captain America? Some of the Marvel movies and TV shows in development could use these characters. (“Hawkeye” and “Secret Invasion” on the small screen, for example, or “Black Widow” and “Black Panther II” on the big one). But it seems equally likely that some of these threads will be left dangling forever. After this show and “WandaVision,” I’m not seeing the same sense of direction that distinguished the earlier M.C.U. projects. Here’s hoping the future series and films bring some clarity. More

This week’s episode is so packed with action that an entire prison riot and jailbreak gets dispatched in under five minutes of screen time.‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Power Broker’Too often, TV series described by their creators as being “like a six-hour movie” have the kind of problems that actual six-hour movies might have. The pace can be unnecessarily slow, with characters spending a lot more time talking at length about what they’re going to do — or brooding over what they’ve already done — than taking action.So far, this hasn’t been the case with “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” which continues to rocket through its plot. This week’s “Power Broker,” for example, is so packed with incident that an entire prison riot and jailbreak gets dispatched in under five minutes of screen time. When Bucky gets back from meeting with the locked-up Baron Helmut Zemo, he says to Sam, “Can I walk you through a hypothetical?” and then proceeds to explain — quickly — how he sprung their old nemesis. There’s no time to dwell on the big brawl, because there’s so much more to do.From there, this episode’s credited writer Derek Kolstad (the creator of the “John Wick” franchise and the screenwriter of the current box office hit “Nobody”) and the director Kari Skogland speed through multiple action sequences, mostly taking place in the rogue city-state of Madripoor, where Zemo has contacts who might be able to fill in some background on the Flag Smashers’ supply of the super-soldier formula. The Sam/Bucky/Zemo trio fight their way out of a seedy neighborhood in Madripoor’s “low town,” rendezvous with the fugitive Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) in “high town,” and corner the mad scientist Dr. Wilfred Nagel (Olli Hasskivi) in one of those labyrinthine shipping docks common to action movies.Nearly any one of these big scenes in Madripoor — not to mention the opening jailbreak — could’ve anchored their own episode. So kudos to the show’s creative team for not dawdling, and instead trying to cram as much forward motion as possible into this hour. By the closing credits, our heroes (and Zemo) know all about Nagel’s involvement with creating a more “subtle, optimized” super-soldier serum, and they know more about how Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) has commandeered his doses for her Flag Smashers. There’s even a fun surprise at the end, when Wakanda’s Ayo (Florence Kasumba) confronts Bucky, demanding to see Zemo, who was responsible for the murder of her King T’Chaka. We’re zipping right along here, at the halfway point of the series.That said, there’s such a thing as moving so quickly that everything becomes a blur. While entertaining — and visually impressive, with their elaborate demimonde sets and backdrops — the Madripoor set pieces are sometimes lacking in the kind of careful setup necessary for dramatic tension. We find out a little about where the characters are and what they’re trying to do, but the plans aren’t laid out in enough detail to make it as nerve-racking as it should be when things go awry. Very quickly in Madripoor, the objective becomes more about surviving, as covers get blown and the gangs of anonymous toughs start attacking. It’s all very exciting, but not at the same level as the action in the previous weeks, where the stakes and the opponents were clearer.In the place of conversations about objectives and methods, the characters spend a lot of time this week talking about a few of the show’s major themes: namely, whether patriotism and heroism still matter, in a world where borders are blurry and it’s not easy to tell who’s “right” and who’s “wrong.”Sharon, who has been on the run and embracing the mercenary lifestyle since the events of “Captain America: Civil War,” is especially cynical about the importance of ideals and virtues, grumbling, “You know the whole hero thing is a joke, right?” Meanwhile, in Lithuania, one of Morgenthau’s close colleagues gets troubled when she blows up an occupied building at the end of one of their missions. Even Sam and Bucky have to wonder what they’re doing when they see that they’re fighting alongside Baron freakin’ Zemo — who is sporting his ominous purple mask, no less.Zemo baits Bucky throughout this episode, trying to see if some of the old Winter Soldier is still buried deep in his head — while also suggesting that Bucky was always somewhat “himself,” even when he was a brainwashed assassin. Like the Flag Smashers, Zemo sneers at heroic and nationalistic iconography, arguing that when people focus on symbols like Captain America’s shield, they forget that the men and women who wield them have flaws. Anyone could become the Winter Soldier — or a Flag Smasher — under the right pressure.Whatever this episode’s failings when it comes to the construction of thrilling and emotionally compelling fights and chases, at least Kolstad and Skogland take the time to include some of those thoughtful conversations and pertinent asides — like the part where Bucky and Sharon explain to Sam that most of the great paintings and statues in museums are replicas. Even as the story races ahead, it’s always worth taking a few moments to think about what makes an image meaningful … and whether fakes and replacements can move and inspire people, the same as the originals.The All-Winners SquadKolstad brings a little of that “John Wick”-style criminal mythology to his conception of Madripoor, a place so wild that Sam has to dress up as a stylish, platform shoes-wearing character named “the Smiling Tiger” — and consume a special cocktail containing snake innards — to fit in.The banter between Sam and Bucky keeps this show from becoming too heavy, but at times the joshing can feel a little forced. This week’s conversation about the deeper meaning of Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” soundtrack felt too much like an attempt to recreate “the modern man schools the man out of time” rapport between Sam and Steve. (Then again, given how conflicted Bucky feels about his place in the larger Captain America lore, maybe his unwillingness to play along and gush over Gaye was apt.)Speaking of Captain America — the John Walker version, anyway — he also bops around Germany this week, chasing some of the same leads as our heroes. In keeping with this episode’s themes, he alarms his sidekick Battlestar with his willingness to bend the law to aid their mission. Walker may consider himself the rightful heir to Steve’s legacy, but there are clearly some issues there, likely to be explored in this series’s second half. More