Episode 17, Crisscross Options

[G1MarvelBlaster]

Hey, the MECH guys took Jack's phone off him, hence why he had to steal Silas's radio. Did he ever get it back? I don't remember him retrieving it, and that phone's hooked into the Autobot Comm-Links...

I hope they follow up on that. It'd be a nice continuity bit for a sequel hook, or a way to start dribbling actual story arcs in before the end of the season (There's 9 more Season 1 episodes, right?)

[Pennpenn]

Hey, the MECH guys took Jack's phone off him, hence why he had to steal Silas's radio. Did he ever get it back? I don't remember him retrieving it, and that phone's hooked into the Autobot Comm-Links...

I hope they follow up on that. It'd be a nice continuity bit for a sequel hook, or a way to start dribbling actual story arcs in before the end of the season (There's 9 more Season 1 episodes, right?)

It might be, but it'd really be a point against the Autobots if they didn't change their codes or whatever to make the phone useless for such purposes. It's not like they don't know MECH has the phone, they probably just didn't put anything in the episode about it because 1) it would have broken the flow of the last scenes and 2) they probably presumed that people would presume the Autobots would deal with the missing phone. The phone itself didn't obstensively have any Cybertronian tech in it, and even then, MECH seem to know how the Autobot's comsystems (and brains apparently!) work.

This post has been edited by Pennpenn: Jul 7 2011, 09:28 AM

[abates]

(There's 9 more Season 1 episodes, right?)

I suspect that Darkness Rising is going to end up counting as part of season 1. Season 2 is supposed to start November 28th (unless they've changed their plans) which given their schedule so far of doing 5 episodes at a time, doesn't seem like it would give them enough time between "Partners" and the start of season 2 to do another 9 episodes.

But we'll see, I guess!

[Jackpot]

- The gall at Jack thinking his measly 'being grounded' problems are bigger then, you know, Arcee fighting for her life with BB against Cons in an energon deposit... That was so 80-ies Hanna-Barbera. If I had a giant robot bike, I'd kinda be understanding that she doesn't want to stand around in alt mode all day. She is fighting a friggin' war, for Primus' sake. Jack came through as a jerk there, kinda uncharacteristically for him based on his prior portrayal.

I can agree with most of your criticisms (though they don't bother me enough to actually complain about them), but I need to stick up for one of my favorite scenes in the whole series here. The contrast between Arcee's battle, Jack's frantic pedaling, and June's casual return home was comedy gold. The pacing, cuts, and score vacillated between overblown and understated perfectly - I laughed out loud. Maybe it's keyed to more of an American sense of humor than a Hungarian one?

Even taking the scene seriously, Jack isn't really a jerk; as has been pointed out, he didn't know what Arcee was doing at the time, and she didn't tell him. In fact, she was pretty receptive to his request. The whole absurd drama arose from her priorities anyway, having invested so much in playing the role of his bike while choosing to keep his mom in the dark. Jack was just working with what he was given.

Thinking about this made me reflect on how much I like Jack. He's a good kid who tries to do the right thing. Maybe it's all the '90s media I've consumed, but I've felt for a long time that cartoon writers seem to think all primary teenage protagonists (especially boys) are either angsty dicks or flippantly oblivious thrillseekers. This lends itself to easy character-driven plots where they have to learn basic human concepts like empathy and forethought the hard way, but that's not what I like in my entertainment. Jack's nicely well-rounded, with enough adventuresomeness to want to race a motorcycle and tag along with space robots, but also enough awareness to have good relations with his mom, be an older brother to the other kids, and be wary of danger.

Also, I found it odd that she transformed into a very different helicopter then the one she scanned (she had an angled, long-nosed cockpit for example unlike the rounded cockpit of Fowler's copter).

Hmmm. People were claiming to see copter-kibble on her in "Predatory," which could be either because the designers wanted her robot mode to still look appropriate without having to be altered after "Crisscross," or because she's meant to be triple-changer. I like the idea that trans-scanning involves a choice with tradeoffs: Either you'll get to turn into an exact duplicate of the target at the price of losing your existing alt-mode, or you'll keep your old alt-mode but the additional one will have aesthetic concessions.

(Now I'm imagining someone getting greedy and trying to take on a dozen alt-modes, each new one more deformed and useless.)

[Kalidor]

Your analysis of Jack is pretty spot on. After all, he was the one who didn't even want to get involved with the robots anyway in the first place.

[Cybersnark]

(Now I'm imagining someone getting greedy and trying to take on a dozen alt-modes, each new one more deformed and useless.)

That would explain some things. . .