"Time to go to work..."
An impressive, and very different, second episode here in which Sam and Bucky finally meet up again and immediately, action sequences or not- and the action sequences are good- have great comic chemistry as the kinds of friends who constantly insult each other. I particularly love the extended riff on Sam's theory about "androids, aliens or wizards", and Bucky's boast about having read The Hobbit... in 1937.
This episode also gives us our first look at this version of John Walker- from Custer's Grove, Georgia as Mark Gruenwald originally wrote him but this time less of an obvious redneck, although he's still something of a jock and naive square jawed conformist type. It's notable how this version of Lemar Hoskins is considerably brighter than this John Walker.
There's lots of tension between all of these characters. As we find out at the end, Bucky resents Sam for spurning the shield as Steve Rogers' hand-picked successor and, of course, both of them are wary of the initially friendly new Captain America and Battle Star. The subtleties of this awkwardness are well handled. There's some nice political subtext, too, in the context of American racism- Sam is only not abused by racist cops because of who he is, and we meet Isaiah, a black super soldier from the Korean War who seems to have been treated abominably by his country.
And the learn more about the Flag Smashers- this time most certainly not a bloke but an organisation much less organic, and its leader is a young woman (with a nice bit of misdirection as we meet her) called Kari Morganthau. Her "imagine there's no countries" ideology is channelled through "the Blip" here, and the whole gang appear to be super soldiers. This is very interesting, as is the mention of Gruenwald perennial baddie the Power Broker.
This isn't quite up there with WandaVision, or indeed Gruenwald's splendid run on the Cap comic. But it is, nevertheless, very good.
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