Awakening Part Three

"Awakening" Part Three is the third televised episode of the series Gargoyles, and the third episode of Season 1.

• Story by Eric Luke & Michael Reaves
• Teleplay by Michael Reaves

Summary

The gargoyles begin to grow accustomed to modern-day life. Elisa investigates the situation, meeting Xanatos and eventually Goliath. Xanatos explains to Goliath that he needs his help retrieving some stolen diskettes, but Goliath chooses to visit Central Park with Elisa, where they are attacked by the invaders from before.

Tidbits

Brendan and Margot make their first appearance in "Gargoyles" here, as do the three street thugs (who would reappear in "Avalon" and "Hunter's Moon"). The yuppie couple are among the best-known of the various "recurring background characters" of "Gargoyles", ordinary residents of New York who have the habit of cropping up again and again. At first they were introduced simply to make things easier for the animators, but soon the production team developed a fondness for making them into people who would encounter the gargoyles over and over, particularly Greg Weisman, who saw it as similar to the "universe of characters" concept found in "The Simpsons" and William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County stories. Brendan and Margot are not the first such "recurring background characters" to appear in "Gargoyles", however; that honor goes to Officer Morgan in "Awakening Part One".

Elisa comments when she first looks around Castle Wyvern, "You must have one heck of a heating bill". This remark bears a striking similarity to one made by Bugs Bunny in the 1959 Warner Brothers cartoon "A Witch's Tangled Hare", regarding, of all places, a ruined Scottish castle that he was strolling about in. Even more interestedly, "A Witch's Tangled Hare" contained a strong element of Shakespearean parody, primarily Macbeth, but with aspects of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet thrown in as well. Was this line of Elisa's a deliberate hommage to Bugs, or merely a coincidence? (While this question remains unanswered, later episodes of "Gargoyles" would contain tributes to another Warner Brothers cartoon character - Wile E. Coyote - in the form of Coyote and Vinnie.)

Links

• Greg's Ramble
• Extensive Synopsis and Review

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