How’s it going? Before I get into this review/breakdown thing, do you wanna hear about my new hobby? I handle raw chicken all day and I never wash my hands then I lick my fingers and rub my eyes a whole bunch.
With that pertinent info out of the way, I want to discuss a particular animated short that I have been thinking about pretty much nonstop for over a decade now: 2009’s Meet the Spy by Valve Studios. I’ve always liked it a lot, but I’ve never really thought about why it’s stuck around in my mind for so long.
I watch a lot of videos from various internet funnymen where they crap on some terrible show or movie or video game, and fair play to them. If you are a creative type, it is critical to be able to see a flaw in a piece of work so that you don’t replicate that.
But what about the really good stuff? It’s easy to say, “Huh. I really liked this movie/game/book/salad.” but it isn’t always easy to put your finger on exactly why you liked it. This is why I want to dissect Meet the Spy: to not only tell you that it’s really really good, but to dig past the surface level elements and share a deeper understanding of its brilliance.
First, a little background. Meet the Spy was the seventh in the Meet the Team series of animated shorts to advertise Valve’s Team Fortress 2, a video game where grown men in funny hats murder each other over a minor land dispute.
Every single one of these shorts is great, but Meet the Spy ascends to a whole ‘nother echelon. Before I get into my analysis… watch the darn thing. It’s three minutes long and totally worth it.
Finished? Good! Let’s get into it.
Meet the Spy, like I mentioned previously, is only three minutes long. Valve wastes no time getting straight to the conflict; within five seconds you know that the RED Spy is loose in the BLU base. Within ten seconds you learn what’s at stake: a briefcase whose contents are apparently valuable enough to warrant Soldier hauling ass with a shotgun to ensure its safety.
The value of the briefcase is never stated, neither in this short or in any other piece of Team Fortress media, but I don’t think that hurts the short at all. Valve wants to get straight to the action and just knowing that the briefcase is intrinsically valuable is satisfying enough.
As Soldier makes his way to the intel room, he finds that Scout has beaten him there. Makes sense, as Scout is the fastest of the mercenaries. Scout, being a bit more brash than Soldier, tries to force his way into the intel room, but Soldier pushes him aside to manually unlock the door via its keypad.
But you came here for my deep dark analysis, not a play-by-play. So what makes this scene so good?
Look closely at the number pad above. See how only the 1 key is worn down? Why would a top-secret mercenary organization have such an easy to guess code? Why did Soldier have to think so hard to remember it? Wait… why didn’t Scout know the code?
We’ll touch on that a little later.
Moments later, Heavy comes barreling through the hallway and decides to just break the door down. In just a few seconds, we see how three different characters handle a problem as simple as opening a locked door. Wait – make that four.
This is a Spy to be sure, but not the RED Spy who is after the briefcase. Here, I want to talk about how Meet the Spy handles its titular character. Every prior Meet the Team short is structured as an interview, where the mercenary in question talks about themselves and their role on the team. Meet the Spy would not have worked nearly as well if the Spy simply sat there and talked about being sneaky and French. Instead, they pivot that character trait into a solid mystery.
The BLU Spy states that even though the briefcase is safe, if the RED Spy is still alive, then the whole team is in danger. Scout, being the cocky little frontbutt that he is, casually says that it’s no problem, even playing with the knife lodged in the dead Sniper’s back. Hey, why was Scout so eager to play with that knife in the first place?
We’ll touch on that a little later.
I’m actually gonna gloss over the next bit just because I don’t want to simply re-quote dialogue from the short. But it’s snappy, showcases the characters’ personalities a bit more, and it contains what may very well be the sickest “your mom” joke in recorded history.
Now that I think about it, Meet the Spy has an edge over the prior shorts because it has a larger cast to work with. In most of those, the titular characters don’t have anyone except the off-camera interviewer to bounce off of.
It makes sense for characters like Demoman or Scout or Sniper to boast about their skills, but Spy is about subterfuge and misdirection. Why waste time talking up a big game when you can let your enemies do it for you?
Ooh, now I get to talk about what really makes Meet the Spy shine: the Spy himself! After humiliating Scout, the BLU Spy goes into detail on why the RED Spy is such a threat. Game recognize game, I suppose. What follows is a montage of the RED Spy taking out three different BLU mercs, all in a different fashion.
It is important to remember that Meet the Spy is, at the end of the day, an advertisement for a video game. To that end, it is not enough to simply showcase a character’s personality, but also their playstyle. Every Meet the Team short does this; those bits between monologues of the mercenaries on the battlefield are just as important as the interviews. It might just be my own bias, but I think Meet the Spy nails this balance the best.
Let’s go over this montage step-by-step.
I could easily imagine a new Team Fortress 2 player being confused by the Spy’s Electro-Sapper. From a first impression, it doesn’t seem to do anything. Its utility is clearly shown here – it destroys enemy Engineer’s buildings. I should dock points for the fact that you can’t actually slide the Sapper across the ground like shown here, but you look me in the eye and tell me that Spy simply walking up and plopping it on Engineer’s sentry would have been half as badass.
I’m glad that they didn’t waste an entire montage segment on Spy’s revolver because it’s a pretty self-explanatory weapon. Show me the really unique stuff!
Oh yeah, Spy killed Sniper. Aside from being a fairly elaborate close-quarters fight scene in a world where most duels are finished with firearms, this scene subtly explains how Spy’s knife works in-game. When Sniper gets slashed along the face, he’s pretty much fine and even holds his own against Spy… for a few seconds anyway. It’s when Sniper turns his back that the knife’s true use is shown: an instant one-hit kill against any opponent. Get it? Cause he’s a Spy? And he backstabs in both a literal and a metaphorical sense?
The lighting is on-point here too. Thought I should mention that.
This is the final scene in the montage, and it was placed last deliberately. To somebody unfamiliar with the Team Fortress lore, they may just assume that Spies are sneaky. But this scene here? It shows off what is perhaps Spy’s most powerful trait: the ability to take the form of anybody. It’s like that John Carpenter film! But seriously, this raises the threat level from looming to imminent. Not only could the RED Spy be anywhere, he could be anyone.
So the RED Spy single-handedly killed three trained mercenaries, all in a unique fashion. How’s that for a showcase of abilities? And then the BLU Spy immediately gets his head blown off by Soldier.
I haven’t talked about the animation too much, and that’s because it hasn’t aged particularly well. Don’t get me wrong, the camerawork, lighting, and choreography are all great, but the character models are a little blocky, textures are a little blurry, and if you look closely you can see some clipping issues. This isn’t a knock against the animators. I know firsthand what Source Filmmaker is capable of and it’s actually quite limited, at least compared to some other animation programs. They pushed the limits of their tool.
It might seem like a weird time to talk about the animation, but that’s because I want to focus on this headshot scene. Team Fortress 2 is a damn violent game, with people exploding into bits at a moment’s notice. But having Spy’s brain matter and skull fragments fly everywhere is just… disgusting and visceral, even by this universe’s standards.
I love it.
Not only is it a fun scene to watch (if you’re into gore) and not only does it showcase Soldier’s “brilliant” deduction skills, but it also subtly displays Spy’s greatest in-game weakness: his frailty.
Actually, let’s talk about the genius of having two different Spies in this short, one as a protagonist and one as an antagonist (I’ll let you decide for yourself which is which). In the Team Fortress universe, it’s a normal thing to see two or three or even a dozen identical mercenaries on the battlefield.
In Meet the Spy’s case, it lets Spy take center stage and display his personality while simultaneously allowing him to remain an unseen threat. Beautiful.
Hmm. I remember saying I was touch on something a little later. Oh yeah! The ending!
The reveal that Scout was the RED Spy all along is what puts Meet the Spy in a tier all its own. What’s the secret ingredient?
Foreshadowing.
It might seem obvious, but placing those subtle hints is paramount to the reveal’s success. And it’s a balancing act too. If the hints are too obvious, then people will guess the RED Spy’s true identity too quickly and the impact of the reveal would be diminished. If the hints are too obtuse, or worse, nonexistent, then it would seem as though the writers just pulled the reveal out of their ass.
This is something that bothered me with 2014’s End of the Line. It too has a reveal that there was a Spy among the team. I understand the necessity of the twist; it allows the presumably dead Heavy to rise up and save the day. But without those little hints sprinkled throughout the short, the twist had no weight.
What else is there to say about Meet the Spy? Music’s really good. Camera work is solid. And it tells its story in just three minutes.
Before I go, I want to talk about Team Fortress 2. It’s a game near and dear to my heart, and it’s still going strong twelve years after its initial release (somebody tell Valve that!). And while updates to the game have slowed considerably, it’s still a ton of fun and it’s maintained a solid playerbase. Plus, it’s free! So if it’s been a few years since you’ve logged in or even if you’ve never played before, hop in for a few rounds. Tell the server I sent you.
That’s all for today. My eyes are all red and I can’t feel my tongue so I should probably go.
Next time: I dunno. I’ll just list every subreddit that I hate.
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