Episode 1 + 2 "A New Family."
Plot: After a low-budget recap of Godzilla (1998)’s final moments, biologist Nick “Worm Guy” Tatopoulos (Ian Ziering) and Major (nee, Colonel) Hicks (Kevin Dunn) set out into the unstable warren of Godzilla-created tunnels formerly known as the Manhattan subway system. A well-timed cavein separates Dr. Nick from his military minders, sending him, like Alice, down a hole and into a strange new, topsy-turvy life. Nick lands in a small puddle of orange-yellow goo not five feet away from the object of his search: the last remaining Godzilla egg, miraculously intact after the aerial bombardment of Madison Square Garden.
Right on the cue, the egg hatches. Its issue—a bobble-headed, spindle-limbed version of his asexual progenitor—sniffs at Nick, licks his face, and retreats when the spark of a broken high-voltage line stuns its widdle, newborn eyes.
Maj. Hicks is nonplussed at Nick’s news of the newborn. “Now it’s time for the hunters to hunt,” he says, “and the lab rats to go back to the lab.” Frustrated, Nick recruits fellow-Drs. Elsie Chapman (Charity James) and Mendel Craven (Malcolm Danare) for a little freelance monster hunting. “We’re the only ones who can track it,” Nick says. “You wanna help me see this thing through, or would you rather wait for the army to screw it up?” Joined by Nick’s “research assistant” (re: Odious Comic Relief) Randy Hernandez (Rino Romano—now the voice of Bruce Wayne on The Batman), Our Heroes take over Nicks’ “research facility” (re: converted warehouse) on Staten Island as a “staging area,” while Hicks and his military cohorts fruitlessly plumb the Atlantic’s depths. Expecting a human-sized monster, it’s not long before Dr. Nick’s intrepid little band receives its first surprise: a T-Rex-sized Godzilla bounding out of the bay, making scrap-metal of Our Heroes’ improvised cage. Making a b-line for Dr. Nick, Godzilla stops short of popping the 90210-voiced scientist into his mouth. Instead, the visibly-calmed monster gives Dr. Nick a friendly-puppy lick, sets him down, and waits patiently for…what?With three PHDs between them, Our Heroes quickly deduce that Godzilla's imprinted on Nick, strange as it sounds. “I had this gunk from the eggs all over me,” Nick remembers. Yeah, that’d be afterbirth, Doc…something you, as a biologist, could’ve guessed at the time. But c’es la vive…In true Movie Scientist fashion, Nick decides to study Godzilla rather than bomb the lizard back to the Stone Age. Convincing his colleagues to go along with this proves far too easy, but, again, c’es la vive.
Too bad Nick makes no move to tell his erstwhile girlfriend, WIDF reporter Audrey Timmonds (Paget Brewster). This leaves Audrey and cameraman Victor “Animal” Polotti (Joe Pantoliano) to accidently come across Godzilla curled up on Nick’s doorstep. The two argue across Godzilla’s flank for awhile (prompting a very adverse reaction when Audrey raises her voice to Nick) when, suddenly, the army descends form out of an overcast, cartoon sky.
With Godzilla seemingly destroyed and Our Heroes (including Audrey and Animal) under house arrest, Nick grows suspicious. He accuses Audrey of calling in the task force. Audrey denies this. “Well, if you didn’t call Hicks, who did?” Audrey accuses Elsie, Elsie snipes back, and I’m sure Nick takes a moment to wonder why every woman in his life is a psychological fourteen-year-old.
Hicks and Nick take a walk outside, on Nick’s balcony, Twin Towers of the World Trade Center visible across the bay. They have a small debate on the ethics of live giant monster research. Calling it a draw, they depart as friends, Nick avoiding a charge of treason, and a stint in Guantanamo Bay.
That night (Twin Towers still visible, by God) Elsie and Craven make plans to visit Jamaica, where ships and swimmers have recently developed a bad habit of vanishing. While packing up for the trip, Nick and Odious Comic Relief (I’m sorry—his name’s Randy) discover Monique Dupree (Gargoyles and Red Shoe Diaries regular Brigitte Bako) breaking into the house computer. A Special Agent from Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, Monique presents herself as weapons master, bodyguard and (un)official liaison with…who? A good spy never tells. “Don’t know ‘bout you, jefe,” Randy, the human goliwog, comments, ”but I feel safer already.”
Nick takes Monique's offer and it’s off to Jamaica. Elsie and Craven, meanwhile, have a run in with some giant squid. Nick finds them cocooned in tar…the same tar congealing around their boat’s propellers. Giant squids have invaded Jamaica’s very waters. (Where they stirred up by the original Godzilla’s swim past the island?) Godzilla Mark Two--now over three hundred feet tall--makes short work of them on Nick’s behalf, returning from the dead just in time. Nick projects loyalty on Godzilla’s actions, but the implications of this are ignored…if, for no other reason, than the appearance of Crustaceous Rex.
This, first of Godzilla’s reoccurring foes, sets the tone for the remainder of the series both in its striking visual design, and its complete biological impossibility. (Legs and tentacles? Somebody, somewhere, got a little greedy.) A well-animated monster fight ensues, with Maj. Hicks and U.S. military arriving at the last minute. But it's okay: after violating all kinds of Jamaica’s territorial sovereignty, the military stands around while Godzilla does their job for them (pretty smart move, in terms of hardware losses). After triumphing over C-Rex, the Big G conveniently rescues all those tar-entombed missing-persons in the process. Nick triumphs over Hicks by arguing that Godzilla is “the only thing that stands between us and every other mutation that comes out of the woodwork. And believe me, Major, there will be others.” With a reluctance totally within character (and an authority out of all proportion to his rank) Maj. Hicks agrees to spare Godzilla's life.
Parting shot from Dr. Nick: “Just be thankful that whatever we have to face in the future, we won’t be facing it alone.”
Analysis: On the positive front, this series presented unrepentant junkies (like your humble narrator) with weekly giant monster action, the hour-long first episode serving this up right off. Its producers knew exactly what they were doing in a way Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich did not. While maintaining continuity of characters and relationships, the series succeeded handsomely in gradually expanded its mythology to include almost every imaginable cliche in the daikaiju genre. Sooner or later, they get to everything here. And I'm going to have a damn good time pointing everything out.
Here we see the first shoots of that growth: the Monster as Friend to Man vs. the Monster From the Deep, set against the tropical backdrop of Jamaica. While Nick’s relationship with Godzilla dances on the edge of Gamera Territory…and I’m willing to let it slide since their "bond" really is the dramatic axis of the show, keeping Our (Human) Heroes involved in a way most giant monster film protagonists are not...and never will be so long as directors think it’s okay to have characters finish up a story blithely watching the monsters fight from minimum safe distance.
If anything, Dr. Nick and his followers are more proactive than Godzilla himself. Our Heroes showcase an ad-hoc, improvisation style of giant monster fighting that’s inventive by necessity—never the same trick twice. Surely the show's writers realized you can only have Godzilla blast the Monster of the Week away with a gust of Atomic Breath so many times before your audience cries out for…something more.
Put simply, like Justice League after it, Godzilla: The Series spent its run successfully mining its parent genre for every conceivably useful idea, eventually managing to distill at least fifty years of daikaiju movies into their purest, most ridiculous essence…and I mean that as a compliment, because if you’re into this sort of thing you couldn’t ask for more. What we have here is an animated, one hour, giant monster made-for-TV movie. Name another from the last ten years. Go on. I’m so desperate for human communication I’m actually daring you to name one. Go on.
Right. Pure, ridiculous essence. Every once in awhile, the producers of this series make with The Creepy. Better yet, they make with The Creepy at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning on Fox. Fucking Fox, man. This feat cannot be underscored often enough. These days you just can’t start the day with the sight of men being dragged to a watery grave by giant squid. More’s the pity.
And mores the pity this series suffers from all the idiotic constraints of American “children's” television, including but not limited to: a relative low budget (see below) and a general squeamishness—re: death.
The series has not aged well—computer technology was in its infancy during Godzilla’s run, and the uneven quality of animation testifying to this, lending the whole works one more layer of unbelievability than it needs. With my suspension of disbelief already stretched to the limit, I don’t want persnickety issues of scale to distract me…but good Lord, sometimes Godzilla and his monster rivals look tall as the Rockies…sometimes, not. Sometimes fight scenes become less like action sequences and more like surrealist interpretations of such. Witness Godzilla vs. C-Rex. The “G-man’s” very dimensions—his…ahem…anatomical proportions—have all the stability of a Salvador Dali watch. The same is true of every monster in the series. It’s annoying, distracting, and ever present. You’ve just got to learn to live with it if you want to enjoy this show. Should be no problem for men (and women) raised on rubber suits made in the dark heart of the 1970s…though we’ll be laughed at mightily for giggling over these little daikaiju nuggets. But fuck the uninitiated.
For one thing, it’s obvious this series takes place in a fantastic parallel dimension where giant monsters just appear, popping into existence like Mother Earth’s own acid flashbacks. The possibilities of such a place immediately fires that part of my brain that reads hard science fiction: obviously, no 9/11. But who knows what the U.S. government of this crazy, parallel world will do in its self-proclaimed War on Monsters? You’re telling me the CIA just allows some jumped-up DGSE Agent to attach herself to Dr. Nick Tatopoulos, Savior of New York City, the Man Who Destroyed Godzilla (well…the first one, anyway)? Where’s the FBI or the NSA or the Pentagon or somebody on something like that? Where’s the new, Cabinet-level post created specifically to deal with the “imminent threat” of a giant monster attack? Where’s the new Executive Department designed to funnel money to Congressional and Presidential cronies under the guise of “keeping America safe from giant monsters”? Where are the speeches, the debates, the pomp and the circumstance? Where is this show when we really need it, to help explore the fractured, fucked-up character of our times here, in the dark heart of the early twenty-first century?
I overhead someone a bus stop the other day wondering about the pre-9/11 world…she was in fifth grade on That Day, and really has no memory of the Time Before. Well, little girl, watch this cartoon and stare in slack jawed wonder at the naiveté of that time…the conventions of American Saturday Morning television notwithstanding.
The main characters overlapping love triangles (Nick like Audrey, Elsie likes Nick [or she just likes to piss Audrey off—and more power to you, Red], Mendel likes Elsie; Randy, true to his name, has a crush on Monique, for which I do not blame him) are annoying, but not disastrously so. Godzilla receives the dignity due him, remaining a straight lizard throughout. Human characters always supply the annoying faux-comedy. Learn to love playful splashing—there are more wet T-shirts on Nick’s team than in the titty bars down my street. No wonder all the characters seem to brim over with displaced aggression—they’re all horny teenagers trapped in adult bodies, further ensnared by the constraints of the Fox Kids Network Department of Standards and Practices.
I’ll derail that little train of thought right now, before it escapes my control, and meet you in the next episode.
Plot: After a low-budget recap of Godzilla (1998)’s final moments, biologist Nick “Worm Guy” Tatopoulos (Ian Ziering) and Major (nee, Colonel) Hicks (Kevin Dunn) set out into the unstable warren of Godzilla-created tunnels formerly known as the Manhattan subway system. A well-timed cavein separates Dr. Nick from his military minders, sending him, like Alice, down a hole and into a strange new, topsy-turvy life. Nick lands in a small puddle of orange-yellow goo not five feet away from the object of his search: the last remaining Godzilla egg, miraculously intact after the aerial bombardment of Madison Square Garden.
Right on the cue, the egg hatches. Its issue—a bobble-headed, spindle-limbed version of his asexual progenitor—sniffs at Nick, licks his face, and retreats when the spark of a broken high-voltage line stuns its widdle, newborn eyes.
Maj. Hicks is nonplussed at Nick’s news of the newborn. “Now it’s time for the hunters to hunt,” he says, “and the lab rats to go back to the lab.” Frustrated, Nick recruits fellow-Drs. Elsie Chapman (Charity James) and Mendel Craven (Malcolm Danare) for a little freelance monster hunting. “We’re the only ones who can track it,” Nick says. “You wanna help me see this thing through, or would you rather wait for the army to screw it up?” Joined by Nick’s “research assistant” (re: Odious Comic Relief) Randy Hernandez (Rino Romano—now the voice of Bruce Wayne on The Batman), Our Heroes take over Nicks’ “research facility” (re: converted warehouse) on Staten Island as a “staging area,” while Hicks and his military cohorts fruitlessly plumb the Atlantic’s depths. Expecting a human-sized monster, it’s not long before Dr. Nick’s intrepid little band receives its first surprise: a T-Rex-sized Godzilla bounding out of the bay, making scrap-metal of Our Heroes’ improvised cage. Making a b-line for Dr. Nick, Godzilla stops short of popping the 90210-voiced scientist into his mouth. Instead, the visibly-calmed monster gives Dr. Nick a friendly-puppy lick, sets him down, and waits patiently for…what?With three PHDs between them, Our Heroes quickly deduce that Godzilla's imprinted on Nick, strange as it sounds. “I had this gunk from the eggs all over me,” Nick remembers. Yeah, that’d be afterbirth, Doc…something you, as a biologist, could’ve guessed at the time. But c’es la vive…In true Movie Scientist fashion, Nick decides to study Godzilla rather than bomb the lizard back to the Stone Age. Convincing his colleagues to go along with this proves far too easy, but, again, c’es la vive. 
Too bad Nick makes no move to tell his erstwhile girlfriend, WIDF reporter Audrey Timmonds (Paget Brewster). This leaves Audrey and cameraman Victor “Animal” Polotti (Joe Pantoliano) to accidently come across Godzilla curled up on Nick’s doorstep. The two argue across Godzilla’s flank for awhile (prompting a very adverse reaction when Audrey raises her voice to Nick) when, suddenly, the army descends form out of an overcast, cartoon sky. With Godzilla seemingly destroyed and Our Heroes (including Audrey and Animal) under house arrest, Nick grows suspicious. He accuses Audrey of calling in the task force. Audrey denies this. “Well, if you didn’t call Hicks, who did?” Audrey accuses Elsie, Elsie snipes back, and I’m sure Nick takes a moment to wonder why every woman in his life is a psychological fourteen-year-old.
Hicks and Nick take a walk outside, on Nick’s balcony, Twin Towers of the World Trade Center visible across the bay. They have a small debate on the ethics of live giant monster research. Calling it a draw, they depart as friends, Nick avoiding a charge of treason, and a stint in Guantanamo Bay.
That night (Twin Towers still visible, by God) Elsie and Craven make plans to visit Jamaica, where ships and swimmers have recently developed a bad habit of vanishing. While packing up for the trip, Nick and Odious Comic Relief (I’m sorry—his name’s Randy) discover Monique Dupree (Gargoyles and Red Shoe Diaries regular Brigitte Bako) breaking into the house computer. A Special Agent from Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, Monique presents herself as weapons master, bodyguard and (un)official liaison with…who? A good spy never tells. “Don’t know ‘bout you, jefe,” Randy, the human goliwog, comments, ”but I feel safer already.” Nick takes Monique's offer and it’s off to Jamaica. Elsie and Craven, meanwhile, have a run in with some giant squid. Nick finds them cocooned in tar…the same tar congealing around their boat’s propellers. Giant squids have invaded Jamaica’s very waters. (Where they stirred up by the original Godzilla’s swim past the island?) Godzilla Mark Two--now over three hundred feet tall--makes short work of them on Nick’s behalf, returning from the dead just in time. Nick projects loyalty on Godzilla’s actions, but the implications of this are ignored…if, for no other reason, than the appearance of Crustaceous Rex.
This, first of Godzilla’s reoccurring foes, sets the tone for the remainder of the series both in its striking visual design, and its complete biological impossibility. (Legs and tentacles? Somebody, somewhere, got a little greedy.) A well-animated monster fight ensues, with Maj. Hicks and U.S. military arriving at the last minute. But it's okay: after violating all kinds of Jamaica’s territorial sovereignty, the military stands around while Godzilla does their job for them (pretty smart move, in terms of hardware losses). After triumphing over C-Rex, the Big G conveniently rescues all those tar-entombed missing-persons in the process. Nick triumphs over Hicks by arguing that Godzilla is “the only thing that stands between us and every other mutation that comes out of the woodwork. And believe me, Major, there will be others.” With a reluctance totally within character (and an authority out of all proportion to his rank) Maj. Hicks agrees to spare Godzilla's life. Parting shot from Dr. Nick: “Just be thankful that whatever we have to face in the future, we won’t be facing it alone.”
Analysis: On the positive front, this series presented unrepentant junkies (like your humble narrator) with weekly giant monster action, the hour-long first episode serving this up right off. Its producers knew exactly what they were doing in a way Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich did not. While maintaining continuity of characters and relationships, the series succeeded handsomely in gradually expanded its mythology to include almost every imaginable cliche in the daikaiju genre. Sooner or later, they get to everything here. And I'm going to have a damn good time pointing everything out.
Here we see the first shoots of that growth: the Monster as Friend to Man vs. the Monster From the Deep, set against the tropical backdrop of Jamaica. While Nick’s relationship with Godzilla dances on the edge of Gamera Territory…and I’m willing to let it slide since their "bond" really is the dramatic axis of the show, keeping Our (Human) Heroes involved in a way most giant monster film protagonists are not...and never will be so long as directors think it’s okay to have characters finish up a story blithely watching the monsters fight from minimum safe distance.
If anything, Dr. Nick and his followers are more proactive than Godzilla himself. Our Heroes showcase an ad-hoc, improvisation style of giant monster fighting that’s inventive by necessity—never the same trick twice. Surely the show's writers realized you can only have Godzilla blast the Monster of the Week away with a gust of Atomic Breath so many times before your audience cries out for…something more.
Put simply, like Justice League after it, Godzilla: The Series spent its run successfully mining its parent genre for every conceivably useful idea, eventually managing to distill at least fifty years of daikaiju movies into their purest, most ridiculous essence…and I mean that as a compliment, because if you’re into this sort of thing you couldn’t ask for more. What we have here is an animated, one hour, giant monster made-for-TV movie. Name another from the last ten years. Go on. I’m so desperate for human communication I’m actually daring you to name one. Go on.
Right. Pure, ridiculous essence. Every once in awhile, the producers of this series make with The Creepy. Better yet, they make with The Creepy at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning on Fox. Fucking Fox, man. This feat cannot be underscored often enough. These days you just can’t start the day with the sight of men being dragged to a watery grave by giant squid. More’s the pity.
And mores the pity this series suffers from all the idiotic constraints of American “children's” television, including but not limited to: a relative low budget (see below) and a general squeamishness—re: death.
The series has not aged well—computer technology was in its infancy during Godzilla’s run, and the uneven quality of animation testifying to this, lending the whole works one more layer of unbelievability than it needs. With my suspension of disbelief already stretched to the limit, I don’t want persnickety issues of scale to distract me…but good Lord, sometimes Godzilla and his monster rivals look tall as the Rockies…sometimes, not. Sometimes fight scenes become less like action sequences and more like surrealist interpretations of such. Witness Godzilla vs. C-Rex. The “G-man’s” very dimensions—his…ahem…anatomical proportions—have all the stability of a Salvador Dali watch. The same is true of every monster in the series. It’s annoying, distracting, and ever present. You’ve just got to learn to live with it if you want to enjoy this show. Should be no problem for men (and women) raised on rubber suits made in the dark heart of the 1970s…though we’ll be laughed at mightily for giggling over these little daikaiju nuggets. But fuck the uninitiated.
For one thing, it’s obvious this series takes place in a fantastic parallel dimension where giant monsters just appear, popping into existence like Mother Earth’s own acid flashbacks. The possibilities of such a place immediately fires that part of my brain that reads hard science fiction: obviously, no 9/11. But who knows what the U.S. government of this crazy, parallel world will do in its self-proclaimed War on Monsters? You’re telling me the CIA just allows some jumped-up DGSE Agent to attach herself to Dr. Nick Tatopoulos, Savior of New York City, the Man Who Destroyed Godzilla (well…the first one, anyway)? Where’s the FBI or the NSA or the Pentagon or somebody on something like that? Where’s the new, Cabinet-level post created specifically to deal with the “imminent threat” of a giant monster attack? Where’s the new Executive Department designed to funnel money to Congressional and Presidential cronies under the guise of “keeping America safe from giant monsters”? Where are the speeches, the debates, the pomp and the circumstance? Where is this show when we really need it, to help explore the fractured, fucked-up character of our times here, in the dark heart of the early twenty-first century?I overhead someone a bus stop the other day wondering about the pre-9/11 world…she was in fifth grade on That Day, and really has no memory of the Time Before. Well, little girl, watch this cartoon and stare in slack jawed wonder at the naiveté of that time…the conventions of American Saturday Morning television notwithstanding.
The main characters overlapping love triangles (Nick like Audrey, Elsie likes Nick [or she just likes to piss Audrey off—and more power to you, Red], Mendel likes Elsie; Randy, true to his name, has a crush on Monique, for which I do not blame him) are annoying, but not disastrously so. Godzilla receives the dignity due him, remaining a straight lizard throughout. Human characters always supply the annoying faux-comedy. Learn to love playful splashing—there are more wet T-shirts on Nick’s team than in the titty bars down my street. No wonder all the characters seem to brim over with displaced aggression—they’re all horny teenagers trapped in adult bodies, further ensnared by the constraints of the Fox Kids Network Department of Standards and Practices.
I’ll derail that little train of thought right now, before it escapes my control, and meet you in the next episode.
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