Show notes
Our MCU podcast officially kicks off with WandaVision Episode 1, “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”! Vision and Scarlet Witch are trapped in a strange, ’50s sitcom world with no clear way out. We break down our reactions to the first episode of the series, as well as plenty of speculation what exactly is going on, when this takes place in the Marvel movie timeline, and Easter eggs from the comics — and movies. SUBSCRIBE TO MARVELVISION ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex: What is up, y’all? Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about the MCU, and specifically, the kickoff of the MCU on Disney Plus, big deal. First episode of WandaVision, we’re talking about all of it right now. I’m Alex. Justin: I’m Justin. Pete: I’m Pete. Alex: And this is very exciting. We did a preview episode for this, but we are officially getting into it now. Two episodes of WandaVision launched on Disney plus today, we’re going to talk about them individually, so check pretty soon for our second podcast talking about the second episode. But I think there’s a… I want to go to a bunch of different directions here. First of all, I want to say, for anybody who is watching this or listening to this podcast, definitely watch the episode first. We’re not going to do a complete recap or anything like that. We’re going to talk broad strokes about feelings about it. I know we have some differing opinions about- Justin: We’ll see. There could be some different takes in here just based on our faces. Alex: Potentially, how traumatized some of us are, or not. Justin: Or exuberant. Alex: But also, we’re going to talk about specific plot points. Obviously we’ll speculate about it. We’ll talk about potential comic book origins, though that’s going to be a tough one I think with this one. Justin: Dicey. Alex: Yeah, a little bit dicey. Let’s start with you, Justin. Well, just to get broad strokes about this episode, this is like the 50 sitcom episode, it’s very Bewitched, I’d say. I’m not very versed, honestly, in old sitcoms. Justin: I feel like it was Bewitched, Dick van Dyk. Pete: I would say Leave It To Beaver as well, type of thing. Alex: Yeah. So this is something we talked about a little on the preview episode, something that they did with the show, which I think is really fascinating, is they tried to film each episode like the time period they’re in. So this was filmed in front of a studio audience, they did the effects just naturally the way that they would do them at that time period, and the thing that I would say that I was really impressed with with this episode is I feel like they wrote the jokes and they structured it exactly how they would for that time period as well. Justin: Truly, I mean, we’ve talked over the years a lot about how the Marvel films, they take a genre and really play the genre and then lay the superhero specifics on top of it. So you get your original Captain America movie, you get your Guardians Of The Galaxy that feels like the fun space romp. All of them use the genre to its most extreme or to its utmost and helps them with the storytelling, and this is like an even harder commitment to that in the television world. This was an episode of this type of TV show, it was perfectly milk toast. And I mean that as a compliment, the jokes, those are real jokes that the writer’s room of an actual sitcom in the fifties would be trying to make the same level of jokes, same style of joke. It’s not mocking the format, it’s doing this perfect translation of it, which I thought was a wild choice. That is a wild tonal choice. Alex: And you’re giving us insider information because as everybody knows, you’re a line producer on many TV shows for years now, so you know when you see it, writer’s room stuff. Justin: That is not. I do work in television, mostly on the writing and directing side, but not in the 1950s, so I don’t have a ton of experience being that [crosstalk 00:03:35]. That’s where you come in, Pete. Alex: Well, something that all three of us have experience with is comedy, right? And comedy writing, and definitely, the thing that I think is kind of fascinating about the structure of this particular episode is, it starts off and it started to feel like a sketch to me. I was like, okay, I get this. It’s a sit-com, but you got Wanda Maximoff. You got Vision, so what if that was in the Marvel universe? But to your point, Justin, it really just doubles down on all the sit-com trips to the point where it’s not just a sketch, it moves beyond a sketch, and then by the end we get, which is my favorite part of this episode, we get this turn into weird, creepy horror that feels right out of a Twilight Zone of that episode down to, again, the way that they’re filming it. Alex: So they’re almost doing two things at the same time, and that total consistency and that time consistency, even if in this early episode, we have no idea what’s going on, though we will get into speculation later, I really appreciated. Pete, I know we’re going to go to you for the contrary take. You were very bummed out about this. I also think though, you were not very excited to get into this show. Is there a reason you were hesitant in the first place? Pete: Well, yes. Tom King, an amazing writer, but the vision comic that he did was a little depressing, and was this kind of take on suburbia, if you will. This kind of, Wanda being trapped or trapping herself or whatever it was- Alex: Vision being trapped. Pete: Vision, sorry. Yes. So that, it was tough because the comic was… You didn’t really know what was going on, but it was also very sad and depressing, and this heightened that a little bit. It got scary and depressing, and I very much was on the side of that 70s show mom when I was like, “Stop, just make this stop. Stop it. This is really uncomfortable and creepy in a way that I don’t understand, nor can I get behind.” So it was a little tough. Justin: Well, because I don’t think there’s a lot of speculation before this came out that it was going to be based on the Tom King vision comic, and I actually don’t think it is. This first episode that sort of tension and the suburban panic of that comic series, but this is something, a totally different animal I think. And it feels like this is a dense show. I mean, we can talk about sort of the big swing nature of this show and the fact that because of COVID, it’s coming out first as opposed to Falcon and Winter Soldier, which would have been a way more across the plate type show as we… What we think we know of it anyway. That this truly does feel like… I’m just going to be very interested to see the reaction because I feel like a lot of people might have a very similar reaction to Pete, which is like, “Wait, what is this?” This has none of the things that I expect from an Avengers. Alex: 100%. I think anything Marvel at this point is a safe bet, right? Like we’ve talked about this incessantly on all the podcasts we’ve done, but even with their bad stuff, it’s really, you could argue, you can quibble a little bit, but it’s like C plus or better, right? Like, “This is fine. I’ll watch it. It’s good.” With something like this, it’s definitely going to be confusing for people. If you’re a sit-com fan and you don’t know anything about it, you’re going to be like, “Who are these people and what is going on here, and what are these jokes?” If you’re a Marvel fan, you might be like, “Why is nobody hitting each other? What’s going on? This doesn’t feel like anything in the Marvel universe.” Alex: So it is a big risk, but at the same time, you do have those little notes, and this is very much jumping to the middle of the episode, but you have that fake commercial in the middle of the episode. Pete: Yeah, what was that? Alex: Well, we don’t know. We don’t know what that is yet, but that gives you that tease of Stark Industries, they probably were making weird toasters at the time, and I feel like that gives you that MCU thing to hang on to, not just Wanda and Vision, but mentioning Stark, throwing other little things in there- Pete: Yeah, but mentioning Stark in a bad way, in a creepy commercial where that woman doesn’t look right. I don’t think she’s okay. She was shiny. I was like, “Somebody helped that lady. I don’t know if she’s there on her own free will” That’s the thing, I wanted to understand what was happening, and it was tough because when it starts, it’s like, “Oh, hey, ’50s, fun.” Like you said, an SNL sketch, but sometimes, an SNL sketch goes too long and you’re like, “Okay, what’s happening?” And I felt like that, where it was like, “Okay, this SNL sketch is getting dark. I don’t know what the payoff is.” Alex: Where’s Kate McKinnon? Pete: Yeah, there was- Justin: Don Pardo. Pete: Yeah, the neighbor was SNL for sure, but I wanted to enjoy this, and it kept me at a distance and kept me confused in ways that I couldn’t latch on. Even the Stark stuff, I was like, why is Stark bad? What is happening? Justin: Well, I do think there’s a reason they released two episodes up tap, so we haven’t seen the second episode yet. Pete: And that’s what I was worried about. I was like, why are you doing that? I was like, does your first episode suck? That’s why you’re releasing two? Oh, okay. Thank you, Alex: Pete. I think the way you were feeling is the way the episode is supposed to make you feel. All of the things they’re trying to get across to you, and to Justin’s point, we’ll watch and talk about the second episode in a second, but my impression is that that is going to walk you further along the path to hopefully understanding a little bit of what’s going on, or at least understanding the show. Something that I was thinking about while I was watching this was, this isn’t strictly a pilot for a TV series in the way that you think of a pilot of a TV series, right? It’s setting up more a tone. It is introducing or re-introducing the characters of Wanda and Vision, but even if you’re a hardcore MC fan and you’ve read everything about the show, I think you understand what’s going on. Alex: But if you’re a casual fan who watched the movies, you might have this reaction of, “Wait, hold on. I thought… Isn’t Vision dead? Did I remember that wrong? Hold on. What’s going on with Wanda? Where does this take place? Is this before the Avengers movies? Wait, I didn’t think they were married.” So there’s all these questions they’re throwing out at you depending on your level of knowledge there, if you haven’t read every Entertainment Weekly article. And again, like you were saying, Justin, I think that’s a tough place to put the audience in, but I do think it’s valuing them at the tight of their intelligence. Justin: And I feel like I love it. I think it’s great. To be able to play so hard and hit the genre so hard, I think is… No other place would have the confidence to start a show like this this way, so I appreciate it. And to walk through it a little bit maybe, the actual plot of the sit-com plot is the classic misunderstanding. Wanda thinks Vision’s coming home for a romantic night in, he’s actually bringing the boss over. They have a bunch of misunderstandings and try to cook dinner, so that feels like they’re just using a very standard boiler plate, 1950 sitcom on plot. But the stuff that was interesting, if we want to get into that, they- Pete: There was one really interesting thing that stood out to me, and I think this is going to catch on like wildfire. Alex: What is this? What is happening? What is about to happen? Pete: A beer that’s the name of your anniversary? I mean, think about that. If you could buy a beer that has your anniversary on it, you don’t have to worry about anything. You can just enjoy your- Justin: You’re talking about the throwaway joke that Kathryn Hahn makes about Ralph, her husband, not remembering their anniversary, unless it was the name of a beer. Pete: Yeah. June 2nd was the name of the beer, and I was like, “This is cash money.” There’s like 80 million breweries out there, somebody get on this and you’re just going to be rolling around in dough. Alex: I’ll tell you what, this is a little bit of a side note and we can get back to what you were saying, Justin, but Kathryn Hahn is so good at this and she’s so perfect for a sitcom, it is out of control. Her lines are easily the actual laugh out loud lines. A lot of the lines, like you were saying, I think milk toast is a good word for it, but she actually nails the jokes really, really well. All of her off-hand stuff about her husband, Ralph, it’s so stupid, but she hits it in the perfect way. Somebody mentioned that line, I don’t know if you guys saw, but they’re doing this Lucy Ricardo movie with Nicole Kidman, and I saw some random tweet where somebody was like, “Hey, I’m just saying,” and it had a picture of Lucy and a picture of Kathryn Hahn, and I was like, well I love Kathryn Hahn, I don’t know. But then watching this, it felt like, yeah, 100%, absolutely. Justin: It’s like weird serendipity, that that fight’s going on online, and we see the show where she literally is playing, she’s technically playing Ethel, but she is really a shoe in for Lucy. But I do think, to jump right on there, she stands out as something weird. She is, and obviously she’s [crosstalk 00:12:59]. Alex: Oh, that’s what you thought was weird? Justin: But I just mean, in the world, she is a deviation from the sitcom world. It feels like she is trying to get information out of them. She is keeping them in the plot, the sitcom plot, as the episode goes on, so she feels like she’s a presence there that wants something from them and is containing them in this, whatever it is, this fantasy world, however we learn about it. Alex: How much… I only ask, because this is our first official episode here so I’m not sure how much we want to get into speculation, and certainly if you’re listening to this and you feel like you want to just talk about recap or something, we can leave the speculation stuff for the end, so just hit us up at MarvelVisionPod. We’re happy to chat about it, we’re happy to do whatever you guys like, but I- Justin: We’ll do anything, [crosstalk 00:13:44] I’m trapped in this child’s room. I’m trapped in my own version of suburbia. Alex: Yeah. I’m also trapped in… This is child stuff over here, and not mine. Justin: We’re all clearly trapped in children’s rooms, because you guys have comic books and stuff like that around you. I have dresses. Alex: A lot of the speculation pre-show focused on Kathryn Hahn and specifically her character, Agnes, and whether she was the character Agatha Harkness from the comic books who… There’s been different takes at Agatha Harkness, but she usually is the one who I think raised Pietro and Wanda also. She ends up, I think, raising the twins that Vision and Scarlet Witch have later on. She’s kind of an antagonist, kind of an ally, sort of straddles the line there. But certainly to your point, Justin, that’s what it feels like in this first episode, right? She knows more about what’s going on than she’s letting on. Justin: And don’t we get the name Harkness at one point? Alex: Heart. Justin: Is that what it was? I heard Harkness. Alex: Yeah, the boss’s name is Heart. It’s close. It’s close. Heart and Hark are different. Justin: Yeah, true. They are different, just the letters, the consonants. Alex: Yeah. Catherine Hahn is great. While we’re talking about performances, let’s talk about Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany I think. Pete, you look so bummed out right now. Pete: I wanted to talk about the 70s Show mom. I thought she killed it, I thought- Alex: Go for it. I want to throw that to you. Justin: Throw the bone, That 70s Show. Pete: I mean, she was hysterical the way she got behind the goodbye with the hands behind the face, it was really great. Justin: Perfect callback. Pete: Yeah, it was- Alex…
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