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Blaise writes...

METAMORPHOSIS

Ah, one of my favs. Pity I missed it the first time it aired.
Throughout the second season, the show was on while I was still in school, so I had to tape it all the time. Three times the VCR, for one reason or another, failed to tape. Each time, the eps that aired were new ones--METAMORPHOSIS, THE CAGE, and KINGDOM (are you sensing a pattern here?). What made this twist of fate REALLY cruel is that these are some of my favorite eps. I love cats for one thing, so I was instantly attracted to the Mutates. This episode was also the one that cemented Brooklyn as my favorite character, so there's another. And, in two of the missed eps, Tim Curry, one of my (again) favorite actors, is featured.
Missing this ep didn't put me too far out of the loop. The only reference to it I picked up was Elisa's remark in EYE OF THE BEHOLDER that the Werefox was "human once, just like [her] brother." For some reason I didn't catch the reference to "mutated victims" and in OUTFOXED, after an initial "Huh?", I forgot about Renard's mention of some "Anton Sevarius" (keeping the strength of THAT revelation safe until the second time around). But, I digress. On with the ep itself.

Brooklyn's attraction to Maggie (whom I instantly recognized and grew interested in--what can I say, I have an affinity for cat-women) intrigued me. I always wondered if the fact that she wasn't a true gargoyle even mattered to him. Did I root for him and Maggie to get together? Not neccesarily. Did I *expect* it? Actually, yes. The attitude Brooklyn displays here is usually as deep as most animated shows go in depicting "love." After some intiial shock, my admiration for the series increased when Maggie wound up with Talon and Brooklyn's attraction was shown as just a crush. Regardless, his "love at first sight" mentality was something in Brooklyn I found appealing (a fellow hopeless romantic, perhaps). His experiences here and his final acceptance of the facts grabbed my notice and from this ep on, I always tended to favor him (though I made an effort not to do so at the expense of the other characters).
Looking at the ep, knowing what I know about the characters now, Brodway's ability to "read people" versus Brooklyn's self-delusion is very nicely juxtaposed, and they have some good exchanges. When Brooklyn tells Broadway "You don't know anything about her" there is much irony--Broadway knows more about her than Brooklyn does.

For what it's worth, I believed Xanatos (probably helped because I had seen EYE OF THE BEHOLDER before I got to see this). He seemed sincere enough to me, and mutation seemed ultra-slimy even for him. Boy was I surprised at the end. I was even more surprised by the end than by Sevarius' "death"--you guys had let people die in the series before, why not now? My surprise was tripled when I saw that Sevarius looked much younger and had a less thick accent than how he'd been played. I thought Sevarius the "mad scientist" was the real thing--he was voiced by Tim Curry who is usually thrown into the roles of over-the-top scientists and (in his own words) "east-European villains" so it was a pleasure to see a sort of send-up of type-casting in this. (And who couldn't recognize Sevarius? Even without the accent, he still had Tim Curry's inimitable pipes.)
The ending: Morbidly enough, this ending is one of my favorites because the good guys actually lost this round. Brooklyn's brooding and Elisa's crying really drove this point home. I am, strangly enough, reminded of a joke T-shirt: "Sometimes, the dragon wins."
And FINALLY! I now know who did the voice of the as-yet-unnamed Fang in this ep. I knew it wasn't James Belushi (it didn't have quite the same "growling" quality) but I couldn't for the life of me figure it out, something I can normally do. Truth be told, I would NEVER have guessed it was Jonathan Frakes (though now it seems so obvious to me). Still, the voices are similar enough, and even if they weren't, the Mutates' voices tended to change with their appearance (Rocky Caroll's (sp?) voice for Derek is different than his voice for Talon, and Kath Souci's voice for Maggie was slightly different in KINGDOM than for her first two appearances). But, nice trivia to know.
I hadn't really noticed how much the theme of self-deception was a factor in this, but it makes sense.
And yes, the animation is sub-par, but I just like the story so much I can live with it (and if I can live with the animation in KINGDOM, I think I can live with anything).
POINTLESS OBSERVATION> Not only does Hudson get left at the Clock Tower, but in this ep (as well as TEMPTATION) he doesn't get a single line). In fact his first words to Maggie are "Who's there?" in THE CAGE.

I'm sure there was more I wanted to say, but I think this message is thick enough already.

Greg responds...

Very good observations.

We intentionally gave Derek & Talon and Maggie Reed & Maggie the Cat different edges to their voices. We wanted the Mutates (with the obvious exception of Claw) to sound a bit more growly than their previous human counterparts.

But Maggie shouldn't have sounded any different between the Cage and Kingdom. Are you sure you're not just responding to attitude, not voice. Clearly, Maggie doesn't really start to come into her own until Kingdom.

Response recorded on August 02, 2000