This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Join me as I analyze the thrilling Red Panda Adventures number four,
The Golden Claw, featuring manly makeup, battling bosses, and baby Browns.
Red Panda Adventures number four, The Golden Claw. It originally aired November 26, 2005.
It was written and directed by Greg Taylor, and this is season one, episode four.
A ruthless protection syndicate is shaking down the citizens and shopkeepers of the city.
But when our heroes move to intervene, they learn there may be more to this racket than meets the eye.
Can even the Red Panda escape the clutches of the Golden Claw?
Man, that's so good. I'm sure that was Taylor, and if it wasn't, then he shouldn't tell anybody that.
And if it was, then he should tell people that. That's so, so good.
Anyway, moving right on to talking about the episode.
I didn't really like the gag at the end about Kit's Butcher being in trouble,
and I just thought it was kind of soft, I guess you could say.
And there was humor sprinkled throughout the episode, and I believe it's been a trend so far
for there to be a gag at the end, and they... I don't know, I guess they're hit and miss is what I'm trying to say,
but I also don't know that we need to finish with a gag every time, and I'm pretty sure there are...
There's one episode in particular that I can think of that does not end with a gag, and I found that very impactful.
Anyway, I don't know. That's kind of a special episode. It's its own beast, you could say.
And I don't know that there's any other that strays from the formula, although I don't remember all of them ending in a gag.
So, you know, ominous, looking towards the future, and maybe Taylor did that because he wanted the first season to end in a gag.
After all, DakotaRingTheatre.com is your source for mystery, comedy, and adventure.
So, maybe that's why? I'm not sure. But I don't... You know, I like humor, but like I said, it was sprinkled throughout,
and I didn't feel like we needed it at the end here, and I felt like it kind of detracted a little bit from the rest of the episode.
Not so much that it's, you know, a killer for me, but just kind of odd, and it made me notice a pattern.
Okay, so I really like how sympathetic the Jacksons were. Not only did we get to hear...
Not only did we get to hear Pop Jackson defending himself and his family and his business and his neighborhood,
and then be brutally beaten, then we got to hear his daughter Dot, who was so sympathetic and scared and worried,
and of course this is fiction, but it carried with it an air of reality, and the...
Just showing the villains to be that bad and that evil and that wicked really makes you root harder
for Red Panda and Flying Squirrel to take care of this protection racket, and it was very effective,
and I think it owes to the performances of... It was close... No, not close. It was...
Andrea Lyons as Dot, and I don't know who as Pop. I've got to figure out whose voice that is.
I mostly know her name from Blackjack Justice, so anyway. Yeah, I thought that was really good.
Oh, and you know, I did mention that the Golden Claw is ruthless, but it's not that the protection racket
specifically tells us how ruthless the Golden Claw is. The fact that she has bodies littered at the bottom of the...
Did she say Lake or River? I can't remember. Anyway, she's, you know, gotten a bunch of mob bosses killed
to take over their enterprises, let's say, and the fact that she had... I can't remember the guy's name,
but he was friends with Mace. He had Mace, or she had Mace killed by his buddy who brought him in
to the operation, and he kind of did it without question. I bet he felt he had no choice, but also,
I bet he wasn't the noblest of fellows, and that's why he was willing to ice his own friend to keep him quiet,
because as he said, now you ain't ever going to talk. And of course, the twist that the Golden Claw
is a woman, not a man, is pretty interesting. That's why I named the episode Woman's Touch.
She talks about the crime syndicates, the crime organization in... Is it Toronto? Do we know it's Toronto?
I think we do. Yeah, because of the terrific twosome of Toronto. Anyway, she mentions it needs a woman's touch
to be focused and organized, and that's pretty interesting. So, like, one, that idea is interesting.
Two, it makes her more interesting, more compelling. And three, I think it's just kind of fun.
Alright, so, I wonder, should there have been more build-up to Golden Claw?
Well, four episodes in, she's been controlling a more focused majority of the underworld for some time.
Months, maybe? I wouldn't think a year. Weeks at the minimum, but I would think months at this point.
Should there have been hints? Now, I thought about the past three episodes, or the first three episodes.
We have... Night Patrol, Rabbit Season, I'm doing these out of order, and Riddle of the Sphinx.
So, we've got a super criminal in Riddle of the Sphinx on his own, doing his own thing after being a petty criminal.
We have Night Patrol, which is just kind of... Well, that leads to the... Well, there's a twist there.
But it leads to another supervillain, and then we have the last episode, which I'm struggling to remember the name.
Oh, Rabbit Season, which is a new supervillain, a superhuman type of supervillain, who we get revealed.
So, I guess they have, as Red Panda mentioned, it's easier to recognize the mad scientist in the bumblebee costume than it is the low-level crime.
So, maybe this was part of the plan for them to be kind of out of the loop, because they've been dealing with these larger threats.
They tried in episode two to deal with petty crime, you know, doing Night Patrol, and it led them to an encounter with a supervillain.
So, I guess that is interesting, but I wonder what it would have looked like had there been hints of Golden Claw throughout.
Anyway, it's kind of interesting to think about.
As far as the gadgets are concerned, we had disguise makeup, which I think counts as a disguise, even though technically it's not an item.
It's, you know, an assemblage of items or whatever, and techniques, but to me it still works.
At least the palette for the makeup would be the gadget.
Then we've got gas grenades that have knockout gas in them that Red Panda and Flying Squirrel use.
And then we have special radio equipment.
So, apparently Red Panda, in his civilian form as Frank, has some sort of radio transmitter on him.
It's going to Kit and the guys of the Flying Squirrel, and she is somehow transmitting that to Chief O'Malley and the police.
I think on the police band, or whatever is what they said.
So, that's interesting.
We don't know what that tech is, but we don't really need to know.
All we know is that they have special radio equipment, and that really suffices.
So, that's cool to record that.
I'm going to move on and talk a little bit more about Red Claw, rather.
No, Golden Claw, sheesh.
Golden Claw seems like a one-and-done villain.
She feels impressive given the scope of her crimes and her coming up in a world of scumbag men.
And the reason I focused on them being scumbag men is because it wasn't that she was breaking the glass ceiling.
It was that she was breaking through guys who probably wouldn't have a problem breaking a lady's jaw because they're thugs and hoodlums.
So, that's interesting that she was able to come up under that, or in that environment.
And I wonder how that happened, and I wonder...
Like, I think there's a cool, interesting backstory for Golden Claw.
Not something that makes her sympathetic, just something that tells us who she is or gives us more of her story.
And I think that can be kind of interesting.
I'm going to move on to talking about lore.
So, Red Pan and Flying Squirrel are immune to their own knockout gas, which is pretty crazy.
And, well, that kind of opens up questions.
So, it gives a perspective on Red Panda that he's so...
...desperate to win in his war against crime, his one-man war against crime,
that he is willing to subject himself to his own knockout gas and make himself eventually immune to the knockout gas,
so that he can use it effectively and have it not be a double-edged sword that can be accidentally used against him and have him knockout when he's using it on enemies.
And Kit is so desperate to join him and make it a one-man, one-woman war on crime,
that she's willing to subject herself to that same treatment and trust this strange man who she doesn't really know
to be around her when she's knocked out until she ain't knocked out anymore, if that's how it works.
And three, that raises a question in my mind.
Is there a possibility that at some point the knockout gas formula will need to be tweaked so that the criminals,
if they're, let's say, a hood or a gangster who keeps running in different people's crews as a henchman,
could he eventually become immune to the knockout gas and then be able to withstand it?
And could that cause a complication in the future? I think that's kind of a fun idea.
Again, unless they tweak the formula, which I could see Red Panda doing because he doesn't want to allow for any chance like that to happen.
He must have read the Art of War.
Okay, Red Panda must have learned to disguise himself somewhere along his journey,
and I think that's pretty cool to think about him working with somebody.
I don't know, who would it have been? A spy? A thief?
I don't know. Was it some noble person or some sort of criminal who knew how to disguise themselves
and how did he get to that point where he could do that too? I just find that interesting.
Let's see. Oh, okay. So this is a, I don't know if this counts as low or not, but this is my show, so I'm doing it.
Kit's eyes are brown, apparently, not green, and I think it's a bold choice, and I think that's kind of cool.
And then there's a little bit more here, which is O'Malley is not decrying Red Panda
and flying squirrel in this golden claw case in the papers.
So that's interesting because maybe he's coming around to them, maybe he's not.
At some point, I wouldn't be surprised, I'll put it that way, if he comes around to them
and maybe even has a rooftop conversation with them. I don't know. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe it won't.
You got to stick around and find out. So, anyway, being that there's a potential for a character arc
and a development between them, I'm just noting that the slow burn might be starting here,
where we're seeing him not attack them in the papers. So I think that's pretty cool.
Yeah, overall, this was a fun episode. It seems like not much happens.
There's a, you know, mastermind type crime boss criminal here, not a supervillain,
and they're just helping out people in the neighborhood, but the cool thing is they're actually helping, you know,
it's better than catching one purse snatcher and beating them up.
You're effectively catching or beating up and hurting, you know, dozens of purse snatchers,
or a whole organization of purse snatchers who coordinates purse snatching so that they can get it more regularly
and set up and become integrated and insinuated into people's lives, where they begin to think it's normal
to have some of your money taken from you by threat of force, like, you know, people are going to beat you up,
or men with guns are going to come after you and threaten to harm you and your family, or even kill you,
or something like that, if you don't give them the money they deserve. It's kind of interesting.
Kind of interesting that people would accept and legitimize a group like that.
I'll say no more. I don't want to offend anybody's Canadian sensibilities, but yeah, overall,
I thought it was a good episode, and I liked it, and I'm looking forward to talking about the next one.
So, for now, this is MJ signing out, and I hope you are well and you be well.
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