IF YOU SEE SWAMP THING, SAY SWAMP THING: SILENT SCREAMS

With superhero television programs blowing up in the last few years, recaps of superhero television shows have become all the internet rage. Other sites, however, are hobbled by the need to cover shows which have been "recently broadcast" or which are "any good at all." But who covers the uncoverable? That's why Gone&Forgotten chooses to cover the 1991-1993 USA Network live-action Swamp Thing television series in a feature I like to call "Swamp Thing's Gotta Give" or...

If You See Swamp Thing, Say Swamp Thing

A moldy tupperware container who walks like a man!
Season One / Episode Three : Silent Screams

In which the whole show enjoys a massive blowjob.

Losing her youngest child to white slavers -- although believing that he’d been killed in a fiery explosion which simply must have left the child writhing in dragged-out agony for long minutes -- doesn’t seem to weigh much on Tressa’s mind. Instead, she’s in the midst of arranging a sleepover for one of her bestest friends from college or high school or something, Eileen, and her daughter Melissa.

The location for their sleepover? The middle of a filthy wasteland, of course! Where would you have it? They don’t even bring a tent, they just sleep in sleeping bags with their faces pressed against the mud of the swamp. Maybe they got drunk there and passed out. Anyway, Tressa gets bitten by a snake.

Lookit these idiots.

Your comical mental image of the day is that Tressa bolts at top speed for home, so as to call the hospital, but bounces off an invisible force field and goes down like a Muppet.

Yep, Arcane is testing something crazy in the swamps – this time, it’s a force field from which no sound or even air can get through. It’s even mime-resistant, making Tressa’s efforts to intimate the location of the field with her outstretched hands fail tragically.

Mime is a craft, not an action.

Now, this is a not a “story” episode. They’re not expanding on anyone’s relationships, attacking Swamp Thing with memories from his past, or doing a Kodak Carousel slideshow while Don Draper narrates about our true desires. This is a gimmick episode, which means there’s, um, not a lot of story to discuss?

The clock ticks on Tressa’s snakebite, her friends are running out of air in their part of the forcefield, and tremendous storms erupt all over town owing to the durned thing. These are a lot of threats and danger but, of course, they’re all … there. They’ll be resolved, I promise.

Mark Lindsay Chapman is so good that they just film him eating lunch and edit it back in later.

Arcane gets a few moments to crow about the success of new doo-dad, but the real news is that Crown Prince is back! Except his eyes are normal and he’s called Alexander now. Still, let’s pretend that it’s continuity! Old creepy-peep Arcane is back in the saddle again, too, observing the mother-daughter pair in distress on his hidden viewscreen. “Not bad for a mother and daughter – quite attractive actually” he says. Ew and goddamn Arcane. Save it for PornHub.

The one good thing about the episode is that Abigail doesn’t have time to fairy-fart up the scene with some story about how back in the government lab they thought shoeboxes were hungry and you could feed them shoes.

I almost forgot to mention that there was a long scene where Tressa argued with her doctor. Where's that Emmy?

Everyone gets a chance to pound on the force field, including Swamp Thing. Something charming happens when you hear Swamp Thing say “It feels like some sort of force field” and then he gets struck by lightning. This, it turns out, is how you destroy a force field, leading to my favorite Swamp Thing quote to date

Will: “What are you going to do?”
Swamp Thing: “Fly a kite”

Anyway, it works, and then they all get together to laugh off the whole thing like idiots. It’s worth mentioning that Arcane is the most evil guy on this show and I root for him most weeks. ROOT! Haha, okay.

"I shouldn'ta made that left turn at Al-bu-koikey!"