Todd Jensen writes...

Just read your "Awakening Part Two" ramble, and thought I'd give you my comments on it as well.

One thing that I particularly like about that episode, where the gargoyles awaken in New York for the first time, is just how impressive, awe-inspiring, and almost alien the city looks. It's the familiar Manhattan skyscrapers, but we can actually see them through the gargoyles' eyes as something mysterious and strange, so different from the medieval world that they were hatched in. Nothing like seeing the modern world through a 10th century gargoyle's eyes to make us appreciate how amazing things that we usually take for granted can be (as Elisa mentions in Part Three when she's giving Goliath the grand tour).

As for Xanatos - the first time that I saw "Awakening", I was never really certain as to what to make of him. I suspected that he would ultimately turn out to be the villain, but I found myself hoping that he really was on the level until Elisa's revelations to Goliath in Part Five forced me to realize that his seeming benevolence was just an act. (I went through the same thing in "Metamorphosis", where the first time around, I actually believed Xanatos to be telling the truth about not having wanted Derek to get turned into a Mutate - and by then I knew what he was really like! Funny the sort of effect that Mr. X has on you, isn't it?)

One part of the episode that I always find a little amusing, oddly: the bit where Lexington catches the grenade, stares at it for a moment, then tosses it away over his shoulder with explosive results.

I also liked the bits about Lexington asking the female Xanatos Commando member if she was a Viking, and Hudson initially mistaking their helicopter for a dragon. One of the things that really appealed to me about the early episodes of the series was the gargoyles trying to understand the world of the 1990's while still stuck with a 990's world-view.