With a season that’s split into two halves that seem to be getting released a week apart, I guess that The Wild Batch’s fifth installment could be described as a mid-season finale. I mean, that certainly seems to be the approach the showrunners are taking with it as “There’s Always A Forture In The Cookie Factory” brings many plot threads to a close while opening up the rest of the season to a whole new world of adventures to explore.
But before we take the Gremlins franchise on a tour of America, we’ve got dome mess to clean up first in the shape of the Gremlin rampage that’s currently raging through the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Led by the betrayed Noggin, who had been handed the reigns of the local crime gangs, he’s taking out his frustration on any humans he and his cronies can find. Can Gremlins manage to wrap this issue up in a satisfactory fashion before taking Gizmo on the road?
As I just stated just now, Noggin is raising merry Hell in Chinatown as his axe waving underlings take to the night streets to take revenge on Gizmo refusing his clawed hand in friendship. But while the Gremlins wreak their particular brand of havoc on the innocent people of Chinatown, Sam, Gizmo, Elle and Chang are finally working out what the deal is with with Elle’s mother, Margot. It seems that all those years ago, as she was carried off across the sea by too many lanterns, her strength finally gave out and she plummeted into the sea; however, once there she was taken by the ancient water spirits who offered her a choice – die now and be at piece or live forever as a water spirit herself in service to the water God, Kung Kung. However, after Elle died temporarily last season, that’s allowed Margot to communicate with her in her dreams and once again a suspicious Elle finds that her mother needs something from her.
But first things first – I mean, we’ve got a Gremlin riot going on on the surface after all – and after braving the chaos, Chang leads the gang to a hidden speak easy where he tries to stir up the survivors to fight this malevolent, green horde. However, Chang learns the hard way that he just doesn’t have the ear of the people he thinks he does and gets rather enbittered at the result. However, Sam and his new, confidence boosting persona of the Monster Hero known as the Boy In The Hat manages to whip up a plan to force Noggin and hid gang back onto the boat they arrived in.
With a tram, fireworks and balls of steel needed to pull this off, everyone hopes that Gizmo’s recent personality disorder won’t derail the plan, but even if they’re victorious in vanquishing Noggin, will they agree to aid Margot and free her of her curse?
It shows a certain amount of confidence to put out the type of set pieces usually reserved for the end of a season at the middle, but after a season and a half of stellar material, the people behind the Gremlins animated show have earned themselves a certain amount of certainty in their decisions. After all, while this halfway point is mainly in place to wipe the slate somewhat clean as we travel into The Wild Batch’s latter section, the showrunners manage to give the proceedings weight as if it were a season finale. Of course, there’s a fair amount of setting up to do before we can cut loose with a classic Gremlin rampage and the majority of it concerns the revelation that Elle’s mother, Margot is now an elemental being of the watery persuasion. While this would be enough to throw anyone off, Elle can only focus on the past that she and her liquid parent once shared and she just can’t shake the fact that Margot has a history of coming to her daughter only when she needs something. In this case it’s that she needs Elle to go on a quest to turn her human again by locating and having an audience with the ancient Water God Kung Kung who apparently is imprisoned somewhere in the more dryer spots of middle America. Of course, we get a bucket full of foreshadowing as we find out from Grampa Wing that Kung Kung may not be the nicest of deities (a single shot of its Smaug-like eye at the end of the episode also raises a couple of alarms) which also hints that Margot might not be on the up and up, but that’s another episode for another day.
However, what’s far more pressing is Noggin’s abandonment tantrum that has ballooned into a full scale Gremlin riot that rips through Chinatown like a green, mean-spirited bowling ball through some city-shaped pins. There’s an argument to be made that the bout of chaotic anarchy we get here isn’t anything particularly different from anything the show (or the movies, for that matter), but on the other hand, a Gremlins property that doesn’t include a scene where the show let’s its giggling antagonists get to stretch its legs wouldn’t feel much like a Gremlins show at all. Thus we get the usual, enjoyable stuff of everyone’s favorite, destructive imps screwing around in a mixture of slapstick and violence that continues to push the boundaries of what you can show in a kids cartoon. However, among scenes of Gremlins waving hatchets around in a reference to the actual chinese criminals from the 20s known as the Axe Gang and an electrocuted Gremlin farting out and little bolt of lightning before getting splattered, there’s some real threat swirling here.
The majority of it unsurprisingly comes from the enraged Noggin and while the sight of him slashing a man’s eye certainly helps put the point across, all credit has to be given to veteran actor George Takei, who takes that famous voice of his and really goes for it with the type of scenery chewing that, for a Gremlin, usually proves to be literal. However, this all sets the stage for a big action sequence that sees our heroes hurtling down the street, firing rockets and clearing out the town until Noggin and his horde retreat to what he believes is fortune cookie factory, but instead is a storage warehouse for extremely unstable fireworks that clears up the problem once and for all.
Well, we’ve said this before and Noggin has managed to side step certain death before – but in the wake of the explosion, there’s still some possible threats that are lurking directly under our hero’s noses. We’ve already discussed the likelihood of Margot being a wrong’un there’s still the issue of Gizmo’s unexplained freakouts to be resolved, but there’s a hint that Chang’s ego has taken a few too many prangs as of late (getting passed over for a gang boss position in favour of a two foot monster was never going to be an easy proposition to swallow), but did I notice a glint of jealousy when the “Boy In The Hat” pulled things together when Chang couldn’t. Who can say…?
Still, when it’s all said and done, the first half of Gremlins’ second season has done ample work to prove that Secrets Of The Mogwai wasn’t a mere fluke and with a road trip exploring the rest of America to come, The Wild Batch can only get wilder.
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