Dirk writes...

Musings on High Noon:

Point 1--I hate Coldstone. Quite a bit. He's so silly. I mean yes, Gargoyles is totally littered with silly things (Under Manhatten there is an abandoned industrial complex inhabited by flying electric catmen who are the protectors of the homeless. Silly.), but usually it's a case of silly things done well. The cyborg-undead-Cybil gargoyle is a) over the top. b) takes way too much explanation. and c) really never added much to the story.

Point 2--I hated the Sixth Sense. What a stupid movie. Up until the twist ending it appeared to be crappy storytelling. The pacing and the interaction between Willis and his wife seemed way off. They there is the surprise ending! Surprise! The storytelling was intentionally crappy! We end up with a crappy story with a surprise ending.

Basically, High Noon is the crappy coldstone episode with everybody vaguely off-character and Elisa being real tired.
Macbeth and Demona working together AND them knowing where the clan lives comes off as WOW this is out of character. Annoyingly so.
When they steal coldstone my thought is Huh? If I were going to loot the clock tower, Coldstone is the last thing I'd take.
And then, rather then puzzle over why these magic savy characters would steal a comatose robo-zombie rather than three of the most powerful magical items in the world, I dimiss it as another symptom of the apparent bad writing.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Apparent bad writing is the exact same as bad writing.

Furthermore, the important conflicts in this episode are very flat. Elisa's internal struggle comes off as why are they going out of the way to make her so tired? And after the Flagrant nonsense behavior of D&M, her "crisis of faith" gets lost as a little more bad characterisation.
And Coldstone I don't like. He's uninteresting, and the whole ostridge thing he does here just seems ungargoyle and makes me dislike him more.

Finally, this is a REALLY bad episode to reveal that the Wyrd Sisters aren't as benevolent as they appear. It seems so out of character from the previous movie, it's a slap in the face.

So the rundown is:
Demona: Behaving way out of character because a spell has been cast on her.
Macbeth: Behaving way out of character because a spell has been cast on him.
Elisa: Behaving signifigantly out of character because of sleep deprivation and dramatic necessity.
Othello: Not having the ability to develop his character prior to this episode, he is behaving notably different than how I would want and expect a protagonist gargoyle to behave.
The Weird Sisters: Behaving drastically different than what we had led to belive was their character.

Last negative thing I'm going to say: Putting this episode directly after City of Stone just makes it appear that much worse, and we really should have had some down time with Mac and Demona MIA.

Basically, it was FAR below par for a Gargoyles episode, but actually not all that bad.

Iago & Mac: This is Diverting. You have no Idea.
Big fun!

Morgan is so cool.

The Elisa getting no sleep could have been really neat, but It got lost in this messy episode.

Could you imagine this being your first episode!! To understand this episode you need to understand who and what Coldstone is, You need to have seen City of Stone for Macbeth and Demona's relationship to make any sense as well as to understand the Wyrd Sister's role in this. You need to have seen the mirror to get that Demona becomes human these days. And it would be nice to be familiar with the phoenix gate, eye of odin, and grimorum arcanorum so that the end makes sense. There's a lot going on.

What crawled up Iago's butt, anyways?

I don't know what this means but when watching Gargoyles... When I hear Frakes, I hear Xanatos; When I hear Sirtis, I hear Demona; When I hear Spiner, I hear Puck; But when I hear Dorn, I hear Worf! He's got a great voice, and definitely is the coolest thing about Coldstone, but it's distinct. By the same token, when ever I hear Keith's voice, I immediately hear Goliath. It was amusing hearing Goliath Narrating Jazz.

All and all, 3 out of 10.

I've said my piece.

Isaac Kelley
"All your base are belong to us."