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nevannaSome thoughts on the end of X-Men: Evolution's first season, a week after re-watching (and a dozen years after my first viewing). Sadly, I'm not sure how much more I'll be able to watch, due to my work schedule for the next few weeks.
A couple of years ago, a fandom friend and I agreed that most of the first season of XME was skippable. Now that I've actually rewatched a good chunk of those episodes, I kind of understand why we thought that, though I don't think that it's entirely accurate. True, I think that the writers grew to understand both their characters and their audience a little better as time went on, and to take more risks in their story arcs, and to weave in a stronger sense of continuity. The first season is definitely the most episodic and lighthearted, but it sets up character dynamics and themes that will be important later on. (This is probably true of a lot of multi-season shows for whatever age demographic - Buffy comes immediately to mind as another example).
As I've said before, I became interested and invested in this show after watching the second episode, and not just because it introduced the two characters who would be my favorites and my OTP for years. I still really like Kitty, and her introductory arc of trying to return to a normal life, discovering that she can't, trusting the wrong person, and harnessing her own power, remains a very solid one indeed. I think that "The X-Impulse" encompassed a lot of the sillier elements of the show (the cheesy dialogue, the preachy and sometimes outright condescending themes and tone, the terrible puns), but also so much of what made it genuinely worthwhile and appealing: namely, the balance of super-powered action with stories of teenagers just trying to live their lives, and to find some sense of identity and purpose - that is, the same thing that made the franchise as a whole so popular. I often call XME "the canon high school AU that works." Did the writing occasionally land in After-School Special territory or forced attempts to be "cool" and "with it?" Absolutely. But I think that one of the reasons why it still worked was because the characters' emotions and conflicts were, if not always "realistic," then at least recognizable. And both the best and the worst were there from the beginning.
The most recent episode that the gang and I watched was "The Cauldron," the Season 1 finale, in which Magneto starts recruiting mutants to his "sanctuary" on Asteroid M. I remember having a low opinion of that one when I first saw it, but I found it a lot more tolerable and even enjoyable now. The setup allows all the characters to be part of the action, and the episode is one of the first to explicitly address an issue that has always been important in other versions of canon: how mutants fit into the rest of the world, and Magneto and Xavier's conflicting ideas on the matter. Magneto is actually somewhat persuasive and charismatic when he's not too busy stuffing people into metal spheres, waving radioactive gems in their faces, or abandoning his own second-in-command. Mystique's reaction to his leaving her behind, however, is handled so much better here than it is in X3 (though the circumstances are admittedly different).
But even the episodes that use the ensemble cast very well often still have a focal character, and "The Cauldron" is Scott's episode, if it's anybody's. Scott Summers in any universe has somewhat of a reputation as The Boring Responsible One, and it's not undeserved (to say the least), but I've actually become quite fond of his XME incarnation over time. He knows how to have fun occasionally, makes misjudgments and is willing to admit to them, and takes his teammates' mockery in stride, while still trying to be The Responsible One because he finds it both necessary and satisfying. His unfortunate self-blame when he finds out that Alex has been alive all along was nonetheless an excellent characterization moment, and their reunion and interactions are actually quite sweet. Scott also questions and argues with Xavier a lot more than I remember from my first viewing… or, perhaps, more than I was willing to acknowledge at the time.
The end of the first season and the beginning of the second were also the beginning of my involvement in the fandom. This was in the summer of 2001. I remained deeply immersed in said fandom for the next three years, dipped my toes back in regularly for several years after that, and am not unwilling to do so even to this day. As usual, there is so much I could say (and have said) about that experience - the fandom trends that I was and wasn't part of, the friends I made there (hi, Sandoz!), the Writing Project That Ate My Adolescence and why that still matters to me - and I'm not saying that I will not address those things again ever, just that I haven't the time or space to get into them now. The fact that I still have thoughts and feelings about XME over a decade after it ended says absolutely nothing bad about me - it just means that I enjoy talking about stories, which are - last I checked - supposed to get an emotional reaction from people. I didn't love this show uncritically then and I definitely don't love it uncritically now, but I am happy to say that I try to love it without shame.
A couple of years ago, a fandom friend and I agreed that most of the first season of XME was skippable. Now that I've actually rewatched a good chunk of those episodes, I kind of understand why we thought that, though I don't think that it's entirely accurate. True, I think that the writers grew to understand both their characters and their audience a little better as time went on, and to take more risks in their story arcs, and to weave in a stronger sense of continuity. The first season is definitely the most episodic and lighthearted, but it sets up character dynamics and themes that will be important later on. (This is probably true of a lot of multi-season shows for whatever age demographic - Buffy comes immediately to mind as another example).
As I've said before, I became interested and invested in this show after watching the second episode, and not just because it introduced the two characters who would be my favorites and my OTP for years. I still really like Kitty, and her introductory arc of trying to return to a normal life, discovering that she can't, trusting the wrong person, and harnessing her own power, remains a very solid one indeed. I think that "The X-Impulse" encompassed a lot of the sillier elements of the show (the cheesy dialogue, the preachy and sometimes outright condescending themes and tone, the terrible puns), but also so much of what made it genuinely worthwhile and appealing: namely, the balance of super-powered action with stories of teenagers just trying to live their lives, and to find some sense of identity and purpose - that is, the same thing that made the franchise as a whole so popular. I often call XME "the canon high school AU that works." Did the writing occasionally land in After-School Special territory or forced attempts to be "cool" and "with it?" Absolutely. But I think that one of the reasons why it still worked was because the characters' emotions and conflicts were, if not always "realistic," then at least recognizable. And both the best and the worst were there from the beginning.
The most recent episode that the gang and I watched was "The Cauldron," the Season 1 finale, in which Magneto starts recruiting mutants to his "sanctuary" on Asteroid M. I remember having a low opinion of that one when I first saw it, but I found it a lot more tolerable and even enjoyable now. The setup allows all the characters to be part of the action, and the episode is one of the first to explicitly address an issue that has always been important in other versions of canon: how mutants fit into the rest of the world, and Magneto and Xavier's conflicting ideas on the matter. Magneto is actually somewhat persuasive and charismatic when he's not too busy stuffing people into metal spheres, waving radioactive gems in their faces, or abandoning his own second-in-command. Mystique's reaction to his leaving her behind, however, is handled so much better here than it is in X3 (though the circumstances are admittedly different).
But even the episodes that use the ensemble cast very well often still have a focal character, and "The Cauldron" is Scott's episode, if it's anybody's. Scott Summers in any universe has somewhat of a reputation as The Boring Responsible One, and it's not undeserved (to say the least), but I've actually become quite fond of his XME incarnation over time. He knows how to have fun occasionally, makes misjudgments and is willing to admit to them, and takes his teammates' mockery in stride, while still trying to be The Responsible One because he finds it both necessary and satisfying. His unfortunate self-blame when he finds out that Alex has been alive all along was nonetheless an excellent characterization moment, and their reunion and interactions are actually quite sweet. Scott also questions and argues with Xavier a lot more than I remember from my first viewing… or, perhaps, more than I was willing to acknowledge at the time.
The end of the first season and the beginning of the second were also the beginning of my involvement in the fandom. This was in the summer of 2001. I remained deeply immersed in said fandom for the next three years, dipped my toes back in regularly for several years after that, and am not unwilling to do so even to this day. As usual, there is so much I could say (and have said) about that experience - the fandom trends that I was and wasn't part of, the friends I made there (hi, Sandoz!), the Writing Project That Ate My Adolescence and why that still matters to me - and I'm not saying that I will not address those things again ever, just that I haven't the time or space to get into them now. The fact that I still have thoughts and feelings about XME over a decade after it ended says absolutely nothing bad about me - it just means that I enjoy talking about stories, which are - last I checked - supposed to get an emotional reaction from people. I didn't love this show uncritically then and I definitely don't love it uncritically now, but I am happy to say that I try to love it without shame.
