Small Quick Ordinary Look at The Umbrella Academy

do you like satisfying instances of reincorporation do you like people gettin murdered to the tune of upbeat music have you ever watched x-men and was like yeah that was great but what if there was more crying and daddy issues and by daddy issues I mean an exploration of parental neglect and how it affects your ability to form meaningful relationships communicate clearly with others and regulate your own emotions as an adult if any of that sounded interesting then you should watch the Umbrella Academy cuz you'll probably like it a whole lot just like me if this is the first you've heard of the show basically on the first of October 1989 forty-three babies were born to women who weren't pregnant at the beginning of the day a rich douche by the name of Sir Reginald Hargreaves wants to collect them all and study them and then use them to fight crime since most of them have magic powers he managed to get seven of them and raised them horribly first tip-off should have been that you give them numbers instead of names they do have normal names now those names were given to them by their robot mommy Hargreaves built for them the show begins when Hargreaves dies and all of his children returned to their childhood home for the funeral they're not really straight up mourning though and some of them only seem to be there to just insult what cremains of him the show was actually based off of a comic book written by Gerard Way he wanted to make comic books before My Chemical Romance blew up I really like all the characters in the show both the mains and the sides I think the actors and actresses nailed this balance between coming off like they all grew up together and know each other but the awkwardness of having spent most of their adult lives avoiding each other always comes leaking through going in order of their number you got super strong Luther he's the one who was loyal to his crap dad until the day he died and then the next day and the next day and basically the more time you spend with him the more accurate these memes become you got mr. goddamn my family hey wait what did you just [ __ ] say about my family he also goes by Diego he can throw knives with inhumanly good accuracy and he's not gonna hold his breath indefinitely waiting for his dad to change he's a strong independent vigilante and he doesn't need no daddy Alison is the world's most warranted case of impostor syndrome she has the ability to brainwash people with her words this takes the format I heard a rumor blank as in I heard Rumour I nailed this audition or more frightening Lee I heard a rumor you love me Alison's marriage has recently gotten nuked out of existence then we have Klaus as we all know the problem with dead people is that they just don't have any Wi-Fi Klaus fixes that unfortunately dead people don't have a good connection right now because classes powers don't work when he's high and that's that's all the time my favorite character number five a teenage boy playing an old man playing a teenage boy he can move through space well and time poorly his dad warned him not to time-travel but he did it anyway he ended up getting trapped many years in the future where something mysterious that has to do with the plot had destroyed humanity when the story begins he manages to time-travel back to his family he's young again because of time shenanigans and he wants to stop the apocalypse but nobody's taking him very seriously then we got Ben he's a mystery so I don't know I'm not gonna talk about him I'm gonna talk about him in the full analysis finally lucky number seven unlucky Vanya her thing is that she's normal she doesn't have powers so she was excluded from the Umbrella Academy her father quite literally told her there was nothing special about her at the beginning of the story Vanya holds herself with this kind of exhausted dignity I think this was a really good use of Ellen Page since Ellen is 5-1 the camera regularly uses her size to make her look even more dominated by her siblings at first she can come off this kind of a blank audience surrogate but she busts out of that and she has some really great big acting moments at the end of the season getting on to the sides hazel and Tasha are also very endearing as underpaid underappreciated assassins who kind of function as a buddy-cop duo only they're evil and trying to make sure the world ends and then there is Pogo he's a chimpanzee Reginald experimented on and gave human intelligence he looks really good and he has a very soothing consoling presence I really like the way this show drip feeds information it makes me watching the show more fun because you realize all the small details you missed the first time around scenes get recontextualized when you know all of the things that X character knows and then you can properly appreciate little nuances to the performance or background elements if you keep an ear out you'll even notice small sound effects giving away major pot spoilers that you might have we missed the first time around because they just didn't mean anything to you yet the way the characters bounce off of each other just feels really organic and cute especially the sibling stuff although everyone's always running around they try to make sure almost everyone gets their time in with everyone else but I still wish there were more group discussions those were kind of my favorite so who might not like this show if you lose your marbles when there are a lot of mysteries that need solvent and explaining but nobody's in a big rush to solve or explain it characters don't feel like explaining some of the bigger mysteries of the show just because they already know what the answers are or they just don't care most of the characters are passive for the first half of the story and are not trying to further the cloth they're doing things that will affect the plot just not on purpose most of the siblings blow off five when he tells them that the world is ending if you're the type of person that can't carry on when you realize the show has one or two or a few plot holes we'll go over all that later in detail since as a youtuber 30% of my caloric intake has to come from sesang over small details or I lose all sensation in my extremities if anything I said is sending you good vibrations I think you should just go for it I genuinely loved it it's derivative of a lot of things but I think it harmonizes all of its little pieces into something that feels very unique okay so I'm gonna do the big ol analysis where I slobber all over the show and I'm gonna spill all the spoiler beans so skedaddle unless you're into that sort of thing [Music] there's always choice a big part of umbrella Academy is examining the effect reginal hard Greaves abuse and emotional neglect had on his children these emotional traumas metastasized differently in each of them Luther has the most different reaction when contrasting him to his siblings Reginald expected Luther to be the leader of the Umbrella Academy but instead Luther became the world's most obedient follower in his quest to be recognized by his father the way he defends his father makes his siblings uncomfortable and frustrated he doesn't even want to admit that he relates to their struggles so he can barely leave them something interesting to note is that occasionally it does seem like Luther got closer to his father than the rest of the managed to and the koi yard at sundown say a few words just a dad's favorite spot dad had a favorite spot yeah you know under the oak tree pieces sit out there all the time none of you ever do that but at what cost well his body once Luther was the only remaining member of the Umbrella Academy he was still sent on dangerous missions alone you don't need to call me by my number anymore why not because I'm the only one left after being critically injured his father managed to save him by injecting him with a serum that made him kind of a man ape hybrid there's an interesting parallel between him and Pogo it actually makes me quite uncomfortable they're both diehard loyal to Reginald Pogo is loyal because he couldn't have the life he has if Reginald hadn't experimented on him the road Luthor went down turned him into Hargreaves experiment twice over making a monkey out of him as the expression goes well monkeys and apes aren't the same thing but you know what I mean Luther cannot even admit at first that he's unhappy about what's happened to him and refers to it only as his father saving his life something I found interesting is Luther describes the moon as lonely cold and quiet but he notes that every once in a while the Sun would come rolling over the horizon and if the light hit just right everything would look like white glass I see this as kind of a metaphor for Luther's life in general his world is cold and in solitude and just occasionally it's wonderful in his world too close and it all makes sense in that little taste of something good is enough to keep him going an absurdly long amount of time it's what makes him think he's meant to be on the moon doing research at his father's request it's what makes him think that his childhood was okay I'm picturing his dad thanking him in a stern way or him learning something about his father that the other kids don't know little things like that that would make him feel special even though they're not even close to the amount of praise that he really deserves for his loyalty and hard work you can contrast the cool glow of the moon with the warm golden glow of the scene where Luther finally gets to have his dance with Allison they finally get to have the dance they wanted to have his kids in the song that they danced to is dancing in the moonlight if that wasn't on the nose enough Luther's Ark doesn't seem totally done but I think this is a good foundation for a story about building self love and self confidence I think Luther and bodies the emotions of people who have or have had misplaced loyalty in an abusive parent I'd like to share this quote because it is about them no matter how hard we try to ingratiate ourselves to our parents their feelings towards us won't change when we fail to win their approval we might feel hurt or even angry but many of us also believe that we haven't tried hard enough to please them the truth is love is not a commodity to be bought and sold our parents will love us if they are able to and for no other reason still it's easier to keep blaming ourselves because it is preferable to facing the unthinkable the fact that our parents don't love us this is an extremely painful realization to come to terms with most people would rather do anything than accept this is the truth not only is it painful it's humiliating please answer to me for what he did you're sending me up there I sacrificed I never had friends and for what nothing on a different note there are some details to the execution of Luther's story that are kind of licking my birthday cake mainly the reveal of Luther's body I think this subplot is not capitalized on well because the information is given to us in the wrong order and the pivotal reveal scene makes some big mistakes that do damage to his story when you see Luther you'll quickly get the impression that he's trying to hide his body because of the turtleneck gloves and big overcoat that he wears all the time if you look closely you'll even notice some discoloration on his fingers but here is what's visually obvious about Luther he's a big boy he's a quarterback wearing a waist trainer wearing another quarterback as a coat but nobody's reacting to Luther as if he looks weird so I think most people will assume that Luther is just big because of his powers sure he looked normal as a kid but maybe he continued to grow after adulthood maybe because of his powers he has the capacity to get way more shredded than a normal human overall you wouldn't think that there's a real mystery or that anything's amiss in Episode one Diego and class of the two siblings whose initial reaction we get to see and I don't think either conveys how actually confusing Luther's body would be if you grew up with him these few seconds where Diego turns his head and seems to be analyzing Luther makes his reaction a bit closer to what you would expect but this gets under mine later by Klaus is reaction Klaus just seems impressed by how swole he is this needs just a teaspoon more nervousness and then it would be fine we needed to be alerted that Luther has a problem that has nothing to do with his powers and we probably need to know that his siblings don't know about it I think that would make seeing their reaction more entertaining so the first clue we get that something weird is going on with Luther is when he gets injured and he covers his arm quickly and runs away then we see him alone in his room and what you're supposed to see here is that his arm is oddly hairy so I've watched the scene on three different monitors and I would have done more but I don't want to knock on my neighbor's door and ask them to watch Netflix with me because I'm shy but I've come to the conclusion that the darkness is not helping the scene I should not be more uncomfortable with Luther's body when watching a scene of him standing in a hallway talking to Klaus than the first scene it's revealed but I am because mostly what I'm getting here is that he's big and fluffy in this scene I can see all of the unpleasant details the discoloration of his skin and the distortion of his muscles this might sound super silly but the main thing that makes me mad about the scene is this dinosaur footstep noise that plays as he walks away [Music] what these noises aren't normally used when Luther is walking around this gives the impression that Luther is suddenly bigger the first time watching the scene I thought the reveal was that Luther gets bigger every time he bleeds maybe in proportion to how much he's bleeding but then I was like well he doesn't look bigger and that's because he's not that sound effect shouldn't be there I think they wanted to use that sound to give you a sense of his size and weight but like buddy I know he's big he's been big the whole time and then your brain explodes because you realize Alison and Diego didn't know this and they're surprised and then the next episode they explain it but it's just like that's a hell of a mystery no one thought was a mystery that's not what that word means or are you so high you think his whole body's a fursuit he leaves behind it was a bad first and a worse father the world's better off without him Diego my name is number two Diego's show powers are a little hard to nail down he seems to have inhumanly accurate skills with throwing knives I'm not exactly sure if that extends to his reflexes in general though despite the fact that Diego hates Reginald for all of his abuse and emotional neglect Diego is the one who essentially functions the way Reginald dreamed all of his children would he is a vigilante who fights crime and protects people and that's basically his whole life as he lives in the back room of a gym and pays rent there by doing custodial work he's a rebel who has no real way to express his rebellion because he actually does seem to enjoy fighting and saving people and it's kind of implied that Diego thinks these things make him special detective patch his ex girlfriend thinks that Diego needs to be a vigilante to feel like what he and his siblings went through in the Umbrella Academy mattered so as bitter as it is that he's doing what his dad wanted him to do it does validate his suffering because it was all of that training that led him to having these special skills therefore Diego's only real way to express his disdain is to do kind of petty things like steal his father's monocle and break it be a moody dingus to the people in his life or fight Luther who is the ultimate representation of being subservient to Reginald I find it interesting that Diego seems to be the person the most actively peeved off about his sister Vanya writing a tell-all book about their family all of them were her embarrassed by Vanya writing the autobiography but it's Diego who keeps antagonizing her you're seriously gonna do this today you may expect the ego to read Vaughn use book and feel solidarity with her but instead he doesn't want her to publicly spill the family story he wants to keep it contained and under wraps this is a big departure from the comic where Diego secretly loves her here they don't get along but are united by the sheer amount of emotions they feel about Reginald however at the beginning of the story Diego's emotions about it run hot where've Anya's run cold and I get the sense the Diego might think that Vanya has no right to complain because she didn't have to fight like the rest of her siblings Vanya is perspective on this is that she felt excluded and so she felt ignored and worthless as a person you got a no potato player sequel yet he was my father too a totally underrated thing I love about this show is their mother grace she's a robot Reginald heart grieves bill and she feels like a breath of fresh air because most of the time when I see a plot like this it comes down firmly on the side that a eyes are human in any meaningful sense of the term umbrella academy plays this a little differently and so it gives me delicious sad emotions grace is in so many ways so much more of a parent than Reginald ever was but she's programmed to be that way sometimes she responds to questions like my Google home and so she comes off as very inhuman but she has these little moments that are so sweet where she seems so real that it just breaks my heart Diego is the most attached to her and he has these moments where he grows frustrated with her and doubts her humanity he made the world a better place do you hear me stop trying to defend him he treated you worse than anyone you work for him for 30 years he didn't even give you a room to sleep in contrast this with his frustration with Luther he has very real love and emotions for this machine that might not be sentient and is just programmed to say what he wants to hear after a fight we're ChaCha and hazel attacked the house Diego goes looking for grace when he finds her he realizes that she has not noticed all of the fighting and sewing a needle into her skin this is what makes Diego decide to put his robot mama down hoga later repairs grace and when Diego sees her again he finds that she's changed I wonder what the weather is like today would be nice to go to the park I never let you off the grounds your father isn't here anymore you can do whatever you want she doesn't come off as fully sentient now but she has an interest in going for walks in the park and she doesn't have to keep secrets if she doesn't want to she's evolved beyond what Reginald intended her to be and now her world has expanded Diego values independence and freedom so he seems satisfied that grace is at least no longer Reginald slave I wish Diego's relationship with detective patch was different it stands out to me as the weakest subplot of the season the reason is because there's a huge disconnect between living detective patch and post-mortem detective patch patch in Diego's story is that there's two people they used to date they're kind of similar but they have a huge ideological divide because one person is a stern cop and the other is a rule breaking vigilante they're at a crossroads their relationship can't function like this something has to change suddenly patch bends a little she calls Diego for backup but when Diego arrives in the scene he finds patch dead the window just slams closed they couldn't establish proper emotional intimacy and now they're out of time the post mortem patch story is that there's a vigilante who wants to kill the killers of the woman he loves but he's torn because he realizes that she was someone who believed people could change when given the opportunity to avenge her he spares the killer he realizes that patch believed in people that she saw the good in everyone and that she would not want this patch would you like about her she believed in people she always saw the good inside I'm sure she'll be proud to know that you're killing hazel and josh has a way to honor her memory the problem is patch never expresses these opinions not about Diego and much less about anyone else poor patch for the sake of the aygos development they ignore the actual personality they gave her there were opportunities to give patch some dialog to show this merciful side of her but they were never taken it makes me wonder if there was some pivotal scene that they cut out and someone who worked on the show is watching the season back like [ __ ] guys we cut that scene why she expresses value-system if that's not what happened the writers didn't take the opportunity in the scenes they did have to do this for example the moment where Diego says patch lives to put scum away patch could show offense at her suspects being referred to as scum but her monologue takes a different direction she lectures Diego about how this behind-the-scenes paperwork stuff is how actual convictions actually happened and honestly they'd have to rewrite most of her dialogue to fix this because patch is actual value system is irrelevant in this situation patch just wants Diego to stop fiddling with her crime scenes so she can use all the existing evidence for her case and put the culprits behind bars but cha-cha is a time-traveling assassin who will never see jail time because the world is gonna end in a few days okay so script doctor glasses on so let's obey the amount of time they give this situation you need patch dead by the end of episode four and yet four scenes with patch and Diego while patch is alive but you need her death to be important to Diego's character development first thing they should have been an already established couple during the show even if they have an unstable flaky relationship I think too much of their dialogue is kind of wasted on this back and forth of Diego being like you're attracted to me and patch rolling her eyes being like I'm not attracted to you the absurdity coming from the guy dressed in spandex it's not spandex it's leather he used to like they don't need to be broken up to have this exact same cop vigilante dynamic Diego's pinkie prints are still gonna end up all over that crime scene so him getting in trouble is not gonna change another thing that's gotta go is patch has to like Diego this is super awkward but I don't think patch loves him I can barely find evidence she like a--like sim in there were seen together she tases Diego [Applause] when Diego makes dirty jokes to flirt with her she doesn't laugh she doesn't even crack a smile that you think you it's the life anymore so use his crappy childhood against him in an argument he looks spiritually exhausted with him like she knows she'll have to arrest him someday the only reason I know she likes him more than a friend deep down is because it's just a fictional cliche and she let him drink out of her travel mug this is seriously the most intimate thing we see them do even when Diego tells her that his mother died they don't give her good dialog it's implied he opened up to her but to what extent it's so co-worker E she doesn't even go for a hug just like give him a goddamn hug Jesus Christ he put down his robot mommy this show has not a clue it seriously thinks it defrosted the ice queen yep David Gray's this year's love is playing but the lyrics are describing a relationship we never so much as saw the shadow of Diego is caressing the dead body of someone he was nothing but a migraine two fathers busy he's always ellison channels her issues with her father into a drive for fame she's found another avenue to get validation and attention although it seems occasionally annoying she doesn't seem that bothered by it it's kind of working as a band-aid to her problems and it's made her very rich but she has testing cheats enabled Trude her way to the top and it can feel a little hollow to her she has done incredibly awful things with her powers in the past mainly brainwashing someone into loving her I heard a rumor that you left me probably not her husband since he has the ability to leave I hope it's not Luther it's her adult voice saying it so that seems unlikely or maybe she could have been saying it to her daughter to make sure she really loves her mom forever and I don't know the main thing she's concerned about is the disintegration of her marriage and losing custody of her daughter Allison's ex-husband Patrick divorced her for using her powers to take away their daughters free will whenever she was being disobedient the example we sees her using her powers to make Claire sleep notice notice anything [Music] Patrick I can explain and we know of some off-screen things like her brainwashing her to stop crying or getting her to eat broccoli which honestly would probably be more disturbing to watch on screen despite the extremely awful things she's done with her powers Alison doesn't come off as a sinister person to me she doesn't even really come off as some vain holier-than-thou celebrity she just kind of seems like a normal person with above-average hair and makeup game all the ways that she's manipulative are usually linked back to her earnest desire to protect we see this in her self lot with Vanya and her boyfriend Harold even though she does not once use her powers she knows Harold's shady before it's obvious to the audience it's subtle but you can see in her personality where the impulse to abuse her powers comes from she thinks she's perfectly calculated what's a justified and unjustified invasion of someone's privacy and autonomy she just knows better she's more experienced and she's right often enough to have confidence in her gut reactions so the thing about Allison is she's not using her powers because she unofficially swore to stop I don't do that anymore what happened the same thing that always happens I made a wish and it came true and I couldn't take it back but really she's not using her powers because her powers would just immediately break the plot no you don't want her to spill the beans about why they're after five your brother I'm broken out a spreadsheet to figure out which of the two siblings interact the least but if I had to guess I would say it's either Allison and five for Allison and Klaus Allison and Klaus doesn't surprise me because Allison can literally solve one of Klaus is major dilemmas in one sentence I heard a rumor you don't drink or do drugs anymore or if Klaus doesn't want to permanently part with his coping mechanism she could just do a I heard a rumor you won't drink or do drugs for the rest of the week if she can make someone who's not sleepy fall asleep because remember Clare doesn't just lay down and stop complaining she falls asleep immediately that probably means that she could hypnotize Klaus into thinking he doesn't feel dope sick so the writers were like don't let them talk o walk past your class walk past the solution new problems don't even ask if you asked we have to make Alison say no and that would make her look unsympathetic and if she says yes that prematurely ends your arks are just just like as you go to tie you up well you know Alison does use your powers eventually yeah we're gonna use Vanya section to go over that scene in detail but when Alison's throat gets injured and she can no longer speak the entire trajectory of where her character was going shifts and I have mixed feelings about it ammonia in the scene where Alison is having luther call her daughter and talk to her is one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the show on the other hand Alison's arc just kind of sputters out as soon as she gets injured Alison loses the ability to express complex ideas to us ideas I really want to hear instead of having Alison write out more complicated sentences and linger on them longer or have a character read them we are left to stare at Alison taking several seconds to write one word that doesn't answer people's questions now I understand the dramatic appeal of this you have a character overwhelmed with the guilt shame and grief over how she's used her powers throughout her life in particular bending her own daughter's free will and making her husband come to see her as some type of monster who's a threat to their daughter she remembers something from her childhood and realizes she was being used as a tool to portray Vanya on top of all of this and I think she feels she has to fix Vanya to fix herself and the world she's trying to redeem herself from the sins of her past when they were writing this I think they had a sense that they would get renewed for a second season of this this wasn't going to be the end of Alison's story in the future when people binge season one and go straight to season two without skipping a beat it probably won't be as big of a deal but as it stands Alison's story just kind of bottoms out a little bit it's not like she's given nothing to do she becomes the group's pacifist and insists on saving Vanya and ultimately makes the decision to spare her sister's life I wasn't sure where to put this section so I'm just gonna put it in Alison since it seems to take up more of her screen time I'm not sure where they're going with Luther and Alison's relationship so I don't think the show will be like yeah your uncle Luther is your stepdad now I think what they're going for is more of like a I treasure our bond because it's dumb is the sounds my crush on you is the most normal least sucky part of my childhood and it taught me lessons about love and in see that maybe made us better socialized than our other siblings but I don't think they stuck the landing because they're to consistently awkward around each other and then you have the cannon retcon what I think so I don't know maybe they're going to bone town anyway every time I Luther and Allison scene begin so though they can't have some cute genuine moments I always feel like the writers are grabbing me by the hand and telling me to run and I'm just like where are we going buddy and the writers like just go with it and I'm like oh if you incest we're just kids you were never just kids you were meant to save the world the thing about Klaus has given up on trying is a lot easier than giving up on Karen let's begin with this flashback scene that's not about Klaus but I think it shows something interesting about the way he's characterized [Music] Thank You Wanda see the first time I watched this I was like this is so forced what the hell is he even doing can't he hear his dad yelling at them to get ready is this really realistic for someone his age but then I realized it's just a blatant cry for attention he wanted to get in trouble it just went unnoticed by his dad this is the type of kid who has given up on getting positive attention and will now settle for any attention period that is a documented reaction many children have to having emotionally neglectful parents and it makes sense for Klaus specifically because Reginald is like is this training yeah throw him in a mausoleum filled with spooky ghosts and wait for him to stop crying now if you allow me to exhume this Klaus is kind of Luther's opposite in this sense where Luther always held out hope that if he just followed the rules hard enough long enough he'd be rewarded Klaus recognized it wasn't gonna happen and gave up trying very early in life he's rolling something at the dinner table as a teen and adult Klaus is tearing open his old stuffed animals looking for pills like their piggy banks the day before your school field trip to a place with an awesome gift shop his powers were the reason Reginald adopted him but he's making himself is useful to his dad as Vanya by choice it's significant that the one that abuses substances is the one whose powers function more like a mental illness hearing the dead makes it harder for him to concentrate and get good sleep it overall lowers his quality of life and Klaus reacts to his powers the way a lot of people who hear voices in real life do he self-medicates in a medically unadvised way in this season him being an addict and struggling with that takes up a lot of his screen time so it's a good decision that it has this practical foundation they're not trying to make the whole thing about his dad in his crappy childhood those are just layers to why he fell down this rabbit hole and the fact that the siblings are affected to different extents and have problems that might have existed without Hargreaves makes everything feel more nice and natural and this brings us to our next point not a complaint just an observation our guide Klaus is the trash tear member of the Umbrella Academy you can't change my mind buddy so Allison's power seemed to be tweaked a little from the comics and if Diego can still hold his breath indefinitely no one's mentioned it but they nerfed the Scout of Klaus Klaus his powers are behind a pay wall and that pay wall is called self-improvement narrative Lee I think this is a good decision and it only causes a few small hiccups and they remember to fix most of them while Klaus is included on merchandise and presumably has his heroic moments off screen his powers are never shown to be useful in the flashbacks he's just kind of there and I think it's really funny that they don't even try to pretend he's the recon guy come on then there's more guys in the hall know Luther didn't say that that was Klaus and he was like come on Ben a spooky ghost told me that there are seven guys in that vault Netflix took all my powers away what we'll give them kudos for is they remembered to change the significance of the children's numbers they originally numbered in order of usefulness / how much Reginald liked them and saw potential in them I do like that because it adds another layer of gross nests to Reginald with these children but I'm glad they gave up on it the show only shows Reginald picking up who I assume is Vanya because the mother dressed the baby in pink and the baby's white and the name Vanya originates from Russia grace might have taken that into account after that we see Reginald returning home with the babies and the strollers are already numbered unlike in the comic where all the strollers are just black meaning if I'm correct Vanya might be number 7 in the show because she was seventh collected which makes sense because I don't think this Klaus would be ranked higher than this banner 5 the main damage done here is to Luther since his number 1 position becomes slightly more symbolic so let's talk about guns real quick and I promise we'll come back to Klaus it's difficult to find a sweet spot when it comes to characters getting caught in bullet storms you need the characters to be unsafe enough that you're afraid they'll get hurt but safe enough so that the show doesn't break your suspension of disbelief because you don't want to feel like the character has plot on her yeah umbrella Academy has a handful of baffling moments where characters are right out in the open and should be getting turned into Beefaroni but magically no bullets touch them my favorite one is when someone means the do that it was a good idea to have four people run from gunfire in a straight line down a bowling alley Lane do you know how slippery those lanes are I have wiped out just thinking about bowling alley lanes this shot is kind of cool but it's just ruined by the fact that you can't turn your brain off this is why I think all the great gunfight scenes in this show are the ones where it's five versus others because he's a teleporter the most keep grindin guns moment is when Ben hears gunfire coming from inside the theater and points it out to Klaus but they also spot cha-cha walking towards the theater if you're tabbed over playing a game or something I don't even know how to describe this in a way that does it justice okay with the grace of Cosmo Kramer stumbling into Jerry Seinfeld's apartment Klaus runs into the theater yelling guys it's cha-cha-cha cheese coming waving his arms as he jumps down some steps and then looks back at the door he came in from there for turning his back to the theatre of non-stop gunfire he also doesn't immediately run to cover Luther has to yell at him to get down so yes in this few seconds he should have gotten shot and it reminds you that all of them have plot armor right now but it's reflective of a deeper inconsistency with how they write Klaus and this is probably just the best example of it I didn't know there were gonna be guns in the room I heard gunfire coming from boy you didn't learn anything from Vietnam it's at this point in the video were people who haven't seen the show or like Vietnam what well I know he was born in 89 what the hell is going on this is supposed to be close to being Klaus and since ChaCha and hazel tortured him it makes sense for him to be afraid of ChaCha but this is the final episode of the season the sound of non-stop gunfire must have been deafening yeah he's your go-to comic relief but come on show you don't have to accept every opportunity the universe gives you to treat Klaus like a clown he's canonically served in the Vietnam War where his boyfriend Dave was shot like with a gun it kind of undermines what he's going through if the fact that he was in the war only matters when it's the designated time to feel sad about Dave time you gotta let that experience bleed into other parts of his character I don't want to feel like he's a toddler and the script is his helicopter parent who's got his day so planned out that they're scheduling time for his mental breakdowns Klauss it's half-past twelve it's time to go to your angst corner what flavour of angst do you want I don't want to go to my angst corner script I want to be a comic relief character and I want to run and hit people and steal ice cream trucks Klaus if you don't go to your angst corner you don't get a banana sticker I hate you you're not my final draft let the record show that I think they were better at juggling causes problems in the front half of the season when it was just spooky extra angst and abuse inks they were fine when they had to add Vietnam PTSD and Dave they dropped all the tomatoes to be fair how could you connect this to anything from his perspective he was gone for ten months the most traumatic experiences this character went through happened off screen which kind of just makes me question the decision to keep the Vietnam subplot at all it is in the comics it's just totally different from this the idea of an addict medium having a dead boyfriend that he's got to stay clean to see like that that's me that seems to be the point of all this so I'm just gonna write a little letter to no one in particular and it says question the Vietnam War and all the I's are dotted with little hearts because I love you I know you're still a good person v otherwise you would never risk everything coming back here to save us all so Aidan Gallagher does a great job or is it Kelleher his acting is completely in lockstep with the adults and their cool layers both to how his dialogue is written and how he delivers it I can easily picture like a Jonathan banks doing half these lines but it's always subdued enough that it doesn't come off like a kid pretending to be mature but just an adult in an awkward situation but you know there is a fun plot hole to Phibes name our plot hole is fun yep Avenue YouTube channel is already melting my brain anyway fives name he doesn't have one because he disappeared before he was named except not really because they made a mistake they say Ben here come on Ben and they say Ben and Vanya here and Leonard has written out their names on his little homemade platform for his figures of them we can see here that they all have normal names except five I don't know how they missed this they'll probably address it eventually maybe they'll make a thing about it maybe robot mommy gave him a stupid name more likely he perceives the numbers not as a ranking system and he finds nothing particularly demeaning about having a number for a name this is kind of fitting since five is the one who has the least beef with Reginald there are a few reasons why he didn't experience all of it he's had more time to get over it it's kind of small potatoes compared to the hell his life was in the post apocalypse and he probably regrets not listening to his dad even though five is my fav I'm not so sure about his Ark people keep telling him to let the apocalypse go but he obviously doesn't because the problem isn't solved yet sometimes characters make it sound like fives problem is that he needs to learn to reach out to others more that he needs to stop trying to do things on his own but he does even from the first episode he seeks Vanya out in Episode two he recruits Klaus he's kind of inconsistent with how much help he needs like sometimes he'll randomly do dumb things like not properly dress of wound because he thinks it'll slow the group down he's mostly just really bad at explaining himself and this problem is worsened by how bad his siblings are at listening to him and taking him seriously I think his main character flaw is that he's extremely arrogant he thinks he's earned the right to look down on people because of what he's gone through I don't think unimaginable things things you couldn't even comprehend but because this flaw is funny the show doesn't address it very seriously the biggest jump 5 makes in his development is giving up his emotional support object Deloris is his mannequin wife who was with him for many years in the post apocalypse she actually has a consistent personality - she's kind of a good angel on his shoulder Delores has definitely earned her place in the emotional support object Hall of Fame but because most of the story is his siblings dealing with their own baggage it can sometimes feel like five is the only one working on the main plot they all refuse the call and they just kind of do their own thing for the first five episode for some this goes on even longer they just so happened to be doing something that ties back into the plot by sheer coincidence and so five is the only string connecting us to the odd and interesting world of the handler and the two Assassin's following him just another example management sticking it to the walking man again I really like the two Assassin's the diligent work focus ChaCha and the calm but slowly defecting hazel you can watch this crap you don't find it interesting how ordinary people live their lives their agonizing over kitchen cabinets as if the entire fate of the universe rests and whether they choose as their blue or asparagus green and your point is sometimes beauty in the mundane the - hazel sort of emerges is the more three-dimensional character Chacho never really gets to stretch outside of her workaholic I will go down with this ship attitude not to knock her overall I think she serves her function in the story in a fun way I was surprisingly satisfied with Hazel's romantic subplot that breaks up the duo I was surprised because I think this is the type of subplot that could be very easily botched when hazel starts talking to Agnes a waitress at the donut shop he finds a very endearing and she really makes him question himself Agnes has been saving money to go to the country and open up her own donut shop it'll take like a year for her to save up enough money to do this but hazel knows that the world will be over in a week Agnes has worked her whole life for this and the cosmic injustice being done to her snaps hazel out of it in the end he can't save this world but he can at least try to run away with her hazel and Agnes are a rare example of a may-december romance with a much older woman and steve blackman had to actually fight to get this people were giving him grief and he thought they were being hypocrites basically because pairing much older actors with much younger actresses is kind of ordinary cranberries at this point and I'm celebrating his victory because I understand what he saw in this Hazel's life is a time-traveling assassin means he's just kind of seen everything Agnes is also just kind of seen everything but in a more mundane way from being a waitress for 30 years she's a muggle but hazel finds her why's hazel was getting reflective he wants to retire from his career and do something different and Agnes feels the same even though hazel is much younger and Agnes is not a time-traveling assassin the kinda at the same stage of life and they share the same interesting mixture of world weariness optimism and appreciation for the small things so my award for second best couple in umbrella Academy goes to Agnes and hazel five and Dolores our first obviously can we go home now Ben is the sibling who died there's not a hell of a lot to say about Ben yet it's kind of frustrating that the characters know all the details but we don't the words on his statue give off a kind of suicide vibe but what we do know is that his passing was a major breaking point for the family out of all the Hargreaves siblings Ben and Klaus seem to be the most comfortable around each other and this is funny and makes sense because Klaus sees his dead brother more often than his other siblings I like how when Klaus is not exactly sober Ben has his hood up and doesn't talk he looks kind of sleepy like Klaus is having trouble communicating with him it's just a nice detail when Klaus is sober Ben can talk freely and he seems like a chill guy I like his outfit he looks older now than he does in the last painting of him but maybe it's just the wardrobe change sometimes he's shown reading not sure how he can do that he never puts the book down so I think it's just like his ghost book I don't know how that works maybe that's what happens when you burn books they go to ghosts for negatives I don't know most of his personality is just like being Klaus is life coach why not try starting your day with a glass of orange juice or some eggs hey life isn't supposed to be easy life is hard but if you were a ghost following your drug-addled brother around because he's the only human who can talk to ghosts that's probably what you would be like so remember kids burn books hashtag and goes to literacy you know what I appreciate the fact that Vanya often doesn't wear makeup and when she does it's always a reflection of how she's feeling and how much effort she wants to put into her grooming and on top of that the fact that when she is wearing makeup it's like mascara blush and like a chill natural lip color she can't suddenly like cut the crease or do a perfect eyeliner flick because like how would she know how to do that she doesn't usually wear makeup most shows know to think about a character's wardrobe and hairstyle but you'd be surprised how many shows will just slap makeup on people to try to make them look pretty and not really think through how a character would do their makeup or how much makeup a character would own literally everyone's makeup is thought-out in this show Allison has that this takes way longer than it looks makeup you can tell because how the crease is planted look at that that's beautiful clouds just sort of smack stuff on they try to make it look like it was all done with one product smeared out so you could imagine he just has one crusty eyeliner patch where is the scientifically calculated amount of makeup that no boss would ever complain about chacha does her eyes really heavy and dramatic and she uses false lashes and it just feels so in character I think it's just the perfect amount of messy effort like yeah my blending is rough but I'm gonna shoot you in these $12 House of lashes fall see so you can literally die mad so the conclusion of the Umbrella Academy makeup analysis that you didn't know you needed but totally did is the show constantly reinforces who its characters are and uses even the smallest details okay spending a whole life trying to forget about the crap you went through as a kid you know can we please go to Wendy's okay so let's not avoid the angst any longer have you ever watched the mr. Rogers documentary won't you be my neighbor he and I both had childhoods that you weren't allowed to be angry you weren't allowed to show your anger and we were never able to do it it scared us [Music] music was my first language I was scared to use words I didn't want to be a bad boy I didn't want to tell people that I was angry but I could show it through the way I would play on the piano I could literally laugh or cry or be very angry through the ends of my fingers Fred Rogers was the creator of Mister Rogers neighborhood and educational television show for young children like kindergarten age the show is slow and relaxing and very focused on everyday rituals like tying your shoes in feeding your fish the show concentrates on giving children uplifting messages and teaching them about life stuff like making mistakes and getting along with others loss and it tries to teach children that they're special and unique mr. Rogers wanted children to think that they have value just as they are and I think that's a good foundation to build self-esteem off of I've seen people break down when for example someone thinks they're worth to the world is that they're smart so them being smart is the foundation of their self-esteem but then one day they fail a test or make a mistake or realize that they're falling behind other people in class when that one trait is the foundation the whole structure of a person's self-esteem can collapse because then they're like well what am i if I'm not smart am i nothing what do I contribute mr. Rogers wanted to remind people as hokey as it sounds that you are special just by being you because you're not replaceable you don't have to accomplish things to justify your existence you are fundamentally lovable and capable of loving others just because you're human he taught the importance both of emotional expression and self-regulation you can express your emotions and then learn to control them understand them and engage with them in 1983 Howard Gardner a developmental psychologist labeled the ability to understand your thoughts and feelings as interpersonal intelligence this is separate from another similar-sounding category of his interpersonal intelligence which is the ability to understand and communicate effectively with other people interpersonal intelligence is a skill a lot of people struggle with in can make their lives difficult and get them into trouble it affects your ability to make long-term plans for your life and career motivate yourself pick up on your bad habits that are negatively affecting your life and assess your mental health Vanya has very little direction in her life she only has one ability that she struggles to find true mastery in this might mean that she struggles with self-talk and so she doesn't know what she wants out of life her career or a romantic relationship and how many years have you been stuck at third chair at a certain point it's not about practice it's whether you've got something special and maybe you just don't you can put in your 10,000 hours or you can go find something you're actually passionate about the violin isn't just something she enjoys or uses to express herself it's her first and last effort to make her existence matter no one was around to teach Vanya that she had value on her own until it was too late and she wouldn't believe it I find it interesting that Vanya was in many ways a sensitive child and a volatile child but rather than work with Vanya Hargreaves decided to dampen her emotions he gave up on working with them but Vanya was a very young child when he gave up he decided to hide the whole thing he never let her know what was going on or why he decided to medicate her to protect other people even after she was grown this also shows a very twisted side to Hargreaves thinking was he really so sure that Vanya was such a creature of habit that she would continue to take the medication forever the sick thing is he's kind of right she might never have stopped if someone had not stolen her pills the scene of Vanya slashing Allison's throat to stop her from rumor in her is extremely shocking I still remember the way my mouth fell the first time I saw it and Vanya is panicked crying and pleading was very gut-wrenching it's an extremely blood chilling scene and it's tragic because they just don't know how to talk to each other or trust each other or when to back off so the emotions rise and everything keeps escalating and when Umbrella Academy syndrome comes in he makes a sickening remark that is so appropriate for his character [Music] if you would have told me at the beginning of the first episode that Vanya was the ultimate big bad I would have been shocked apparently I was one of the few people that didn't see this coming from a mile away I caught on of course but the funny thing was that there was never really like a Wow twist reveal moment instead the story took a different tactic of slowly adding pressure and chipping away at Vanya by the time she was in her suit flipping the lights off to her apartment I truly came to appreciate this car crash in slow motion that is Vanya story even though it would have been unthinkable to me in Episode one then they made the excellent decision to put her in a black suit and she looks adorable and unnerving as her apocalypse bringing attacked charges she plays away at her violin the color strips from her suit and violin turning white in a way that's visually similar to her comic book counterpart and it's ethereal and beautiful her transformation into the villain of the story and the bringer of the apocalypse could have been prevented if she or the members of her family were able to cope better with the struggles in their life but the way umbrella academy paints the story it continually points out that they were never given the tools to do this because the adults in their lives failed them now as adults they have to build the tools on their own or with each other and part of that is stepping outside of their own little worlds their little square because as much as that cute dance sequence in the first episode represents their freedom from hargreaves it also represents their division from each other so if you can't tell I look forward to season two and that's all I have to say about the Umbrella Academy for now who's cute fan art people sent me on Twitter cute cute cute if you like this video open up the nearest window and Yee loudly at the moon

Channel: Quinn Curio

Views: 2,626,982

Keywords: The Umbrella Academy, Netflix, vanya hargreeves, five hargreeves, klaus hargreeves, Quinn Curio

Id: UZZB1aU24Og

Length: 53min 4sec (3184 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/shlushian]

small quick look - 53 minute runtime.

sounds interesting and i'll watch it, but a small quick look that discusses the abuse theme that i could just pass around would be helpful

[u/murchisongirl]

dont have time to watch it right now but will watch tonight, to help with my terrible withdrawals about the show, season 2 cant come fast enough for me