Wonder Man “Kathy Friedman”

So, sometime between when I watched this episode and when I sat down to write-up this episode, Disney announced there would not be a second season after all and, like…huh?

I think this episode, out of the entire run thus far, maybe does the most heavy lifting.  While the series is still a little cagey on what Simon’s powers actually are, since he seems to just explode when he gets angry enough, I think this is the episode where his character most came into focus in ways that it hadn’t up to that point.  I also think that was by design.  The flashbacks to his time with his late father seeing the original Wonder Man movie, the conversation with his ex-girlfriend, all these things seemed to really define Simon in certain ways.

See, I watched the series with my girlfriend, and she didn’t care for Simon the character.  The actor playing him, and his interplay with Ben Kingsley’s Trevor are another story.  Simon himself was withholding his true self, hustled too much, and the like.  I should explain that my girlfriend, first and foremost, likes moral heroes and protagonists, and Simon in the pilot episode doesn’t quite cut the metaphorical mustard.  She can recognize good acting, but she just doesn’t want to associate too much with immoral heroes.

Case in point:  we saw Marty Supreme together.  Now, my girlfriend generally likes superheroes, fantasy, some sci-fi, and the occasional musical biopic when we go to the movies together.  That, or a damn clever concept.  From the trailers, Marty Supreme looked like a sports biography of some kind.  Plus, she does have a weakness for the acting style of Timothée Chalamet.  When the movie turned out to be…very different from what either of us had been led to believe it was, what followed was my girlfriend’s basic statement that, as much as she can acknowledge that Chalamet did a fantastic job, he was very much not the sort of protagonist she wants to follow around for two or so hours in any movie.  Simon, for her, is in a similar boat due to his dishonesty, emotional withdrawal, and general sneakiness as seen in the pilot.

In this episode, Simon doesn’t quite redeem himself, but when he finally has a conversation with his ex, learns she knew he had powers all along, and the fact that he lost our on something with her and seems to realize it, I think that went a long way for her.  Me, I just saw Simon’s hustle as something I have seen in a million Hollywood stories before.  She needed something else.

I don’t think he quite completely redeemed himself for her, but I think the character took a step in the right direction.

Oh, and then he explodes when he finds out Trevor was spying on him on behalf of the Department of Damage Control, something that only came out when Trevor let it slip after the infamous Kathy Friedman of the episode’s title did a hit piece on Trevor and not Simon as Simon had feared for the entire episode.  C’mon.  This is still the MCU.  Something was gonna explode.