Censors dropped the ball: “Video Games”
May. 15th, 2010 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameAfter a quick battle against Ssserpent (last seen in “Vengeance of Vilgax”), Ben is approached by a videogame developer, Oliver, to star in his own game. When Ben tries to tell Gwen and Kevin, they’re arguing over Gwen’s driving practice, since Kevin refuses to let her drive and she needs to pass her test. Ben promises to teach Gwen after he meets with the developer, and they scan his alien forms other than Nanomech, who is too small for the motion-capture to pick up. But unknown to Ben, Oliver is actually Mr. Webb, a scientist working for Will Harangue, building a weapon for him.
Ben takes Gwen out for driving practice, but they’re interrupted by Harangue’s weapon, the Stalker—the lovechild of the Omnidroid from The Incredibles and the robot spider from Jonny Quest. It’s easily able to counter all of Ben’s moves, and it stays on them at all times…until an innocent family in a minivan with the same paintjob drives past. Ben and Gwen are able to hold off the Stalker while the family drives away, but just when the Stalker has Ben, Webb recalls it, arguing that the autopilot is too risky if an innocent family was nearly killed. Harangue, however, insists on taking the controls.
Kevin discovers footage from the battle made The Harangue Nation, with everything spun to make Ben look like the aggressor. And that’s not the end of it. The next day, as Gwen’s going through her driver’s test in Ben’s car, she and the instructor are targeted, and Ben has to try to save them. Once again, the Stalker has him on the ropes, but before a helpless and demorphed Ben can be killed, Harangue checks out his ratings and realizes that Ben is making him serious money. He calls off the Stalker and decides to put an end to this once and for all, challenging Ben to a battle on the National Mall in Washington.
The team attempts to fight, but Ben is still losing badly. They manage to damage the Stalker enough that Harangue loses control of it, ironically causing him to cause severe property damage, and to the symbols of the nation he loves so much to boot. Realizing that the videogame was a front for the Stalker’s programming, the team runs through Ben’s aliens before they remember only one of them was never scanned: Nanomech. Over Kevin’s protests, Gwen grabs the straw from Ben’s smoothie and tells him to put his spitball talents to good use, firing Nanomech toward the Stalker. He gets inside and manages to disable it, but just to be sure it’s finished, Way Big stops by Harangue’s studio and crumples up the Stalker…dropping it right on Harangue’s car. Score: Ben: too many to count, Automobiles: 0. Harangue, naturally, refuses to drop the feud, spending the next day doctoring the footage from the live battle to make it look like Ben was causing the damage, but Ben and the team have more important things on their mind. Like the fact that Gwen finally has her license, Kevin’s got to hand over the keys, and Ben’s called shotgun.
Normally, I spend my analysis section on character development or plot themes. I usually save “stuff that bugged me” for the notes. I wouldn’t necessarily say this bothered me or disappointed me, though I am a little concerned about how this will play out. I think this is something that deserves some deeper analysis, so this time, I want to discuss the Ben vs. Harangue feud.
When we first met Will Harangue, he was the host of The Harangue Nation, a cable news program not unlike what you’d find on Fox News or MSNBC. He hated Ben, insisting he was a threat to America, or at the very least a menace. He brought up footage of Ben’s past battles and pointed out the property damage in his argument. Ben wasn’t thrilled with his opinion, but he didn’t take it all that personally. Harangue was just one reporter among many who was not impressed with him and—not unreasonably—thought he was a danger to the community at large.
Here, we see Harangue make this rivalry personal. He tricks Ben—a sixteen-year-old boy who’s been thrust into celebrity unexpectedly and is going to be easily swayed by promises of fame and fortune—into posing for a supposed videogame. He has a scientist pose as a developer and takes advantage of Ben’s trust and scan the abilities of his aliens. These details are then programmed into a robot not unlike Syndrome’s Omnidroid from The Incredibles, and then the robot is unleashed on Ben. Harangue commits acts that would be considered terrorism (attacking innocents, blasting missiles at the Capitol, nearly demolishing the Washington Monument, and repeatedly trying to murder a sixteen-year-old boy), and he blames the wanton destruction on Ben. He treats it like a ratings stunt, holding off on killing a demorphed Ben because he wants to bring up his ratings for the next day. Let me reiterate: He appears willing to kill a sixteen-year-old boy (which has to be emphasized because he’s seen Ben in his human form), and he plans to use it to boost his ratings.
One of my favorite chapters in Ellen Brand’s “Personality Conflicts” universe is Fathers and Sons. In this story, Detective Trevor Park has had a long-standing grudge against the Power Rangers. He believes them to be a menace to Angel Grove, college kids hotdogging for the cameras and causing just as much damage as the monsters do. His view of them is changed when he and the Green Ranger are sent to another dimension, and he realizes that Green Ranger sounds way too young, and he’s in fact seventeen. And for a seventeen-year-old, Green Ranger is way too mature for his own good. He knows what war is, though he is horrified by the idea that another Ranger might turn against the people they’re sworn to protect. And he’s “made arrangements” for someone to tell his family if anything happened to him. It’s only by the end of the story, when Zedd threatens to kill Trevor’s son, Adam, if he doesn’t hand over a powerful artifact, that the Green Ranger reveals his identity as Adam Park to his father. Adam wins over his father as a Power Ranger, proving that the Rangers really are heroes and not the irresponsible kids Trevor had always thought they were.
It’s a plotline like that I’ve been hoping to resolve the Ben/Harangue feud. I feel like it’s important for Ben to win the respect of his biggest critic, if he’s ever going to win the respect of the planet. I don’t expect them to like each other, but I would like to see them come to an understanding. This is Ben’s greatest strength—winning people over. It’s how he saved the galaxy from the Highbreed—he not only managed to befriend Reiny, which led to him convincing the High Council to end their suicide pact and try to coexist with the rest of the galaxy, but he also became best friends with one of his most hated enemies, which created the team that managed to build the army that got that far. And he never would have been able to win Reiny’s respect and friendship if he hadn’t won Kevin’s first. Ben may never win over Harangue completely, but they’re supposedly looking for the same thing—trying to protect the planet and (specifically for Harangue) the country. I don’t want to see a critic of Ben Tennyson go on to become an enemy of Ben 10. It’s too easy to dismiss all of the potentially valid criticisms of Ben that way.
But at the same time, if they ever do bury the hatchet, there will always be this episode in the way. Harangue has made it hard to forgive himself when he endangers civilians, causes thousands of dollars of property damage, blows up part of the Capitol building, knocks over the Washington Monument, and spins it all to blame it on Ben. The battle in Washington is aired live, and everyone tuned into The Harangue Nation is watching Will Harangue’s Omnidroid wreak havoc on the very symbols of America, while the threat and menace himself, alien boy Ben Tennyson, is trying to stop him. Harangue spends the next day insisting that Ben manipulated things to make him look like the bad guy. Yeah, it may be a sad commentary on the news media today, but at the same time, this is kicking the dog to ridiculous levels. Worse still, as I keep saying, is that he tries to kill a teenage boy. Ben ceased being an alien menace when he was lying injured, demorphed, and helpless in the middle of a blast crater; at that point, he was no different from any other sixteen-year-old boy. Yes, Harangue holds off on killing Ben once he sees him there—which may indicate that he’s got a heart and can’t make himself kill another human—but he still vows to ruin the life of a young boy who is just old enough to drive, attacks him with deadly force, and airs it on national TV for his own benefit. And why? Simply because he thinks that the sixteen-year-old boy causes too much property damage that it makes him a threat to America.
It can be done well. I really would like to see Harangue redeem himself, even if he and Ben never see eye-to-eye. In fact, I don’t think I want to see them see eye-to-eye. It’s more interesting this way if Ben winds up with someone who respects him who also criticizes him. It keeps him honest and ensures that he will remain a hero. I think of the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited. Amanda Waller wanted to protect America, the same as the League. However, she knew they were a potential danger and she was also being manipulated by Luthor. In “Panic in the Sky,” when she realized she’d been had, she teamed up with the League to ensure that Luthor didn’t go through with his plan to destroy them and Cadmus. But at the same time, “Epilogue” reminds us she’s done a lot that she has to answer for. Cadmus was responsible for the Royal Flush Gang, the Ultimen, and Doomsday, and Waller herself created Terry McGinnis. She knows Terry is her one good contribution to the world, and she realizes that she deserves harsh judgment for her crimes. Bruce is said to respect her. Terry—we don’t know, but we do at least see that he takes her advice to heart and tries to ensure he never cuts himself off from either Terry’s world or Batman’s. But I’m not entirely sure that Harangue can reach this level. Still, it’s only the fourth episode, so who knows what’s possible? Still, I hope that we do see some consequences for his behavior in future interactions between him and Ben.
This episode features the series debuts for Four-Arms and Nanomech. Four-Arms, now older and dressed like some gladiator/sumo wrestler that oddly enough works for him, doesn’t have a whole lot of screentime, but Ben’s thrilled to discover he’s got him in the Ultimatrix anyway. Nanomech, a Hive Drone (implied human hybrid) introduced in Alien Swarm, is the key to saving the day. How, you may ask? Well, Ben himself put it best in the movie: “I’m small?!” Nanomech doesn’t use any of his powers this episode, mostly because it’s a lot easier when you’re small enough to pull the plug on a rampaging Omnidroid than to zap it to death. His VA, Dee Bradley Baker, goes for a different sound than in the movie—where Alex Winter had played Nanomech using his natural voice, Baker goes for a small, high-pitched voice. I guess if you’re as crazy as me, you can just pass it off as a matter of acoustics—to Nanomech himself, he sounds like Alex Winter at a normal pitch, but to everyone taller, they can just hear a high-pitched Dee Baker.
Also very noteworthy were the jokes. Dear God, the censors must have been asleep this episode. It starts with Kevin making an accidental insinuation about Gwen’s sexuality, commenting that Gwen needs to treat a car the way she should treat a woman. Gwen had no comment, and I hid my ship fics with Julie once again. But then it was followed up with a joke that shocked the hell out of both me and my sister and led to me cracking up all episode. When one of the sensors fell off of Humongousaur (and on a sidenote, did Edna Mode design those suits or something? Because either it should have vanished or he should have torn it), he says, “One of my balls dropped.”
Excuse me for a moment while I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old.
“Video Games” was written by Eugene Son. Dee Bradley Baker played Nanomech, Four-Arms, and Ssserpent. Peter MacNicol played Oliver/Mr. Webb. John DiMaggio played Will Harangue.
Ben takes Gwen out for driving practice, but they’re interrupted by Harangue’s weapon, the Stalker—the lovechild of the Omnidroid from The Incredibles and the robot spider from Jonny Quest. It’s easily able to counter all of Ben’s moves, and it stays on them at all times…until an innocent family in a minivan with the same paintjob drives past. Ben and Gwen are able to hold off the Stalker while the family drives away, but just when the Stalker has Ben, Webb recalls it, arguing that the autopilot is too risky if an innocent family was nearly killed. Harangue, however, insists on taking the controls.
Kevin discovers footage from the battle made The Harangue Nation, with everything spun to make Ben look like the aggressor. And that’s not the end of it. The next day, as Gwen’s going through her driver’s test in Ben’s car, she and the instructor are targeted, and Ben has to try to save them. Once again, the Stalker has him on the ropes, but before a helpless and demorphed Ben can be killed, Harangue checks out his ratings and realizes that Ben is making him serious money. He calls off the Stalker and decides to put an end to this once and for all, challenging Ben to a battle on the National Mall in Washington.
The team attempts to fight, but Ben is still losing badly. They manage to damage the Stalker enough that Harangue loses control of it, ironically causing him to cause severe property damage, and to the symbols of the nation he loves so much to boot. Realizing that the videogame was a front for the Stalker’s programming, the team runs through Ben’s aliens before they remember only one of them was never scanned: Nanomech. Over Kevin’s protests, Gwen grabs the straw from Ben’s smoothie and tells him to put his spitball talents to good use, firing Nanomech toward the Stalker. He gets inside and manages to disable it, but just to be sure it’s finished, Way Big stops by Harangue’s studio and crumples up the Stalker…dropping it right on Harangue’s car. Score: Ben: too many to count, Automobiles: 0. Harangue, naturally, refuses to drop the feud, spending the next day doctoring the footage from the live battle to make it look like Ben was causing the damage, but Ben and the team have more important things on their mind. Like the fact that Gwen finally has her license, Kevin’s got to hand over the keys, and Ben’s called shotgun.
Normally, I spend my analysis section on character development or plot themes. I usually save “stuff that bugged me” for the notes. I wouldn’t necessarily say this bothered me or disappointed me, though I am a little concerned about how this will play out. I think this is something that deserves some deeper analysis, so this time, I want to discuss the Ben vs. Harangue feud.
When we first met Will Harangue, he was the host of The Harangue Nation, a cable news program not unlike what you’d find on Fox News or MSNBC. He hated Ben, insisting he was a threat to America, or at the very least a menace. He brought up footage of Ben’s past battles and pointed out the property damage in his argument. Ben wasn’t thrilled with his opinion, but he didn’t take it all that personally. Harangue was just one reporter among many who was not impressed with him and—not unreasonably—thought he was a danger to the community at large.
Here, we see Harangue make this rivalry personal. He tricks Ben—a sixteen-year-old boy who’s been thrust into celebrity unexpectedly and is going to be easily swayed by promises of fame and fortune—into posing for a supposed videogame. He has a scientist pose as a developer and takes advantage of Ben’s trust and scan the abilities of his aliens. These details are then programmed into a robot not unlike Syndrome’s Omnidroid from The Incredibles, and then the robot is unleashed on Ben. Harangue commits acts that would be considered terrorism (attacking innocents, blasting missiles at the Capitol, nearly demolishing the Washington Monument, and repeatedly trying to murder a sixteen-year-old boy), and he blames the wanton destruction on Ben. He treats it like a ratings stunt, holding off on killing a demorphed Ben because he wants to bring up his ratings for the next day. Let me reiterate: He appears willing to kill a sixteen-year-old boy (which has to be emphasized because he’s seen Ben in his human form), and he plans to use it to boost his ratings.
One of my favorite chapters in Ellen Brand’s “Personality Conflicts” universe is Fathers and Sons. In this story, Detective Trevor Park has had a long-standing grudge against the Power Rangers. He believes them to be a menace to Angel Grove, college kids hotdogging for the cameras and causing just as much damage as the monsters do. His view of them is changed when he and the Green Ranger are sent to another dimension, and he realizes that Green Ranger sounds way too young, and he’s in fact seventeen. And for a seventeen-year-old, Green Ranger is way too mature for his own good. He knows what war is, though he is horrified by the idea that another Ranger might turn against the people they’re sworn to protect. And he’s “made arrangements” for someone to tell his family if anything happened to him. It’s only by the end of the story, when Zedd threatens to kill Trevor’s son, Adam, if he doesn’t hand over a powerful artifact, that the Green Ranger reveals his identity as Adam Park to his father. Adam wins over his father as a Power Ranger, proving that the Rangers really are heroes and not the irresponsible kids Trevor had always thought they were.
It’s a plotline like that I’ve been hoping to resolve the Ben/Harangue feud. I feel like it’s important for Ben to win the respect of his biggest critic, if he’s ever going to win the respect of the planet. I don’t expect them to like each other, but I would like to see them come to an understanding. This is Ben’s greatest strength—winning people over. It’s how he saved the galaxy from the Highbreed—he not only managed to befriend Reiny, which led to him convincing the High Council to end their suicide pact and try to coexist with the rest of the galaxy, but he also became best friends with one of his most hated enemies, which created the team that managed to build the army that got that far. And he never would have been able to win Reiny’s respect and friendship if he hadn’t won Kevin’s first. Ben may never win over Harangue completely, but they’re supposedly looking for the same thing—trying to protect the planet and (specifically for Harangue) the country. I don’t want to see a critic of Ben Tennyson go on to become an enemy of Ben 10. It’s too easy to dismiss all of the potentially valid criticisms of Ben that way.
But at the same time, if they ever do bury the hatchet, there will always be this episode in the way. Harangue has made it hard to forgive himself when he endangers civilians, causes thousands of dollars of property damage, blows up part of the Capitol building, knocks over the Washington Monument, and spins it all to blame it on Ben. The battle in Washington is aired live, and everyone tuned into The Harangue Nation is watching Will Harangue’s Omnidroid wreak havoc on the very symbols of America, while the threat and menace himself, alien boy Ben Tennyson, is trying to stop him. Harangue spends the next day insisting that Ben manipulated things to make him look like the bad guy. Yeah, it may be a sad commentary on the news media today, but at the same time, this is kicking the dog to ridiculous levels. Worse still, as I keep saying, is that he tries to kill a teenage boy. Ben ceased being an alien menace when he was lying injured, demorphed, and helpless in the middle of a blast crater; at that point, he was no different from any other sixteen-year-old boy. Yes, Harangue holds off on killing Ben once he sees him there—which may indicate that he’s got a heart and can’t make himself kill another human—but he still vows to ruin the life of a young boy who is just old enough to drive, attacks him with deadly force, and airs it on national TV for his own benefit. And why? Simply because he thinks that the sixteen-year-old boy causes too much property damage that it makes him a threat to America.
It can be done well. I really would like to see Harangue redeem himself, even if he and Ben never see eye-to-eye. In fact, I don’t think I want to see them see eye-to-eye. It’s more interesting this way if Ben winds up with someone who respects him who also criticizes him. It keeps him honest and ensures that he will remain a hero. I think of the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited. Amanda Waller wanted to protect America, the same as the League. However, she knew they were a potential danger and she was also being manipulated by Luthor. In “Panic in the Sky,” when she realized she’d been had, she teamed up with the League to ensure that Luthor didn’t go through with his plan to destroy them and Cadmus. But at the same time, “Epilogue” reminds us she’s done a lot that she has to answer for. Cadmus was responsible for the Royal Flush Gang, the Ultimen, and Doomsday, and Waller herself created Terry McGinnis. She knows Terry is her one good contribution to the world, and she realizes that she deserves harsh judgment for her crimes. Bruce is said to respect her. Terry—we don’t know, but we do at least see that he takes her advice to heart and tries to ensure he never cuts himself off from either Terry’s world or Batman’s. But I’m not entirely sure that Harangue can reach this level. Still, it’s only the fourth episode, so who knows what’s possible? Still, I hope that we do see some consequences for his behavior in future interactions between him and Ben.
This episode features the series debuts for Four-Arms and Nanomech. Four-Arms, now older and dressed like some gladiator/sumo wrestler that oddly enough works for him, doesn’t have a whole lot of screentime, but Ben’s thrilled to discover he’s got him in the Ultimatrix anyway. Nanomech, a Hive Drone (implied human hybrid) introduced in Alien Swarm, is the key to saving the day. How, you may ask? Well, Ben himself put it best in the movie: “I’m small?!” Nanomech doesn’t use any of his powers this episode, mostly because it’s a lot easier when you’re small enough to pull the plug on a rampaging Omnidroid than to zap it to death. His VA, Dee Bradley Baker, goes for a different sound than in the movie—where Alex Winter had played Nanomech using his natural voice, Baker goes for a small, high-pitched voice. I guess if you’re as crazy as me, you can just pass it off as a matter of acoustics—to Nanomech himself, he sounds like Alex Winter at a normal pitch, but to everyone taller, they can just hear a high-pitched Dee Baker.
Also very noteworthy were the jokes. Dear God, the censors must have been asleep this episode. It starts with Kevin making an accidental insinuation about Gwen’s sexuality, commenting that Gwen needs to treat a car the way she should treat a woman. Gwen had no comment, and I hid my ship fics with Julie once again. But then it was followed up with a joke that shocked the hell out of both me and my sister and led to me cracking up all episode. When one of the sensors fell off of Humongousaur (and on a sidenote, did Edna Mode design those suits or something? Because either it should have vanished or he should have torn it), he says, “One of my balls dropped.”
Excuse me for a moment while I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old.
“Video Games” was written by Eugene Son. Dee Bradley Baker played Nanomech, Four-Arms, and Ssserpent. Peter MacNicol played Oliver/Mr. Webb. John DiMaggio played Will Harangue.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 02:51 am (UTC)Ironic that the spit wads ended up being instrumental near the end when Ben-as Nanomech-had to get inside the Stalker to 'put these two together' and save the day. It was hilarious when Kevin complained about having Ben cooties, and when Way Big destroyed Harangue's car! It seems as though Kevin either has a problem when any car is destroyed, or if Ben ends up being the reason behind it. (He just gets more bent out of shape when his car is damaged.)
In any Marvel-type universe, I think the ever-lasting rivalry between Spider-Man and J. Jonah Jameson will continue on for a long time. Such could happen with this issue between Ben and Harangue, but in what's currently a trade paperback titled Marvel V.S. DC, Jameson actually apologized to Spidey when it seemed like their universes were about to be destroyed. It might take something as drastic as Ben being trapped with Harangue somewhere-similar to when Ben was trapped with Reiny-for either of the two to trust each other.
Gwen having her license will prove to be very intriguing in some way or another, and it would be very hilarious to see Kevin in the back seat more times often than not. Plus, having the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old during certain moments is okay. That moment where 'one of my balls dropped' was indeed one of them. (And I think Edna definitely designed that suit, at least.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 03:58 am (UTC)Now, I may not follow comics, but I did love the '90s animated Spider-Man. And I think the rivalry between Jameson and Spidey (as well as Jameson and Peter) was handled well there. They revealed that Jameson had problems with Spidey because he'd lost his family to masked gunmen, and he associated anyone with a mask with a criminal with something to hide. Yeah, this was revealed later on, but you saw enough redeeming moments out of him. I especially remember the time Peter was arrested, and Jameson anonymously hired Daredevil to be his attorney. Peter had no idea who paid for this incredibly good and incredibly expensive lawyer, and Jameson was quick to deny to Robbie that he did it out of any kind of affection toward his photographer. Some kind of redeeming moment like that might well get me to understand Harangue better, but like I said, the fact that he pretty much held a gun to the head of a helpless sixteen-year-old makes him pretty much an asshole of the highest caliber.
And throughout the entire Gwen vs. Kevin on the car issue, I couldn't help but think of Summer and Dillon:
"How is driving my car into a tornado the right thing to do?"
"Probably because she didn't take my car."
"Or mine. Definitely the right choice!"
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 11:52 pm (UTC)