Top Five Badass Scenes: Bucky Barnes (The Avengers)

*Spoilers.*

While Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments posts focus on victories of all stripes, this new periodic feature I’m kicking off will be more specifically geared toward action. I’m looking here at the sort of moments that make me want to shout out loud in the theater. And who better for an inaugural post than Bucky Barnes? Captain America: The Winter Soldier still has some of my favorite MCU fight choreography to this day. This is especially appropriate for the Big Damn Hero Moments/Badass Scenes distinction, since some of these devastatingly badass moments are for a character who’s not yet a hero but a weapon used by others.

 

Attack on the Highway (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

Oh my god, so incredibly cool. The Winter Soldier is just this inexorable force who never stops coming. He lands on the roof of Sam’s car, smashes the window and yanks Sitwell out, is thrown off and uses his metal arm to slow his momentum, flips back onto the roof of car, and rips the steering wheel out! So intense, so brutal. I love those moments in the midst of the attack when he just goes still—patient, unconcerned, waiting for his moment to strike again. Hands down one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite MCU movies.

 

Fighting Steve and Natasha on the Street (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

That’s right: this sequence is so epic, I had to split it into two separate entries. While the highway attack gives us that scary-cool relentless brutality, the street fight shows off the Winter Soldier’s skills up close and personal. I love the clang of the Winter Soldier’s metal arm punching the shield, as well as the move where he uses the shield to flip Steve to the ground, taking it for himself, and I live for all the knife-fighting. Also, it’s a little moment amid the larger fight, but I like that quick beat after Natasha uses a device to temporarily disable the electronics in his arm, just that careful curl of the fingers as the arm comes back online and the decisive way he rotates it in its socket before he dives back into the fight.

 

The Apartment Fight (Captain America: Civil War)

A quasi-tag-team with Steve. When Bucky is framed for a terrorist attack and the police come banging down his door, he displays all kinds of cool-as-hell ingenuity to evade them. He uses everything from a mattress to his metal arm to absorb the bullets, and he roughs up the police with cement blocks and their own battering ram. My favorite moments are when he leaps down the middle of the stairwell, grabbing the railing to slow his momentum—it sounds dumb when you describe it, but it looks so cool in action!

Escape from Custody (Captain America: Civil War)

When Zemo reactivates the Winter Soldier, let’s just say the Avengers are lucky that his orders are evidently to escape, not attack. Because at the very least, the Winter Soldier would’ve left some dead CIA folks in his wake. The Winter Soldier is a machine as he methodically fights his way through agents and Avengers, getting past Sam, Steve, Tony, Sharon, Natasha, T’Challa, and (nearly) Steve a second time, with an assist from a helicopter. I especially love his face-offs with Tony and T’Challa, both of whom are somewhat hampered by not having their suits (T’Challa’s still got his enhanced abilities, but the lack of panther claws trips him up at a crucial moment.) I really like how dispassionate the Winter Soldier is throughout the whole thing. No matter what they throw at him, he only has eyes for his objective and simply isn’t going to stop until he fulfills his orders.

Fight with the Flag Smashers (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Season 1, Episode 5)

One thing about Bucky is that, by and large, the Winter Soldier’s fighting is undeniably cooler than his own. The Winter Soldier is just devastatingly relentless and lethal, and it’s so effing cool. When Bucky has his own agency, there’s always a level to which he’s holding back, precisely because he doesn’t want to kill people. But at his best, he’s still got the moves. It’s a small moment within a larger fight, where Bucky joins both Sam and Walker in going after the Flag Smashers, but I do love this bit. After kicking a dude through a brick wall (fighting other super soldiers allows Bucky to let loose a little more,) he shows off his lightning-fast reflexes in going hand-to-hand against another guy, catches a knife in mid-air, and then throws it with impeccable precision just inches from the guy’s head after laying him out. 

Other Doctor Lives: Sex Education: Season 2, Episode 3 (2020)

Quite a few different threads going on here. It doesn’t all necessarily fit together neatly, but most of the individual parts are compelling to watch. Ncuti Gatwa/Eric has a fun plot going on.

Jean has set up shop at the school, ready to hear what the students want in their new sex ed curriculum. Otis is mortified about this for all the ordinary reasons, and he’s also completely freaked that she’ll find out about his own unlicensed sex therapy practice. It’s Maeve’s birthday but she hates celebrating (because of course she does,) but the day takes an unexpected turn when she steps forward to help Aimee with a difficult situation. Eric is both thrilled and panicked when Rahim asks him out, not least of which because it falls to him to figure out what makes for a fun date in their sleepy little town. Jackson, whose swimming career is on hold due to an injury, is casting about for something else to make of himself, and he finds that he’s drawn to the auditions for the school play.

Otis is really in his feelings about everything this episode, which can get tiresome (and I’d say Ola agrees,) but it’s really interesting to watch Jean at the school. Last week, she was basically a thorn in the headmaster and sex ed teacher’s sides, plaguing them with her quiet competence and disapproving looks, but here, we see how she’s not as effective as she could be. Maybe it’s because she’s used to working with adults, not teens—goodness knows she’s had a difficult time relating to Otis—or maybe it’s because she’s in curriculum-research mode, not therapist mode. Either way, she calls kids’ sexual fears “fascinating” as she takes notes on them and neglects to notice when she’s making a mess of things.

Maeve and Aimee’s plot is really well done. I like how they handle Aimee’s situation, which deals with her being assaulted by a guy masturbating on the bus. In the moment, she’s completely freaked out, but as soon as it’s over, she tries to minimize it, arguing with Maeve that there’s no need to go to the police. I love the moment where a female officer tells Aimee, firmly and quietly, “You’re not wasting anyone’s time.” At the same time, we see how painful and impersonal the experience of reporting an assault like that can be.

“Jock secretly discovers he’s good at acting” isn’t the most original plotline out there, but the show, and Jackson, do well with it. Since his injury, Jackson has been working with Viv, a tutor, on his schoolwork—his grades had been fine for a swimming star, not so much for someone who might no longer be able to get an athletic scholarship—and when he takes an interest in the play, he turns to her for help. The scene between them discussing the audition is great. Is it entirely believable how fast Jackson progresses for someone who starts out “not getting” Shakespeare? Nah, but I love the advice Viv gives him, little things that instantly elevate his performance.

And then we’ve got Eric. Last week, he was utterly perplexed by Rahim, but this time around, Rahim is perfectly unambiguous: he wants a date. And since he’s new in town and doesn’t know what’s cool, Eric can plan it. Ncuti Gatwa nicely plays Eric’s mix of omg-it’s-really-happening excitement and oh-shit-what-do-I-do-now indecision. I love when he shouts at Otis, “I don’t have time for this conversation. I have to go home and try on everything I own!” Oddly, Eric trying to plan a date is a little like Otis’s first official crack at sex therapy back in season 1: he gets in his head too much and tries too hard. He’s capable of a lot more than he thinks if he can just relax.

One thing I like about Eric, and how Ncuti Gatwa plays him, is that this is a kid who’s never really had it together. I’ve since plenty of media depictions of gay boys who present themselves as poised, confident, and knowledgeable in their day-to-day lives, but as soon as they get the prospect of a real live boyfriend, their inexperience bubbles to the surface and they flail. And Eric definitely flails here, but it’s not a major turn for him. He’s always been at least a little bit of a mess, and while he often projects confidence, we’ve seen many times when that’s clearly a veneer and he’s just trying to make it up as he goes. If he sometimes plays the part of the street-smart sex/relationship expert to Otis’s book smarts, it’s mainly because Otis is even more of a mess than he is. With Gatwa’s performance, you never lose sight of how young Eric is, or the way his insecurities creep through no matter how valiantly he tries to mask them.

Doctor Who: Series 21, Episodes 11-14 – “Resurrection of the Daleks” (1984)

*End-of-serial spoilers.*

On different instances, this serial has been packaged as two hour-long episodes instead of four half-hour ones (including on the DVD,) but for whatever reason, I still think of it as a four-part serial.  Maybe because each episode of the “two-parter” has such a clear midpoint cliffhanger in addition to its end-of-episode cliffhanger that it’s obvious it was written and shot to be shown in four parts?  Maybe because, despite the show’s present-day successes, the following season shows that classic Who was not ready for an hour-long format?  At any rate, however you want to number it, this is “Resurrection of the Daleks.”

A time corridor links 1980s London with a space station in the far future, and it pulls the TARDIS off course with the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough inside.  As our heroes move between the two spaces and times, they discover a Dalek fleet with some lab-grown human slaves, who are in search of one particular prisoner being held on the space station:  their creator, Davros.  The stakes are high, and the price is even higher.

Some decent supporting characters here.  This story introduces Commander Lytton, who will later crop up a second time in “Attack of the Cybermen” (he does like working with the big-name villains, doesn’t he?)  The space-station end of the time corridor gives us Dr. Styles and Lt. Mercer, who have an interesting tug-and-pull dynamic as they argue about the best way to combat the Daleks.  Turlough winds up spending a lot of his time with them, while the Doctor is paired with Stien, a troubled escapee with a secret.  Tegan, on the other hand, is in London for most of the serial, and she finds an ally in Professor Laird, who’s smart and brave and rolls with the alien punches surprisingly well.

I’m more mixed on the story itself, which tends to confuse grimness with quality.  Not that dark is bad, but this story is awfully dark for classic Who, and more significantly, it feels like it’s going “edgy” purely for the sake of it.  Some of the minor characters meet pretty horrific ends, and this one of a few Five-era serials with notoriously high death tolls.  And while it’s one thing to get darkness from the Daleks, it’s another to get it from the Doctor himself.  I know that, however much the Doctor may wish for things to get otherwise, he usually winds up having to kill the bad guys instead of just disarming them, capturing them, or getting them to agree to leave.  But in the context of a TV show, there’s a difference between rigging one a device to blow up a bunch of identical monsters and stepping forward to personally kill an individual we know, even a terrible one.  In light of that, it’s always going to be disturbing to see the Doctor holding Davros at gunpoint.  I know it’s a murky situation—one could argue, and people have, that the Doctor has somehow “allowed” the destruction and murder the Daleks have spread across the universe by not definitively destroying them once and for all, and Davros is tied up in that—but although there are no easy choices, it still feels wrong to see the Doctor even preparing to make one like this.

Of course, all of this is there in part to facilitate Tegan’s exit from the show.  Hers is a curious departure.  She doesn’t decide to stay somewhere new for the sake of love or service, and while she’s returning home, it’s more about what she’s leaving than what she’s going back to.  This last adventure is too much for her—not just all the people who are killed, but what the Doctor does and what she does in order to defeat the Daleks—and she can’t do it anymore.  It’s a different exit than most on the show, and I like that she doesn’t actively blame the Doctor for what’s happened, but at the same time, it gets a little too close to the whole “the Doctor’s way of life wrecks those who get close to them” thing that the new series has brought up from time to time, and I never like that thread.  Because yes, running with the Doctor is dangerous and frightening, and it can leave scars, but I like the show best when it reminds us why it’s worth it, every time.  Endings like this tend to feel too defeatist for me.

Top Five Gags: The Frozen North

*Spoilers.*

August 28, 1922—the day The Frozen North was released. This can be a hard one to take the first time you see it. Buster is parodying William S. Hart, an actor whose films I’ve never seen, doing his take on a cruel rake who causes trouble amid a little shameless melodrama (those thick glycerin tears!) As such, it’s very different from Buster’s normal work and features a very different sort of character for him. But even while parodying someone’s else’s shtick, Buster’s personality still comes through in a number of gags.

 

The Stickup

Buster wants to hold up a saloon, but he’s fresh out of ammo. Instead, he finds a poster of a gun-wielding masked outlaw and cuts out the figure, propping it up in the window of the saloon. Then, while his cardboard “partner” keeps his gun trained on everyone, Buster heads inside to collect the loot. It goes well for him… until someone with a little liquid courage tries to knock the gun out of the outlaw’s hand and realizes it’s just a cutout.

 

Fooling the Police

This is a character where casual sexism is part of the point—it’s baked into Hart’s film persona, and so Buster spends the short being pretty callous to women and treating them entirely on his terms. In this scene, his wife has gotten knocked out (he didn’t hit her, by the way, a vase fell on her head,) and the lawman has come a-calling. Thinking quick, Buster turns on the record player and picks up the unconscious wife, dancing her around the room so the officer thinks there’s nothing afoot. And just to hammer the point home, Buster dismissively drops her back on the floor as soon as the lawman leaves.

 

Walking Through the Snow

Buster has spotted another beautiful lady he’s got his eye on (like I said, sexist,) so he puts on a crisp white suit, grabs a stylish cane, and sets out to meet her. However, as he trudges through the deep snow, he doesn’t quite cut the suave figure he was hoping for here. Great bit of physical comedy.

 

Snowshoeing

More “walking around in the snow”-based humor. Buster doesn’t have snowshoes, but he does have two guitars. This is a terrific sight gag, and the way Buster clomps through the snow with his feet shoved into guitars is simply *chef’s kiss*.

 

Ice Fishing

While ice fishing, Buster accidentally hooks the line of the guy fishing the hole behind him. This is superbly executed, their poles alternately rising and lowering as each man wrestles with the “big catch” he thinks he has on the line. When Buster proves the victor, giving his line a final heave, the other man is yanked into his hole in the ice, and Buster has to fish him out. Impeccable timing, and fantastic to watch.