Back when this show was first being announced, information doled out in careful and tantalizing amounts, this was the teaser trailer I saw first. I avoided the full trailers as they came out, as I usually do for media I’m looking forward to, but this shot was the first and only one I saw:
I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed by it. It looked too fantastical for me, almost fake. I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly, but it felt as if I was looking at a movie scene, not a real-life campsite.
And then I was proved wrong.
Camp Half-Blood looks so good. It really does give the atmosphere of an activity-heavy summer camp, and the scenery of it is just gorgeous. This is exactly what every PJO fan was waiting for!
(Now, when can we attend? I know I’m 22, but can you make an exception for older campers? Please?)
As for the characters, this episode served as a major introduction for many central players of the camp. I’m familiar with Jason Mantzoukas from The Good Place, and from that I knew he’d have the perfect disposition for Dionyseus. We get to see Chiron in his centaur form, too, and meet a lot of campers – Clarisse La Rue being a significant one!
But I didn’t find her portrayal to be accurate to her character. Nothing against Dior Goodjohn here – she just seems badly cast. She’s 17, but she doesn’t look threatening. For reference, this image below from the TLT graphic novel is what comes to mind when I picture Clarisse. She’s big. She looks like she could beat Percy up with her bare hands.
One of my friends said that Goodjohn is “too pretty” for Clarisse and I think that statement holds weight. I’m sure she’ll be showing her skills far more when we get to Sea of Monsters. There’s time for her to come into Clarisse. Currently, though, if I told you this girl used to bully me:
– would you assume she shoved my head in a toilet or spread rumors about my sex life?
Anyhow, and then there’s Charlie Bushnell, our Luke. I don’t have much to say about him, but he just feels off. He’s the right age, but something about his interactions with Percy make him feel like a peer, not a slightly older mentor. I think it’s his bearing more than his physical appearance, honestly.
And then we have Leah Jeffries, PJO’s Annabeth. I was excited when the show opened with the “you drool in your sleep” line, but for the rest of the episode Annabeth was just… mean. I know that part of Annabeth’s characterization is that she’s “scary,” but she’s not openly abrasive with Percy at every turn. So far, it’s as if the show doesn’t want to let her slip or have any flaws. In the book, the bathroom scene with Clarisse ends with Percy drenching Annabeth and all of the Ares kids, leaving himself the only dry one. In the show, Annabeth acts dramatically cocky and says she was spying on Percy the whole time. No toilet water for her.
Also, it’s minor, but in the book Annabeth reluctantly steps back when Clarisse grabs Percy and watches through her fingers when Clarisse tries to dunk him. There, Annabeth isn’t this suave, confident character. She’s a 12-year-old kid who’s beholdened to the hierarchy of camp as much as anyone else.
And there there’s the Capture the Flag scene! In the book, Annabeth realizes that Percy is being healed by the water and tells him to step in it. In the show, she forcefully shoves him into the river. Like – come on! She’s not supposed to be actively bullying him the whole time!
Speaking of that scene, we come to one of my most significant gripes with the show asofar – the distribution of information. Instead of learning the major story beats and slowly delivering crumbs of the more minor worldbuilding aspects, full reveals are dropped all at once. I was so disappointed when Luke told Percy about Thalia and explicitly said that himself and Annabeth were the other two demigods with her. They’re hiding the fact that Grover was the satyr who brought them all to camp, but I still wish this whole part wasn’t discussed yet. Keeping it vauge that “Thalia and two demigods were led to camp by a satyr” made the eventual discovery by Percy of who those people were hit so much harder in the book.
It feels like the show is breaking that “don’t say the plan out loud” rule. You know, the one about how if characters say what the plan is, it’ll fail, and if they don’t, then it’ll succeed. Chiron explicitly tells Percy “Hades has the bolt” instead of obscuring the message a bit (“you must retrieve the bolt from the Underworld to prevent war”) to imply that Hades has it. By using the latter method, the eventual reveal that Hades doesn’t have it feels like more of a shock. But I digress; I’m just being picky here. I can’t tell if I would’ve been fooled by this if I hadn’t read the books.
But here’s my biggest complaint about this episode – the Posiedon claiming! You know, the major point where Percy realizes his parentage and everyone kneels??
Gods, I’m mad about this.
The impact of Percy discovering that his father is one of the “Big Three,” even the Ares cabin kneeling for him, Chiron’s fantastic line… we get none of it!
I can’t tell why the show did this. Maybe the writers are assuming that everyone watching already knows Percy’s heritage, so there wasn’t any need to make a big deal out of it. But that’s wrong. It’s such a killer part to end chapter 8 on in the book – having Percy get to use his cabin and agreeing to go on his quest (before talking with the Oracle!) really misses something.
Well, I still had fun getting to see Camp Half-Blood in all its glory, and we were introduced to so many characters this episode. If PJO can slow down a bit when it comes to information delivery – and reveal the more important parts, like the gods being drawn to Western civilization! – then I’ll be chuffed. But either way, I’ll still be here.
As before, here are my live notes for this episode!
