![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameWhile riding his bike, Ben is nearly mowed down by a couple of out-of-control teen drivers. Realizing that they can’t control the car, he turns into Big Chill and flies after them. However, when he manages to stop them, the next thing the kids know, Big Chill’s taking a bite out of the car.
The next day, Ben’s at Kevin’s, with no memory of what happened. As he’s brushing his teeth, he finds a piece of metal in his mouth. But Kevin can’t exactly worry about Ben going through weird stuff—Gwen just showed up with a notice about her prep school’s upcoming formal dance, and in a scene straight out of W.I.T.C.H., she tricks Kevin into asking her out, leaving him flailing about exactly what to do. Also in a scene straight out of W.I.T.C.H.,Matt Ben is stuck coaching Caleb Kevin in how to dress and what Gwen likes.
But Ben’s problems still aren’t solved. With Kevin and Gwen too focused on the dance to help, he turns to Julie and confides in her about his blackouts and his fears that he’s got another Ghostfreak on his hands. Fortunately for him, Julie agrees to help, detective-style. They meet again later, with Julie planning on riding her moped to catch up with him, and Ben morphs into Jetray to test the weirdness. However, things get even weirder when he unexpectedly changes from Jetray to Big Chill and takes off, but CSI Julie’s on the case. She tracks him down to the Burger Shack and takes notes on how Big Chill is eating large amounts of metal. But Big Chill is refusing to answer to her calls to him (and to Ben), and he eventually strands her in an alley. Later that night, Ben wakes in the desert, next to a ditch, with no idea how he got there.
These aren’t the only weird symptoms he’s displaying, though. He ends up eating an entire jar of pickles—brine and all—while Kevin’s asking him for help. Also, he’s being unusually helpful, even going so far as to tie Kevin’s bowtie and brush some lint off his shoulder (Ladies? Your Ho Yay quota for this episode has just been filled). Meanwhile, Julie thinks they’ve kept this mystery to themselves too long, and she brings her notes to Gwen for help. Gwen dismisses her worries and brings up her own regarding Kevin, before leaving Ben and Julie alone. When Julie says she was worried about him, Ben admits he’s worried too and he doesn’t remember anything from the other night. And Julie’s notes aren’t relieving his fears that he’s losing control again. With Gwen and Kevin too busy to help, Ben fears he’s alone in this, but Julie assures him that he’s still got her. But the next thing she knows, Ben starts acting strange again—staring into space momentarily before changing into Big Chill. She follows him to the foundry, where he’s not only eating the steel beams made there, but he’s also devouring the molten metal. The police arrive to try and stop him, but Julie tries to talk them out of shooting. It doesn’t work, and the police are partially frozen for their trouble. She tries to chase after him again when he leaves, but he disables her moped with an icy breath. But Julie’s not out of options yet.
Kevin’s just picked Gwen up for the dance, and she’s impressed with how far he’s gone for this. As they’re driving, he confesses that Ben told him what to do, and Gwen points out how weird it is that Ben gave him dating tips and helped him tie his tie. But now she’s really starting to think about Julie’s warnings that Ben was acting strange. She tells Kevin that they can’t go into the dance, and he’s afraid it’s because she’s embarrassed of him, but she says it’s only because she’s afraid Ben’s in trouble. Sure enough, her fears are confirmed by Julie’s phone call letting them know that he’s in trouble. When Gwen insists that she and Kevin will handle it, Julie flat-out tells them that she’s going too. Kevin uses his badge to track down Ben’s Omnitrix and gives Julie the coordinates.
They meet Julie at the ditch in the desert that Ben had mentioned before, where Big Chill is protecting some kind of metal structure that looks strangely like a cocoon. Julie’s attempts to reason with him and Kevin and Gwen’s attempts to physically confront him fail, and when he goes so far as to try to attack Julie, they knock him out and decide they need to destroy the structure. But inside is some kind of green goo, out of which some kind of blue bubbles start floating up. The bubbles start changing to a larval form and then finally…into baby Big Chill aliens. It was no cocoon—it was a nest. Kevin pretty much sums it up with “You’ve got to be kidding.” The babies fly over to Big Chill before flying off into the moonlight, except for the smallest, which Big Chill has to encourage to fly away. When Ben suddenly demorphs with no memory of what happened, Julie throws her notes away and tells him to sit down.
With the crisis averted, Ben humiliated, and absolutely everyone laughing at him, Julie finally takes Ben home. Gwen realizes that she and Kevin missed the dance, but Kevin decides they might as well just dance there.
The more I watch season two, the more I really hope they feature Julie more. Since “Pier Pressure,” she has impressed me as not being a Dana type—that is, not being the kind of girlfriend who is kept out of the loop, gets annoyed when weird stuff goes on with her superhero boyfriend, and throws another level of drama into the hero’s life (much as I like Dana from Batman Beyond, she did end up serving this purpose more often than not). I don’t know whether I should compare her to Max from Batman Beyond or Rose (though decidedly not as Huntsgirl) from season two of Jake Long. Here, Julie is the hero. Ben’s own friends are too caught up in their own problems to listen to him, so he asks her for help without a second thought. And she agrees immediately. She continued trying to reason with Big Chill when everyone else tried to attack, even if things really didn’t work out as she’d hoped. She tries to get the police not to attack and also tries to talk Big Chill out of attacking. And she never gives up; even when Big Chill abandons her and tries to attack her, she’s still trying to help. Ben’s terrified that he’s going to lose control and have a repeat incident of Ghostfreak, and he thinks he’s alone because his team is too busy to help him. I admit that I let slip an “Aww!” when Julie came up to him, put a hand on him, and insisted that he wasn’t alone because she was there for him. And honestly, her most awesome moment was telling Gwen and Kevin that there was no way they were leaving her out of this, and they immediately told her where to go. Julie has no powers whatsoever, no experience fighting aliens, and she still does whatever it takes to help Ben with this. Moral of this story? Julie is Awesome.
So this episode gives us the Big Reveal about Big Chill. When it was first hinted at Comic Con, people were worrying that the writers would tread old ground from Ghostfreak—and in a nice anticipation of this, Ben and Gwen both admit this is starting out very similar to what Ghostfreak had put him through. However, things turn out to be completely different—though whether or not it’s better depends on your interpretation (Ben, for one, probably doesn’t see it as an improvement). Like all Necrofrigians, Big Chill has an eighty-year reproductive cycle, at the end of which, he apparently asexually lays eggs in a metal nest. When the babies hatch, they fly off into the cold of space and live off solar plasma. Ben happened to be unlucky enough to be stuck right at that point in the reproductive cycle. The best part is that the guys are the only ones who find this to be disturbing. Upon seeing theadorable little abominations baby Necrofrigians, Gwen and Julie let loose a cry of “Aww!” Kevin’s brain-broken, but recovers enough to torment Ben, who would clearly rather forget this Fight Club incident.
This episode is named for the B-plot—a date that never really happened. Gwen finally manages to get Kevin to ask her out—by tricking him into it, essentially. Kevin spends the episode flailing because he’s not sure what she expects from him. This subplot keeps both of them too distracted to recognize that Ben’s in trouble, or to even listen to him and Julie ask for help. So just like the issues with Big Chill were built up and ended unexpectedly, this didn’t end the way they expected either. Because they had to help Ben, they completely missed the dance, and Gwen’s disappointed. But Kevin, who’s been going nuts getting ready for this and was completely afraid of either making a fool out of himself or having Gwen too embarrassed with him to want to go, decides that there’s no reason they can’t just dance right there in the desert. It would be nice to see some acknowledgement of how far their relationship’s gotten by this episode, but judging by “Undercover,” it still looks like they’re not quite sure where they stand with one another.
I’m actually pretty surprised that they got away with this episode. Alien mpreg—not the kind of thing you expect to see on a cartoon geared to kids and teens. Though I’m not quite surprised that the writer for this episode did an episode of American Dragon: Jake Long; it’s the exact kind of wacky scenario Jake would go through, if Disney would’ve let them.
A couple of changes from season one are here again too. First off, the morphing sequences for Ben’s alien forms are getting longer and flashier. There’s more detail into the transformation of Ben’s skeleton to fit the alien form. I noticed this in “Good Copy, Bad Copy,” but I wasn’t entirely sure. Also, the police in Bellwood apparently have lasers issued as standard weaponry. Previously, we’d seen Sheriff Mason of Grover’s Mill (“Everybody Talks About the Weather”) carrying around a shotgun. Apparently, this is now a no-no. Either that, or Bellwood’s wising up to the alien weirdness and have apparently gotten a good budget for DCAU weaponry (maybe they went to Dakota for it?).
“Save the Last Dance” was written by Amy Wolfram. Julie was once again voiced by Vyvan Pham.
The next day, Ben’s at Kevin’s, with no memory of what happened. As he’s brushing his teeth, he finds a piece of metal in his mouth. But Kevin can’t exactly worry about Ben going through weird stuff—Gwen just showed up with a notice about her prep school’s upcoming formal dance, and in a scene straight out of W.I.T.C.H., she tricks Kevin into asking her out, leaving him flailing about exactly what to do. Also in a scene straight out of W.I.T.C.H.,
But Ben’s problems still aren’t solved. With Kevin and Gwen too focused on the dance to help, he turns to Julie and confides in her about his blackouts and his fears that he’s got another Ghostfreak on his hands. Fortunately for him, Julie agrees to help, detective-style. They meet again later, with Julie planning on riding her moped to catch up with him, and Ben morphs into Jetray to test the weirdness. However, things get even weirder when he unexpectedly changes from Jetray to Big Chill and takes off, but CSI Julie’s on the case. She tracks him down to the Burger Shack and takes notes on how Big Chill is eating large amounts of metal. But Big Chill is refusing to answer to her calls to him (and to Ben), and he eventually strands her in an alley. Later that night, Ben wakes in the desert, next to a ditch, with no idea how he got there.
These aren’t the only weird symptoms he’s displaying, though. He ends up eating an entire jar of pickles—brine and all—while Kevin’s asking him for help. Also, he’s being unusually helpful, even going so far as to tie Kevin’s bowtie and brush some lint off his shoulder (Ladies? Your Ho Yay quota for this episode has just been filled). Meanwhile, Julie thinks they’ve kept this mystery to themselves too long, and she brings her notes to Gwen for help. Gwen dismisses her worries and brings up her own regarding Kevin, before leaving Ben and Julie alone. When Julie says she was worried about him, Ben admits he’s worried too and he doesn’t remember anything from the other night. And Julie’s notes aren’t relieving his fears that he’s losing control again. With Gwen and Kevin too busy to help, Ben fears he’s alone in this, but Julie assures him that he’s still got her. But the next thing she knows, Ben starts acting strange again—staring into space momentarily before changing into Big Chill. She follows him to the foundry, where he’s not only eating the steel beams made there, but he’s also devouring the molten metal. The police arrive to try and stop him, but Julie tries to talk them out of shooting. It doesn’t work, and the police are partially frozen for their trouble. She tries to chase after him again when he leaves, but he disables her moped with an icy breath. But Julie’s not out of options yet.
Kevin’s just picked Gwen up for the dance, and she’s impressed with how far he’s gone for this. As they’re driving, he confesses that Ben told him what to do, and Gwen points out how weird it is that Ben gave him dating tips and helped him tie his tie. But now she’s really starting to think about Julie’s warnings that Ben was acting strange. She tells Kevin that they can’t go into the dance, and he’s afraid it’s because she’s embarrassed of him, but she says it’s only because she’s afraid Ben’s in trouble. Sure enough, her fears are confirmed by Julie’s phone call letting them know that he’s in trouble. When Gwen insists that she and Kevin will handle it, Julie flat-out tells them that she’s going too. Kevin uses his badge to track down Ben’s Omnitrix and gives Julie the coordinates.
They meet Julie at the ditch in the desert that Ben had mentioned before, where Big Chill is protecting some kind of metal structure that looks strangely like a cocoon. Julie’s attempts to reason with him and Kevin and Gwen’s attempts to physically confront him fail, and when he goes so far as to try to attack Julie, they knock him out and decide they need to destroy the structure. But inside is some kind of green goo, out of which some kind of blue bubbles start floating up. The bubbles start changing to a larval form and then finally…into baby Big Chill aliens. It was no cocoon—it was a nest. Kevin pretty much sums it up with “You’ve got to be kidding.” The babies fly over to Big Chill before flying off into the moonlight, except for the smallest, which Big Chill has to encourage to fly away. When Ben suddenly demorphs with no memory of what happened, Julie throws her notes away and tells him to sit down.
With the crisis averted, Ben humiliated, and absolutely everyone laughing at him, Julie finally takes Ben home. Gwen realizes that she and Kevin missed the dance, but Kevin decides they might as well just dance there.
The more I watch season two, the more I really hope they feature Julie more. Since “Pier Pressure,” she has impressed me as not being a Dana type—that is, not being the kind of girlfriend who is kept out of the loop, gets annoyed when weird stuff goes on with her superhero boyfriend, and throws another level of drama into the hero’s life (much as I like Dana from Batman Beyond, she did end up serving this purpose more often than not). I don’t know whether I should compare her to Max from Batman Beyond or Rose (though decidedly not as Huntsgirl) from season two of Jake Long. Here, Julie is the hero. Ben’s own friends are too caught up in their own problems to listen to him, so he asks her for help without a second thought. And she agrees immediately. She continued trying to reason with Big Chill when everyone else tried to attack, even if things really didn’t work out as she’d hoped. She tries to get the police not to attack and also tries to talk Big Chill out of attacking. And she never gives up; even when Big Chill abandons her and tries to attack her, she’s still trying to help. Ben’s terrified that he’s going to lose control and have a repeat incident of Ghostfreak, and he thinks he’s alone because his team is too busy to help him. I admit that I let slip an “Aww!” when Julie came up to him, put a hand on him, and insisted that he wasn’t alone because she was there for him. And honestly, her most awesome moment was telling Gwen and Kevin that there was no way they were leaving her out of this, and they immediately told her where to go. Julie has no powers whatsoever, no experience fighting aliens, and she still does whatever it takes to help Ben with this. Moral of this story? Julie is Awesome.
So this episode gives us the Big Reveal about Big Chill. When it was first hinted at Comic Con, people were worrying that the writers would tread old ground from Ghostfreak—and in a nice anticipation of this, Ben and Gwen both admit this is starting out very similar to what Ghostfreak had put him through. However, things turn out to be completely different—though whether or not it’s better depends on your interpretation (Ben, for one, probably doesn’t see it as an improvement). Like all Necrofrigians, Big Chill has an eighty-year reproductive cycle, at the end of which, he apparently asexually lays eggs in a metal nest. When the babies hatch, they fly off into the cold of space and live off solar plasma. Ben happened to be unlucky enough to be stuck right at that point in the reproductive cycle. The best part is that the guys are the only ones who find this to be disturbing. Upon seeing the
This episode is named for the B-plot—a date that never really happened. Gwen finally manages to get Kevin to ask her out—by tricking him into it, essentially. Kevin spends the episode flailing because he’s not sure what she expects from him. This subplot keeps both of them too distracted to recognize that Ben’s in trouble, or to even listen to him and Julie ask for help. So just like the issues with Big Chill were built up and ended unexpectedly, this didn’t end the way they expected either. Because they had to help Ben, they completely missed the dance, and Gwen’s disappointed. But Kevin, who’s been going nuts getting ready for this and was completely afraid of either making a fool out of himself or having Gwen too embarrassed with him to want to go, decides that there’s no reason they can’t just dance right there in the desert. It would be nice to see some acknowledgement of how far their relationship’s gotten by this episode, but judging by “Undercover,” it still looks like they’re not quite sure where they stand with one another.
I’m actually pretty surprised that they got away with this episode. Alien mpreg—not the kind of thing you expect to see on a cartoon geared to kids and teens. Though I’m not quite surprised that the writer for this episode did an episode of American Dragon: Jake Long; it’s the exact kind of wacky scenario Jake would go through, if Disney would’ve let them.
A couple of changes from season one are here again too. First off, the morphing sequences for Ben’s alien forms are getting longer and flashier. There’s more detail into the transformation of Ben’s skeleton to fit the alien form. I noticed this in “Good Copy, Bad Copy,” but I wasn’t entirely sure. Also, the police in Bellwood apparently have lasers issued as standard weaponry. Previously, we’d seen Sheriff Mason of Grover’s Mill (“Everybody Talks About the Weather”) carrying around a shotgun. Apparently, this is now a no-no. Either that, or Bellwood’s wising up to the alien weirdness and have apparently gotten a good budget for DCAU weaponry (maybe they went to Dakota for it?).
“Save the Last Dance” was written by Amy Wolfram. Julie was once again voiced by Vyvan Pham.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-09 11:05 pm (UTC)