The Umbrella Academy S4E2: Jean and Gene
We all knew when the Hargreeves lost their powers at the end of last season, The Umbrella Academy wouldn’t waste too much time handing them back. At last episode’s end, the gang conveniently finds a jar of Marigold, the otherworldly essence that gives them their powers, and Ben spikes everyone’s drinks with it. So everyone’s got their powers back (apart from Lila, who can now shoot laser beams from her eyes, and Klaus, who in the interest of sobriety poured out his drink), and no one’s happy about it. The Hargreeves may have been living half-assed ordinary lives, but they were lives they had built for themselves, without any superhero bullshit, and without their father’s evil influence.
And, as Allison pointed out, the last time they had their powers, they kinda ended the world. For the third time. The Umbrellas have great power, and none of them have ever been in the same time zone as great responsibility. It’s not a good combination, and no one knows it better than they do. Which puts them all back where they belong: in deep trouble and mad at each other. Or more accurately, all mad at Ben, who’s smugly convinced he did the right thing in tricking the family into getting their powers back. Except while all of the Hargreeves feel ill post-transformation, Ben gets the worst of it, as his side effects include nasuea, vomiting, and not getting his tentacles to retract back into his body.
So the Hargreeves go back to the dry cleaner where Special Guest Star David Cross roped them into this nonsense, and where they conveniently found the Marigold. Except it’s been cleaned out. All that’s left is a map, with a small town in Maine circled in red. So the gang take a road trip to Maine, and find a quaint small town that gives them some time to amble around, and some time for us to realize that, while the family is just as dysfunctional and dissatisfied as ever, they’ve grown up since last season. They have adult problems now. Allison is an exhausted mom. Luther gets excited about vintage sconces. Klaus’ newfound overcautiousness is an attempt to keep his fragile sobriety together, and it’s clearly something he’s worked hard for.
And Diego and Lila have typical middle-aged couple problems — neither of them gets to make the decisions, both of them crave the freedom they used to have, and each know the other one isn’t happy but don’t know what to do about it. (There’s a nice scene where Five, always the adult in the room, reassures Diego that Lila isn’t cheating on him, without revealing that Five himself was the strange man Diego saw her out with in the previous episode.)
But it’s wouldn’t be The Umbrella Academy if this thoughtful character development didn’t give way to the series’ signature mixture of twee set design, metaphysical mysteries, and lots and lots of machine guns. Critics who binge-watched and binge-reviewed the whole season have largely been disappointed, but we thought this was one of the best episodes Umbrella has ever done. It’s heavy on character, heavy on action, and heavy on plot, and the three seamlessly work together in the episode’s third act. The best action scenes tell you something about the people involved, and while it’s fun to see the Umbrella use their powers again, it’s even more satisfying to see how, after years of bickering and undercutting each other, they’ve actually become a team.
And one with a lot more to contend with going into next week, as the shootout at the end involves the missing daughter, the Hargreeves’ as-yet-absent father, and the idea of multiple timelines, all colliding in interesting enough ways that we wish Netflix had given the show more than four more episodes to wrap all of this up.
Stray thoughts:
• The “car stereo can only play one song over and over” gag has been done many times, but “Baby Shark” is still pretty darn effective in driving the Umbrellas slowly insane. That being said, Diego refusing to stop the car because he’s a dad now and ‘we’re making good time’ leans a little too heavily on clichés. The only real slow spot in an otherwise great episode.
• We’ve never had a problem with the gore on this show, but the close-up shots of everyone getting carsick on the road to Maine, we could have lived without.
• Despite the episode title, Jean and Gene don’t appear until the final shot of the episode, although we’re sure to see more of them next week.