#70. 'Hawkeye' Episodes 3 and 4
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This bonus episode skips the usual personal-catchup preamble and dives straight into Hawkeye episodes 3 and 4, marking JVL's first time weighing in on the show since he missed the episodes 1 and 2 discussion with guest John Podhoretz. JVL arrives a full convert, calling the two episodes a huge leap forward, praising the seemingly-one-take car chase as some of the best action in any MCU TV show, and declaring Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop "fucking gold" — the first MCU character handoff (unlike Falcon-for-Cap or Wanda-for-Natasha) he's actually excited about. He's especially taken with how the series uses Matt Fraction's beloved Hawkeye comic run as a "lens" for tone, characters, and visual gags (the tracksuit mafia, the red '78 Challenger from the "Cherry" issue) while writing an entirely new plot, and he insists the show didn't praise "Rogers: The Musical" from episode 1 nearly enough, ranking it alongside Team America's "America, Fuck Yeah" as one of the great fictional musicals. Sonny agrees episodes 3 and 4 are a major improvement now that the show is actually about Hawkeye, loves Jeremy Renner's weary, reluctant-hero performance and his hearing-aid storyline, but dings the green-screened rooftop fight in episode 4 for bad lighting and fake-looking shadows. Vic is still coming around on Kate Bishop, gripes about the obviously fake CGI fire and purple foam arrows, admiringly notes Zahn McClarnon's performance as Maya's gangster father, and, to the others' amusement, confesses to finding himself borderline inappropriately attracted to Kate Bishop — sparking a debate (Vic says there's romantic tension, Sonny insists it reads as father-daughter, JVL is still deciding) that gets defused into a joke about slash fiction. The episode closes on Florence Pugh's Yelena showing up at the end of episode 4 and a bit of confusion untangling her Black Widow timeline, with the hosts previewing next week's bonus episode on Hawkeye 5 and 6 and, eventually, Starship Troopers.
From the show notes
JVL has lots of thoughts about Hawkeye and its source material. And Vic, to everyone's surprise, says something that's borderline inappropriate!
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe and tell your friends to subscribe. Today we're talking about Hawkeye again. This time it's episodes three and four. Although this is JVL's first time chiming in on the series because we did the first two with our friend John Podhoretz at the time. And compared with the other Marvel TV series JVL. What do you think?
JVL00:00:53So I didn't love the first two episodes of Hawkeye. They didn't move. They didn't move very quickly. They were kind of boring. But episode three is great. And episode four is pretty good. And I feel like four episodes in, this is the first Marvel series that I am interested in finishing. Mm-hmm. Just because I'd like to. I never finished Loki. Same. I finished Scarlet Witch only because we had to do it for the show. One division, yeah. Sorry. One division, only because we had to do it for the show. I don't even remember what the other Marvel series were, but I didn't like them. Captain.
Sonny00:01:35Never watched. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Just skipped. I skipped that one entirely. What if?
JVL00:01:41Skipped it. Entirely.
Vic00:01:41And we saw the one with, we saw the one with, what's his name, Patton Oswalt, that one, the animated one.
JVL00:01:46Yeah. And I, I gotta say, I was, I don't want to say I was angry listening to you guys. Maybe I misunderstood. But I believe that. What I heard listening to you guys discussing the first two episodes was that Haley Steinfeld was not good.
Vic00:02:08And I. I can't remember. I can't remember.
JVL00:02:11I have a very different opinion of her as an actress and especially of her in this role. Because I think she's fucking gold.
Sonny00:02:19I think what I, what I meant at least was that I find, I found the first episode focused on, that is mostly focused on the Kate Bishop character to be. Incredibly boring.
Vic00:02:29Yeah.
Sonny00:02:29Like I just, I didn't, I didn't care about her or her family or any of that stuff. I just didn't, I didn't care about it. I, the, the show picked up for me once Jeremy Renner was on the screen, like being Hawkeye and having to interact with people as Hawkeye. Cause I think that's actually really interesting. This idea of like a reluctant superhero who like is really just a normal guy and like has to wear a hearing aid because he's, he's been beat up so much, you know, like I like, I like that idea. I like the, I like the. Look on his face every time somebody thanks him for saving the world. Like it's that great actor, that stuff is gold to me. And I will say that I thought, I thought, uh, I thought Haley Steinfeld is very good in episodes three and four of this, this show. Um, and, and, uh, I, I, I also liked episodes three and four much more than one and two, because I think it's actually, again, it's like, it's, it's about, it's actually about Hawkeye instead of again, the first episode, which was not about her. And I just didn't think it was about her.
Vic00:03:26And if I can clarify, uh, I think she's definitely growing on me.
JVL00:03:30She's growing on me right now. Oh, she, well, listen, we can talk more about Haley Steinfeld episodes three and four begin advancing the plot along multiple axes and how we have four different stories happening at the same time. And we're actually moving relentlessly forward on all of them throughout the move. There's no running in place. I don't think. And. I love that. And I loved what I mean, the the best parts of Loki was just having Owen Wilson on screen with Tom Hiddleston. Right. Yes. And I think that Haley Steinfeld and Jeremy Renner together on screen, not quite as good as Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston, but a very, very close getting there. Yeah. And they they have. The character. The characters are written very well together. The two stars are fantastic together. And unlike Loki, which, again, just ran in place a lot, this seems to be moving to tell a bunch of different stories together at the same time. There's a story of what her mother really is. There's a story of what Jack is. There is the story of the tracksuit mafia. There's Maya's story. I loved, loved, loved the beginning of episode three, setting up Maya. As this incredibly vulnerable little kid who's deaf and only has one leg. And so you're all rooting for her. And then you realize, oh, and she's a gangster and she's a bad guy. Yeah. Her father ran a sort of a car fencing operation.
Sonny00:05:12Her father, who's played by Zach McLaren, who is just a wonderful Native American actor. He's been in a bunch. Oh, yeah. He's Bone Tomahawk. He's in Doctor Sleep.
Vic00:05:23Well, what's interesting is I hadn't seen him before, but I but he I could, you know, it's amazing when you don't see when you are not familiar with an actor, but within the first minute or two, they just carry so much heft, even with just a few lines and you get very comfortable with it versus other actors. You could feel awkward because they just deliver terrible lines. This was like, wow, you know, it makes Russian tracksuit guys, the tracksuit mafia guys.
JVL00:05:47There are four or five identifiable guys within it who are all doing interesting work with
Sonny00:05:52like two lines of dialogue. That's right.
JVL00:05:54The Kaz, whoever it was, you know, Maya's number. Two, I don't know who that guy is, but he's great.
Sonny00:06:01The guy who looks like, uh, what's his name from? Yeah, he looks exactly like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones.
JVL00:06:07That guy's great. So you have actors making the most of what's going on the car chase scene, which is, is not one take, but is done as if it's one take where you're, you are in the car and you're just pivoting to look forward and backward as things are happening. Fantastic. It was exciting. It was fun. Uh,
Sonny00:06:27this, these two episodes had the best action of any of the Marvel TV shows, uh, so far and away. And I, I have, I have, I have a lot, I have some issues with how they were shot in particular in the fourth episode, the, the fight that's on the rooftop, um, where, where, you know, spoiler Florence Pugh shows up at the end. Um, uh, that, so, so that, that, that whole fight is so clearly like green screen. Um, you know, uh, it is like the, the lighting is just all wrong. The shadows are all wrong. Everything, it looks, it looks very, very fake, but everything else in everything else in the, the two episodes we're talking about this week, exceptionally well done.
Vic00:07:10I don't like the, yes, I, it's, it's one of these instances for me where the story is interesting, the acting and the, the characters are interesting, but the visuals are not, uh, for me. So like, I hate the CGI fire. I know it's fake. I can tell, you know, whereas like, you know, you watch a movie like, I don't know, die hard or whatever. You blow things up. They're blowing things up. You want real fire.
Sonny00:07:35No, you want, you want the Christopher Nolan burning down the forest fire version. Yes. Yeah.
Vic00:07:39I can't wait for our draft. Yeah. I can't. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. They're burning stuff up, you know? And, uh, as complete tangent, I, did you ever go to the backdraft at universal studios as a brief moment where if you went to universal studios in Orlando or I guess in California, they had a backdraft exhibit and you could feel the heat, you know? So, I mean, I just. You know, wanted to see that and I was disappointed and the different, the idea of the different arrows, I was so let down when that purple foam came out and it looked so fake. I'm like, oh, come on, man. So.
Sonny00:08:07I didn't mind that because like, that's like, obviously, I mean, yeah, that, that, that didn't bother me so much. Again, it's, it's the lighting and the, the, the kind of the, I don't know, the framing, the boxing, like it just doesn't, the blocking, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't work. Like it looks very, very fake, which I find distracting, but, but like the, this, the fighting. The fight scene in the, the used cape or the, the out of business KB toys is just wonderful. And like the, the out of business KB toys is also just a wonderful touch.
Vic00:08:37Throwing the stuff down was, I mean, it was, it was good. Okay. So I do have a question, which is, I liked the reveal and I remembered that she was going to make an appearance because a Florence Pugh I'm talking about because at the end of Black Widow, when, um, uh, what's her name, uh, tells her from, uh. Uh, Julia Louis Dreyfus tells her that Hawkeye, for whatever reason, Hawkeye killed, uh, her sister. So I, so I had forgotten that she would eventually make an appearance here that took place in the eighties. Yes. That, that, that, that the, the, um, um, the death of black, I mean, uh, no, not the death of black. Oh, that's right. Okay. I'm getting confused when she meets black. When you see black, when you see Florence Pugh in the Black Widow movie that took place
Sonny00:09:25in the, that took place in the. Like that took place, uh, in the, the section of the MCU universe when they were on the run, like after civil war.
Vic00:09:36Oh, okay. Okay. So recently, so more recently I got confused.
Sonny00:09:40There was, there was a, there was a section that takes place in like the late eighties or early nineties, like right at the beginning when they're little kids.
Vic00:09:46So I was thinking, shouldn't she look older is what I was going to say in this, but it's about the same. Sorry.
JVL00:09:52Can I, I'm sorry. I need to go back in time also to episode one since I wasn't here.
Vic00:09:57Yeah.
JVL00:09:57I feel like you guys and you praised it, but you didn't praise enough the musical. Oh yeah. Roger's the musical. No, no, no.
Vic00:10:07Absolutely. Yeah. It was great.
JVL00:10:08It was great. I, I will call that one of the two greatest ever fictional musicals. The other being team America, world police. Yes. AIDS. AIDS, right?
Sonny00:10:19Lease.
JVL00:10:20This was, this was so, this was even better than lease though, because everything about that is. What in today's debauched Disney-fied Broadway, that's what that would look like. Yeah. I, I, I just.
Vic00:10:36It was totally believable. It was totally believable.
JVL00:10:38I just saw Shrek the musical on, uh, on Netflix. Netflix has the, the actual stage version of Shrek the musical. The stage production of Shrek. The stage production of Shrek the musical. And it is. Truly the Hamilton of our times. It is so much worse than you could possibly imagine. And yet. It's exactly, it, it is Rogers the musical. No, you couldn't out. You know, and I, it, that thing is so well done and is the kind of thing where a lesser production wouldn't have gone to the trouble. A lesser production just would have shown you the posters. Yes. And that would have been enough. Around the city for it. You could get a chuckle out of it. Right.
Vic00:11:17This is pretty good. Well, they had a, well, there was a whole choreographed scene with the dancing on stage and it is awful. Hulk.
JVL00:11:25The ant man. What do you say, Hulk? Oh my gosh.
Vic00:11:31And Jeremy, what is Jeremy Renner saying? He goes, that guy wasn't even in there or whatever. I forgot who he was. Yeah. With ant man. With ant man.
JVL00:11:37He wasn't even there. Yeah. Right. That's great. But the, the way iron man like holds himself in the, the black widow does the hair flip thing. Everything about it is sensational. Um, I don't know. I really, I really liked it, but here's, here's the thing I wanted to talk about a little bit. I don't know that I have ever. Seen an adaptation like this because this entire series owes everything about it to the Matt fraction Hawkeye run, which you guys talked a little bit about it. And yet the story has nothing to do with the Matt fraction Hawkeye run, right? So it is, it has taken the visual cues.
Vic00:12:23It has taken the tone, which is to, to have it. Basically.
JVL00:12:27Uh, it has taken the characters with Kate Bishop and pizza dog and Hawkeye, Clint Barton and the, um, the tracksuit mafia and has taken the entire gestalt of it, but thrown away the plot and just written its own story using that almost as if it's using the Matt fraction book, like a lens filter to just look at the Hawkeye world through it. And I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. And I find it very interesting. I can't think of any precedents.
Vic00:13:04Is the whole thing about Hawkeye becoming Ronan, not real, or is that also in the comic books?
JVL00:13:10That's in the comic books. Okay. I think it's Ronan. It's different because there was never any Thanos erasing half the world. Yeah. Um, that's not tied to it. Yeah. And this is in a weird way. This feels like a valedictory for. For Jeremy Renner, like Jeremy Renner is ready to get out of these things. Oh, and so there is a constant sense of, uh, like Danny Glover, I'm getting too old for this shit throughout it.
Sonny00:13:39And I love that.
JVL00:13:41I love the hearing aid stuff. I love all the, the deaf, hard of hearing stuff. Same. Cause you don't have superpowers. And this is the first of the character handoffs where I am excited for the new character. Cause Kate Bishop is a great fucking character. And Haley Steinfeld is a great actress. And this is not like going from Chris Evans to Anthony Mackie, which I'm sorry is bad, right?
Sonny00:14:06That's just a downgrade in terms of star power and character.
JVL00:14:09This is not like going from, uh, Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff to Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff, which again, I'm sorry, is a downgrade, right? All these other, these other trades that MCU is making as we move out of. You know, phase three into phase four are all downgrades except for the Kaylee Steinfeld Kate Bishop, which actually feels like a fresh, interesting character that I would like to spend time with.
Sonny00:14:44Well, it helps that Hawkeye has always been kind of a tertiary character anyway. He is, he is one of the easier ones to hand off, I think, because he has not ever before this, you know, been the anchor of. Of one of these movies like he he is not he is not, which makes it interesting and there's
Vic00:15:02all sorts of possibilities.
Sonny00:15:04But also, I think I think I like I'm I'm starting to regret the idea of losing Hawkeye after watching this because Jeremy, I love Jeremy Renner and I've always loved Jeremy Renner. I think he's been good in these movies. He's been he was great in Wind River. He's oh my gosh, he was really good in the the Bourne spinoff movie that like didn't really go anywhere. He is he's just fantastic. And. I again, the best part of the show, I say this, I keep saying this over and over again. I sound like a broken record, but the best part of the show is just him kind of like wandering around New York City, making the like, yes, I'm Hawkeye face to people. I just I love it. I love it.
JVL00:15:42And we are going to lose him without ever getting. But again, I've I've been begging for 15 years now, which is my Black Widow and Hawkeye movie, which is essentially Lethal Weapon. Right. I want the buddy cop version of them in Budapest where they are running. Around doing spy shit together.
Sonny00:15:59Well, we could still get that. There's no reason we can't have. When you say when you say it's going to the aging technology, when you say it's going
Vic00:16:06to end, what do you mean it's going to end with him? Is he dying at the end of this thing or no?
JVL00:16:12I think like we're clearly he's he's going to step back and she is the new Hawkeye. And that's that's great. That's what that's what they did in the fraction books. So they hand I see fraction finish. He wrote twenty six, I think, of. Of these books, and then he ended his Hawkeye series and he left and they were they sold so well that Marvel just did like Hawkeye volume to Jonathan and just centered it around around Kate.
Vic00:16:41Our listeners didn't notice that I did. I did. Even I got the reference to her when she draws up what his costume should be. And because I said, oh, wait, I think I'm remember that was his Hawkeye.
JVL00:16:55But they're they're business together. There's a scene. There's a scene in I think it's episode four where they're riding the subway together and his hearing aid is broken and he starts talking about one thing and then she responds thinking that she's in the same conversation, but he can't hear her. And so he then keeps talking and then he's talking about something totally different and she's and it's all it's it's very odd couple type stuff. It's Oscar and Felix and it's great. It plays so well.
Sonny00:17:23It really works. They're fabulous together.
JVL00:17:26And I'm going to say something. I don't want to get in trouble. I think it is something of an accomplishment to have these two characters on screen and have their naturally be zero sexual tension between them. Well, see, this is what I was going to say.
Vic00:17:45I you didn't I would I'm trying to I keep on feeling that it's there. Is it just me? I think it's I think it's just like if I was Hawkeye and she visited for Christmas, you know, like. Oh, she came here.
Sonny00:17:58I mean, it's it's very much it's very much a father daughter thing, man.
JVL00:18:02It's not this is not I don't know about that in my mind. I think that I'm waiting for it.
Vic00:18:10I'm feeling it's going to happen.
JVL00:18:11Smashing the stop record button.
Vic00:18:14It is really like if I wrote it like, OK, here's it. Here's how I think it's going to end.
Sonny00:18:19And then be like, oh, that's what we call slash fiction.
JVL00:18:21Oh, Vic, it's very and then he brings Kate Bishop home to meet the girl. From Freaks and Geeks. That's right. And he says, why don't you do kiss and make up? They go to this motel down in the glades.
Vic00:18:36See, it writes itself. JVL, it writes itself. Look at that. I'm tuning into that one.
JVL00:18:43She's great. Kaylee Semple is great. He's great with her. And they're funny. Yeah, there was also there is a moment of interesting direction in episode. I don't know. I don't know which one, whether it was three or four, but the two of them are sitting in a diner talking and we get the entire scene with them each doing one camera shots with their talking to the camera and then flipping. And there's no master shot to it. You know, there's no side from the two of them. And it winds up really bringing home the intimacy of a diner conversation. Oh, sure. You know, where, you know, two people, you're sitting 26 inches apart. And you're I really like that. That was the first time in one of these where I've noticed the director doing something. Yeah.
Sonny00:19:37Well, I wanted to say that these these these two episodes in particular have been better directed than any again, anything else from the MCU TV shows, I think. I mean, I like it. Is it a director? It is actually. No, it's the directoring team. It's a directing team. It's like Birdie and Birdie or. Oh, that's right. Or somebody. And. Like, again, it just visually it is a much more interesting show than it needs to be. First off, and that be any of these any of these Marvel shows have been. I mean, like it makes it makes Loki look like a big pile of shit. Yeah. By comparison.
JVL00:20:15Here's just again to hammer home what I was trying to say about how it owes everything to the Matt Fraction comic books, but it does its own thing. So episode three is based on. In an issue of the comic called Cherry, which is one of the one which is about a redheaded woman who is in trouble, who is fleeing from the tracksuit mafia, who drives a 78 Challenger, a red 78 Challenger. And Clint and Kate are trying to help her and they're helping her flee in the 78 Challenger. And they're doing all this funny arrow shit, right? You know, because they're being tried. And so they take that. And they craft an epic. Episode basically around that. But accomplishing totally different storytelling goals. And that's again, I just find it fascinating. Like, hey, here's an element that we can pick and use, but we're just going to use it without feeling any need for fidelity to the source material. We're just going to use it to get what we need. Storytelling wise. That's fascinating.
Sonny00:21:22There. Sorry, I'll stop talking.
JVL00:21:24Well, I look, I was not talking. I got to my phone while I was listening to you guys and John doing episodes one and two. Not at all.
Vic00:21:32But again, I'm coming from my background because I have no knowledge of any of these things.
Sonny00:21:36Well, this is why I wanted, this is specifically why I wanted to do this show, because I know you're a big fan of that run of Hawkeye comics.
Vic00:21:43Yeah.
?00:21:44Love, love, love.
Vic00:21:45Well, if the episode was called Cherry, I would have really turned in.
Sonny00:21:49Oh, stop it. Stop it. So next, next week, next week for the bonus episode, we're going to do five and six. Vic may or may not be here. We're going to, we're going to finish up this run of episodes, uh, and then Starship Troopers.
JVL00:22:03Maybe we'll see.
Sonny00:22:04I don't know. Hard to say. Boy, Starship Troopers.
?00:22:07I'm sure that'll be fun.
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