Review: Pantheon “You Must be Caspian”

I need to take a breather after “You Must be Caspian.” Just like with every other episode, there’s so much stuff going on, that you just need a second to catch your brain up with what your eyes saw. There’s so much, especially with Carey trying to unravel the bullshit that he and Renee put on Caspian. Then couple that with Maddie and her team trying to fix Laurie and David, that everything is just coming at you so fast. And I like it. I like it a lot.

There is something off-putting with “You Must be Caspian,” and it has to do with the scene at the Sacramento race track. It sounds like Paul Dano recorded Caspian’s part of that scene in a Campbell’s soup can. It sounds fucking atrocious. You would think, that with the pandemic being a thing for most of this production, being announced during the height of the pandemic, AMC would have made sure that everything possible was done to get studio quality wherever their voice actors needed to record. But of course not. This is the second time this occurred. Production woes could really hurt Pantheon if this continues. And it’s sad.

That said, the scene itself is well written. Katie Chang’s Maddie was the voice of authority when Caspian was pushing back on bringing Carey to the hospital. How Maddie shut down Caspian’s “you don’t even know me” crap was fantastic. “You’re a clone of Stephen Holstrom. You’ve been raised just like him so you can complete his life’s work. My dad lives inside of a computer, so we get it. Let’s go.” You cannot put it any simpler, and Chang nailed it. Shutting Caspian down and getting him outside his emo moment was the jolt that was needed, not only to get the story going along, but to push him on his way to help.

There are some obnoxiously beautiful set pieces this week. The scene with the zoom in of Chanda’s globe was well articulated. The city we were looking over, and the scope of seeing giant Chanda looming over like Galactus was amazing. Forced perspective is something that is generally only used in theme park talk, but here it did wonders. On top of that, the scene where Chanda sent one of the failed scans to its “final resting place” was stunning. The art direction continues to be amazing. The set pieces look amazing when the artists are allowed to run wild with the settings inside the scans, because there’s no boundaries. There’s nothing like gravity or physics holding everything in a box.

As for the writing end of it, just like the Sacramento raceway scene, the entirety of time where Caspian and Maddie were interacting at Maddie’s home was well put together. Caspian has been reeling for the last 36-ish hours in his time trying to piece together what was going on. And it’s been taking a toll on him. He was one step away from a complete mental break, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And it finally happened. He saw that he was a bag baby, going through every file he could before losing it and rushing outside into the backyard. Showing the full struggle someone goes through when it’s been trauma after trauma is something every writer needs to know. Too many shows don’t show how trauma affects their characters. This is done right, not only with Caspian, but with a lot of the characters. The ending is exactly what happens when Caspian keeps getting upended every time he thinks he has a handle.

On the opposite side of this coin, you see what happens when trauma goes unprocessed, so to say. Chanda is officially the man who killed his boss, and his family. He’s also to blame for Alliance going to complete ruin. He has anger issues, and those issues sent the blueprints to the machine that scans the brains to every single defense agency in the world. The man got burnt by his former boss, and by thinking he was alone, he wanted to watch the world burn. All of this so that he wasn’t alone anymore. That said, Chanda’s monologue during the last segment was great. The art direction shows stuff that is unique from anything shown before. So far, there was a lot of rigidity. Chanda’s moments talking about being alone was so fluid. By the way, this guy sent the plans out like he just wished on Shenron in Dragon Ball. The references in this show are great.

If Pantheon can iron out its production issues when it comes to the audio, it can be a top tier show. However, that audio issue is a detriment. Luckily, it was ironed out later in the episode. But it was jarring enough to take away from the severity of what was going on. Like I said earlier, there was two years between announcement and airing. In that time, there could have been someone going “hey, Paul’s audio sounds like a Campbell’s soup can. Can we get that re-recorded?”

But that was the only misstep. Overall, Pantheon delivers again. The Matrix is in my top 3 list of movies because it made me question a lot. It made me think. Pantheon, week in and week out, forces you to think. The level of thought and intrigue that each episode throws at you. There’s so much to think about, and not just the characters. What makes the impossible, possible? Like, is uploaded intelligence really such a far off concept? These are things that intrigue me. Even though it seems so far fetched, and we don’t have the technology to take a human mind and load it into a server farm, it still is a pretty awesome concept to think about.