'Peacemaker' S2E02 Review | "A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird"
"I've heard of getting ahead of yourself, but this is insane!"
[Welcome to Decoding TV’s coverage of Peacemaker Season 2! For each of Peacemaker’s eight episodes, we’ll run reviews by Dan Gvozden. If you’d like to support what we’re doing here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The review below contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of Peacemaker.]
After Peacemaker’s Season 2 premiere, “The Ties That Grind,” which focused heavily on reintroducing audiences to the various multiversal lives of Chris Smith after a several-year gap from the end of the previous season and also rebooted the DCU, this week’s episode wisely shifts its focus to the show’s excellent supporting cast. “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird” is a slower-paced episode, with less bombast, but it functions as a sort of second half to the season’s premiere. Some momentum is undoubtedly lost here in this contemplative, character-driven episode, which might have been better as part of a two-episode premiere. Still, the character and thematic work in this episode will likely benefit the rest of the season, regardless of how it was released.
The episode starts eight months before the current events. We see Economos guiding Rick Flagg Sr. into the A.R.G.U.S. facilities, as he prepares to take on the role of Acting Director now that Amanda Waller has been removed. There’s some tension between them, despite Economos’ claim that they are “old friends,” possibly because of Economos’ deep history with Waller, as shown in The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker Season 1, and the animated Creature Commandos show.
Once in Flagg’s new office, his intentions are revealed and he demands that Economos provide him with complete details about his son, Rick Flagg Jr.’s, death in Corto Maltese, which had previously been denied to him. Economos, who knows the truth, tries to hedge—if not only to save his own skin but also that of Peacemaker—and reluctantly hands over the files. Inside, Flagg discovers meticulous details of Peacemaker’s betrayal and the murder of his son, all at the behest of Waller. The files include line-by-line dialogue and imagery from The Suicide Squad, so much so that I half-expected Flagg to find the Blu-ray buried among them. I thought the whole point of Taskforce X was that it was an off-the-books team that gave Waller plausible deniability of her involvement—at least until her daughter exposed her at the end of Peacemaker Season 1. So, who compiled all these notes?
Either way, it’s these files that motivate Flagg to order Economos to surveil Chris, as seen in the previous episode, and to shout “Fuck the Peacemaker!” as the show kicks into its fancy, Dirty Dancing-inspired, new title sequence.
We pick back up with Chris in the quantum-unfolding storage area as he holds his alternate self’s dead body in his arms. The episode's title, “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird,” directly highlights the differences between these two men, aside from their current state of aliveness. On our Chris’s Peacemaker costume, a dove appears to be falling out of the sky, while on the now-dead Peacemaker’s chest, a dove is turned the opposite way, soaring upward.
In the previous season, Chris fought hard to overcome his traumatic past, where he accidentally killed his brother, and the violence he engaged in to silence those traumas. But here, he’s accidentally killed someone else: the ideal version of himself. It's a pretty direct representation of Chris’s struggles with self-destructive behaviors. Still, it should also give Chris a chance to see how much he does or doesn’t fit into the life of his perfect, mirrored self. I’d bet it won’t go as smoothly as the deeply imperfect Chris might think, as he’s forced to confront whether he can accept himself when faced with a picture of the beautiful life he could have had if he were just a better person.
However, for now, Chris faces a more immediate problem: disposing of this alternate Chris’s body, which happens to be the same massive size as wrestler and bodybuilder John Cena. As a result, the body repeatedly flops and rolls out from under the display panels, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. So, he returns to his home dimension and calls Vigilante to bring his collection of bone saws. I imagine Vigilante’s response was something like, “Say less, Peacemaker.” Then, covered in “his” blood, he attempts to wash it and his sins away, much like Lady Macbeth. (Somewhere in this moment is the seed of a sequel to Jet Li’s The One, where detectives try to catch a multiversal murderer but keep failing because the DNA is always the same.)
The episode quickly shifts to Adebayo, who might as well be entering another universe, as she unlocks the door to her ex’s apartment and is greeted by her cosplay-loving dogs from the previous season. She thinks she’s alone until Keeya reappears, having been home the entire time, to tell her off for inviting herself in. It appears Adebayo was mistaken in calling their split “time off,” since Keeya is still angry that their plan to return to Gotham City to be near her family was sacrificed so Adebayo could start a spy business. “Your dreams are leeching off of someone else’s reality,” she tells Adebayo, which sounds eerily and thematically similar to what Chris is going through right now. But hasn’t Keeya watched Creature Commandos, where the hellish Gotham City was recently taken over by a criminal empire led by a glowing, radioactive skeleton man named “Doctor Phosphorus” who was then defeated by a vigilante dressed as a man-sized bat? Frankly, compared to that, Charlton County, Washington, seems pretty idyllic. Move your family, Keeya!
After seeking out a butt-whooping at a local dive bar in the previous episode, Harcourt stops at her local Vaughn Drugs to grab whatever painkillers and bandages she can find. There, a woman approaches her, assuming she’s been a victim of domestic abuse. Harcourt dismisses her, saying, “That’s not what this is,” then loudly repeats, “I’m not a mirror.” And no, she’s not being abused by a domestic partner. Still, like Chris, she’s also involved in deeply self-destructive behavior she can’t seem to break free from, even as those around her try to support her—whether it's Peacemaker, this troubled woman, or the Beaker lookalike at Vaughn’s.
Outside the Smith household, Economos stays on his lone watch when Agent Fleury (Tim Meadows) arrives to supervise his actions at the request of the distrustful Flagg Sr. Fleury, like Harcourt, appears to be a very closed-off person who shows no interest in investing in his subordinates' lives and mocks any closeness they might share. Meadows, a true master of deadpan humor, is perfectly cast as Fleury and delivers sharp, cutting insults to Economos, objectifies Adebayo, and reveals his “bird blindness,” all while massaging Economos’ shoulders in a way that only he can. In a better, alternate universe, Tim Meadows would have Jimmy Fallon’s career and maintained David Letterman’s legacy of unflinching deadpan as a cornerstone of American late-night TV. For now, I enjoy watching him ask Economos, “Are you a hugger?” nicknaming him “Ginger Cool,” and eating his nuggets.
After the world’s longest shower, Chris finds the remnants of the previous night’s orgy still splayed out across his living room. With Adebayo and Vigilante on their way, he quickly tries to hide the dozens of nude extras. Unsuccessful, he meets with Adebayo on his front porch and learns that Flagg Sr. is actively watching him because of his son's death. Even though Economos is embedded within A.R.G.U.S., Adebayo urges Chris to come clean about the quantum portal in his closet, as they will likely be able to track its use. She’s right; moments later, we find out Fleury plans to send a team of A.R.G.U.S. agents to raid Chris’s home when Economos meets with him later that night.
That’s about when Vigilante shows up, upset that he wasn’t invited to the orgy, and of whom Fleury rightly suggests, “Looks like he caught all the pokémen.” Together, he and Chris enter the quantum-unfolding storage area to dispose of the alt-Chris’s body in a Breaking Bad-esque, gory, cooking montage wherein Chris is forced to juggle and incinerate his disembodied head and limbs, much to the chagrin of the kyphotic alien who reappears to incinerate a cat before being told to “Fuck off.”
Later that night, after retrieving alt-Chris’s phone, Peacemaker scrolls through a photo roll full of pictures of “Milia,” the alt-Harcourt’s pet name from when she and alt-Chris were a couple. Not only does he see images of them on vacation and in bed together, but he also sees that, as Peacemaker, he received awards for his heroism. This creates even more awkwardness for Chris when he meets up with the rest of the 11th Street Kids, the name of the gang from Season 1, which includes Economos, Adebayo, Vigilante, and Harcourt, who tries to hide her injuries. They celebrate Economos’ “return” from his work at A.R.G.U.S., not suspecting that he has been monitoring Chris the entire time.
Meanwhile, at the Smith house, Fleury arranges his team of A.R.G.U.S. agents, assigning them codenames: Mexicali, Ponyboy / Barely Legal / Kewpie Doll, Titties, and Encino Man. They argue over what qualifies as a housewarming gift and ultimately start searching Chris’s home. There, they discover the quantum-unfolding storage area and are soon attacked by Eagly, who defends the house successfully by plucking out a few eyeballs and dive-bombing Fleury, helped by Fleury’s “bird blindness”-triggered inaction.
At the 11th Street Kids’ party, Chris reels Harcourt into a conversation with him. They flirt and try to catch up, but Chris’s inquiry about the cut on her eye interrupts their reunion. Chris quickly realizes that Harcourt returned to the bar where they first met to look for a fight, but she points out that he does the same by putting on a uniform and seeking out opportunities for violence. It’s a harsh blow to Chris, who’s been trying to do better in his role as Peacemaker, but knows he has blood on his hands. She storms off, dismissing Chris’s concern for her, and says, “Sorry, I’m not as fucked up as you, Chris.”
A drunk Chris returns home, trips over a threshold, and lands in a pile of Eagly’s feathers. He’s so distracted by his own problems that he not only ignores the devastating state of his house, but when Eagly hugs him, it barely registers. The latest rejection from Harcourt sends him back into his alternate’s phone, where he finds Milia’s contact info and texts her, but realizes that it can't be delivered (must be AT&T). This drives Chris to re-enter the quantum-unfolding storage area and into the alternate universe, where he finds his alternate father and brother desperately searching for his alternate self. They suspect that their Chris might be with “Karen” or that it might be because of “his pills again,” but there’s no time for our Chris to ask questions because he quickly notices that his text to Milia Harcourt has gone through, and she’s responded with a heartbreak emoji. Does this mean that in this universe, Chris was the one to end their relationship? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, Chris sits on the office bench where he bawled his eyes out in the previous episode and quietly reflects on the choice before him. How good is Chris’s bird?
Dan Gvozden is a film and comics critic who lives and works in Baltimore. If you enjoyed this review, check out his Spider-Man podcast, The Amazing Spider-Talk.