When I initially heard of an episode called "Happy Hogan Saves Christmas," I was a little worried. Worried that it wouldn't be interesting, or that it'd be like Episode 7 where there's too much hit-and-miss humor crammed into the story. And then I watched it, and I found I was wrong on both accounts.
And no, I'm not saying the story takes itself too seriously. It doesn't, and it's all the better for it. I love how it just keeps escalating in this fun intensity as it goes on. It starts off with Justin Hammer breaking into Avengers Tower looking for Hulk Blood before that blood gets transferred into Happy, leading to him becoming a Hulk.
And then everything after that just ends up having this chaotic energy to it. We got a scene where Happy Hulk ends up wailing on a bunch of Iron Legion robots in a hallway, and it is insane just how intense and gorey it gets with the robots. The momentum then keeps going as he fights Hammer in a Hulkbuster suit, making for a pretty good climax.
Honestly, this episode's a whole lot of fun from start to finish. I like the heist style the first half goes for, and Sam Rockwell sounds like he's having the time of his life playing Justin Hammer. As for the humor, it's good, but half of it involves references to Christmas movies while another 25% of it involves Justin Hammer's holiday wordplay. The rest of the 25% is everything else. And even with half the humor being reference humor, it's not like the story's bogged down by it.
Like I said, the episode's a lot of fun. It's got great action, great escalation of fun intensity, as well as just being energetic in general. It's a great episode to watch as a break from all the serious episodes that might be coming up next, succeeding where S1E7 kinda failed, in my opinion.
And no, I'm not saying the story takes itself too seriously. It doesn't, and it's all the better for it. I love how it just keeps escalating in this fun intensity as it goes on. It starts off with Justin Hammer breaking into Avengers Tower looking for Hulk Blood before that blood gets transferred into Happy, leading to him becoming a Hulk.
And then everything after that just ends up having this chaotic energy to it. We got a scene where Happy Hulk ends up wailing on a bunch of Iron Legion robots in a hallway, and it is insane just how intense and gorey it gets with the robots. The momentum then keeps going as he fights Hammer in a Hulkbuster suit, making for a pretty good climax.
Honestly, this episode's a whole lot of fun from start to finish. I like the heist style the first half goes for, and Sam Rockwell sounds like he's having the time of his life playing Justin Hammer. As for the humor, it's good, but half of it involves references to Christmas movies while another 25% of it involves Justin Hammer's holiday wordplay. The rest of the 25% is everything else. And even with half the humor being reference humor, it's not like the story's bogged down by it.
Like I said, the episode's a lot of fun. It's got great action, great escalation of fun intensity, as well as just being energetic in general. It's a great episode to watch as a break from all the serious episodes that might be coming up next, succeeding where S1E7 kinda failed, in my opinion.