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akinoameThanks to an unknown portal on Earth, Ceddy plans to track down Caleb’s hiding place. Meanwhile, Susan discovers Will’s terrible grades and grounds her from going to the movies over the weekend. Yeah, season one of W.I.T.C.H. is kind of bad at the whole transition thing, isn’t it? The movie is a fantasy epic that I’m sure in no way resembles Lord of the Rings, starring heartthrob Vance Michael Justin. It’s almost a shame that this series was made in 2004 and not later, otherwise we might have gotten a Twilight analogue like Ben 10 did. Turns out that Cornelia has a massive crush on Mr. Three First Names, to the point that none of the others want to sit next to her when she starts screaming out his name. Over and over. I have no comment about this. Will lies and says that’s she’s coming to the movie, which of course means she has to. Because it’s not like she can explain that she’s grounded or anything; that would be too easy for a slice-of-life series.
Across town, Caleb and Blunk are on the trail of a portal. Or at least, Caleb’s on the trail of a portal. Blunk goes missing, but Caleb’s honestly not too worried. He sees the girls (sans Cornelia, who’s still trying to sex up the movie poster) and heads out of the alley, totally missing the fact that somebody is following him. Caleb sees Cornelia flirting with the poster and begins making sarcastic commentary. This time, I can’t blame him because I’d do the same in that situation. They have a UST-filled argument in which Caleb tries to measure his sword against VMJ’s, if you know what I mean. But Cornelia walks off in the middle of his rant, and she somehow misses the sight of a taxi driving maniacally down the street. I thought the geological evidence of “Divide and Conquer” put Heatherfield on the West Coast, not in the middle of New York City. Anyway, the cab stops right in front of Caleb, and a couple of understandably terrified tourists get out and run for their lives, and Caleb discovers that the driver is Blunk. Though Blunk tries to explain that he didn’t steal the cab—he merely took “take a taxi” literally—Caleb hijacks the cab back from Blunk to try to return it to the hotel, not realizing that the monsters are still following him. Why couldn’t this have been the main plot?
While Hay Lin tries to convince her parents to let her go to the midnight premiere, the monsters and Cedric inform Phobos that they spotted Caleb but lost him in the city thanks to his terrible driving. So Phobos authorizes using the Tracker. Bizarrely transition back to Heatherfield (can this series seriously stop jumping around so much and figure out its pacing already?!) and Will gets annoyed with her math homework and decides to sneak out of the house as soon as she hears her mom go into the shower. Transition back to Caleb and his shitty driving skills nearly taking out half the city’s traffic, and he brings the cab to a sudden stop in an alley after Blunk vomits or farts or something that produces foul-smelling smoke. But from the hidden portal, the Tracker arrives with his hellhound…and suddenly, the Tracker can talk, and Caleb and Blunk make a run for it—after Blunk takes the air freshener for a snack. Meanwhile, Irma’s plans to go to the movie premiere are derailed when she’s got to take care of her bratty little brother, Chris. Between Chris and Lillian, it seems like all kid siblings on this show are total brats. Desperate to find some poor sucker to pawn babysitting duty off on, Irma is rescued by just that kind of fool coming to the door: Caleb and Blunk are looking for a place to hide out. To her credit, Irma is freaked when she hears that a search party is after Caleb, but he insists that he ditched them, since outwitting the Tracker is like outwitting a six-year-old. Cue six-year-old Chris running over his foot on a tricycle. Irma, sweetie? I think this is an obvious clue that Caleb is not babysitting material. But she ditches the brat on him anyway. Countdown to this backfiring. She damn well better pay Caleb for this.
The girls meet up outside the Silver Dragon, where Hay Lin’s parents are doing the overprotective thing before letting her go. At the theater, they realize they’re the only ones not cosplaying, but Cornelia has her princess getup ready. At the Lair house, Blunk is watching TV while Caleb tries to save various breakables and a pet goldfish from Chris’s rampage. Damn, getting blackmailed about your secret identity or having your transformation device stolen while babysitting are almost relaxing in comparison. At the theater again, Hay Lin tells her parents once again that she’s fine when the Heart of Kandrakar reacts to danger. Thanks to Blunk having left behind the bitten air freshener, the Tracker and his hound have the scent. They pass right by the people in line for the movie, but thanks to everybody there being in costume, they’re pretty much unnoticed. Kind of like if you try to attack Comic Con. The Tracker turns a corner and Irma realizes that they’re going after Caleb and Blunk at her house, and Will thankfully calls her an idiot for leaving her baby brother in the hands of Caleb and Blunk. Taranee says it’s cruel, but Hay Lin points out that it might actually be cruel for the babysitters and not the baby. Sure enough, Caleb gets hit in the face with some kind of batter when Chris and Blunk team up. And yet he’s still not the world’s worst babysitter. Will decides they need to transform, but Cornelia’s got her priorities straight, of course: Someone needs to stay on line to save their seats. Exactly. Caleb should be fine against the hunter who was easily wiping the floor with all of them just three episodes ago. The others transform and follow the path of destruction to find the Tracker attacking random cars. Because apparently despite being the best hunter in Meridian, he sucks at finding people. Given Phobos’s usual standards, I can buy it. The girls fight them off to keep them from finding the house, with Irma sending a flood to wash away Blunk’s scent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any good, so Hay Lin goes to trade with Cornelia. Meanwhile, in the Lair Torture House of Death, Caleb is failing to control the kid or the Passling when there’s a knock at the door. Fearing it’s the Tracker (because evil is polite enough to knock), Caleb tells them to settle down. But Chris is too dumb to live and starts loudly running toward the door. Unfortunately for natural selection, it’s only Yan Lin at the door. The Tracker manages to…well, track down Blunk and Caleb, but the girls attack, with Cornelia proving she can be kind of scary when she wants to be. I mean, really, having a pinecones grow out of the guy’s nostrils? Creepy. The Tracker gets free and once again manages to snare Will’s leg with his chain. Taranee manages to save her by generating fire in her hands and then apparently converting it into lightning. Hey, if it worked in Avatar, it’ll work here. Meanwhile, Yan Lin has managed to get Blunk and Chris to clean up the whole house, through what Caleb believes are her Mystical Grandma Powers, but she reveals it was just a cookie bribe. Caleb is then excited over the idea of cookies. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer. Caleb’s attitude adjustment over the course of the series is not due to anything like character development, but through the awesome power of chocolate chips. Girl Scouts, start looking for the cool loner guys; you’ll make a fortune. Yan Lin tells off Caleb for his stupidity regarding the Tracker and not asking for help, and when Caleb insists that there’s no way the Tracker possibly could have followed him, he hears the howl of the Tracker’s dog from down the street.
Irma trades off with Hay Lin as the Tracker finds the house. Battle ensues in which the house is damaged, and Caleb nobly decides to sacrifice himself by taking a skateboard and a helmet (…which would have been bought for a six-year-old but somehow fits his head), grabbing Blunk (who also somehow has a helmet), and going out to lure the Tracker away and find that portal. Caleb shreds down the hilly streets of Heatherfield (which makes it look like San Francisco), heading for the portal behind the theater while evading the Tracker’s attacks. Inside the theater, Irma is trying to save the girls’ seats when she discovers the portal on the screen. Fortunately, Caleb and Blunk arrive, but unfortunately, so too has the Tracker. Caleb, Irma, and Blunk flee inside, chased by the Tracker. Caleb runs up on stage and engages the Tracker in a fight, which the audience thinks is just a pre-show martial arts demonstration or something. Caleb jumps inside the portal, followed by the Tracker, and just as the Guardians get anxious and the audience gets bored, Caleb leaps back out, allowing Will to seal it. The movie begins and the girls collapse.
Mrs. Lair and Susan meet up to pick up their daughters, pissed at what Irma and Will pulled on them by Irma ditching babysitting duty on Yan Lin and Will breaking her grounding. An usher wakes up Will, Irma, Taranee, and Cornelia, who realize in horror that they slept through the movie. But Hay Lin saw the whole thing, completely oblivious to the fact that her friends were asleep.
There’s not much to analyze here. The main subplot revolves around Caleb’s stubborn insistence on doing things without the girls’ help, and I just covered that in “Ambus at Torus Filney.” Really, all this episode does is build more on his and Cornelia’s UST and give a better introduction to the Tracker.
The Tracker first appeared in “The Labyrinth,” coming out of the blue to hunt down Will and Caleb after they escaped from Phobos’s castle. When he first appeared, he was completely silent, which made him creepy as all hell. Silent, monstrous, and competent, he was a force to be reckoned with, only managing to be outpowered by the Guardians. Sadly, giving him a voice makes him seem less frightening, even with his voice actor trying to go for what would happen if Ezekiel Rage were Batman. His competency also takes a hit, since the build-up to him finding Caleb and Blunk is shown, unlike when he just seemed to pop out of nowhere to find the Guardians in his first appearance. But at least we see that the team fears him, though it comes from experience.
For all this season has a shaky feel to it, this is the first episode that really feels like filler. It’s not necessarily a bad episode; it just doesn’t do enough to justify existing. It doesn’t contribute to the “Find the missing sister” plot, and the rest of the story is just a pain to get through. Caleb’s personality conflicts were only just explored a few episodes ago, the A plot is the girls trying to see a frickin’ movie, and the Tracker—who was already introduced—loses some of his edge due to the focus on him. The production values are still at their shaky nature, with voice actors changing randomly, and ADR becoming confusing—like when Kittie (Taranee) says a line about needing to save Caleb, and Hay Lin teases Cornelia that her comment means she likes him. I know that Disney didn’t exactly care for this show, but I’d think that by episode nine, somebody on staff might care enough to make sure that these same dumb mistakes don’t keep happening.
“Return of the Tracker” was written by Andy Guerdat and Steve Sullivan. No guest voice actors were credited, but I recognized a couple and checked IMDB for the rest (well, for Chris). James “MY CABBAGES!” Sie played Mr. Lin and I think Lauren Tom played Mrs. Lin. Chris was played by Cesar Flores. Michael Bell played the Tracker.
Across town, Caleb and Blunk are on the trail of a portal. Or at least, Caleb’s on the trail of a portal. Blunk goes missing, but Caleb’s honestly not too worried. He sees the girls (sans Cornelia, who’s still trying to sex up the movie poster) and heads out of the alley, totally missing the fact that somebody is following him. Caleb sees Cornelia flirting with the poster and begins making sarcastic commentary. This time, I can’t blame him because I’d do the same in that situation. They have a UST-filled argument in which Caleb tries to measure his sword against VMJ’s, if you know what I mean. But Cornelia walks off in the middle of his rant, and she somehow misses the sight of a taxi driving maniacally down the street. I thought the geological evidence of “Divide and Conquer” put Heatherfield on the West Coast, not in the middle of New York City. Anyway, the cab stops right in front of Caleb, and a couple of understandably terrified tourists get out and run for their lives, and Caleb discovers that the driver is Blunk. Though Blunk tries to explain that he didn’t steal the cab—he merely took “take a taxi” literally—Caleb hijacks the cab back from Blunk to try to return it to the hotel, not realizing that the monsters are still following him. Why couldn’t this have been the main plot?
While Hay Lin tries to convince her parents to let her go to the midnight premiere, the monsters and Cedric inform Phobos that they spotted Caleb but lost him in the city thanks to his terrible driving. So Phobos authorizes using the Tracker. Bizarrely transition back to Heatherfield (can this series seriously stop jumping around so much and figure out its pacing already?!) and Will gets annoyed with her math homework and decides to sneak out of the house as soon as she hears her mom go into the shower. Transition back to Caleb and his shitty driving skills nearly taking out half the city’s traffic, and he brings the cab to a sudden stop in an alley after Blunk vomits or farts or something that produces foul-smelling smoke. But from the hidden portal, the Tracker arrives with his hellhound…and suddenly, the Tracker can talk, and Caleb and Blunk make a run for it—after Blunk takes the air freshener for a snack. Meanwhile, Irma’s plans to go to the movie premiere are derailed when she’s got to take care of her bratty little brother, Chris. Between Chris and Lillian, it seems like all kid siblings on this show are total brats. Desperate to find some poor sucker to pawn babysitting duty off on, Irma is rescued by just that kind of fool coming to the door: Caleb and Blunk are looking for a place to hide out. To her credit, Irma is freaked when she hears that a search party is after Caleb, but he insists that he ditched them, since outwitting the Tracker is like outwitting a six-year-old. Cue six-year-old Chris running over his foot on a tricycle. Irma, sweetie? I think this is an obvious clue that Caleb is not babysitting material. But she ditches the brat on him anyway. Countdown to this backfiring. She damn well better pay Caleb for this.
The girls meet up outside the Silver Dragon, where Hay Lin’s parents are doing the overprotective thing before letting her go. At the theater, they realize they’re the only ones not cosplaying, but Cornelia has her princess getup ready. At the Lair house, Blunk is watching TV while Caleb tries to save various breakables and a pet goldfish from Chris’s rampage. Damn, getting blackmailed about your secret identity or having your transformation device stolen while babysitting are almost relaxing in comparison. At the theater again, Hay Lin tells her parents once again that she’s fine when the Heart of Kandrakar reacts to danger. Thanks to Blunk having left behind the bitten air freshener, the Tracker and his hound have the scent. They pass right by the people in line for the movie, but thanks to everybody there being in costume, they’re pretty much unnoticed. Kind of like if you try to attack Comic Con. The Tracker turns a corner and Irma realizes that they’re going after Caleb and Blunk at her house, and Will thankfully calls her an idiot for leaving her baby brother in the hands of Caleb and Blunk. Taranee says it’s cruel, but Hay Lin points out that it might actually be cruel for the babysitters and not the baby. Sure enough, Caleb gets hit in the face with some kind of batter when Chris and Blunk team up. And yet he’s still not the world’s worst babysitter. Will decides they need to transform, but Cornelia’s got her priorities straight, of course: Someone needs to stay on line to save their seats. Exactly. Caleb should be fine against the hunter who was easily wiping the floor with all of them just three episodes ago. The others transform and follow the path of destruction to find the Tracker attacking random cars. Because apparently despite being the best hunter in Meridian, he sucks at finding people. Given Phobos’s usual standards, I can buy it. The girls fight them off to keep them from finding the house, with Irma sending a flood to wash away Blunk’s scent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any good, so Hay Lin goes to trade with Cornelia. Meanwhile, in the Lair Torture House of Death, Caleb is failing to control the kid or the Passling when there’s a knock at the door. Fearing it’s the Tracker (because evil is polite enough to knock), Caleb tells them to settle down. But Chris is too dumb to live and starts loudly running toward the door. Unfortunately for natural selection, it’s only Yan Lin at the door. The Tracker manages to…well, track down Blunk and Caleb, but the girls attack, with Cornelia proving she can be kind of scary when she wants to be. I mean, really, having a pinecones grow out of the guy’s nostrils? Creepy. The Tracker gets free and once again manages to snare Will’s leg with his chain. Taranee manages to save her by generating fire in her hands and then apparently converting it into lightning. Hey, if it worked in Avatar, it’ll work here. Meanwhile, Yan Lin has managed to get Blunk and Chris to clean up the whole house, through what Caleb believes are her Mystical Grandma Powers, but she reveals it was just a cookie bribe. Caleb is then excited over the idea of cookies. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer. Caleb’s attitude adjustment over the course of the series is not due to anything like character development, but through the awesome power of chocolate chips. Girl Scouts, start looking for the cool loner guys; you’ll make a fortune. Yan Lin tells off Caleb for his stupidity regarding the Tracker and not asking for help, and when Caleb insists that there’s no way the Tracker possibly could have followed him, he hears the howl of the Tracker’s dog from down the street.
Irma trades off with Hay Lin as the Tracker finds the house. Battle ensues in which the house is damaged, and Caleb nobly decides to sacrifice himself by taking a skateboard and a helmet (…which would have been bought for a six-year-old but somehow fits his head), grabbing Blunk (who also somehow has a helmet), and going out to lure the Tracker away and find that portal. Caleb shreds down the hilly streets of Heatherfield (which makes it look like San Francisco), heading for the portal behind the theater while evading the Tracker’s attacks. Inside the theater, Irma is trying to save the girls’ seats when she discovers the portal on the screen. Fortunately, Caleb and Blunk arrive, but unfortunately, so too has the Tracker. Caleb, Irma, and Blunk flee inside, chased by the Tracker. Caleb runs up on stage and engages the Tracker in a fight, which the audience thinks is just a pre-show martial arts demonstration or something. Caleb jumps inside the portal, followed by the Tracker, and just as the Guardians get anxious and the audience gets bored, Caleb leaps back out, allowing Will to seal it. The movie begins and the girls collapse.
Mrs. Lair and Susan meet up to pick up their daughters, pissed at what Irma and Will pulled on them by Irma ditching babysitting duty on Yan Lin and Will breaking her grounding. An usher wakes up Will, Irma, Taranee, and Cornelia, who realize in horror that they slept through the movie. But Hay Lin saw the whole thing, completely oblivious to the fact that her friends were asleep.
There’s not much to analyze here. The main subplot revolves around Caleb’s stubborn insistence on doing things without the girls’ help, and I just covered that in “Ambus at Torus Filney.” Really, all this episode does is build more on his and Cornelia’s UST and give a better introduction to the Tracker.
The Tracker first appeared in “The Labyrinth,” coming out of the blue to hunt down Will and Caleb after they escaped from Phobos’s castle. When he first appeared, he was completely silent, which made him creepy as all hell. Silent, monstrous, and competent, he was a force to be reckoned with, only managing to be outpowered by the Guardians. Sadly, giving him a voice makes him seem less frightening, even with his voice actor trying to go for what would happen if Ezekiel Rage were Batman. His competency also takes a hit, since the build-up to him finding Caleb and Blunk is shown, unlike when he just seemed to pop out of nowhere to find the Guardians in his first appearance. But at least we see that the team fears him, though it comes from experience.
For all this season has a shaky feel to it, this is the first episode that really feels like filler. It’s not necessarily a bad episode; it just doesn’t do enough to justify existing. It doesn’t contribute to the “Find the missing sister” plot, and the rest of the story is just a pain to get through. Caleb’s personality conflicts were only just explored a few episodes ago, the A plot is the girls trying to see a frickin’ movie, and the Tracker—who was already introduced—loses some of his edge due to the focus on him. The production values are still at their shaky nature, with voice actors changing randomly, and ADR becoming confusing—like when Kittie (Taranee) says a line about needing to save Caleb, and Hay Lin teases Cornelia that her comment means she likes him. I know that Disney didn’t exactly care for this show, but I’d think that by episode nine, somebody on staff might care enough to make sure that these same dumb mistakes don’t keep happening.
“Return of the Tracker” was written by Andy Guerdat and Steve Sullivan. No guest voice actors were credited, but I recognized a couple and checked IMDB for the rest (well, for Chris). James “MY CABBAGES!” Sie played Mr. Lin and I think Lauren Tom played Mrs. Lin. Chris was played by Cesar Flores. Michael Bell played the Tracker.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-16 07:10 am (UTC)Some of things I did not like about the animated version of WITCH is that they made Hay Lin so ditsy and oblivious to many things than her original counterpart in the comic series.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-16 10:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-16 05:35 pm (UTC)While season 2 changed a lot of...obvious things, at least they still managed to keep some of the girls' characteristics straight on than the new comic writers.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-16 05:45 pm (UTC)Irma doesn't seem to be contributing much to the comic's storyline lately. She's there to eat and make bad jokes. Sure, she'll fight, but where she can be helpful in a fight she's not as helpful in the overall plot. And I feel like the oneshot nature of the current arc has really made things suffer. It's become a slice-of-life plot, which as you can see with this season's reviews, I'm not particularly fond of.
I enjoy things changing in adaptations. Seriously, it's one of the things I praised in the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime and cringed at in the closer-to-source Brotherhood, and I frequently complain about the "constraints" of the Shinkenger footage holding back Power Rangers Samurai (among various other complaints). But it also has to be handled by someone who really knows what they're doing, like Greg Weisman. Possibly one of the best examples at Doing It Right vs. Doing It Wrong is Weisman's interpretation of Matt against the comics version, where he was suddenly important to the plot and had been lying about being uninvolved and was actually from Kandrakar the whole time...only for the writers to completely forget that aspect of his characterization one arc later, and they now treat him as nothing more than an ordinary guy.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-16 06:53 pm (UTC)I like Matt Olsen better as the guitar player/normal earth boy who doesn't know how to fight than having him playing Batman (in this case, we're calling him "BatMatt" now). I had really enjoy seeing him asking Caleb for help in season 2. At least he doesn't sound and act like a condescending jerk. I had liked Matt the way he was at first up until the beginning of the 7th saga where the girls got their New Power costumes. I didn't really like the idea of having him as Shagon the 2nd time (while serving under Lilian) in season 2, but if I have to compare him with the new "BatMatt" in the recent comics, I'd prefer the Shagon Matt anytime. Just thinking about it makes me want to kick his butt around with the Heart of Kandrakar.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-17 01:31 am (UTC)As you're going to see when I get to my Ryuki reviews, I don't mind assholish characters when they've got a reason behind it. If something they have to be because they're fighting for something or looking for something. Or as in one memorable case, when they're charming enough to get away with it (plus, the guy's a lawyer, so I expect him to be scum). Matt had no reason to be vengeance and the night. It came out of left field, it went against everything we already knew about his character and his history, and it required butchering the characterization of half the supporting cast. As opposed to Shagon v 2.0 in the series, who I actually liked, and I'll get to my thoughts on him when I get to that point in the series. There's a big setup for Matt's character development along with everyone else's as I get closer to season 2.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-17 03:22 am (UTC)It's things like this that makes me missed the older issues, because they were more in depth with the characters and the stories than the recent ones these days.