Never meet your heroes: “Hero Time”
Jun. 19th, 2010 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameBen teases Kevin for dragging them to the bookstore to meet Jennifer Nocturne, star of the Darkfall vampire romance movies. Apparently, Kevin can’t get enough of his sparkly vampire romances, though Gwen has to admit that it’s romantic too. But Ben isn’t interested until a bunch of terrorists grab Jennifer and demand a million-dollar ransom. While not quite sure if it’s a publicity stunt or not, he decides not to take the chance it’s not and jumps into action as Spidermonkey. Ben is soon aided by Captain Nemesis, a real-life superhero who’s been his idol. Unfortunately for the Captain, Jennifer credits Ben with the rescue and plants a smooch on the bewildered teen, right in front of the camera.
Later, Kevin, Gwen, and Julie watch the recap on the news, and Julie insists that she’s not too worried about Ben having feelings for Jennifer; he’s obviously too gay for Captain Nemesis to have any straight left in him for the movie star. No, this isn’t me exaggerating; Julie actually calls it a crush, though Ben insists that his admiration for Captain Nemesis is strictly professional. He also insists it’s strictly professional that he’s hanging out with Jennifer and sharing her hot tub (which Julie isn’t too happy with), as her publicist says it would be good for the both of them if they were seen together. Julie’s even less happy when Jennifer’s helicopter arrives to take Ben to a swanky party, with Jennifer hardly noticing Ben’s companions while she hangs off him. She continues to do so at the party, until Ben sees Captain Nemesis there, whose company is hosting the party. Ben tries to get advice from the senior hero, but Nemesis brushes him off and isn’t happy at all that the media is eager to jump to the “new hotness” for the latest story. Once the party’s over, Nemesis looks to his assistant, Simons, and tells him to figure out a way to get him back in the headlines—by any means necessary. Simons then meets with our old buddy, Will Harangue, and arranges a deal for an exclusive on the battle about to take place.
Meanwhile, at Kevin’s mom’s garage, Gwen is suspicious of the would-be ransomers—they had high tech lasers, but they seemed like complete amateurs. Kevin admits that while it’s not alien tech, he’ll look into it. In the warehouse district, workers are horrified by the arrival of Computron and his minions, archenemies to Captain Nemesis. Like Syndrome arriving to battle the Omnidroid, Nemesis arrives in the nick of time to fight his…nemesis, and Harangue starts filming. But there’s a live camera nearby, having been in the area, and so too is Jetray, who speeds into the fray. Armadrillo takes out the bulk of the robots, and when the second reporter asks Ben if he’s Captain Nemesis’s new sidekick, Ben jokes that since he took out more, maybe Nemesis should be his sidekick instead. Naturally, Harangue spins it to mean he thinks he’s better than Nemesis, who sees an opportunity in all of this and says that Ben’s competitive streak should be put to good use—a contest between the two superheroes for charity, covered by The Harangue Nation, and Ben gets the distinct feeling he’s getting pulled into things. Back at the garage, Kevin asks Ben how he got tricked into it like that, but Ben feels obligated because it’s for charity. But as Ben keeps trying to defend his hero, Julie, Kevin, and Gwen have bad news. Kevin traced the serial numbers on the guns to one of Nemesis’s companies. Ben tries to argue that Nemesis has a lot of companies, but they add that Nemesis is paying for the kidnappers’ lawyers, and Julie insists the whole thing is a trap. But Ben refuses to listen and heads off to the competition alone.
Jennifer is covering the contest for The Harangue Nation, and hilariously, she’s cheering Ben on the whole time to Harangue’s dismay. Humongousaur wins the train-tossing contest. When Ben becomes Rath instead of Jetray, he loses the race to Nemesis, who fires his rockets in Rath’s face and generally makes Rath very angry. In the final event, a tug-of-war, Four-Arms attempts to go in with two hands tied behind his back, but he and Nemesis are evenly matched, forcing him to use his extra limbs to his advantage to win. Harangue heavily implies that Ben cheated, and Nemesis has had enough of being outshone. He amps up the power of his suit to dangerous levels, alienating Simons when he tries to convince him not to cross that last line, but Nemesis knows that he already crossed it when he freed Computron. There’s no turning back now.
Julie is playing tennis while venting her hatred of Jennifer when Nemesis sneaks up on her. By instinct, Julie attacks with her racket, but it does nothing, and she’s captured. Nemesis then kidnaps Jennifer—helicopter and all. Ben is driving through town and trying to call Julie, but Nemesis answers, taunting Ben to come after him if he wants her back. Ben races to Nemesis’s tower and without hesitation, goes Ultimate Humongousaur. Nemesis is able to withstand his attacks and shows him that Julie and Jennifer are suspended from his statue, and Ben’s only going to have time to save one of them. Nemesis severs the lines holding them, and Ben makes his choice, going Goop to rescue Julie, insisting it was a no-brainer because she’s “[his] girl.” But Jennifer’s not exactly hero-less. Unlike Nemesis, Ben’s got a little help from his friends, and Gwen and Kevin saved her. The team tries to fight off Nemesis, but they notice that his suit is extremely hot—it’s overloading, and it’ll explode if he keeps using it. Goop tries to reason with him, but Nemesis insists that he wasted his time protecting people like Ben. Now, he wishes to be known as Overlord. Ben’s not exactly buying it, and he decides he needs to cool him off. Turning Water Hazard (while meaning to go Big Chill), he blasts water at Nemesis, then draws off the steam, weakening the armor and exposing cracks. Nemesis continues to insist he can beat Ben, but Water Hazard shuts him up with a punch or four, shattering the armor. Ben then rages against his former hero, but before he can hit him again, Julie and Gwen convince him to stand down. Meanwhile, Jennifer has found a new object of affection in Kevin, but Gwen lets her know exactly what’ll happen if she tries.
Nemesis is carted off to jail, and Harangue laments the loss of a hero, corrupted by the menace that is Ben Tennyson…
After four episodes spent on the Andromeda Five/Aggregor plot, we return to the dual subplots of Will Harangue and Ben’s fame. And I’ve got to say, in bringing Ben face-to-face with the issues of his public identity, it’s actually pretty effective. It comes from two otherwise weak new characters introduced.
First, of course, is Jennifer Nocturne. The hot young movie star starring as the Bella Swan analogue in the Twilight analogue film/book series, Darkfall, Jennifer is pretty much your typical, ditzy, spoiled starlet. She’s a very shallow character on her own—she just exists to crush over Ben and piss off Julie. However, you see that there’s a subtle sense that Jennifer and Ben are using each other—Jennifer’s publicist insists that they be seen together because it will boost their popularity. After all, the media’s giving Ben this bad-boy charm from being so controversial, and every girl loves a bad boy. And Ben gets the chance to see things he never got to experience—a vacation in Paris with a hot-tub view of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, or swanky parties held by billionaire superheroes.
Second is Captain Nemesis. In short, he’s a dark parody of Iron Man—a billionaire who gives “power suit” a whole new meaning by fighting supervillains with superpowered armor, while keeping his identity public. He loves the attention, and after years of fading into obscurity, he’s decided to make his comeback now that Ben 10 has eclipsed him in everyone’s minds. In a way, it’s a good thing to show the backstory of the Ben 10verse itself—that before the Omnitrix, there were people other than the Plumbers who tried to save the world (kind of think the Masked Rider to the universal Power Rangers federation). However, he’s really poorly pulled off. There’s no build-up to his appearance—he was written just for this episode. There’s no indication there was ever anyone besides the Plumbers who fought before Ben, and Ben’s hero-worship of him ends up coming out of left-field. Yeah. Ben’s a geek. Sumo Slammers and Kangaroo Commando are the only fandoms he’s actually named, but we know he likes his comic book superheroes. It’s totally in character for him to fanboy a superhero. But when it’s a real-life superhero and not an actor or anything (which would have treaded old ground anyway, given there was an episode of the original dealing with that), then it feels very out of place. Who is this guy? Why does Ben respect him? And why should we care about him? Worst of all is that they don’t even bother to pretend that Nemesis isn’t evil (I mean, come on! Look at the name! It’s as obvious as naming your protagonist Hiro Nakamura!), so we never find anything about him to sympathize with. He might as well have changed his name to Captain Asshole.
Despite these major flaws, I have to say that it’s the characters’ effects on Ben that works. Ben never goes for Jennifer. He still loves Julie. Put the girls side-by-side and there’s no comparison. Julie instinctively reacts to defend herself against Nemesis, and Jennifer is kidnapped in her helicopter without any way to put up a fight. When they’re held hostage, Julie keeps her cool and asks Ben if he’s okay, and Jennifer screams for Ben to save her. Ben affirms to Julie that he still cares about her first and foremost and that she’s his girlfriend, which finally redeems him from the events of “Duped.” However, in Jennifer’s defense, she’s not from the same world they’re from. In her world, the boy who comes to your rescue the first time is going to come every time. He’s your true love. She comes from the simpler world of the movies and doesn’t realize that sometimes, knights in shining armor save the damsels because they’re knights and that’s what they do. Sometimes, those heroes have their true loves already, and they’re happy with them.
But while Ben is never completely blinded by the dazzle of the spotlight around Jennifer, he’s still a little starstruck by the world she comes from. At the same time, you see that he’s not entirely comfortable with it. Captain Nemesis drags him into a competition he doesn’t want to be in, but because it’s charity, he knows he can’t back out of it. Captain Nemesis represents the extreme end of that spectrum, where fame becomes everything. Nemesis hates Ben for stealing the spotlight from him, and he either has forgotten what it means to be a hero or he never knew what it was to begin with (again, the character’s too shallow for us to know for sure). Ben is furious that he’s betrayed these principles:
”Did you forget? This isn’t about fame! It’s about helping people!”
However, like with Kevin in “Andreas’ Fault” and “Fused,” there’s a hint of projection in there. Julie asks Ben if he’s talking about Nemesis or about himself. It’s not the first time Ben’s identified with anybody (in fact, this was used against him in “Birds of a Feather”), but it is a hint that Ben may try to deal with his fame with a good deal more wisdom this time. But only time will tell.
We see that Water Hazard is able to condense water directly from the air around him, as well as producing it from within his shell…somewhere.
“Hero Time” was written by Steven Barnes. Jennifer was played by Tara Platt, and Captain Nemesis was played by Christopher McDonald.
Later, Kevin, Gwen, and Julie watch the recap on the news, and Julie insists that she’s not too worried about Ben having feelings for Jennifer; he’s obviously too gay for Captain Nemesis to have any straight left in him for the movie star. No, this isn’t me exaggerating; Julie actually calls it a crush, though Ben insists that his admiration for Captain Nemesis is strictly professional. He also insists it’s strictly professional that he’s hanging out with Jennifer and sharing her hot tub (which Julie isn’t too happy with), as her publicist says it would be good for the both of them if they were seen together. Julie’s even less happy when Jennifer’s helicopter arrives to take Ben to a swanky party, with Jennifer hardly noticing Ben’s companions while she hangs off him. She continues to do so at the party, until Ben sees Captain Nemesis there, whose company is hosting the party. Ben tries to get advice from the senior hero, but Nemesis brushes him off and isn’t happy at all that the media is eager to jump to the “new hotness” for the latest story. Once the party’s over, Nemesis looks to his assistant, Simons, and tells him to figure out a way to get him back in the headlines—by any means necessary. Simons then meets with our old buddy, Will Harangue, and arranges a deal for an exclusive on the battle about to take place.
Meanwhile, at Kevin’s mom’s garage, Gwen is suspicious of the would-be ransomers—they had high tech lasers, but they seemed like complete amateurs. Kevin admits that while it’s not alien tech, he’ll look into it. In the warehouse district, workers are horrified by the arrival of Computron and his minions, archenemies to Captain Nemesis. Like Syndrome arriving to battle the Omnidroid, Nemesis arrives in the nick of time to fight his…nemesis, and Harangue starts filming. But there’s a live camera nearby, having been in the area, and so too is Jetray, who speeds into the fray. Armadrillo takes out the bulk of the robots, and when the second reporter asks Ben if he’s Captain Nemesis’s new sidekick, Ben jokes that since he took out more, maybe Nemesis should be his sidekick instead. Naturally, Harangue spins it to mean he thinks he’s better than Nemesis, who sees an opportunity in all of this and says that Ben’s competitive streak should be put to good use—a contest between the two superheroes for charity, covered by The Harangue Nation, and Ben gets the distinct feeling he’s getting pulled into things. Back at the garage, Kevin asks Ben how he got tricked into it like that, but Ben feels obligated because it’s for charity. But as Ben keeps trying to defend his hero, Julie, Kevin, and Gwen have bad news. Kevin traced the serial numbers on the guns to one of Nemesis’s companies. Ben tries to argue that Nemesis has a lot of companies, but they add that Nemesis is paying for the kidnappers’ lawyers, and Julie insists the whole thing is a trap. But Ben refuses to listen and heads off to the competition alone.
Jennifer is covering the contest for The Harangue Nation, and hilariously, she’s cheering Ben on the whole time to Harangue’s dismay. Humongousaur wins the train-tossing contest. When Ben becomes Rath instead of Jetray, he loses the race to Nemesis, who fires his rockets in Rath’s face and generally makes Rath very angry. In the final event, a tug-of-war, Four-Arms attempts to go in with two hands tied behind his back, but he and Nemesis are evenly matched, forcing him to use his extra limbs to his advantage to win. Harangue heavily implies that Ben cheated, and Nemesis has had enough of being outshone. He amps up the power of his suit to dangerous levels, alienating Simons when he tries to convince him not to cross that last line, but Nemesis knows that he already crossed it when he freed Computron. There’s no turning back now.
Julie is playing tennis while venting her hatred of Jennifer when Nemesis sneaks up on her. By instinct, Julie attacks with her racket, but it does nothing, and she’s captured. Nemesis then kidnaps Jennifer—helicopter and all. Ben is driving through town and trying to call Julie, but Nemesis answers, taunting Ben to come after him if he wants her back. Ben races to Nemesis’s tower and without hesitation, goes Ultimate Humongousaur. Nemesis is able to withstand his attacks and shows him that Julie and Jennifer are suspended from his statue, and Ben’s only going to have time to save one of them. Nemesis severs the lines holding them, and Ben makes his choice, going Goop to rescue Julie, insisting it was a no-brainer because she’s “[his] girl.” But Jennifer’s not exactly hero-less. Unlike Nemesis, Ben’s got a little help from his friends, and Gwen and Kevin saved her. The team tries to fight off Nemesis, but they notice that his suit is extremely hot—it’s overloading, and it’ll explode if he keeps using it. Goop tries to reason with him, but Nemesis insists that he wasted his time protecting people like Ben. Now, he wishes to be known as Overlord. Ben’s not exactly buying it, and he decides he needs to cool him off. Turning Water Hazard (while meaning to go Big Chill), he blasts water at Nemesis, then draws off the steam, weakening the armor and exposing cracks. Nemesis continues to insist he can beat Ben, but Water Hazard shuts him up with a punch or four, shattering the armor. Ben then rages against his former hero, but before he can hit him again, Julie and Gwen convince him to stand down. Meanwhile, Jennifer has found a new object of affection in Kevin, but Gwen lets her know exactly what’ll happen if she tries.
Nemesis is carted off to jail, and Harangue laments the loss of a hero, corrupted by the menace that is Ben Tennyson…
After four episodes spent on the Andromeda Five/Aggregor plot, we return to the dual subplots of Will Harangue and Ben’s fame. And I’ve got to say, in bringing Ben face-to-face with the issues of his public identity, it’s actually pretty effective. It comes from two otherwise weak new characters introduced.
First, of course, is Jennifer Nocturne. The hot young movie star starring as the Bella Swan analogue in the Twilight analogue film/book series, Darkfall, Jennifer is pretty much your typical, ditzy, spoiled starlet. She’s a very shallow character on her own—she just exists to crush over Ben and piss off Julie. However, you see that there’s a subtle sense that Jennifer and Ben are using each other—Jennifer’s publicist insists that they be seen together because it will boost their popularity. After all, the media’s giving Ben this bad-boy charm from being so controversial, and every girl loves a bad boy. And Ben gets the chance to see things he never got to experience—a vacation in Paris with a hot-tub view of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, or swanky parties held by billionaire superheroes.
Second is Captain Nemesis. In short, he’s a dark parody of Iron Man—a billionaire who gives “power suit” a whole new meaning by fighting supervillains with superpowered armor, while keeping his identity public. He loves the attention, and after years of fading into obscurity, he’s decided to make his comeback now that Ben 10 has eclipsed him in everyone’s minds. In a way, it’s a good thing to show the backstory of the Ben 10verse itself—that before the Omnitrix, there were people other than the Plumbers who tried to save the world (kind of think the Masked Rider to the universal Power Rangers federation). However, he’s really poorly pulled off. There’s no build-up to his appearance—he was written just for this episode. There’s no indication there was ever anyone besides the Plumbers who fought before Ben, and Ben’s hero-worship of him ends up coming out of left-field. Yeah. Ben’s a geek. Sumo Slammers and Kangaroo Commando are the only fandoms he’s actually named, but we know he likes his comic book superheroes. It’s totally in character for him to fanboy a superhero. But when it’s a real-life superhero and not an actor or anything (which would have treaded old ground anyway, given there was an episode of the original dealing with that), then it feels very out of place. Who is this guy? Why does Ben respect him? And why should we care about him? Worst of all is that they don’t even bother to pretend that Nemesis isn’t evil (I mean, come on! Look at the name! It’s as obvious as naming your protagonist Hiro Nakamura!), so we never find anything about him to sympathize with. He might as well have changed his name to Captain Asshole.
Despite these major flaws, I have to say that it’s the characters’ effects on Ben that works. Ben never goes for Jennifer. He still loves Julie. Put the girls side-by-side and there’s no comparison. Julie instinctively reacts to defend herself against Nemesis, and Jennifer is kidnapped in her helicopter without any way to put up a fight. When they’re held hostage, Julie keeps her cool and asks Ben if he’s okay, and Jennifer screams for Ben to save her. Ben affirms to Julie that he still cares about her first and foremost and that she’s his girlfriend, which finally redeems him from the events of “Duped.” However, in Jennifer’s defense, she’s not from the same world they’re from. In her world, the boy who comes to your rescue the first time is going to come every time. He’s your true love. She comes from the simpler world of the movies and doesn’t realize that sometimes, knights in shining armor save the damsels because they’re knights and that’s what they do. Sometimes, those heroes have their true loves already, and they’re happy with them.
But while Ben is never completely blinded by the dazzle of the spotlight around Jennifer, he’s still a little starstruck by the world she comes from. At the same time, you see that he’s not entirely comfortable with it. Captain Nemesis drags him into a competition he doesn’t want to be in, but because it’s charity, he knows he can’t back out of it. Captain Nemesis represents the extreme end of that spectrum, where fame becomes everything. Nemesis hates Ben for stealing the spotlight from him, and he either has forgotten what it means to be a hero or he never knew what it was to begin with (again, the character’s too shallow for us to know for sure). Ben is furious that he’s betrayed these principles:
”Did you forget? This isn’t about fame! It’s about helping people!”
However, like with Kevin in “Andreas’ Fault” and “Fused,” there’s a hint of projection in there. Julie asks Ben if he’s talking about Nemesis or about himself. It’s not the first time Ben’s identified with anybody (in fact, this was used against him in “Birds of a Feather”), but it is a hint that Ben may try to deal with his fame with a good deal more wisdom this time. But only time will tell.
We see that Water Hazard is able to condense water directly from the air around him, as well as producing it from within his shell…somewhere.
“Hero Time” was written by Steven Barnes. Jennifer was played by Tara Platt, and Captain Nemesis was played by Christopher McDonald.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-20 03:30 am (UTC)Notice that Jennifer's crush didn't stop at Ben, but at seemingly any boy who would risk their lives to save her? (Seemingly since this is the first and possibly only appearance of Darkfall's vampire.) Enter Kevin Ethan Levin. If Gwen hadn't stepped in, think our resident 'anti-hero' would've found himself picking up his teeth off the pavement?
JJ's appearance in this was definitely memorable, and worthy of 'Best J. Jonah Jameson' award from beginning to end as he kept putting down Ben at every opportunity while building up Captain Nemesis until the end...though he still kept on putting down Ben. And I was able to see that projection Julie mentioned when Ben made that statement that should be one of his many quotes-though Gwen did reassure Ben that he could calm down, and that it was over. I'm very pleased that Julie is going to be a fixture in Ben's world for a long time to come, as Goop stated after rescuing her 'You're my girl.' (I did find it hilarious that Julie was taking out her rage on Jennifer during tennis practice even if the moment ended on a sour note-her kidnapping.) Plus, Ben's relationships with Gwen and Kevin are still solid despite any hero-worshipping he may have had during the course of the episode.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-20 04:37 am (UTC)And yes. Like I said, in her world, the hero gets the girl he rescued, so it makes sense for her. She just doesn't realize that the heroes are already spoken for. And yeah. Kevin would have been killed. The boys are whipped.
Yeah, Harangue's still King of the Assholes. Ben's apparently fighting Kevin for King of Projection, though this episode might have gotten him the crown. But absolutely yes on Julie. They emphasized both that she is strong and that she's important to Ben (say, more important than a movie?). And yeah on the team relationships. There wasn't a whole lot of interaction between Ben and his friends this episode, but you do see how much they want to protect him. And Julie fit in that dynamic perfectly, trying to warn him it was a trap. Ben at the same time didn't hesitate in going ultimate to save her and took it so seriously that he cut the banter, just like he'd done when his mom was captured. Reminds me of a certain Doctor: "You just hurt somebody I like, and that's a very bad place to stand."