Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The World Vs Scott Pilgrim

December 6, 2023 6:12 AM - Season 1, Episode 8

Scott, Ramona and their friends face their toughest challenge yet in a knockdown epic showdown that could change everything.
posted by neilbert (3 comments total)

Alright, let's wrap up the final episode, even though most of us probably finished this weeks ago.

What a wonderful surprise this show ended up being.

A few things stood out for this episode:

- The name "Even Older Scott" really cracks me up.
- I was assuming that Matthew Patel and the whole musical production would suck, but they were actually good, and it was all he wanted.
- By the end of the episode, most characters end up roughly where they want to be. Some more excellent grunt-work was provided by Chris Evans/Lucas Lee.
- Really random aside: There was an improbably beautiful, black-haired young woman who use to work at Queen Video (RIP) back in the day. So much so that you could have conversations about Queen Video with random people and chances are you'd start talking about her. The black-haired girl that Kim is with at the end (who works at an independent video store) reminds me of her, and I honestly wonder if Bryan Lee O'Malley had this same girl in mind.

I also kind of appreciate that even though no one is suggesting it's likely to occur, they did dangle the possibility of a season 2 in front of us. After three versions of this story, it would be nice to finally see what an actual relationship between Ramona and Scott looks like.
posted by Alex404 at 4:03 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

As someone who bounced off the comics after the first volume (and someone just a little older than Even Older Scott), I really appreciate where this went. Scott was always his own worst enemy. He comes off as lazy and immature, but EOS proves he can focus and work hard for ten years. He just needs motivation and self-discipline. Scott loves the community of people gathered around him, and the world tells him his only talent is fighting and he's not really interested in that. So he copes badly.

I love that there's no real resolution for Scott and Ramona. They've seen their future and are still willing to try. Will that be enough to change how things work out? Or are they always destined to break apart? Bryan Lee O'Malley and Hope Larson split up, and I'm sure that informs his work here. But I want to root for Scott much more in this version.

It was really nice to see Scott's friends and frienemies integrate the evil-ex community into the fold and have everybody learn that not fighting can be done with just as much skill and panache as fighting. What a way to take a flawed masterpiece and deepen it and re-evaluate it from its core. It took a lot of courage to make this show this way.
posted by rikschell at 4:55 AM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

I like the original movie a lot, but someone I know watched it and hated it and told me why:

Scott is a creep for dating a high schooler and treating her badly.

None of the female characters have character arcs, they are all there as props for Scott up to and including Ramona as the damsel in distress

It’s gross that scott defeats Roxy by giving her an orgasm

I am convinced that the writers for this series had the same criticisms bc it seems like they wrote this entire thing as a corrective. Scott doesn’t even appear in half of the episodes! Knives is more than a lame fan!
posted by bq at 8:20 AM on March 25