The bully pulpit: “Reflected Glory”
Oct. 16th, 2010 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameThe Forever Knights race to the site of a wrecked spaceship, only to run into Ben and the team, who easily dispatch them. But when they’re all done, they’re interrupted by Cash, JT, and a cameraman—Ben’s old friend Oliver from “Video Games.” As it turns out, he’s been fired by Will Harangue and since gone freelance, coming across a blog Ben’s former bullies set up, where they claim to be the brains of the outfit, telling the team what to do. Oliver is shooting a live webcast based on the blog, and the plan is to follow the team around and take credit for everything. Naturally, they tell them no, but they’ve got three things to control them: For Ben, they remind him that he owes them one for sticking up for him at school (“Fame”), which apparently makes up for eight straight years of bullying. For Gwen, Cash reveals that he needs the money the webcast will bring, to pay for his mother’s operation. And for Kevin, they promise a cut of the profits.
After Bulk and Skull Jr. manage to turn the ship into a giant robot that nearly kills everyone, they set out to track down the Forever Knights, though making pit stops along the way at the sites of “The Final Battle,” “Hit ‘Em Where They Live,” and “Singlehanded,” Cash and JT explaining how they saved the day each time, and Gwen barely keeping Ben from going Rath on them. They reach the Camelot Apartments, where a grunt Knight turns out to be in character all the time—he greets them at the door in his undies and helmet, brushing his teeth. Yes, under the visor. It’s hilarious. Cash accidentally cuts off his escape route through the window, and the team questions the guy, with Kevin playing good cop this time. Everything’s relative, of course, since Ben gives a teasing “grr” when Kevin points him out as the bad cop, who hasn’t eaten any bad guys in a while. It still scares the pants (metaphorically speaking, of course) off the Grunt Knight, and he reveals that they stole a power cell to operate a power decoupler they stole from another alien ship. The power decoupler is a weapon that drains the energy of anything, converts it into other energy, and stores it. The Knights at Castle Construction wait for it to charge, but Ben and the gang break up the party. JT and Cash run after them, insisting that they need to tell them what to do for the camera, but the trio’s teamwork is so flawless that anyone could see that they don’t need orders; they know each other too well. When Cash knocks over a barrel of oil, causing Kevin to slip in battle, Kevin finally tells them off and tells them to keep their money. Gwen tries to talk reason into him, but someone else butts in—Psyphon. Hey, long time, no see.
Psyphon, as it turns out, wants revenge for Vilgax’s apparent death, and because he’s intrigued by the internet, he saw the webcast. Considering what other things the internet is for, they all honestly could have done worse. He believes that Cash and JT are in fact the masterminds behind Vilgax’s defeat, and he goes after them, but Ben does what he can to defend them. Meanwhile, Kevin and Gwen face his REDs—Robotic Extermination Devices—that give them a hell of a time before Gwen finally gets the idea to outsmart them with a mirror, and they get the drop on them, smashing them into itty bitty bits. When Spidermonkey is KO-ed by Psyphon, JT and Cash admit on camera that they lied about everything, even convincing Gwen to coerce Ben into helping by not revealing that Cash’s mom’s surgery was actually a nose job. Disgusted, Psyphon decides they’re not worth it and goes after Ben, realizing that he really was the one responsible for bringing down his master, but the bullies’ confession bought Spidermonkey time to go ultimate. Still, it’s not enough, and he’s getting his ass thoroughly kicked. JT comes up with the idea of using the power decoupler on Psyphon, but it drains the last of the camera’s battery as it charges. With Ben semi-conscious, Oliver looking away, and Gwen and Kevin absent, no one is around to watch Cash fire on Psyphon, draining his power and giving a very weak Ultimate Spidermonkey the chance to get in a punch (actually, closer to a fist bump), making Psyphon drop to the ground. Ben calls off the arrangement, and nobody believes Cash and JT when they insist they took Psyphon down. Worse for them, Gwen got 200 tweets about their confession, and Oliver admits that nobody’s going to want to watch the show now. Cash and JT were finally the heroes, but it’s the greatest story never told.
It’s been a while, and we finally catch up with Cash and JT for the first real time since “The Gauntlet.” When we last saw them in “Fame,” they led the entire school in applause for Ben, giving him the sense that he wasn’t universally hated. And in “The Gauntlet,” they stopped picking on him now that he’d saved Cash’s life. Throughout the course of the series, we’ve seen them come a long way. Six years of picking on Ben, running from aliens, and trying to live as ordinary humans in an extraordinary world has given them the chance to show who they truly are—total douchebags.
All right, that’s harsh. But I’ve also got to admit that calling them Bulk and Skull in the recap was an insult to the original Power Rangers bullies-turned-heroes. Cash and JT set up their blog because they were jealous of Ben’s fame. They felt like nobodies compared to him, and they wanted the chance to be known, to be somebodies. Gwen had to sympathize with them, but I’ve got to admit, sympathetic as it sounds, these guys did bully Ben nonstop from second grade until Alien Force. To be honest, they owe Ben—for not having cracked and killed them a lot earlier. And to be fair to Ben, he’s skeptical of the whole thing. He doesn’t buy it when Cash says that the money is for his mom’s surgery, and when Gwen says that she can read the truth in Cash’s aura, Ben still laughs it off. But at the same time, Gwen’s using this to keep him in check, since she avoided telling Ben about the blog because she didn’t want him to go after them the next time he turned into Rath—which Ben quickly has to agree was a good idea. Hell, half the time, all Cash wanted was his own weapon, and even Kevin knew that was a Bad Idea. I can’t feel bad for them at all in this episode—other bully duos have done a lot better in trying to become heroes (Bulk and Skull, Katsuharu and Teppei), and they at least didn’t do it for the fame.
I do have to ask where Cash and JT got those fake Plumbers’ badges, since I don’t think you can get them out of a cereal box. Also, regarding the Forever Knights? Yeah, we got the lame group this time. They did, however, reference the Forever King growing impatient with them, but who knows if their King is Driscoll, Patrick, Urian, or Dagonet? I did like a couple of things, though: one, the lance-swords were actually pretty cool-looking weapons, and two, when one Knight told another that “brevity is the soul of wit,” Ben’s response was “Then what’s the soul of the halfwit?” I laughed. The answer is most likely “Ben.”
Psyphon isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to be handing Ben his ass, but he reveals that with Vilgax gone, he’s not about to let that tech go to waste. And it works. However, where Vilgax had a hell of a lot of toys in Alien Force, Psyphon only has these devices that pretty much let him do anything Gwen can, but in red energy. He’s strong, but I feel like it could have been handled a little better with that kind of set up.
Ben used two of the Andromeda scans today: Armadrillo (Andreas) and Terraspin (Galapagus). With Armadrillo (whose pun is on “armadillo,” though it does also resemble the Spanish word for yellow, amarillo, and yellow is the guy’s predominant color), Ben has better control over the powers than the more emotional and less mentally stable Andreas, so there’s not as much rampant destruction. In fact, even for Ben, it’s remarkably controlled. Terraspin (based on terrapin—a kind of turtle and the mascot of the University of Maryland, my school’s eternal rival) actually isn’t voiced by John DiMaggio, as would be expected, but Dee Baker. Terraspin is a much better fighter than his source scan, but there’s the indication that Ben’s making it up as he goes. He’s dizzy when he uses a spinning attack against the Wrecked Ship Megazord. Which makes sense—Aldabrans are a nonviolent race, so there may not be a fighting instinct for Ben to rely on, as with the rest of his aliens. He has to wing it and try to turn these abilities into attacks, kind of like having to figure out how to improvise a weapon out of everyday devices. So Ben’s not necessarily going to be good at it at first, but with time, he will easily be able to surpass Galapagus’s ad-hoc fighting skills.
“Reflected Glory” was written by Peter David. Matt Levin returned as Cash. Peter MacNicol played Oliver. Dee Bradley Baker played Psyphon, Armadrillo, and Terraspin.
After Bulk and Skull Jr. manage to turn the ship into a giant robot that nearly kills everyone, they set out to track down the Forever Knights, though making pit stops along the way at the sites of “The Final Battle,” “Hit ‘Em Where They Live,” and “Singlehanded,” Cash and JT explaining how they saved the day each time, and Gwen barely keeping Ben from going Rath on them. They reach the Camelot Apartments, where a grunt Knight turns out to be in character all the time—he greets them at the door in his undies and helmet, brushing his teeth. Yes, under the visor. It’s hilarious. Cash accidentally cuts off his escape route through the window, and the team questions the guy, with Kevin playing good cop this time. Everything’s relative, of course, since Ben gives a teasing “grr” when Kevin points him out as the bad cop, who hasn’t eaten any bad guys in a while. It still scares the pants (metaphorically speaking, of course) off the Grunt Knight, and he reveals that they stole a power cell to operate a power decoupler they stole from another alien ship. The power decoupler is a weapon that drains the energy of anything, converts it into other energy, and stores it. The Knights at Castle Construction wait for it to charge, but Ben and the gang break up the party. JT and Cash run after them, insisting that they need to tell them what to do for the camera, but the trio’s teamwork is so flawless that anyone could see that they don’t need orders; they know each other too well. When Cash knocks over a barrel of oil, causing Kevin to slip in battle, Kevin finally tells them off and tells them to keep their money. Gwen tries to talk reason into him, but someone else butts in—Psyphon. Hey, long time, no see.
Psyphon, as it turns out, wants revenge for Vilgax’s apparent death, and because he’s intrigued by the internet, he saw the webcast. Considering what other things the internet is for, they all honestly could have done worse. He believes that Cash and JT are in fact the masterminds behind Vilgax’s defeat, and he goes after them, but Ben does what he can to defend them. Meanwhile, Kevin and Gwen face his REDs—Robotic Extermination Devices—that give them a hell of a time before Gwen finally gets the idea to outsmart them with a mirror, and they get the drop on them, smashing them into itty bitty bits. When Spidermonkey is KO-ed by Psyphon, JT and Cash admit on camera that they lied about everything, even convincing Gwen to coerce Ben into helping by not revealing that Cash’s mom’s surgery was actually a nose job. Disgusted, Psyphon decides they’re not worth it and goes after Ben, realizing that he really was the one responsible for bringing down his master, but the bullies’ confession bought Spidermonkey time to go ultimate. Still, it’s not enough, and he’s getting his ass thoroughly kicked. JT comes up with the idea of using the power decoupler on Psyphon, but it drains the last of the camera’s battery as it charges. With Ben semi-conscious, Oliver looking away, and Gwen and Kevin absent, no one is around to watch Cash fire on Psyphon, draining his power and giving a very weak Ultimate Spidermonkey the chance to get in a punch (actually, closer to a fist bump), making Psyphon drop to the ground. Ben calls off the arrangement, and nobody believes Cash and JT when they insist they took Psyphon down. Worse for them, Gwen got 200 tweets about their confession, and Oliver admits that nobody’s going to want to watch the show now. Cash and JT were finally the heroes, but it’s the greatest story never told.
It’s been a while, and we finally catch up with Cash and JT for the first real time since “The Gauntlet.” When we last saw them in “Fame,” they led the entire school in applause for Ben, giving him the sense that he wasn’t universally hated. And in “The Gauntlet,” they stopped picking on him now that he’d saved Cash’s life. Throughout the course of the series, we’ve seen them come a long way. Six years of picking on Ben, running from aliens, and trying to live as ordinary humans in an extraordinary world has given them the chance to show who they truly are—total douchebags.
All right, that’s harsh. But I’ve also got to admit that calling them Bulk and Skull in the recap was an insult to the original Power Rangers bullies-turned-heroes. Cash and JT set up their blog because they were jealous of Ben’s fame. They felt like nobodies compared to him, and they wanted the chance to be known, to be somebodies. Gwen had to sympathize with them, but I’ve got to admit, sympathetic as it sounds, these guys did bully Ben nonstop from second grade until Alien Force. To be honest, they owe Ben—for not having cracked and killed them a lot earlier. And to be fair to Ben, he’s skeptical of the whole thing. He doesn’t buy it when Cash says that the money is for his mom’s surgery, and when Gwen says that she can read the truth in Cash’s aura, Ben still laughs it off. But at the same time, Gwen’s using this to keep him in check, since she avoided telling Ben about the blog because she didn’t want him to go after them the next time he turned into Rath—which Ben quickly has to agree was a good idea. Hell, half the time, all Cash wanted was his own weapon, and even Kevin knew that was a Bad Idea. I can’t feel bad for them at all in this episode—other bully duos have done a lot better in trying to become heroes (Bulk and Skull, Katsuharu and Teppei), and they at least didn’t do it for the fame.
I do have to ask where Cash and JT got those fake Plumbers’ badges, since I don’t think you can get them out of a cereal box. Also, regarding the Forever Knights? Yeah, we got the lame group this time. They did, however, reference the Forever King growing impatient with them, but who knows if their King is Driscoll, Patrick, Urian, or Dagonet? I did like a couple of things, though: one, the lance-swords were actually pretty cool-looking weapons, and two, when one Knight told another that “brevity is the soul of wit,” Ben’s response was “Then what’s the soul of the halfwit?” I laughed. The answer is most likely “Ben.”
Psyphon isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to be handing Ben his ass, but he reveals that with Vilgax gone, he’s not about to let that tech go to waste. And it works. However, where Vilgax had a hell of a lot of toys in Alien Force, Psyphon only has these devices that pretty much let him do anything Gwen can, but in red energy. He’s strong, but I feel like it could have been handled a little better with that kind of set up.
Ben used two of the Andromeda scans today: Armadrillo (Andreas) and Terraspin (Galapagus). With Armadrillo (whose pun is on “armadillo,” though it does also resemble the Spanish word for yellow, amarillo, and yellow is the guy’s predominant color), Ben has better control over the powers than the more emotional and less mentally stable Andreas, so there’s not as much rampant destruction. In fact, even for Ben, it’s remarkably controlled. Terraspin (based on terrapin—a kind of turtle and the mascot of the University of Maryland, my school’s eternal rival) actually isn’t voiced by John DiMaggio, as would be expected, but Dee Baker. Terraspin is a much better fighter than his source scan, but there’s the indication that Ben’s making it up as he goes. He’s dizzy when he uses a spinning attack against the Wrecked Ship Megazord. Which makes sense—Aldabrans are a nonviolent race, so there may not be a fighting instinct for Ben to rely on, as with the rest of his aliens. He has to wing it and try to turn these abilities into attacks, kind of like having to figure out how to improvise a weapon out of everyday devices. So Ben’s not necessarily going to be good at it at first, but with time, he will easily be able to surpass Galapagus’s ad-hoc fighting skills.
“Reflected Glory” was written by Peter David. Matt Levin returned as Cash. Peter MacNicol played Oliver. Dee Bradley Baker played Psyphon, Armadrillo, and Terraspin.