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elia-de-silentio · 2 years

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TENTATIVE ANALYSES: THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

EPISODE 2: RUN BOY RUN

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

This is more of a Breather Episode after the more emotionally-charged first; I haven't found a specific structure in it, rather three progressing subplots.

1. Five and the End of the World: the confrontation between Five and Viktor goes wrong due to miscommunication between two people who haven't talked to each other in years. So, Five is on his own again, with his only clue being a glass eye who he had found in the hand of Luther's corpse when he arrived to the bad timeline. The problem is, he can't access the sensible datas to find who he belongs to because he's stuck in the body of a kid, so he enlists Klaus' help. The two eventually manage to find out, from the serial number, that the eye hasn't been fabricated yet. Left alone with a useless clue, Five goes to find comfort in a mannequin who had been his companion during his wanderings in the post-apocalypse, and has another fight with two assassins sent by a group he worked for before. Meanwhile, his former massacre is being investigated by Diego.

2. Viktor Ascending: this one starts slow and subdued, but Viktor, after trying and failing to communicate with his siblings, finds a new violin student who seems to have truly a lot in common with him, giving him some inkling of a positive relationship with someone.

3. Luther and the mystery of Reginald: Luther first goes to the shithole Diego lives in to apologize for suspecting ... mostly him, because he was the most openly hostile to their father. After Diego shoos him away, he goes to talk with Allison, ready to admit his mistakes and quit the chase ... only for his sister to tell him that he actually was right, and there's proof thanks to surveillance videos.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

Unlike the previous episode, that was littered with flashbacks involving all of the siblings, in this episode there are just two, that put the focus squarely on Five. We are shown first the events that led to him being separated from his family (he got overconfident with his time travel attemps and got stuck in a post-apocalyctic world) and the meaning of the glass eye he worries so much about for the whole episode (he found it in the hand of a dead Luther, and it is his only clue about the cause of the end of the world). This, along with him having the majority of the scenes, puts him in a sort of central role for this episode.

Also regarding Five, his first attempts at time travel receive a nice 'foiling of the scenery': the first two attempts bring him to crowded street with sun and brilliant colors; the third attempt lands him in a world that's clouded, dominated by tones of brown, with only the occasional fire here and there to break it. It makes for a sudden and drastic change of atmosphere, letting us share in the shock of the character.

Another interesting thing is how we get hints to a bigger plot via being left in the dark about something a character said or saw, and curiously both involve Allison. The first is her phone call with her husband, from which we can understand that not only he has exclusive custody of their daughter, but Allison isn't even allowed to see or talk to her unless she does 'something'. The conversation doesn't let us understand what this something actually is, just clues us in that what we've learned about Allison's divorce might not be all there is to it. The second time is when she sees the surveillance videos dating back to her and her siblings' childhood; she puts on some, to bask into nostalgia, and then her eyes widen at something that we don't see on these videos. Next time we see Allison, she runs up to Luther and tells him that he's right about their father's death not being an accident.

In both of these occasions, we're fed just the right, little morsels of information to keep us hooked.

CHARACTERS

Going with the Hargreeves family first:

What we learn about Reginald basically confirms what we were shown in the first episode. He was strict, exceedingly formal (he basically ordered the kids to eat at mealtimes like you'd do to train dogs) and overly focused on training (they can't even talk during breakfast, because he put on some registration of a climbing guide).

Luther, the failed leader, goes on to try and adapt again to life on Earth. He backpedals on his previous suspicions on his siblings, particularly going to apologize to Diego in a very awkward conversation. He talks of something else, revealing his insecurities with his surprise that Allison talked to her daughter about him instead of trying to forget everything and everyone tied to her superhero life. And right at the end of the episode, when it seems he's starting to go on to establish some normality, here comes Allison with the reveal that he was right.

Diego: it's almost surprising how pathetic he appears here. He talks and acts a big game, but it's found out that he's a vigilante because he failed police academy, because he couldn't respect the procedures and actively dismissed them. He tried to break out of his father's influence while keeping fighting crime, something that as Patch points out gives him a sense of purpose; but he ended up acting just like the vigilante he was as a kid, with an added spite for formalities and authority on which he projected his hatred for his father; problem is, such a behaviour wouldn't fly on actual police force, there are actual laws the police is bound to for specific reasons (... in tv world, let's not talk about the actual one, it's too big of a can of worms), and he couldn't even make it out of police academy. The closest thing he has to a job now is his vigilantism (which gets him routinely arrested by the actual police), and supports himself by being the cleaning man at a gym in exchange for a place to stay in a little basement. In this episode, he appears as anything but cool.

Allison keeps on not being much of an Heart. She has some success with Luther, gently pointing out his flaws that could ruin his relationship with his siblings; but she also interacts with Viktor, and unlike the previous episode, where she was conciliating, it's a complete disaster. After a bad call with her ex husband, she ends up taking her frustrations on her brother, accusing him of not being able to understand her because he was always so detached, and cuts short his attempts at saying that this wasn't a choice by telling that he's an adult and can't blame their father anymore, he has to hold up to his mistakes (it's implied, but the issue here is the autobiography). She regrets it quite soon, however, but not before Viktor has gone away; she watches some surveillance videos from their childhood with Pogo, and realizes that they did isolate their 'powerless' sibling even during normal playtime. Interesting, she looks at it through the eyes of a mother, thinking to how it would feel if someone treated her Claire like that; she rejects the 'you were just children' excuse Pogo tries to offer her, and puts both herself and her sibling in the position of adults, who have to take responsibilities.

Klaus receives a little more depth: there are the first hints that he is plagued by the spirits of the people around him, who clamor for his attention, and the drugs are his attempts to shut them down. Save for Ben, whose ghost is his most constant companion and unsuccessful Jiminy Cricket. It's also shown that life post-Umbrella Academy wasn't kind to him: his expensive addiction ended up leaving him homeless, he had trouble forming meaningful relationships, and he lost contact with his siblings who wouldn't help him, all things implied in one go by his comment about his longest relationship lasted three weeks and that was because his partner offered lodgings. The fact that Five teleports away right after Klaus reveals this is quite heartbreaking, all things considered. On a lighter note, Klaus shows here that he is very capable of using his weird, offputting ways to get people confused and intimidated and get what ge wants out of them; Jester he might be, but he's not stupid.

Five has a no-nonsense attitude and a tunnel vision on his goal, and this ironically risks to bring him farther from it. He ignores the limitations of his teenaged body and the fact that he's not an Organization-sponsored assassin anymore, and his first attempt to retrieve the owner of the glass eye fails for this very reason, because to the external world he's just some kid with no leverage. He seeks out his siblings for help, but he's quick to dismiss them once they behave in a way he dislikes (not fully getting his situation or trying to talk about themselves). He risks to end up alienating them, in a situation where their help could be vital. But it's also shown that for several decades, the only being he related to was a mannequin he gave a name to and carried around, his only companion in the post-apocalyptic world. This, remember, where he was an actual teen and his social capabilities were still developing. He carries himself as more mature than his siblings, but he's just as damaged as them.

Ben receives a little more screentime here; little, as I said, he tries to get Klaus to behave with absolutely zero success.

Viktor here has two unsuccessful meetings with his family: he fails to connect with both Five and Allison, partly because he doesn't understand their problems and partly because they themselves pushed him away as soon as they heard something they didn't like. But then he meets a perfect stranger, one who seems to have a lot of things in common with him. It's interesting to see how much Viktor downplays himself: Harold barely gets in a compliment on of much of a good teacher he is, and he immediately starts talking about some student who's a violin prodigy and could give him pointers. It seems like he can't handle the idea of being good at something and reacts the way his family members did: going on about how average and non-special he is.

Now, this episode also introduces some new characters.

Hazel and Cha-Cha: two former colleagues of Five, assassins for the Organization. It seems like he officially became their target. They're both shown as cold-blooded and very quick to jump at torture, as seen by what they did to a poor guy they mistook for Five. Of the two, Hazel is the most informal and relaxed, while Cha-Cha is more uptight.

Eudora Patch: an old flame of Diego from the times of the police academy, only she actually managed to graduate and become an actual detective. She works on the case of the shooting Five was involved in, and has very little tolerance for Diego's insistence to do things the rough-and-tumble way, providing scathing analysis of his behaviour.

Harold: a guy who goes to Viktor for violin lessons. It appears to have much in common with him, namely an estranged father, and with his calm and compliments, he's the most positive personal interaction Viktor has had so far in the show.

THEMES

The theme of abuse is still strong in this chapter, as the root of the dysfunctional behaviours exhibited by the siblings; this time, though, the matters of 'personal responsibility' and 'communications' are added on.

There are a lot of difficult communications in this chapter: Viktor involontarily dismissing Five's problems, Luther having difficulties talking with Diego even if he genuinely wanted to apologize to him, Allison taking her frustrations on a Viktor that merely wanted to support her, Five cutting short his conversation with Klaus as soon as the topic turned into one he wasn't interested in. Interestingly, all these incidents involve people who were separed from the family for a long time: Five because of his botched time travel, Luther because he was kicked quite upstairs and Reginald never let him have any contact with the rest of his family, and Viktor who wasn't separated in the physical sense but in the social one, the pariah of the household. These three endured a stunting of their ability to interact with their family, and as a result they can't properly communicate with them. It's interesting to see that the only successful, positive interactions this episode are: between Allison and Luther, where she clears a misunderstanding with him, Allison and Pogo, a quite open-hearted conversation, and Viktor and Harold, the first conversation the former has with someone outside their family and thus without expectations for or baggage with him, and the results are the first appreciative remarks we hear addressed to him.

Now, onto the 'personal responsibility thing'. There's the way Luther has been over-responsibilized and now, as Allison notices, doesn't know what to do if he doesn't have a mission. There's the way Five has been traumatized by finding himself in the post-apocalypse, and now would do anything to prevent it. And above all, there's the argument between Allison and Viktor, where the concept is openly spelled out.

It's interesting because Allison so far has been nice and understanding to Viktor, never once bringing up his book; but once she's already stressed by her unability to see or even hear Claire, she snaps at him, accusing him of being unable to understand her. And when he weakly tries to object saying that being isolated wasn't his choice, Allison remarks that now he's an adult and doesn't get to blame their father for his actions. The book isn't mentioned, but clearly implied as the main source of anger on Allison's part. However, she regrets her outburst: she thinks back to when they were children, realizes that Viktor was really isolated, and she played a part, neglecting staying more in contact even during their adult years. She missed an occasion to connect with her sibling, and has to deal with the consequences, taking responsibilities as an adult.

SYMBOLISM

• The violin: it's Viktor's thing. He started playing it as a child, alone in his room, while his siblings had superheroism and games that heavily involved their powers, excluding him. As an adult, he plays professionally and gives lessons to children, but he's quick to point out that he's not that good with it, he's not a prodigy. The violin represents Viktor's separation from his siblings: a perfectly normal instrument, a perfectly normal talent level, nothing special to see either in it nor in its owner.

• Delores: the mannequin that was Five's only companion during the post apocalypse years. He acts like it has an actual personality, and cherishes it like a sentimental partner. It represents Five's stunted social abilities: he had no real human beings around for decades, and as a result he can't really interact with his siblings: he tries to vent his problems at them, but when they talk back, saying things he's not interested in hearing (in other words, when they don't act like mannequins) he cuts the conversation short and goes away. At the end of the episode, after unsuccessful interactions with Viktor and Klaus, he goes in the clothes shop to retrieve Delores.

REFERENCES

• The title of the episode comes from the song Run Boy Run by Woodkid, appropriately played as Five leaves his family to become stuck in a post-apocalyptic future.

Thanks to anyone who read insofar!

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