What not to wear: “The Gauntlet”
Sep. 9th, 2009 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameThe episode begins with the Alien Force fighting a large robot (called “Techadon,” according to the DNA of a Scene featurette). Once Ben finally gets the Omnitrix out of recharge mode, he decides this looks like a job for a new alien, Goop, who manages to get the job done but succeeds in grossing the others out. The battle over, Ben reverts to normal and Kevin grabs the last surviving piece of the Techadon—a gauntlet—and they drive off to the Mr. Smoothy, where Ben gets them all drinks. However, being Ben, he immediately runs into trouble—this time in the form of his long-time bullies, Cash and JT. Kevin starts to head over to help Ben out, but Ben waves him off, trying to defuse the situation with a more optimistic outlook. It throws them off-guard, but not for long, and Cash tries shoving Ben to provoke him. That nearly works, and Ben reaches for the watch before deciding that Cash and JT aren’t worth it. As other kids are ready to jump to his rescue, Ben points out that they’ve all grown up, save for Cash, and it’s just sad. Ben then walks away from them, to the cheers of the other kids.
Later, while the Alien Force are out having dinner, Cash is still fuming over the way Ben completely humiliated him without having to lift a finger. To redirect his friend’s anger away from him, JT points out Kevin’s car nearby and suggests that Cash vandalize it to try and gain some of his reputation back—after all, winning one over the toughest kid in town would definitely make people forget that he got verbally pwned by one of his oldest victims. They send the car careening down the side of the road, into a ravine. Naturally, it grabs the Alien Force’s attention. As they make a run for it, Cash tells JT to grab the stuff that fell out of the trunk, but all JT can hold onto is the Techadon gauntlet.
When they get back to the abandoned mannequin factory where they hang out, JT and Cash check out the gauntlet, to discover it shoots lasers. Cash immediately takes it from JT and gets in some practice, deciding this is the perfect way to get back at Ben. This rubs JT as a little extreme, and later in the night, he tries to steal the gauntlet from Cash, but Cash wakes with glowing red eyes, scaring him off. Realizing the only thing he can do is warn Ben, he heads to the garage where Gwen and Kevin are. Ben had left a few minutes before, fed up with Kevin’s attitude when he was only trying to help, but JT tries to warn them to warn Ben. Unfortunately, Kevin is thoroughly pissed about what happened to his car and wants the chance to get back at Cash. He goes to the factory to find Cash with the gauntlet growing over his arm, and it’s given him enough power to take Kevin down in short order, leaving him with the message that he’s calling Ben out to fight later.
After Kevin doesn’t come back for a while, Gwen and JT go looking for Ben and find him at the Mr. Smoothy. While Ben isn’t thrilled to see JT, they confide in him their fears, which Ben brushes off, knowing that Kevin’s a lot stronger than Cash is. This causes Gwen to redirect her worry, and they rush off to make sure Kevin hasn’t killed Cash. But when they get there, they see things went the other way around, and Kevin reports on Cash’s sudden upgrade in powers. Gwen squeezes the details of the theft from JT, and Kevin tells Ben that Cash is looking for a showdown at the Mr. Smoothy parking lot. Ben heads off to settle the score, and Kevin tells Gwen that he’ll be okay long enough for her to go with Ben. JT, at first unsure which is the more dangerous option, decides that it would probably be safer to go with Gwen than deal with Kevin’s wrath.
Cash, now almost entirely encased in the armor (and bearing a bit of a resemblance to Darkseid from DC Comics), is terrorizing the other kids at Mr. Smoothy, and Ben approaches him with a calm fury, asking him what his deal is and insisting he doesn’t plan on fighting. JT and Gwen appear to try and talk Cash down, but Cash is furious to see that JT’s taken their side instead and tries to attack, forcing Gwen to put up a forcefield to protect him. This appears to be the last straw, and Ben goes Chromastone to try and hold Cash off. While Cash is strong enough to smash Chromastone around in the parking lot, he can’t get a scratch on him, and Chromastone overpowers him, bringing him to his knees as nonviolently as possible, insisting that Cash doesn’t need to fight. Cash argues that the gauntlet wants him to fight, and its nanotech is repairing itself and taking him over even more, but JT reminds him he’s stronger than the machine. With a massive force of will, Cash reverts to normal and JT flings the gauntlet off him. With the crisis averted, Ben returns to human form and glares at Cash. JT thanks them and leads Cash off. Feeling better now that they see Cash and JT may be cleaning up their act, Gwen and Ben watch them leave, but Gwen has the feeling they’ve forgotten something. Ben reminds her they need to lock up the gauntlet better, but that’s not it. Jokingly adding that she forgot to buy him another smoothie, Ben leads Gwen in the opposite direction, all the while she tries to remember what’s bugging her.
And at sunset, Kevin sits alone in the factory, still waiting for the others to come back for him.
Cash and JT have been Ben’s enemies for the longest time. From the very first episode of the original Ben 10, they’ve picked on him. Cash is always the most active bully while JT acts as his yes-man, going along with whatever Cash says until Cash tells him to shut up. Now, five years later, we see that in Ben’s eyes, they haven’t matured at all. He points out that Cash’s bullying techniques are still out of elementary school:
“Could you at least try being original for a change? You’ve been doing the same old bully routine since the second grade, Cash. It’s tired. Spilling my drink? Seriously? I can’t believe I used to be afraid of you.”
This highlights Ben’s maturity between series as well. Now that he’s faced serious threats like Vilgax and the Highbreed, he can’t even put himself back into the position of normal kid afraid of the stronger bully. He’s seen what true danger is and he knows his own strength. And at the same time this episode shows Ben acting more like a normal kid for one of the few times in season 1, it also shows that there is a major divide between Ben and normal kids, and Ben really can’t ever be “normal” again.
Part of Ben’s new maturity and his inability to connect with the life he lived before the Omnitrix is his insistence on not fighting when it’s not “worth it.” Season 2 highlights Ben looking for a more peaceful solution to a problem and hoping that things will turn out for the better (“Alone Together,” “War of the Worlds”). This is a more pragmatic approach. As Gwen points out, Ben easily could have beaten the ever-living shit out of Cash, but he didn’t. With the Omnitrix, Ben could do whatever he wanted to them (and as seen in the end of the first episode of the original, “And Then There Were 10,” among others, he has), but ultimately he decided it wasn’t worth blowing his secret identity just to teach Cash a lesson. Furthermore, when Ben instinctively tries to go after Cash and JT when they run off after trashing Kevin’s car, Gwen has to talk him out of it, remind him that it’s not worth blowing his identity just because they were assholes and pushed Kevin’s car down the side of a ravine. Ben also insists that he won’t fight Cash when he sees him terrorizing people at the Mr. Smoothy, and even when he does become Chromastone to try to overpower Cash, he barely outright attacks him, mostly deflecting attacks, taking abuse, and wrestling Cash to the ground without trying to hurt him. As he tries to hold Cash off, he once again insists, “Neither of us has anything to gain by fighting!” And this appears to be the deciding factor for Ben in why he fights—he needs a good enough reason, which Cash didn’t give him; when Chromastone asks, “Why me?” Cash’s response is “Why not?” Ben’s reason to fight appears to be for his friends, and in regards to the Highbreed background plot, for the planet, but fighting for the sake of standing up to Cash is definitely out of the question. There’s a more peaceful solution to that problem, which he continues to try first.
The question of the nature of friendship comes up quite a lot in this episode. Gwen reminds JT that when he and Ben were little, they had been the best of friends, eating paste together in first grade. But things changed around the time Cash started picking on Ben. Instead of standing behind Ben to try to defend him and taking whatever consequences that came with, JT betrayed him and sided with Cash in the interests of self-preservation. Reminded of this fact and thankful to Ben for saving Cash, JT offers the chance to try and get back some of that friendship: “We should hang out some time and eat paste.”
JT’s friendship with Cash, however, is like a twisted mockery of Ben’s friendship with Kevin. Gwen points out that JT’s got a level of control over Cash; and being the team leader, Ben of course has a measure of control over Kevin, and even waves him off when Kevin comes over to try and defend him against Cash. However, where Ben and Kevin have no hidden agendas in their friendship, JT uses his control over Cash to try and keep himself safe. Ben won’t use Kevin as a shield, but JT will use Cash as one, or at least manipulate him to redirect his anger on someone other than him. But, of course, JT’s not the only abuser in the relationship; he manipulates Cash out of fear of him. Cash is always looking for a victim, and JT fits the victim profile. Cash also generally treats JT poorly, repeatedly telling him to “can it” and holding it over his head that he can and will turn on him and hurt him if he doesn’t do exactly what he says. Yet at the same time, that indicates there’s a part of Cash that needs JT, and each time they play the role of abuser, on a deeper level, it fuels the other’s abuser role. Because of this underlying (or in JT’s case, quite obvious) fear of what the other can do to them, it comes off as an unhealthy version of a dominant/submissive relationship. But by the end, when JT takes the more dominant role and Cash is shamed, you see the promise that whatever their relationship may be, now it will probably be a lot healthier for the both of them.
As in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Ben pulls a fairly shoehorned-in new transformation. However, at least Goop wins his fight where Spidermonkey had been royally pwned. Goop is a being made entirely of green slime, someone who would have been right at home in the original, and thus, Ben enjoys the nostalgia. His gelatinous form makes him nigh-indestructible and incredibly versatile, however he does have a glaring weakness. The small UFO-like gravity disk that hovers over him allows him movement, otherwise the slime collapses to the ground, inert and useless, as seen when Techadon tosses it away from Goop’s body. Also, which hasn’t been confirmed, it appears that the gravity disk contains Ben’s mind, as the animation indicates that Goop’s voice is speaking out of the disk. If this is true, then any good attack to that disk could prove extremely dangerous to Ben.
This episode also features the first time in the series where the trio’s powers are revealed to outsiders. Kevin uses his powers against Cash, relieved that he won’t have to hold back when he sees that Cash has been overtaken by the gauntlet. Gwen reveals hers when she needs to throw up a shield around JT. But it appears that the most surprising for Cash is Ben, the smallest of the trio and Cash’s preferred victim for the past ten or so years. When Ben first uses the Omnitrix, Cash refers to him as “some kind of freak,” but insists he’s still stronger than Ben.
And while Cash and JT obviously saw all three of their powers (as Kevin was still partially armored when JT and the others found him), it’s unclear if any of the others on scene at the Mr. Smoothy did or if they all managed to run away before Gwen and Ben revealed their true strength.
“The Gauntlet” was written by Robert Hoegee. Cash was voiced by Matt Levin and JT by Scott Menville.
Later, while the Alien Force are out having dinner, Cash is still fuming over the way Ben completely humiliated him without having to lift a finger. To redirect his friend’s anger away from him, JT points out Kevin’s car nearby and suggests that Cash vandalize it to try and gain some of his reputation back—after all, winning one over the toughest kid in town would definitely make people forget that he got verbally pwned by one of his oldest victims. They send the car careening down the side of the road, into a ravine. Naturally, it grabs the Alien Force’s attention. As they make a run for it, Cash tells JT to grab the stuff that fell out of the trunk, but all JT can hold onto is the Techadon gauntlet.
When they get back to the abandoned mannequin factory where they hang out, JT and Cash check out the gauntlet, to discover it shoots lasers. Cash immediately takes it from JT and gets in some practice, deciding this is the perfect way to get back at Ben. This rubs JT as a little extreme, and later in the night, he tries to steal the gauntlet from Cash, but Cash wakes with glowing red eyes, scaring him off. Realizing the only thing he can do is warn Ben, he heads to the garage where Gwen and Kevin are. Ben had left a few minutes before, fed up with Kevin’s attitude when he was only trying to help, but JT tries to warn them to warn Ben. Unfortunately, Kevin is thoroughly pissed about what happened to his car and wants the chance to get back at Cash. He goes to the factory to find Cash with the gauntlet growing over his arm, and it’s given him enough power to take Kevin down in short order, leaving him with the message that he’s calling Ben out to fight later.
After Kevin doesn’t come back for a while, Gwen and JT go looking for Ben and find him at the Mr. Smoothy. While Ben isn’t thrilled to see JT, they confide in him their fears, which Ben brushes off, knowing that Kevin’s a lot stronger than Cash is. This causes Gwen to redirect her worry, and they rush off to make sure Kevin hasn’t killed Cash. But when they get there, they see things went the other way around, and Kevin reports on Cash’s sudden upgrade in powers. Gwen squeezes the details of the theft from JT, and Kevin tells Ben that Cash is looking for a showdown at the Mr. Smoothy parking lot. Ben heads off to settle the score, and Kevin tells Gwen that he’ll be okay long enough for her to go with Ben. JT, at first unsure which is the more dangerous option, decides that it would probably be safer to go with Gwen than deal with Kevin’s wrath.
Cash, now almost entirely encased in the armor (and bearing a bit of a resemblance to Darkseid from DC Comics), is terrorizing the other kids at Mr. Smoothy, and Ben approaches him with a calm fury, asking him what his deal is and insisting he doesn’t plan on fighting. JT and Gwen appear to try and talk Cash down, but Cash is furious to see that JT’s taken their side instead and tries to attack, forcing Gwen to put up a forcefield to protect him. This appears to be the last straw, and Ben goes Chromastone to try and hold Cash off. While Cash is strong enough to smash Chromastone around in the parking lot, he can’t get a scratch on him, and Chromastone overpowers him, bringing him to his knees as nonviolently as possible, insisting that Cash doesn’t need to fight. Cash argues that the gauntlet wants him to fight, and its nanotech is repairing itself and taking him over even more, but JT reminds him he’s stronger than the machine. With a massive force of will, Cash reverts to normal and JT flings the gauntlet off him. With the crisis averted, Ben returns to human form and glares at Cash. JT thanks them and leads Cash off. Feeling better now that they see Cash and JT may be cleaning up their act, Gwen and Ben watch them leave, but Gwen has the feeling they’ve forgotten something. Ben reminds her they need to lock up the gauntlet better, but that’s not it. Jokingly adding that she forgot to buy him another smoothie, Ben leads Gwen in the opposite direction, all the while she tries to remember what’s bugging her.
And at sunset, Kevin sits alone in the factory, still waiting for the others to come back for him.
Cash and JT have been Ben’s enemies for the longest time. From the very first episode of the original Ben 10, they’ve picked on him. Cash is always the most active bully while JT acts as his yes-man, going along with whatever Cash says until Cash tells him to shut up. Now, five years later, we see that in Ben’s eyes, they haven’t matured at all. He points out that Cash’s bullying techniques are still out of elementary school:
“Could you at least try being original for a change? You’ve been doing the same old bully routine since the second grade, Cash. It’s tired. Spilling my drink? Seriously? I can’t believe I used to be afraid of you.”
This highlights Ben’s maturity between series as well. Now that he’s faced serious threats like Vilgax and the Highbreed, he can’t even put himself back into the position of normal kid afraid of the stronger bully. He’s seen what true danger is and he knows his own strength. And at the same time this episode shows Ben acting more like a normal kid for one of the few times in season 1, it also shows that there is a major divide between Ben and normal kids, and Ben really can’t ever be “normal” again.
Part of Ben’s new maturity and his inability to connect with the life he lived before the Omnitrix is his insistence on not fighting when it’s not “worth it.” Season 2 highlights Ben looking for a more peaceful solution to a problem and hoping that things will turn out for the better (“Alone Together,” “War of the Worlds”). This is a more pragmatic approach. As Gwen points out, Ben easily could have beaten the ever-living shit out of Cash, but he didn’t. With the Omnitrix, Ben could do whatever he wanted to them (and as seen in the end of the first episode of the original, “And Then There Were 10,” among others, he has), but ultimately he decided it wasn’t worth blowing his secret identity just to teach Cash a lesson. Furthermore, when Ben instinctively tries to go after Cash and JT when they run off after trashing Kevin’s car, Gwen has to talk him out of it, remind him that it’s not worth blowing his identity just because they were assholes and pushed Kevin’s car down the side of a ravine. Ben also insists that he won’t fight Cash when he sees him terrorizing people at the Mr. Smoothy, and even when he does become Chromastone to try to overpower Cash, he barely outright attacks him, mostly deflecting attacks, taking abuse, and wrestling Cash to the ground without trying to hurt him. As he tries to hold Cash off, he once again insists, “Neither of us has anything to gain by fighting!” And this appears to be the deciding factor for Ben in why he fights—he needs a good enough reason, which Cash didn’t give him; when Chromastone asks, “Why me?” Cash’s response is “Why not?” Ben’s reason to fight appears to be for his friends, and in regards to the Highbreed background plot, for the planet, but fighting for the sake of standing up to Cash is definitely out of the question. There’s a more peaceful solution to that problem, which he continues to try first.
The question of the nature of friendship comes up quite a lot in this episode. Gwen reminds JT that when he and Ben were little, they had been the best of friends, eating paste together in first grade. But things changed around the time Cash started picking on Ben. Instead of standing behind Ben to try to defend him and taking whatever consequences that came with, JT betrayed him and sided with Cash in the interests of self-preservation. Reminded of this fact and thankful to Ben for saving Cash, JT offers the chance to try and get back some of that friendship: “We should hang out some time and eat paste.”
JT’s friendship with Cash, however, is like a twisted mockery of Ben’s friendship with Kevin. Gwen points out that JT’s got a level of control over Cash; and being the team leader, Ben of course has a measure of control over Kevin, and even waves him off when Kevin comes over to try and defend him against Cash. However, where Ben and Kevin have no hidden agendas in their friendship, JT uses his control over Cash to try and keep himself safe. Ben won’t use Kevin as a shield, but JT will use Cash as one, or at least manipulate him to redirect his anger on someone other than him. But, of course, JT’s not the only abuser in the relationship; he manipulates Cash out of fear of him. Cash is always looking for a victim, and JT fits the victim profile. Cash also generally treats JT poorly, repeatedly telling him to “can it” and holding it over his head that he can and will turn on him and hurt him if he doesn’t do exactly what he says. Yet at the same time, that indicates there’s a part of Cash that needs JT, and each time they play the role of abuser, on a deeper level, it fuels the other’s abuser role. Because of this underlying (or in JT’s case, quite obvious) fear of what the other can do to them, it comes off as an unhealthy version of a dominant/submissive relationship. But by the end, when JT takes the more dominant role and Cash is shamed, you see the promise that whatever their relationship may be, now it will probably be a lot healthier for the both of them.
As in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Ben pulls a fairly shoehorned-in new transformation. However, at least Goop wins his fight where Spidermonkey had been royally pwned. Goop is a being made entirely of green slime, someone who would have been right at home in the original, and thus, Ben enjoys the nostalgia. His gelatinous form makes him nigh-indestructible and incredibly versatile, however he does have a glaring weakness. The small UFO-like gravity disk that hovers over him allows him movement, otherwise the slime collapses to the ground, inert and useless, as seen when Techadon tosses it away from Goop’s body. Also, which hasn’t been confirmed, it appears that the gravity disk contains Ben’s mind, as the animation indicates that Goop’s voice is speaking out of the disk. If this is true, then any good attack to that disk could prove extremely dangerous to Ben.
This episode also features the first time in the series where the trio’s powers are revealed to outsiders. Kevin uses his powers against Cash, relieved that he won’t have to hold back when he sees that Cash has been overtaken by the gauntlet. Gwen reveals hers when she needs to throw up a shield around JT. But it appears that the most surprising for Cash is Ben, the smallest of the trio and Cash’s preferred victim for the past ten or so years. When Ben first uses the Omnitrix, Cash refers to him as “some kind of freak,” but insists he’s still stronger than Ben.
And while Cash and JT obviously saw all three of their powers (as Kevin was still partially armored when JT and the others found him), it’s unclear if any of the others on scene at the Mr. Smoothy did or if they all managed to run away before Gwen and Ben revealed their true strength.
“The Gauntlet” was written by Robert Hoegee. Cash was voiced by Matt Levin and JT by Scott Menville.
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Date: 2009-09-09 08:37 pm (UTC)Ironically, Ben & Kevin might've ended up as solid friends a lot sooner back in the original series if things hadn't gone south until the beginning of Alien Force.