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akinoameAnnoyed at Cedric’s continued failures, Phobos plans to trade flour for info on his missing sister from the starving villagers. When Ced begs for a second chance, Phobos reminds him that Will is the key to the Guardians’ power, and dividing her from the equation would leave them easy to conquer. Meanwhile, in what’s apparently Cornelia and Will’s science class, they’re learning about the volcanic Mt. Heatherfield, where a school ski trip is scheduled to take place soon. During the lesson, Matt Olsen (previously seen but not heard in “Happy Birthday Will”) sneaks a glance at Will, blushes, and turns away. Will gets the hint and lets Cornelia know that she thinks he likes her, if he’s avoiding her so much. Cornelia has this look on her face that says she pities the poor girl.
At lunch, Hay Lin tries to talk the other Guardians and Elyon into going on the ski trip, but none of them really want to. Until the new girl from Switzerland, Sondra, shows up. Suddenly, all of the boys go gaga for the lady, including Martin, which perturbs Irma. Throughout school, she gets on the girls’ nerves. She says that she makes her own clothes from the hair of her grandmother’s cashmere goats (which Taranee later points out are native to the Himalayas) and she’s read War and Peace in the original Russian. And even worse, she’s going skiing with Matt. This means war, and Will tells the girls flat-out that they’re going. Cornelia and Elyon visit Ye Olde Bookstore after school and talk about their going on the trip despite Will being a klutz on the snow, and Cedric gets a cunning plan. But later at the Silver Dragon, Caleb puts Meridian logic into play and asks the girls why they’re doing an activity they hate (skiing) with a girl they hate (Sondra). By all accounts, it doesn’t make much sense. And when he starts lamenting that they’re wasting perfectly good longbow wood on skis they’re going to break, the girls decide that Caleb doesn’t know what “fun” means, leaving him indignant. And wearing a kitty hat. I promise, it makes sense in context. As the girls load onto the buses and Will gets depressed at the sight of Sondra sitting with Matt, Blunk accidentally gets thrown in with the luggage. They arrive at the Mt. Heatherfield ski lodge, Will awkwardly tries to ask Matt out, mistakenly asking, “Would you like to ski down me?”
…Wow. Freudian slip like whoa there. Where the hell were the censors on this line?
Fortunately, Matt knows what Will means, but unfortunately, he gives her a rain check because he’s hanging out with Sondra. And Sondra is a bitch to Will. No lie, the girls get into an argument instantly. The girls decide that they’ll have a ski race, and whoever wins gets to sit next to Matt on the bus ride home. Matt tries to talk sense into them, but they yell at him to shut up. Poor guy. You don’t get far being the logical one on this show. Principal Knickerbocker (*sigh* who has names like this? Half of the teachers at Sheffield sound like they’re from some kind of spoof) warns the kids away from Dead Man’s Trail, which apparently is banned from skiing due to, you know, skiers becoming dead men. Good name for it. But Hay Lin ends up running her down due to her bad skiing and total lack of concern over whether she’ll walk again, as Taranee puts it. Later that evening, Will and Hay Lin find Blunk half-frozen and bundle him up, but they’re distracted when Yan Lin drives up with Caleb, who’s got something to prove. Determined to have fun, he presents Yan Lin’s old skis, which he’s going to use to make a total fool of himself. The humans all head into the lodge, leaving Blunk outside to get kidnapped by Cedric. Great job, guys.
The next day, Cornelia and Taranee fail to convince Will that this is a bad plan, since she plans to use her powers for personal gain to win the race and Matt. Apparently, between pushing an unconscious man in a wheelbarrow after midnight and giving Blunk a bath, they suddenly have a problem with misusing their powers. Meanwhile, Caleb fails to ski, as Yan Lin’s ancient skis die a horrible death. Thankfully, an incredibly generous snowboarder gives Caleb a board of his own, and Caleb…geeks out. Over the “mummerboard.” Apparently, snowboarding on Earth is identical to mumboarding on Meridian, and Caleb’s a pro at it. According to Cornelia later, Meridianites do this on mudslides. Damn. Meridianites are born and bred badasses. At the exact same time all of this is going on, Cedric takes Blunk to a cave up in the mountain, demanding info from Will. To his credit, the little guy doesn’t spill. Just before the race, Will plans to have Hay Lin use her powers of air to keep her upright and speeding down the mountain, so she transforms, cluing Cedric in to where she is.
Will arrives at the starting line, and Matt tries and fails once again to talk her and Sondra out of this stupid idea. He should talk to Caleb about how impossible these girls can be. Will leads Sondra down the trail, and Hay Lin’s cyclones keep Will above the snow and on her feet, which shocks everyone else in on the Guardians’ powers. But halfway down the trail, she’s distracted saving a bunny from a hungry fox, and Will stumbles into Dead Man’s Trail. Against the boys’ warnings that are way too far for her to hear, Sondra follows her. Meanwhile, Cedric creates an avalanche to stop the other girls, and Knickerbocker warns the other students back inside…wait just a second there! Knickerbocker’s been there the whole time?! And she didn’t stop the girls from doing something dangerous?! We know she’s right up there at the starting line because it’s the only way she and the others can get inside while the Guardians, Caleb, and Yan Lin are buried, but GOD, what a horribly irresponsible chaperone! Sheffield really IS evil. Anyway, Hay Lin manages to lose Will in the forest, and Sondra pulls ahead as Will falls flat on her face. Hay Lin tries to explain what happened, but Cedric attacks them, apparently managing to move a whole lot faster now that he doesn’t have a really tiny Passling that didn’t fight back at all. Speaking of Blunk, he discovers that the cave has secret tunnels—volcanic vents that lead out the mountain and conveniently to the avalanche. Unlike in “The Labyrinth,” where the girls didn’t use their limited powers to get them through the library, now they’re trying to get themselves out. But Blunk manages to dig through to Taranee and Cornelia, and then all of them dig through to find Irma, Caleb, and Yan Lin. Knowing something evil’s afoot and they have to save Hay Lin and Will, the girls get on their skis (with Irma and Taranee sharing) while Caleb puts on his shades like he’s Horatio Caine and gets on his snowboard to save the day. On Dead Man’s Trail, where Will and Hay Lin are. The No Ski Zone. When Caleb’s the only one who even has a possibility of having the skills to make it through alive. Yeah, writers, didn’t think this through.
Will and Hay Lin are getting their butts kicked, but the girls arrive just in time, and Will transforms them so they don’t die a horrible death. Caleb snowboards up Cedric’s tail before coming to a land on the powder. Now you’re just showing off. The girls defeat Cedric in short order, but he escapes. They make their way back to the ski lodge, where Sondra’s been rescued after spraining her ankle. And out of pain and anger, her accent slips. She’s not Swiss at all. And unsurprisingly, she buys expensive cashmere instead of spinning it, and she doesn’t speak Russian. But it doesn’t matter; she plans to transfer the moment she calls her parents. Don’t you love how easy it is to get rid of a snotty new student on TV? Ignoring the fake, Matt asks Will if she wants the front of the bus or the back. No comment. And Irma’s annoyed when Martin and the other boys still find Sondra hot. Sorry, sweetie, but some things still impress even when they’re fake. This is why plastic surgery is still popular.
Later that night, Hay Lin notices that there aren’t any portals for Cedric to have used, and Will wonders where he could have gone. Hmm, maybe he’s the spy! The one you know is there! Because you were wondering about who it was for two episodes now! Oh, and don’t try to build suspense by showing Cedric shift into his human form and hide in the bookstore. This subplot is already becoming stupid enough.
This episode begins one of the two major canon ships of the series: Will/Matt. It’s handled pretty much like a typical high school romance (never mind the fact that both of them are in middle school; given that Matt takes a middle school science class, this would make him in the eighth grade at the most, and Will’s thirteen and either in seventh or eighth grade; unlike in the comics, he’s roughly her age instead of older and wiser). Will is hinted to have a bit of a crush on him in his cameo at the end of “Happy Birthday Will,” and he’s nice enough to walk her back inside to the party. Now, we see Matt reciprocating those feelings. He blushes when he looks at her in class and tries to avoid her gaze. He also seems completely immune to Sondra’s dazzling effect (which we’ll see again under completely different circumstances in season two), possibly because he likes Will so much. He also immediately takes her side at the end, when he actually starts mocking Sondra for her fake accent. What we get from his character at first glance is that he’s the sane one here—similar to Caleb in that he’s the voice of reason that nobody listens to, but better with his social skills. And even despite his confidence, he seems to be a bit shy around Will, based on that blush. But not shy enough not to suggest they take it to the back of the bus.
Sondra is the vehicle to starting the ship. She’s supposedly from Switzerland, but she’s only faking the little Swiss girl act—so, I’m guessing that in order for the news to spread that she’s from Switzerland, there’s got to be some truth in it; maybe she’s a military brat? Emphasis on the brat? And oddly enough, her design seems to be based on a combination of Irma and Cornelia, gone horribly, horribly right. Cornelia’s the pretty one on the team, and adding in traits of Irma adds to make it more annoying for her when Martin’s stars of love change alignment. All of the main six girls hate her, but Will takes special pride in her hatred because of Sondra hitting on Matt. As we’ve seen before (especially in “A Service to the Community”) Will isn’t exactly the coolest head on the team, and her plans blow up in her face because she thinks with her heart instead of her head. But this foreshadows an important point to her character much later on: When it comes to Matt, she takes things way too seriously.
And we’re back to Phobos’s Bad Plans. Today, we have two for the price of one. First, Phobos mentions a plan we never see in action to trade food for information. On paper, this sounds great: the villagers will sell each other out to get food. However, this is the truth: the villagers will sell each other out to get food. Phobos won’t get anything resembling reliable information—he’ll just get whatever the best liars can come up with so they can put dinner on the table. Second, he plans to separate the Guardians from Will so they don’t have their powers and can’t put up a decent fight. This would be good if he didn’t do it already at least twice before, and it still failed. Hell, there’s less dividing and conquering in this episode than there was in “The Labyrinth.” So, fail. Again.
Finally comes the prerequisite bitching about the production value. Sorry, guys. But a series that honestly looks this nice in terms of character design and artwork really should maintain that standard. Something about this episode really tripped up the character designers when it came to Matt. He looks horribly off-model in his ski gear. Look at his hair. I mean, where the hell did all of it come from? They have no problem drawing the others in ski gear, but they just seemed to screw that one up. Furthermore, during the really awkward conversation between Will and Matt, someone went overboard putting shadows in her hair, making half of her hair a very dull red. They fixed it by the end of the exchange where it finally looked like red hair with a bit of shadow for depth at the bottom, but yeah. And I’m wondering if Meridianites have a problem with mountains. As I complained earlier, Cedric kidnaps Blunk in the evening, possibly a little later at night. It’s at least mid-morning when he gets to the cave up the mountain, giving plenty of time for the girls to see that Caleb can snowboard and for Will and Hay Lin to get ready to cheat and Matt, Sondra, and everyone else from the school to gather for the race. And then he has no trouble whatsoever getting to the peak of the mountain to start the avalanche and then get down to Dead Man’s Trail to attack Hay Lin and Will. Guys, THINK about how you’re setting up your scene timeframes. It makes it look stupid if you do stuff like this.
“Divide and Conquer” was written by Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers. Matt was played by Jason Marsden. Lauren Tom played Sondra.
At lunch, Hay Lin tries to talk the other Guardians and Elyon into going on the ski trip, but none of them really want to. Until the new girl from Switzerland, Sondra, shows up. Suddenly, all of the boys go gaga for the lady, including Martin, which perturbs Irma. Throughout school, she gets on the girls’ nerves. She says that she makes her own clothes from the hair of her grandmother’s cashmere goats (which Taranee later points out are native to the Himalayas) and she’s read War and Peace in the original Russian. And even worse, she’s going skiing with Matt. This means war, and Will tells the girls flat-out that they’re going. Cornelia and Elyon visit Ye Olde Bookstore after school and talk about their going on the trip despite Will being a klutz on the snow, and Cedric gets a cunning plan. But later at the Silver Dragon, Caleb puts Meridian logic into play and asks the girls why they’re doing an activity they hate (skiing) with a girl they hate (Sondra). By all accounts, it doesn’t make much sense. And when he starts lamenting that they’re wasting perfectly good longbow wood on skis they’re going to break, the girls decide that Caleb doesn’t know what “fun” means, leaving him indignant. And wearing a kitty hat. I promise, it makes sense in context. As the girls load onto the buses and Will gets depressed at the sight of Sondra sitting with Matt, Blunk accidentally gets thrown in with the luggage. They arrive at the Mt. Heatherfield ski lodge, Will awkwardly tries to ask Matt out, mistakenly asking, “Would you like to ski down me?”
…Wow. Freudian slip like whoa there. Where the hell were the censors on this line?
Fortunately, Matt knows what Will means, but unfortunately, he gives her a rain check because he’s hanging out with Sondra. And Sondra is a bitch to Will. No lie, the girls get into an argument instantly. The girls decide that they’ll have a ski race, and whoever wins gets to sit next to Matt on the bus ride home. Matt tries to talk sense into them, but they yell at him to shut up. Poor guy. You don’t get far being the logical one on this show. Principal Knickerbocker (*sigh* who has names like this? Half of the teachers at Sheffield sound like they’re from some kind of spoof) warns the kids away from Dead Man’s Trail, which apparently is banned from skiing due to, you know, skiers becoming dead men. Good name for it. But Hay Lin ends up running her down due to her bad skiing and total lack of concern over whether she’ll walk again, as Taranee puts it. Later that evening, Will and Hay Lin find Blunk half-frozen and bundle him up, but they’re distracted when Yan Lin drives up with Caleb, who’s got something to prove. Determined to have fun, he presents Yan Lin’s old skis, which he’s going to use to make a total fool of himself. The humans all head into the lodge, leaving Blunk outside to get kidnapped by Cedric. Great job, guys.
The next day, Cornelia and Taranee fail to convince Will that this is a bad plan, since she plans to use her powers for personal gain to win the race and Matt. Apparently, between pushing an unconscious man in a wheelbarrow after midnight and giving Blunk a bath, they suddenly have a problem with misusing their powers. Meanwhile, Caleb fails to ski, as Yan Lin’s ancient skis die a horrible death. Thankfully, an incredibly generous snowboarder gives Caleb a board of his own, and Caleb…geeks out. Over the “mummerboard.” Apparently, snowboarding on Earth is identical to mumboarding on Meridian, and Caleb’s a pro at it. According to Cornelia later, Meridianites do this on mudslides. Damn. Meridianites are born and bred badasses. At the exact same time all of this is going on, Cedric takes Blunk to a cave up in the mountain, demanding info from Will. To his credit, the little guy doesn’t spill. Just before the race, Will plans to have Hay Lin use her powers of air to keep her upright and speeding down the mountain, so she transforms, cluing Cedric in to where she is.
Will arrives at the starting line, and Matt tries and fails once again to talk her and Sondra out of this stupid idea. He should talk to Caleb about how impossible these girls can be. Will leads Sondra down the trail, and Hay Lin’s cyclones keep Will above the snow and on her feet, which shocks everyone else in on the Guardians’ powers. But halfway down the trail, she’s distracted saving a bunny from a hungry fox, and Will stumbles into Dead Man’s Trail. Against the boys’ warnings that are way too far for her to hear, Sondra follows her. Meanwhile, Cedric creates an avalanche to stop the other girls, and Knickerbocker warns the other students back inside…wait just a second there! Knickerbocker’s been there the whole time?! And she didn’t stop the girls from doing something dangerous?! We know she’s right up there at the starting line because it’s the only way she and the others can get inside while the Guardians, Caleb, and Yan Lin are buried, but GOD, what a horribly irresponsible chaperone! Sheffield really IS evil. Anyway, Hay Lin manages to lose Will in the forest, and Sondra pulls ahead as Will falls flat on her face. Hay Lin tries to explain what happened, but Cedric attacks them, apparently managing to move a whole lot faster now that he doesn’t have a really tiny Passling that didn’t fight back at all. Speaking of Blunk, he discovers that the cave has secret tunnels—volcanic vents that lead out the mountain and conveniently to the avalanche. Unlike in “The Labyrinth,” where the girls didn’t use their limited powers to get them through the library, now they’re trying to get themselves out. But Blunk manages to dig through to Taranee and Cornelia, and then all of them dig through to find Irma, Caleb, and Yan Lin. Knowing something evil’s afoot and they have to save Hay Lin and Will, the girls get on their skis (with Irma and Taranee sharing) while Caleb puts on his shades like he’s Horatio Caine and gets on his snowboard to save the day. On Dead Man’s Trail, where Will and Hay Lin are. The No Ski Zone. When Caleb’s the only one who even has a possibility of having the skills to make it through alive. Yeah, writers, didn’t think this through.
Will and Hay Lin are getting their butts kicked, but the girls arrive just in time, and Will transforms them so they don’t die a horrible death. Caleb snowboards up Cedric’s tail before coming to a land on the powder. Now you’re just showing off. The girls defeat Cedric in short order, but he escapes. They make their way back to the ski lodge, where Sondra’s been rescued after spraining her ankle. And out of pain and anger, her accent slips. She’s not Swiss at all. And unsurprisingly, she buys expensive cashmere instead of spinning it, and she doesn’t speak Russian. But it doesn’t matter; she plans to transfer the moment she calls her parents. Don’t you love how easy it is to get rid of a snotty new student on TV? Ignoring the fake, Matt asks Will if she wants the front of the bus or the back. No comment. And Irma’s annoyed when Martin and the other boys still find Sondra hot. Sorry, sweetie, but some things still impress even when they’re fake. This is why plastic surgery is still popular.
Later that night, Hay Lin notices that there aren’t any portals for Cedric to have used, and Will wonders where he could have gone. Hmm, maybe he’s the spy! The one you know is there! Because you were wondering about who it was for two episodes now! Oh, and don’t try to build suspense by showing Cedric shift into his human form and hide in the bookstore. This subplot is already becoming stupid enough.
This episode begins one of the two major canon ships of the series: Will/Matt. It’s handled pretty much like a typical high school romance (never mind the fact that both of them are in middle school; given that Matt takes a middle school science class, this would make him in the eighth grade at the most, and Will’s thirteen and either in seventh or eighth grade; unlike in the comics, he’s roughly her age instead of older and wiser). Will is hinted to have a bit of a crush on him in his cameo at the end of “Happy Birthday Will,” and he’s nice enough to walk her back inside to the party. Now, we see Matt reciprocating those feelings. He blushes when he looks at her in class and tries to avoid her gaze. He also seems completely immune to Sondra’s dazzling effect (which we’ll see again under completely different circumstances in season two), possibly because he likes Will so much. He also immediately takes her side at the end, when he actually starts mocking Sondra for her fake accent. What we get from his character at first glance is that he’s the sane one here—similar to Caleb in that he’s the voice of reason that nobody listens to, but better with his social skills. And even despite his confidence, he seems to be a bit shy around Will, based on that blush. But not shy enough not to suggest they take it to the back of the bus.
Sondra is the vehicle to starting the ship. She’s supposedly from Switzerland, but she’s only faking the little Swiss girl act—so, I’m guessing that in order for the news to spread that she’s from Switzerland, there’s got to be some truth in it; maybe she’s a military brat? Emphasis on the brat? And oddly enough, her design seems to be based on a combination of Irma and Cornelia, gone horribly, horribly right. Cornelia’s the pretty one on the team, and adding in traits of Irma adds to make it more annoying for her when Martin’s stars of love change alignment. All of the main six girls hate her, but Will takes special pride in her hatred because of Sondra hitting on Matt. As we’ve seen before (especially in “A Service to the Community”) Will isn’t exactly the coolest head on the team, and her plans blow up in her face because she thinks with her heart instead of her head. But this foreshadows an important point to her character much later on: When it comes to Matt, she takes things way too seriously.
And we’re back to Phobos’s Bad Plans. Today, we have two for the price of one. First, Phobos mentions a plan we never see in action to trade food for information. On paper, this sounds great: the villagers will sell each other out to get food. However, this is the truth: the villagers will sell each other out to get food. Phobos won’t get anything resembling reliable information—he’ll just get whatever the best liars can come up with so they can put dinner on the table. Second, he plans to separate the Guardians from Will so they don’t have their powers and can’t put up a decent fight. This would be good if he didn’t do it already at least twice before, and it still failed. Hell, there’s less dividing and conquering in this episode than there was in “The Labyrinth.” So, fail. Again.
Finally comes the prerequisite bitching about the production value. Sorry, guys. But a series that honestly looks this nice in terms of character design and artwork really should maintain that standard. Something about this episode really tripped up the character designers when it came to Matt. He looks horribly off-model in his ski gear. Look at his hair. I mean, where the hell did all of it come from? They have no problem drawing the others in ski gear, but they just seemed to screw that one up. Furthermore, during the really awkward conversation between Will and Matt, someone went overboard putting shadows in her hair, making half of her hair a very dull red. They fixed it by the end of the exchange where it finally looked like red hair with a bit of shadow for depth at the bottom, but yeah. And I’m wondering if Meridianites have a problem with mountains. As I complained earlier, Cedric kidnaps Blunk in the evening, possibly a little later at night. It’s at least mid-morning when he gets to the cave up the mountain, giving plenty of time for the girls to see that Caleb can snowboard and for Will and Hay Lin to get ready to cheat and Matt, Sondra, and everyone else from the school to gather for the race. And then he has no trouble whatsoever getting to the peak of the mountain to start the avalanche and then get down to Dead Man’s Trail to attack Hay Lin and Will. Guys, THINK about how you’re setting up your scene timeframes. It makes it look stupid if you do stuff like this.
“Divide and Conquer” was written by Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers. Matt was played by Jason Marsden. Lauren Tom played Sondra.
