“The Choad Less Traveled” is essentially the full story of Vigilante and how he truly supports Peacemaker as a partner. He gets plenty to do in this week’s episode. Additionally, it’s revealed that Peacemaker did not actually kill the butterfly in the lair from the previous episode. He’s also still struggling with the trauma of his father’s disapproval and his brother’s death. Harcourt continues to train Leota Adebayo on what it means to be a member of this ARGUS team. Judomaster is being held prisoner within the headquarters and almost escapes to hilarious effect. Finally, a butterfly is revealed within the team, and the audience is left pondering what that discovery will mean, as we still question what these aliens even want.
The most important thing I can tell you about this episode is that it’s filled with detail on characters the audience didn’t get to know previously. Specifically, this is where Vigilante gets to come into his own. He allows himself to be arrested for disorderly conduct so that he can go inside the prison to kill Christopher Smith’s father. This is a brilliant yet horrible thing for him to do. After some convincing from Adebayo, Vigilante truly believes that if the White Dragon is dead, Peacemaker will be able to move on and live a better, healthier life.
Freddie Stroma gives his best performance yet as Vigilante in this episode. We may not completely understand why he cares so much for Peacemaker, but as an audience, we can definitely value his contribution to Peacemaker’s life. This episode particularly feels like people are constantly making the wrong decision because the right one seems too obvious. This is fine because of who we know is writing the show overall, but I am getting tired of watching these professional adults make decisions that would either compromise the mission or get their team members killed.
The biggest negative that I have for this episode is that the story is pretty much all over the place. This show works best when it’s focused on one central idea and navigates the characters around that idea. We had Peacemaker experiencing a depressive episode and Vigilante trying to cure that depression in the worst possible way. All the characters seemed to jump around whenever needed rather than focusing on who the butterflies are and their goal. Some explanation would make things with the story more fluid, which I find really important in action-adventure series.
“The Choad Less Traveled” wasn’t a bad episode, just an unfocused one. I hope for stronger episodes in the following weeks, especially when the team finds out who the hidden butterfly is, which should cause serious drama. At some point, I hope Amanda Waller steps in and forces the team to truly come together to stop whatever threat there may be. Audiences love a good team-up, and this team needs to come together somehow; otherwise, this gamble of a TV series won’t pay off.
