This is MJ. I'm an author. I'm an artist. I'm an analyzer.
You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com. Welcome to Red Panda Report 2, the special, the second special.
Special number two, I guess is what I mean to say. In this episode of
The Shadow that I'll be covering, which is Shadow episode 3, I believe, called the Temple Bells of
Nibon, The Shadow
battles a
drug pushing, kidnapping,
yeah,
lady from India, the Indian subcontinent, I believe is the correct way to say it.
It turns out that this young woman was
a, the niece of a yogi who, I wonder if that means she was a slave.
Well, anyway, she was the niece of a yogi who
trained in part, or who was part of the training of Lamont Cranston, which led him to become the Shadow.
So I'm gonna start off with something with things that were less than thrilling. I think the episode
works, and the episode has a float to it, but somewhere in the middle
I've listened to this two or three times recently, and somewhere in the middle
it just kind of loses the plot for me, and I kind of slip for being able to concentrate on it.
There's no immediate threat. I mean, the Shadow is in threat of
being exposed, but
it's very unclear and
the stakes feel low, even though his life is in peril, perhaps because I know the Shadow's life is always in peril, and
the way his life is in peril this time is that if he
lets himself
stay
within a certain area at a certain time and place, or
yeah, if he stays in a certain place for a certain amount of time,
his ability to become the Shadow or to be invisible will be undone for a few
moments or for some undetermined amount of time,
during which he can be shot and killed.
The Shadow could be shot and killed at any time within a certain room,
or you know, at any time within a certain time or place. For example, if you had a circle of
guys with machine guns,
let's say eight of them, and four of them were aiming, two were aiming high, two were aiming low,
two were aiming in the middle, and two were
aiming up and down, let's say, and
you knew the Shadow was going to be in that room with those eight guys,
the Shadow on the radio drama, at least, would easily be killed, I think, by those guys all firing simultaneously and
covering as much of the room as they could so that he
would be stricken by bullets and
die by bleeding to death.
Now,
that's a ridiculous scenario, but it would also be kind of exciting for the Shadow to go through that scenario and
somehow escape from it. The drama of the tension in this one was a lady in a room with a snake and a guy with a gun
on a boat, I guess, they're in a room on a boat,
is
going to undo his powers, and if the intention was for his powers to be undone forever,
and for him to no longer to become, be able to become the Shadow becoming invisible,
that would make sense, and if they had explained that to me, I would have
appreciated the danger he was in more.
However,
the amount of
pushback or defiance he gave to this plan
was very little. He
swapped out a snake in a basket and
hoped, or guessed,
that the lady would in time Sadi Beladur, Sadi Beladur,
which I don't know if that's supposed to be like Bel-adur, like beautiful snake,
and I don't know if that's supposed to be a real name, or if it's supposed to just be something exotic sounding, like maybe Sadi is an actual
not Punjabi, like Hindu name, and
the Bel-adur, or Belada, because that's what they say, Sadi Belada.
Yeah, I can't quite tell if that's a stage name, or what that is, but anyway, it just,
she doesn't seem like she's enough of a threat, and then the way that he handles her makes it feel,
makes it seem like he doesn't feel she's much of a threat either, in which case, why am I, listening to this,
why am I interested and excited? I don't know.
The reason I selected this episode was because I thought it had an interesting premise, that there was somebody from the shadows past, from Lamont's past, who could
undo his shadow ability, but upon further listening,
it's not so great.
Wow, so I mean, I'm even falling asleep talking about it. That's not good. So,
I don't know, it's interesting, but I never said the shadow was perfect. I just said it was interesting and cool,
so there has to be lows, and I think this is one of them.
So,
yeah, that's my main gripe with the episode.
For some of the positive stuff,
we get to see resourcefulness of Lamont Granson slash the shadow. He's going out with Margot Lane to some
event, and she's gonna be, oh, he's taking her dancing, or,
taking her to go see this Indian dancer, who he already believes is part of this
drug
crisis that is hitting New York, or the city, whatever, and
Margot is involved with having that problem addressed, and she's part of some social
actress club, or I don't know what they're doing, petitioning for laws, or something, anyway,
but she's involved in the case, and his network and his information is so extensive and so
robust that he already knows
what she is working on.
What she's concerned about. He's concerned about it, and he's already traced down the
likely
attack vector to handle this issue, which is
going to Saudi Balladur because she's part of it, so
that's interesting. I like that.
Something in the lore to talk about is the fact that
Lamont Granson, once again, tells Margot that the
yogi's practice and ability that he learned from is a type of science, and that
it isn't something wholly mystical, but then again, you know, or the temple bell is mystical as well.
I'm not sure. I don't know if there's supposed to be some sort of
scam or sham or fake, but he
seemed to be afraid of them, and he seemed to treat them as a legitimate threat,
but then again, he was able to reproduce them in his office with, or in his study or
library with Margot, so I just don't understand
what that was about, but I'm supposed to be just talking about the lore.
Yeah, but the lore is a little vague and quite indetermined, which I believe allows for maximum flexibility
as a creative, as a writer, so I appreciate why you'd want to do that, but
it is a little strange that we didn't get much more.
I guess a more concrete piece of lore would be that Lamont went around to different places showing his face and
I suppose revealing his identity to people, and that means there's probably a dozen or
or less people on earth who were involved with the lore, and
a dozen or or less people on earth who were involved with Lamont in his training,
who could pinpoint or who could put the finger on him for being the Shadow because they recognize that he
uses some of their techniques or some of the things that they taught him.
And I just, I do find that to be interesting.
Just on a nerdy level, nothing really exciting about it
unto itself, but
it's just kind of a fun factoid, a fun, did you know kind of thing.
So yeah, like I said, I didn't think this was the greatest episode.
There were some interesting concepts in it, but overall some of it fell flat for me or just wasn't
wasn't quite
as exciting as it could have been, and I think that's too bad, but tune in for the next episode where I'll be talking about another episode
of the Shadow on
the third Red Panda Report special before we get into the Red Panda Adventures
proper. So anyway, until next time folks,
goodbye and good night.
I hope you enjoyed that. Go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have.
There you can find all of my analysis, art, and fiction.
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