Endpoint Analysis: Alien Force
May. 10th, 2010 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameI didn't plan on doing this, but now that we're beginning a new series and I'm looking at the characters with a new analysis based on the Alien Force background and the Ultimate Alien plot, I feel like I should give my final analysis on this series.
I'll start with the characters, from Ben to Gwen to Kevin. Ben starts off this series as almost a completely different character than in the original series. He's confident without being cocky, calm and rational under pressure, and surprisingly reluctant to put the watch on again. The others are also very different this time around, but unlike with Kevin, for Ben and Gwen, this personality shift isn't nearly as controversial. Yeah, they were accused of being "boring," but there weren't complaints that it came out of nowhere. They grew up, plain and simple. Nobody expects Ben to act like a ten-year-old when he's a teenager.
I think the best way to describe Ben through the course of AF is the first lines from Five For Fighting's song "100 Years": "I'm fifteen for a moment / Caught in-between ten and twenty." Ben is right in the middle between being a kid and being an adult, and his character journey is the process of growing up. Right from the onset, he learns that he can no longer rely on Grandpa Max's guidance and support, and he has to save the world by himself. Then he learns that Max expects him to build and lead an army. By the sixth episode, he loses that last hope for "training wheels" when Max apparently dies to save them. Ben is forced to grow up in a short amount of time and learn how to be a leader and an adult if he's going to stand a chance against this threat. This idea is carried over into Alien Swarm, though it is set closer to UA: Ben can't follow Max's orders anymore--he has to stand on his own two feet and find his own way to lead.
And it's because of this theme that I have such a problem with his immaturity in season three and parts of UA so far. I feel like it's a massive betrayal of Ben's character development that he begins goofing off and basking in his own glory and really failing to be the hero who'd saved the entire galaxy. Ben should have gone into his first battle with Vilgax the way he did the last time in "The Final Battle"--as a man who has grown from his experiences and overcome many challenges. It would have made his triumph in "Vengeance of Vilgax" all the more powerful, and it would have made Vilgax a stronger enemy if he's struggling to beat an enemy with the mindset of an adult instead of an immature boy. For UA, I'd like to see Ben struggle with trying to be accepted by the media and proving with his own personality that he is someone the Earth can trust to protect them. While I did like Ben's having to admit his failures and bring himself from the brink of despair and humiliation to save the day, I still don't like that there was even a need to humble him in the first place.
Gwen, however, I think really came into her own in season three. While Ben was making an ass of himself, his teammates really had the chance to shine. I got frustrated with Gwen in season one--I felt like there really wasn't a whole lot to her character. She was the love interest for Kevin and the counselor for Ben. It wasn't until "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" that we really begin to see any insight into her. She confessed that she felt like an outsider when she was around normal kids. This could explain why Ben's girlfriend becomes her best friend by UA--Julie is on the boundary between normal and them, allowing Gwen to have a friend who understands where she's coming from. The episode hinted that Gwen needed the boys maybe more than they needed her. She wasn't the stabilizing force in the team keeping them from falling apart--they were the stabilizing presence that kept her from falling to pieces. She needed to be needed by them, which carries into her character growth in season three, particularly "Time Heals." She becomes so obsessed with fixing things for the emotionally fragile Kevin that she fails to consider the consequences to her actions.
Season two doesn't have much focus on Gwen, and little on Kevin too. It was Ben's season, his chance to prove himself as a leader and as the savior of the galaxy. But it does show the consequences of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in "War of the Worlds." After she's already affirmed that her humanity is more important to her than her powers, she's willing to go back on this to save Kevin and end the war--again like in "Time Heals," she fails to consider the consequences of her actions. When she can't figure out how to solve a problem (and especially when it comes to Kevin), she goes for the simplest solution, consequences be damned. We see two sides to her--the rational front she maintains, trying to keep Ben and Kevin from doing something stupid, and the short-sighted girl with good intentions who has to learn her lesson the hard way, which has severe ramifications on the others too.
However, for all her short-sightedness and her other flaws, it's clear that she cares deeply about her boys and will stand by them no matter what. Again, it's season three that shows this the best. She supports Kevin throughout his mutation, and we learn from Ben that she refuses to give up in finding a solution. She tells Kevin in "Fool's Gold" that she doesn't need a memento to remember how he used to be because she knows it's what's on the inside that counts. In a callback to "Ben 10 Returns," when Ben again asks them to stand by him, Gwen once again joins her cousin without hesitation, no matter how poorly he's treated them. She tells Kevin to lay off on him in "The Final Battle," and she tries to offer him advice when he begins to have his breakdown in the rain. But "The Final Battle" is the one time Gwen can't save either of them (barring the alternate universe versions of Kevin and Ben in "Time Heals," who had to be sacrificed along with their timeline so that they would never go through all of that when the timeline was restored). She's forced to leave Ben when he fails to respond to her reassurances, and it's Azmuth who manages to convince Ben of what it means to be a hero. Kevin is restored to normal as a result; with Azmuth's advice, Ben comes up with the plan to destroy the Omnitrix, which severs the energy connection to Kevin, reverting him to normal. Gwen plays no part in it--her advice couldn't help Ben any more than her spells could help Kevin. And she seems okay with this; she knows the important thing is that it happened at all. It implies that she's beginning to learn to stand on her own, just as Ben did, and that she can stop defining herself by how much they need her.
I still feel that Kevin is the best-developed character this series, for all his change in alliance was awkward and how much we still don't know about him. Season one started off pretty much as his season, much like how the first half of Power Rangers: RPM was Dillon's story. "Kevin's Big Score" dealt with the fact that he wanted to help Ben, but he knew that Ben had no reason to trust him. Sure, they'd fought some DNAliens together, but the only real interaction between them until then was Ben asking him to join the team. In the face of this, we saw that Kevin had a block--he had to do less than heroic things in order to prove he was a hero. He steals the Rustbucket with the intent to sell its tech to someone he'd burned in the past, all in order to get something Ben needed. We see this again in "All That Glitters," when he tries to break into Morningstar's house to prove to Ben that there is something wrong about him, above Ben's protests that Kevin is better than this and he can't resort to criminal actions. This is repeated in season three's "In Charm's Way" and especially "Trade-Off," where he's tempted by his and Gwen's enemies to regain his normal form. Charmcaster plays on his doubts to make enough of a chink in his confidence for her mind control to work, and Darkstar is able to convince him this is the best choice for both of them. In these two cases, his decisions have painful consequences for Gwen.
Kevin flirts with the dark side more than the others, and it's appropriate considering his history as a villain--he's freer to do it. All while he's trying to redeem himself and become one of the good guys, he's too jaded to completely embrace their ideals. He comes from an entirely different world than they do, and they're fairly sheltered in comparison. His father--a Plumber and a paragon of heroism and justice--was murdered in cold blood while trying to do the right thing. It's no wonder he has a revenge quest in "Vendetta"--he already knows that he will never be as good a man as his father had been, and it's all Ragnarok's fault that he turned out this way. His stepfather apparently rejected him, and he ended up on the streets of New York. He had to be tough to survive, and virtues like those Devin had stood for--the ones that got him killed--couldn't be spared. One of the first people who had accepted him and befriended him--who had powers of his own and thought Kevin's were cool--betrayed him and became his greatest enemy. But then something happened in those five years, and Kevin found himself wanting to help Magister Labrid and Ben and Gwen, and he realized that he could once again try to make his father proud.
I feel like family became a major character theme for Kevin. Season one didn't allude to it at all, as his journey there was to leave his past behind. He was re-inventing himself, trying to become a man that Ben and Gwen could trust and someone worthy of carrying that Plumber's badge. But in "Darkstar Rising," he let slip information about his father, and he had to come clean to Gwen, the one person he'd come to trust the most. He revealed that as a kid, he'd worshipped his father and hoped to be just like him one day, but it wasn't until now that he felt he really could. He also admitted at the end that he was on better terms with his mother and wanted to tell her he'd finally done it. We see near the end of season three that although he's still a little shaky with her (where he really only uses her garage and stays for the night on occasion), he does love her and wants her safe.
Steadily, his friendship with Ben became stronger, as their teasing became more and more lighthearted. Still, they never really let themselves admit they were good friends. In "Voided," Ben teased Kevin for all the safety precautions meant to keep him from getting lost in the Null Void, and Kevin snarked back that he had "better things to do than go to your funeral." But at the end of that same episode, Kevin was the one who grabbed Ben when Gwen couldn't pull him through the portal, and said, "Time to come home, Ben." He said it seriously and simply, proving that yes, he did care about Ben and didn't want to lose him. Their friendship went through the wringer in season three, with Ben causing the accident that mutated Kevin. Kevin wouldn't even have been at ground zero if he hadn't decided to run over to Ben and try to get the Omnitrix off him before the explosion could happen. He probably saved Ben's life, and it took until the end of the season for Ben to admit it was his fault. But for all it could have ended things there, Kevin remained Ben's friend. As his relationship with Gwen became more strained--because he believed she wouldn't want to be with a "monster" like him, and she inadvertently made things worse with her secrecy as she searched for a cure--Kevin began to confide in Ben more and more. He admitted all of his doubts about himself and Gwen, and Ben repeatedly told him not to worry about it. Despite everything, I'd have to say this is the season where they became best friends. Kevin became more protective of Ben, giving him an old family medicine when he was sick, and being the first to jump to protect him from Vilgax's enraged attack in "The Final Battle." He and Ben were able to work as a team again and better than ever before. This has consequences into UA, where Kevin gets very protective of Ben in "Fame," organizing the whole search for whoever revealed his identity and threatening Jimmy for "ruining Ben's life." He sticks by him in "Duped" and isn't afraid to call him out on his relationship mistakes, just as Ben had done for him in "In Charm's Way." And in "Hit 'Em Where They Live," his reaction to Ben's family being targeted is the same as if it was his own family, and Gwen has to remind him not to cross the line again. I also think that Alien Swarm shows his loyalty to Ben well when he continues to try to help him even after he broke ranks. I'd have to say that Kevin now sees Ben as the brother he never had, and it's reciprocated. Vilgax even calls all of them a family, though mockingly referring to Kevin as their pet, but you really see that the Tennysons have more or less adopted Kevin. When Ben makes it out of the explosion of Vilgax's ship and Grandpa Max and Gwen hug him, Kevin joins the hug without hesitation, and they all look at him with a smile. The scene is even called "Family Reunion" on Cartoon Network's site. Sure, Kevin pulls away in embarrassment, but it's clear that they all know they are a family now.
However, Kevin is proven to be the most psychologically fragile character from the onset. He's afraid of his friends--his new family--rejecting him. He refuses to talk about his sins in "Kevin's Big Score," and they have to convince him that they won't decide not to forgive him if they knew what he'd done in the past. He knows better than to talk about his darker tendencies around them, ensuring that Gwen and Ben can't stop him in "Vendetta," then evasively responding that Ragnarok didn't make it, so they don't know either way if he killed him or if he was even capable of killing him. He also worries several times that Gwen would prefer to be with someone "better" than him, such as "Save the Last Dance" and "Fool's Gold." His insecurity is magnified by the mutation, which makes him easy for Charmcaster and Darkstar to manipulate. But by the end of "Trade-Off," he's more at peace with his form, knowing that nothing is worth sacrificing the people he cares about.
Overall, I feel like Alien Force was a pretty solid series. It dealt with themes that the original Ben 10 really couldn't simply because of the age of the characters. Here, they really had to become heroes in their own right, since Ben and Gwen didn't have Grandpa Max to teach and lead them. The story and characters were also more internally consistent than in the original, more or less keeping track of the battles they'd fought and the lessons they'd learned.
However, it's definitely not perfect. Consistency broke down a bit in season three, especially with Ben's abrupt personality shift. I've referred to him as having a "hero mode"--a specific persona he adopts when he needs to take things seriously. I'd pass off his personality in seasons one and two as being an extended stint of his hero persona, but there's no indication that his season three personality is his default. He's modest and responsible in the short time we see before the plot begins in "Ben 10 Returns." Fortunately, the characters all seemed to learn from their mistakes--including Ben in season three (compare "The Con of Rath" to "Simple," for example)--all the while the writers remember that certain personality traits are going to cause them trouble (as I explained above).
Pacing can sometimes be a mixed bag, and I generally think it improved a lot in UA so far (through episode three). While they can do a great job building up suspense, I often feel the overall plot lags. This is a problem in specific episodes like "Vengeance of Vilgax," which focused too long on the escaped aliens subplot; and in arcs like the Highbreed plot, which didn't really take off until season two, had some episodes that felt unnecessary for the finale, and relied on a recap from Paradox and Azmuth to explain the Highbreed's plan (instead of having the team put together the plot themselves based on the evidence they'd come across all season). While I understand from writing my fics just how tedious it can be to stick to one particular plot all the way through without some subplots to break it up a little bit, their subplots were often left hanging. We barely saw Ben build that army of Plumbers' kids, and by the invasion, he'd only had two he'd recruited, an enemy he blackmailed, his girlfriend and her pet alien starship, a time traveler, and the creator of the Omnitrix--who was only there because the time traveler dragged him off his exploding planet, reminding him that Ben needed him. Pierce, Helen, and Manny were recruited by Max, though Helen and Manny had met Ben beforehand. The Forever Knight subplot lagged in the background, forgotten save for a couple of episodes here and there, and whenever they needed a mob of enemies for the team to plow through. This especially is a subplot they should have tried to resolve before "War of the Worlds," when the crew didn't know they'd have a third season and a sequel to take advantage of. If they never got renewed, the story would never be completed. Season three also lost focus a lot in the quest to bring back Ben's classic rogues, making the overall plot of Vilgax trying to gain the Omnitrix feel less cohesive than the more structured Highbreed arc. And the return of villains like Hex and Charmcaster made for a sucker punch when it was Albedo of all people who teamed up with Vilgax. Don't get me wrong, I like Albedo and I liked that he played an important role, but we hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since the beginning of season two! There was no build-up to him at all, no indication that he broke out of jail or that there was a shortage of chili fries somewhere.
Finally, I need to come back to a comparison I made earlier. I said that Kevin in the first few episodes of season one was similar to Dillon in Eddie Guzelian's run on RPM. The story focused more on him, building him as he worked through his issues about his past and became a hero and a trusted member of the team (not to mention being convinced to join by the beautiful and strong second-in-command who eventually had a romantic relationship with him). But the model breaks down the further in AF you go. Kevin is a mystery for a long time, and we never really learn why he was able to change so quickly, even if we know about his father. There are years between his last (canonical) appearance in Ben 10 and his first appearance in AF that are never explained this series. The same holds true for Dillon, but he has an excuse--he has amnesia. He himself doesn't know what his life was like before Venjix, and that's where his life begins. The story follows Dillon as he tries to recover his past, and it starts with him on the road to Corinth. We meet all of the characters through Dillon's eyes, and telling their stories through flashback is poetically effective because that's how we're learning about Dillon too. He reaches a point where he can never regain all of his memories, and he must concentrate on finding his sister while trying to hold onto the life and people he has in the present, and it works. It doesn't work as strongly with Kevin because he does remember, and we're supposed to believe that it's what he does remember that drives him (as opposed to what Dillon doesn't remember), when we don't know what it is. His origin story is the episode before the series finale, and while the revenge quest works the way it is because he didn't know the full details, the information about his father would have been good to know earlier, especially given that Max was Devin's partner--it makes for a lot of second-guessing the characters' behavior and interactions.
But at the end of the day, I don't feel that the series' flaws outweigh its successes. It is still a great show that I will continue to watch in reruns. And I think that's the part that matters the most--can you say you liked it? I did, and I'm going to still enjoy it, which is the best thing I could have possibly gotten out of it.
I'll start with the characters, from Ben to Gwen to Kevin. Ben starts off this series as almost a completely different character than in the original series. He's confident without being cocky, calm and rational under pressure, and surprisingly reluctant to put the watch on again. The others are also very different this time around, but unlike with Kevin, for Ben and Gwen, this personality shift isn't nearly as controversial. Yeah, they were accused of being "boring," but there weren't complaints that it came out of nowhere. They grew up, plain and simple. Nobody expects Ben to act like a ten-year-old when he's a teenager.
I think the best way to describe Ben through the course of AF is the first lines from Five For Fighting's song "100 Years": "I'm fifteen for a moment / Caught in-between ten and twenty." Ben is right in the middle between being a kid and being an adult, and his character journey is the process of growing up. Right from the onset, he learns that he can no longer rely on Grandpa Max's guidance and support, and he has to save the world by himself. Then he learns that Max expects him to build and lead an army. By the sixth episode, he loses that last hope for "training wheels" when Max apparently dies to save them. Ben is forced to grow up in a short amount of time and learn how to be a leader and an adult if he's going to stand a chance against this threat. This idea is carried over into Alien Swarm, though it is set closer to UA: Ben can't follow Max's orders anymore--he has to stand on his own two feet and find his own way to lead.
And it's because of this theme that I have such a problem with his immaturity in season three and parts of UA so far. I feel like it's a massive betrayal of Ben's character development that he begins goofing off and basking in his own glory and really failing to be the hero who'd saved the entire galaxy. Ben should have gone into his first battle with Vilgax the way he did the last time in "The Final Battle"--as a man who has grown from his experiences and overcome many challenges. It would have made his triumph in "Vengeance of Vilgax" all the more powerful, and it would have made Vilgax a stronger enemy if he's struggling to beat an enemy with the mindset of an adult instead of an immature boy. For UA, I'd like to see Ben struggle with trying to be accepted by the media and proving with his own personality that he is someone the Earth can trust to protect them. While I did like Ben's having to admit his failures and bring himself from the brink of despair and humiliation to save the day, I still don't like that there was even a need to humble him in the first place.
Gwen, however, I think really came into her own in season three. While Ben was making an ass of himself, his teammates really had the chance to shine. I got frustrated with Gwen in season one--I felt like there really wasn't a whole lot to her character. She was the love interest for Kevin and the counselor for Ben. It wasn't until "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" that we really begin to see any insight into her. She confessed that she felt like an outsider when she was around normal kids. This could explain why Ben's girlfriend becomes her best friend by UA--Julie is on the boundary between normal and them, allowing Gwen to have a friend who understands where she's coming from. The episode hinted that Gwen needed the boys maybe more than they needed her. She wasn't the stabilizing force in the team keeping them from falling apart--they were the stabilizing presence that kept her from falling to pieces. She needed to be needed by them, which carries into her character growth in season three, particularly "Time Heals." She becomes so obsessed with fixing things for the emotionally fragile Kevin that she fails to consider the consequences to her actions.
Season two doesn't have much focus on Gwen, and little on Kevin too. It was Ben's season, his chance to prove himself as a leader and as the savior of the galaxy. But it does show the consequences of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in "War of the Worlds." After she's already affirmed that her humanity is more important to her than her powers, she's willing to go back on this to save Kevin and end the war--again like in "Time Heals," she fails to consider the consequences of her actions. When she can't figure out how to solve a problem (and especially when it comes to Kevin), she goes for the simplest solution, consequences be damned. We see two sides to her--the rational front she maintains, trying to keep Ben and Kevin from doing something stupid, and the short-sighted girl with good intentions who has to learn her lesson the hard way, which has severe ramifications on the others too.
However, for all her short-sightedness and her other flaws, it's clear that she cares deeply about her boys and will stand by them no matter what. Again, it's season three that shows this the best. She supports Kevin throughout his mutation, and we learn from Ben that she refuses to give up in finding a solution. She tells Kevin in "Fool's Gold" that she doesn't need a memento to remember how he used to be because she knows it's what's on the inside that counts. In a callback to "Ben 10 Returns," when Ben again asks them to stand by him, Gwen once again joins her cousin without hesitation, no matter how poorly he's treated them. She tells Kevin to lay off on him in "The Final Battle," and she tries to offer him advice when he begins to have his breakdown in the rain. But "The Final Battle" is the one time Gwen can't save either of them (barring the alternate universe versions of Kevin and Ben in "Time Heals," who had to be sacrificed along with their timeline so that they would never go through all of that when the timeline was restored). She's forced to leave Ben when he fails to respond to her reassurances, and it's Azmuth who manages to convince Ben of what it means to be a hero. Kevin is restored to normal as a result; with Azmuth's advice, Ben comes up with the plan to destroy the Omnitrix, which severs the energy connection to Kevin, reverting him to normal. Gwen plays no part in it--her advice couldn't help Ben any more than her spells could help Kevin. And she seems okay with this; she knows the important thing is that it happened at all. It implies that she's beginning to learn to stand on her own, just as Ben did, and that she can stop defining herself by how much they need her.
I still feel that Kevin is the best-developed character this series, for all his change in alliance was awkward and how much we still don't know about him. Season one started off pretty much as his season, much like how the first half of Power Rangers: RPM was Dillon's story. "Kevin's Big Score" dealt with the fact that he wanted to help Ben, but he knew that Ben had no reason to trust him. Sure, they'd fought some DNAliens together, but the only real interaction between them until then was Ben asking him to join the team. In the face of this, we saw that Kevin had a block--he had to do less than heroic things in order to prove he was a hero. He steals the Rustbucket with the intent to sell its tech to someone he'd burned in the past, all in order to get something Ben needed. We see this again in "All That Glitters," when he tries to break into Morningstar's house to prove to Ben that there is something wrong about him, above Ben's protests that Kevin is better than this and he can't resort to criminal actions. This is repeated in season three's "In Charm's Way" and especially "Trade-Off," where he's tempted by his and Gwen's enemies to regain his normal form. Charmcaster plays on his doubts to make enough of a chink in his confidence for her mind control to work, and Darkstar is able to convince him this is the best choice for both of them. In these two cases, his decisions have painful consequences for Gwen.
Kevin flirts with the dark side more than the others, and it's appropriate considering his history as a villain--he's freer to do it. All while he's trying to redeem himself and become one of the good guys, he's too jaded to completely embrace their ideals. He comes from an entirely different world than they do, and they're fairly sheltered in comparison. His father--a Plumber and a paragon of heroism and justice--was murdered in cold blood while trying to do the right thing. It's no wonder he has a revenge quest in "Vendetta"--he already knows that he will never be as good a man as his father had been, and it's all Ragnarok's fault that he turned out this way. His stepfather apparently rejected him, and he ended up on the streets of New York. He had to be tough to survive, and virtues like those Devin had stood for--the ones that got him killed--couldn't be spared. One of the first people who had accepted him and befriended him--who had powers of his own and thought Kevin's were cool--betrayed him and became his greatest enemy. But then something happened in those five years, and Kevin found himself wanting to help Magister Labrid and Ben and Gwen, and he realized that he could once again try to make his father proud.
I feel like family became a major character theme for Kevin. Season one didn't allude to it at all, as his journey there was to leave his past behind. He was re-inventing himself, trying to become a man that Ben and Gwen could trust and someone worthy of carrying that Plumber's badge. But in "Darkstar Rising," he let slip information about his father, and he had to come clean to Gwen, the one person he'd come to trust the most. He revealed that as a kid, he'd worshipped his father and hoped to be just like him one day, but it wasn't until now that he felt he really could. He also admitted at the end that he was on better terms with his mother and wanted to tell her he'd finally done it. We see near the end of season three that although he's still a little shaky with her (where he really only uses her garage and stays for the night on occasion), he does love her and wants her safe.
Steadily, his friendship with Ben became stronger, as their teasing became more and more lighthearted. Still, they never really let themselves admit they were good friends. In "Voided," Ben teased Kevin for all the safety precautions meant to keep him from getting lost in the Null Void, and Kevin snarked back that he had "better things to do than go to your funeral." But at the end of that same episode, Kevin was the one who grabbed Ben when Gwen couldn't pull him through the portal, and said, "Time to come home, Ben." He said it seriously and simply, proving that yes, he did care about Ben and didn't want to lose him. Their friendship went through the wringer in season three, with Ben causing the accident that mutated Kevin. Kevin wouldn't even have been at ground zero if he hadn't decided to run over to Ben and try to get the Omnitrix off him before the explosion could happen. He probably saved Ben's life, and it took until the end of the season for Ben to admit it was his fault. But for all it could have ended things there, Kevin remained Ben's friend. As his relationship with Gwen became more strained--because he believed she wouldn't want to be with a "monster" like him, and she inadvertently made things worse with her secrecy as she searched for a cure--Kevin began to confide in Ben more and more. He admitted all of his doubts about himself and Gwen, and Ben repeatedly told him not to worry about it. Despite everything, I'd have to say this is the season where they became best friends. Kevin became more protective of Ben, giving him an old family medicine when he was sick, and being the first to jump to protect him from Vilgax's enraged attack in "The Final Battle." He and Ben were able to work as a team again and better than ever before. This has consequences into UA, where Kevin gets very protective of Ben in "Fame," organizing the whole search for whoever revealed his identity and threatening Jimmy for "ruining Ben's life." He sticks by him in "Duped" and isn't afraid to call him out on his relationship mistakes, just as Ben had done for him in "In Charm's Way." And in "Hit 'Em Where They Live," his reaction to Ben's family being targeted is the same as if it was his own family, and Gwen has to remind him not to cross the line again. I also think that Alien Swarm shows his loyalty to Ben well when he continues to try to help him even after he broke ranks. I'd have to say that Kevin now sees Ben as the brother he never had, and it's reciprocated. Vilgax even calls all of them a family, though mockingly referring to Kevin as their pet, but you really see that the Tennysons have more or less adopted Kevin. When Ben makes it out of the explosion of Vilgax's ship and Grandpa Max and Gwen hug him, Kevin joins the hug without hesitation, and they all look at him with a smile. The scene is even called "Family Reunion" on Cartoon Network's site. Sure, Kevin pulls away in embarrassment, but it's clear that they all know they are a family now.
However, Kevin is proven to be the most psychologically fragile character from the onset. He's afraid of his friends--his new family--rejecting him. He refuses to talk about his sins in "Kevin's Big Score," and they have to convince him that they won't decide not to forgive him if they knew what he'd done in the past. He knows better than to talk about his darker tendencies around them, ensuring that Gwen and Ben can't stop him in "Vendetta," then evasively responding that Ragnarok didn't make it, so they don't know either way if he killed him or if he was even capable of killing him. He also worries several times that Gwen would prefer to be with someone "better" than him, such as "Save the Last Dance" and "Fool's Gold." His insecurity is magnified by the mutation, which makes him easy for Charmcaster and Darkstar to manipulate. But by the end of "Trade-Off," he's more at peace with his form, knowing that nothing is worth sacrificing the people he cares about.
Overall, I feel like Alien Force was a pretty solid series. It dealt with themes that the original Ben 10 really couldn't simply because of the age of the characters. Here, they really had to become heroes in their own right, since Ben and Gwen didn't have Grandpa Max to teach and lead them. The story and characters were also more internally consistent than in the original, more or less keeping track of the battles they'd fought and the lessons they'd learned.
However, it's definitely not perfect. Consistency broke down a bit in season three, especially with Ben's abrupt personality shift. I've referred to him as having a "hero mode"--a specific persona he adopts when he needs to take things seriously. I'd pass off his personality in seasons one and two as being an extended stint of his hero persona, but there's no indication that his season three personality is his default. He's modest and responsible in the short time we see before the plot begins in "Ben 10 Returns." Fortunately, the characters all seemed to learn from their mistakes--including Ben in season three (compare "The Con of Rath" to "Simple," for example)--all the while the writers remember that certain personality traits are going to cause them trouble (as I explained above).
Pacing can sometimes be a mixed bag, and I generally think it improved a lot in UA so far (through episode three). While they can do a great job building up suspense, I often feel the overall plot lags. This is a problem in specific episodes like "Vengeance of Vilgax," which focused too long on the escaped aliens subplot; and in arcs like the Highbreed plot, which didn't really take off until season two, had some episodes that felt unnecessary for the finale, and relied on a recap from Paradox and Azmuth to explain the Highbreed's plan (instead of having the team put together the plot themselves based on the evidence they'd come across all season). While I understand from writing my fics just how tedious it can be to stick to one particular plot all the way through without some subplots to break it up a little bit, their subplots were often left hanging. We barely saw Ben build that army of Plumbers' kids, and by the invasion, he'd only had two he'd recruited, an enemy he blackmailed, his girlfriend and her pet alien starship, a time traveler, and the creator of the Omnitrix--who was only there because the time traveler dragged him off his exploding planet, reminding him that Ben needed him. Pierce, Helen, and Manny were recruited by Max, though Helen and Manny had met Ben beforehand. The Forever Knight subplot lagged in the background, forgotten save for a couple of episodes here and there, and whenever they needed a mob of enemies for the team to plow through. This especially is a subplot they should have tried to resolve before "War of the Worlds," when the crew didn't know they'd have a third season and a sequel to take advantage of. If they never got renewed, the story would never be completed. Season three also lost focus a lot in the quest to bring back Ben's classic rogues, making the overall plot of Vilgax trying to gain the Omnitrix feel less cohesive than the more structured Highbreed arc. And the return of villains like Hex and Charmcaster made for a sucker punch when it was Albedo of all people who teamed up with Vilgax. Don't get me wrong, I like Albedo and I liked that he played an important role, but we hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since the beginning of season two! There was no build-up to him at all, no indication that he broke out of jail or that there was a shortage of chili fries somewhere.
Finally, I need to come back to a comparison I made earlier. I said that Kevin in the first few episodes of season one was similar to Dillon in Eddie Guzelian's run on RPM. The story focused more on him, building him as he worked through his issues about his past and became a hero and a trusted member of the team (not to mention being convinced to join by the beautiful and strong second-in-command who eventually had a romantic relationship with him). But the model breaks down the further in AF you go. Kevin is a mystery for a long time, and we never really learn why he was able to change so quickly, even if we know about his father. There are years between his last (canonical) appearance in Ben 10 and his first appearance in AF that are never explained this series. The same holds true for Dillon, but he has an excuse--he has amnesia. He himself doesn't know what his life was like before Venjix, and that's where his life begins. The story follows Dillon as he tries to recover his past, and it starts with him on the road to Corinth. We meet all of the characters through Dillon's eyes, and telling their stories through flashback is poetically effective because that's how we're learning about Dillon too. He reaches a point where he can never regain all of his memories, and he must concentrate on finding his sister while trying to hold onto the life and people he has in the present, and it works. It doesn't work as strongly with Kevin because he does remember, and we're supposed to believe that it's what he does remember that drives him (as opposed to what Dillon doesn't remember), when we don't know what it is. His origin story is the episode before the series finale, and while the revenge quest works the way it is because he didn't know the full details, the information about his father would have been good to know earlier, especially given that Max was Devin's partner--it makes for a lot of second-guessing the characters' behavior and interactions.
But at the end of the day, I don't feel that the series' flaws outweigh its successes. It is still a great show that I will continue to watch in reruns. And I think that's the part that matters the most--can you say you liked it? I did, and I'm going to still enjoy it, which is the best thing I could have possibly gotten out of it.