Review: Red vs Blue: Zero “Recovery” ; Episode 3


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Carolina settles in as part of Shatter Squad, Zero’s team, Viper, continue their mysterious plans.

OUR TAKE

These two episodes act as a bit of a two-parter, at least in that the events started in Ep 2 lead into and are resolved in Ep 3. They mainly serve to more thoroughly introduce us to Shatter Squad as our protagonists and hint at what Viper has in store. The way they go about this is…debatable, mainly in how rather clunky the exposition can get. In just Episode 2, we probably get three very blunt scenes that feel more like reading off a character bio than actual dialogue. The first feels like that first teaser for Guardians of the Galaxy where John C Riley reads off the character descriptions, the main difference being that they knew to take that out of the actual film. The others are so distracting in how blunt that you feel you’re being exposited at more than actually getting to know the characters. They’re also intercut with very elaborate and intense action scenes, though that feels more of a way to keep the audience from getting bored rather than putting these things together in a meaningful way. They’re cool fights, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t tell me much about the characters involved, meaning they lack a critical dimension that could help them be more than just flashy moments.

While I don’t really feel much of a connection to many of the new characters yet (and some just straight up annoy me, particularly anyone wearing mainly yellow or orange), it’s been interesting seeing how Carolina is integrated into this newer cast. Her interactions with One and East feel like a parallel with her initial rivalry with Tex, though part of me wonders if I may be reaching with that comparison as it’s almost too subtle, and subtle doesn’t seem to be this season’s thing. I also don’t really feel like she has much of a reason to be here aside from her connection to Wash and needing a team to go up against Viper (though why she needs this team in particular is unknown). And even though the third episode does end up laying out a lot of the character relationships, including between Viper and Shatter Squad, I still somehow don’t feel like I know many of the characters enough for that to mean much of anything. I understand that they probably want to catch everyone up on the new characters as fast as possible, but the way they’re going about it feels like it’s having the opposite effect, at least for now. We’ve still got over half the season to go, so maybe things will pick up.