Spoilers X-Men '97 spoilers

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episode 6 promo and OMG.. THAT ITEM landing made me tingle

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I finally got to watch this.

It rules. It goes unreasonably hard. It's awesome.

I had forgotten how much I loved the X-Men, and it absolutely does them justice. Sure 3 & 4 were a little weak, but 1, 2 and 5 absolutely ruled to just a crazy degree.

Also as someone who was 18/19 in 1997, I absolutely love that it's seemingly set in 1997 and best girl Jubilee uses '90s slang a lot (Mojo even commented on this I note).

There are very few things that I am legit a "fan" of but this is one.

 

[Tonguez]

Wow, 5 was heavy, good although Scott really is a dick

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wow, 5 was heavy, good although Scott really is a dick.

I noticed a lot of people were saying "Wait Scott is a great guy! How did I not notice before?" about the first few episodes, so that was kind of funny, because this was more like kind of shenanigans he often got involved when I still reading the comics a lot. I do think people frequently overstated how much of a dick he was, like he's generally far less of a dick than characters who that's never said about (particularly Jean Grey herself), but still, more than zero.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Wow, 5 was heavy, good although Scott really is a dick

I noticed a lot of people were saying "Wait Scott is a great guy! How did I not notice before?" about the first few episodes, so that was kind of funny, because this was more like kind of shenanigans he often got involved when I still reading the comics a lot. I do think people frequently overstated how much of a dick he was, like he's generally far less of a dick than characters who that's never said about (particularly Jean Grey herself), but still, more than zero.

It is an interesting choice, as the 90s cartoon was the one place* where they didn't include the stuff where Scott was the dick. Not sure why they wanted to bring it into the animated world so long after it became immaterial elsewhere**.
*arguably also the early 2000s movie trilogy, where he had like a dozen lines and was really more 'competition for the main character (Wolverine) in the love triangle' than an actual dick.
**original timeline Scott is dead in the comics, right? And irrelevant in the MCU.

Scott, in general, is the same character as Ross from Friends or J.D. from Scrubs or any number of other episodic media characters. All of these, I or someone I know feels like they are the good guys/non-dicks, 'but the writers keep screwing that up*!' They are introduced as sympathetic characters that the audience is supposed to empathize with** and you get the idea that they are 'supposed' to win the female lead's heart at the end or become the best doctor/team leader/whatever. However, in episodic weekly shows or monthly comics, you can't just progress them through a reasonable series of challenges and end up with at the deserved results, as then their story is done. So instead you find things for them to do, and it is so much more dramalicious to have them screw up at being that good character! So they cheat, or lie, or are jealous, or selfish, until it's hard to explain to anyone new to the franchise why you liked them in the first place (maybe something like 'but these transgressions are still being noted/coded as outliers, so they must be being the good guy in between episodes or something...').
*acknowledging that it is a nonsensical statement, as the writers make the characters
**perhaps as an audience surrogate, as they are often more bland and less interesting than all the other characters in the ensemble

That said, Ruin Explorer is right. Scott is a dick the same way that Jean Grey dies all the time or Wolverine teams up with the latest moody teen girl character -- it's happened a handful of times over the past several decades but has become a constant occurrence only in the form of memetic amplification.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It is an interesting choice, as the 90s cartoon was the one place* where they didn't include the stuff where Scott was the dick. Not sure why they wanted to bring it into the animated world so long after it became immaterial elsewhere**.

I would imagine it's because they need Madelyne Pryor to do at least two of the storylines they've done (and probably other future ones), either because replacing her with Jean Grey doesn't work, or because they actively want to replace Jean Grey with her in some of them. Having Madelyne Pryor in the story gives you a lot of potential to "mess around" with the character who is like 98% Jean Grey without "tainting" the main Jean Grey and making "Jean Grey is a dick" become the meme.

The side-effect of that though, is that you're inevitably going to run into some amount of "Cyclops is a dick" as a result. And the "running out of ways to progress the relationship" was absolutely behind most of the "Cyclops is a dick" - I don't know if they'll have time to get into most of those.

Also he's not the audience surrogate in either this or the original cartoon. So comparing him to JD or Ross definitely makes sense for the comic, where he often was the "normal guy", who it was easy for the main target audience of the era to see themselves in, but it doesn't really make sense for the cartoon.

To be specific - the audience surrogate in the original cartoon is absolutely Jubilee - the '90s teenager. Watching the first few episodes of the original cartoon makes that extremely clear. In the modern cartoon, you could make a case that role has transferred to Sunspot (Roberto Da Costa - who has a very similar introduction to the team as Jubilee did, which is is surely quite a conscious decision by the writers), but it definitely has not transferred to Cyclops (Scott Summers).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I personally didn't read his behavior in the episode as Scott being a dick so much as really, really emotionally confused about how he should be dealing with the whole Jean/Maddy thing. Its not like the appropriate thing to do is super clear-cut here. And I suspect that conflict also lead to him completely losing it on-camera in this ep.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I personally didn't read his behavior in the episode as Scott being a dick so much as really, really emotionally confused about how he should be dealing with the whole Jean/Maddy thing. Its not like the appropriate thing to do is super clear-cut here. And I suspect that conflict also lead to him completely losing it on-camera in this ep.

I think you're being overly-literal here. "Scott is a dick/Cyclops is a dick", which has been around as a sort of quasi-meme since the 1990s or maybe even the 1980s, has never been about him actually being a dick, in like an "unnecessarily crappy behaviour" way, it's just about him suddenly behaving in ways that people viscerally don't like. It kind of doesn't matter if there are reasons for them (though I would say the cartoon makes the reasons a bit more obvious and closer in time than the comics did, as I remember them).

One of the few things I think they screwed up was the reporter - if this is set in 1990s, which seems to be the case, she would have been MUCH nastier, and his outburst would have made more sense. They had her sort of holding back and almost seeming respectful. voice-wise, and that's absolutely not how reporters asking those kind of "gotcha-y" personal questions were in the '90s, they were very aggro and showman-y and "gotcha!", even if they started out nice. It was even clearly a '90s-style gotcha because she had all the supporting data to hand. Instead of seeming shocked/appalled that Scott seemed to be lying to her, she'd have had a whole lot of attitude/snark in the "Why are you lying to me?". And we often saw reporters and interviewers sort of snap from "nice" to "shark" real quickly in that era. Feels like there was a disconnect between the writers, who wrote it as that kind of scene, and the episode director, who played it in a more modern way.

 

[Stalker0]

I think you're being overly-literal here. "Scott is a dick/Cyclops is a dick", which has been around as a sort of quasi-meme since the 1990s or maybe even the 1980s, has never been about him actually being a dick, in like an "unnecessarily crappy behaviour" way, it's just about him suddenly behaving in ways that people viscerally don't like. It kind of doesn't matter if there are reasons for them (though I would say the cartoon makes the reasons a bit more obvious and closer in time than the comics did, as I remember them).

One of the few things I think they screwed up was the reporter - if this is set in 1990s, which seems to be the case, she would have been MUCH nastier, and his outburst would have made more sense. They had her sort of holding back and almost seeming respectful. voice-wise, and that's absolutely not how reporters asking those kind of "gotcha-y" personal questions were in the '90s, they were very aggro and showman-y and "gotcha!", even if they started out nice. It was even clearly a '90s-style gotcha because she had all the supporting data to hand. Instead of seeming shocked/appalled that Scott seemed to be lying to her, she'd have had a whole lot of attitude/snark in the "Why are you lying to me?". And we often saw reporters and interviewers sort of snap from "nice" to "shark" real quickly in that era. Feels like there was a disconnect between the writers, who wrote it as that kind of scene, and the episode director, who played it in a more modern way.

Yeah ultimately I did not see it in a pure "scott is a dick".

Now I don't think anyone thinks his actions (both at the interviewer and with Madeline) were good ones, but what he's going through is really messed up. He just lost a son, his wife is not his wife (or maybe she is). This other woman not only looks like your girl, sounds like girl....I mean she IS your girl! she has the same memories, same abilities, same everything. The one major difference is that she actually feels the pain of loss your going through.

So again Scott's actions are understandable even though from Jean's perspective they are abhorrent (and its understandable from her perspective as well which is why its good drama).

Now where the comics mess up is that they keep coming back to this same well. Scott does X crazy thing, Scott does Y crazy thing....that over time developed the comic book memes that he is just a dick. Hopefully if the cartoon keeps that reigned in it won't come to that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think you're being overly-literal here. "Scott is a dick/Cyclops is a dick", which has been around as a sort of quasi-meme since the 1990s or maybe even the 1980s, has never been about him actually being a dick, in like an "unnecessarily crappy behaviour" way, it's just about him suddenly behaving in ways that people viscerally don't like. It kind of doesn't matter if there are reasons for them (though I would say the cartoon makes the reasons a bit more obvious and closer in time than the comics did, as I remember them).

I didn't get it back then either, but this wouldn't be the first time people's reaction to fictional characters leaves me puzzled. Call it a character flaw.