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akinoameSevenseven makes an assassination attempt on Ben’s mother, but Grandpa Max manages to stop it just in time, and with Sandra none the wiser. But he’s injured and he’s already stopped nine attempts, and he knows he can’t keep it a secret any longer.
Ben and the team have just saved a train from Rojo and her new gang (whom I will temporarily nickname Azula and Amarilla until they get names) when the New Rustbucket (seriously needs a new nickname) breaks up any chance for a press conference. Max explains to the kids that since Ben’s identity came out, his old enemies have decided to get revenge by attacking his family. Max had been preventing the attacks in secret, and Ben and Gwen are bothered by the fact that he didn’t tell them. But now he can’t, and it’s up to the kids to do it.
A worried Ben keeps a close eye on his mother while she does her balance exercises, but when his dad has to go shopping, he calls the others to make sure he gets there safely. Sure enough, a team of villains is waiting—Charmcaster and Vulkanus, led by the guy who put out the hit, Zombozo the clown. The team takes them down, and Zombozo covers their escape, and Ben is relieved to see that his dad never even knew about the danger. Still, Ben has Gwen act as a bodyguard for his mom when she goes shopping, but Zombozo and the gang catch Gwen off-guard. They kidnap Sandra and knock out Gwen, hauling off Charmcaster so she remembers the priority: she can’t kill Gwen now because they need a witness.
When Gwen tells Ben that she failed to save his mother from a psychotic clown, he has a bit of a Bale-out. Kevin manages to remind him that the important thing to do is save his mom and not play the blame game, and Ben apologizes before getting Highbreed-arc serious. Showing off his detective skills once again, he realizes that the clown is hiding out at the Old Abandoned Amusement Park, but they’re forced to split up to cover more ground. All three hear a scream and race to find Sandra, but Ben finds Vulkanus and Kevin finds Charmcaster. Interestingly, Kevin outwits Charmcaster while Ben is too pissed off to think straight, and he goes Ultimate Big Chill, muscling his way past Vulkanus (while Ben has been relying more on his muscles than his brain since Vilgax’s return, usually you don’t see him lose his temper or Kevin fighting smart; it’s an interesting trade in battle tactics). Gwen, meanwhile, has found Zombozo, who has Sandra precariously balancing on a tightrope. But two firebombs on the ends of the rope blow up, igniting it. Gwen has a Bale-out of her own, going into her Anodyte state and threatening Zombozo if he ever touches their families again. Zombozo reacts the way anyone would when faced with a glowing energy being with a reverberating voice who’s suddenly displayed the ability to change her size and is very, very angry: he screams like a little girl.
We don’t see the outcome, and it’s probably for the best, but Gwen manages to rescue her aunt and enjoys some cotton candy in the face of her victory. The boys arrive, and Ben is relieved to see his mother safe, but when Kevin asks what happened to Zombozo, Gwen smirks and insists they “came to an understanding.”
The number one reason a hero keeps a secret identity is to protect the people in his normal life. When this comes out, suddenly, everyone he loves is in mortal danger. As Zombozo explains to Gwen, he put a hit out on Ben’s family not simply to destroy Ben, but to make him suffer. And it’s a very effective plan—Ben puts everything on hold so he can keep an eye on his parents, and he worries about their every move. When his mother is kidnapped, he reacts in a way not at all unlike Katara in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode “The Southern Raiders.” There is no honor among these villains—as long as it’ll piss Ben off, it’s fair game. I have to say that I’m surprised that they haven’t used this tactic earlier; the only times family members were targeted by enemies in the past for Alien Force/Ultimate Alien were Ken in “Max Out” and the Levin family in “Vendetta.” Both times, it had been to settle a score with the Plumbers—to lure Max into a trap and to uncover where Devin had hidden the key. But Zombozo wants Ben to know how it feels to lose his loved ones, rather than just lure him into a trap. Call it a “bad day,” if you will. Either way, I’m still not sure why they waited until now to attack, given that Ben’s identity has never been a secret from his enemies. Consider how many times Rita and Zedd attacked the Power Rangers’ parents and assorted cousins and tell me how hard it is to google “Ben Tennyson.” Those reporters had to find his house somehow; are the villains seriously that much lazier than the media?
I’ve described Ben as having two “modes”—whatever his default personality is this season (whether it’s serious in AF season 1, cheerful and optimistic in season 2, or egotistical in season 3; UA season 1 has only just started, and there’s enough personality drift across the three episodes that you can’t always tell) and “hero mode.” Hero mode—or sometimes “leader mode”—is when he stops goofing off and begins taking things deathly seriously. Typically, it happens when he knows he’s got a particularly tough mission or when Grandpa Max asks him to do something. Here, Ben seems to go beyond his normal hero mode. The moment he learns of the threat to his family, he’s on constant vigilance. He doesn’t even react to Kevin’s teasing him about his phobias; he’s too intent on checking up on his dad and being sure he’s okay. And when they get his mom, he’s pissed. Listen to the way he freaks out on Gwen. Then go back to “Ben 10 Returns” and listen to him freak out on Gwen for a joke about Max dying. Both times, Kevin has to remind Ben to get a grip, and it’s clear that Ben has a very intense fear in the front of his mind about these possibilities. His family is extremely important to him. Family is important for all the Tennysons—Ken’s kidnapping resulted in the clan blowing stuff up in “Max Out,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” indicated that Gwen’s parents wanted to protect her from the truth of her heritage for fear of losing her, and Ben’s parents did whatever they could to protect him in “Grounded” by either grounding him or beating the shit out of the alien that dared lay a hand on him. I’ve said before: if you mess with this family, they will fuck you up. And you see just how personally Ben takes this. He won’t rest until his mom is safe and sound. He’s glaring the entire time throughout the search. He doesn’t even stop to banter with Vulkanus—he tells him to shut up; Ben isn’t exactly polite to his rogues, but he’s never told them to just shut up and fight, like Batman would. And of course, he hurries the fight along and even goes to Ultimate just to get the battle over with. Vulkanus is suitably freaked out. Ben’s never really lost his temper like this before. He gets angry, but he usually keeps it under control during a fight—even Rath is more coolheaded than Ben was this time around. Given how this series deals so much with Ben’s identity being public and all of the consequences that go along with it, I really wonder just what else we’ll see from Ben in response to these bad consequences.
And I found it absolutely fitting that Gwen was the one who found Sandra in the end. She needed to redeem herself—in her own eyes, if no one else’s. She’s really not to blame for being unable to stop the kidnapping; as Bruce Wayne and Terry McGinnis can attest, psychotic clowns keep insanely high-voltage joybuzzers on-hand. And Ben apologized for blaming her—Kevin pointed out to him that passing the blame would just waste precious time that could be spent finding Sandra, and just like in “Ben 10 Returns,” Ben’s apology was heartfelt, indicating he didn’t want to hurt her; he was just reacting in fear, and fear leads to anger. But Gwen was taking it hard to begin with—she’d promised to protect her aunt, and she failed to do so, and Gwen is a protector at heart. It wasn’t even one of her normal enemies who took her down—it was a clown! A one-shot villain Ben couldn’t remember. A one-shot villain who didn’t even remember her! She also gets even more violent than Ben when it comes to family members in danger, as seen with her lightning and explosions back in “Max Out,” and here with the Anodyte State (TM). The last time we saw her reach the Anodyte State was in “War of the Worlds,” to protect Kevin from a vicious beating by a Highbreed. Kevin had to talk her down so she wouldn’t give into it and ascend completely. Here, Gwen knows how to control her transformation back quite well, along with some of the powers of her Anodyte form. As she tells Zombozo, pissing off Ben isn’t nearly as dangerous as pissing her off. No kidding.
A lot of people noticed that Zombozo was played very much like the Joker—he even sounded like Mark Hamill (Batman: The Animated Series) at a few points, and he licked his lips at one point which reminded me of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. I think it just sets things up as more satisfying when Gwen scares the shit out of him. Forget Batman; Gwen does enough of a job scaring villains. We also see that he uses confetti to mask his escape, which could explain how he survived at the end of “Last Laugh,” his one and only episode in the original. Otherwise, there’s really not a whole lot to say about this guy. He only showed up once, aggravated Ben’s coulrophobia, was scared away by Ghostfreak, and now was scared away by Gwen. Yeah, he kidnapped Gwen, but it wasn’t something noteworthy; neither he nor Ben remembers the incident at all!
Ben achieves Ultimate Big Chill this episode, and this time, there’s no freaky flashing eyes when he reverts to human form. So no Avatar State or evil whatever right now. Ultimate Big Chill purposely keeps the battle short, so all we see out of him is more intense ice breath and “freezing flames.” At first, this seems impossible, but I remembered the laws of thermodynamics, and they actually support the idea—the flames probably are endothermic, meaning that they absorb heat rather than releasing it, thereby causing ice crystals to form all over whatever he’s attacked until it’s frozen solid. In any case, the form gives some kind of connection to Big Chill’s devouring molten metal and his babies needing to survive off solar plasma (“Save the Last Dance”).
The writer for this episode also did “Vendetta” in Alien Force season three, so appropriately, there are some throwbacks. It’s a nice touch when Kevin tells Ben what he’d do if it was his mother who’d been kidnapped, given that his first reaction when he found his house ransacked and half-destroyed was to rush inside looking for his mother, hugging her in relief when she comes home and says that she’d been out during the attack. When Max warns the kids about the attacks on Ben’s parents, Kevin vows that if his mother was attacked, he’d put an end to it “permanently.” Gwen is disturbed by this, but Max doesn’t call him on it. Both reactions are appropriate, given “Vendetta”—Gwen worried the whole time that Kevin would kill Ragnarok, and Max knows that Kevin has every right to react that way, given his father’s murder and how the family was still targeted afterward. Gwen continues to worry about Kevin’s potential reaction, and once Ben splits off from them, she warns Kevin not to take the law into his own hands. He responds that “unfortunately,” he’ll play by Gwen’s rules this time. Again, neither Ben nor Gwen knows exactly what happened to Ragnarok, and Gwen’s just as vague to explain to Kevin what happened to Zombozo as he’d been to explain how Ragnarok didn’t escape.
“Hit ‘Em Where They Live” was written by Len Wein. Beth Littleford reprised her role as Sandra Tennyson. Kari Wahlgren played Charmcaster. John DiMaggio played Vulkanus and Zombozo.
Ben and the team have just saved a train from Rojo and her new gang (whom I will temporarily nickname Azula and Amarilla until they get names) when the New Rustbucket (seriously needs a new nickname) breaks up any chance for a press conference. Max explains to the kids that since Ben’s identity came out, his old enemies have decided to get revenge by attacking his family. Max had been preventing the attacks in secret, and Ben and Gwen are bothered by the fact that he didn’t tell them. But now he can’t, and it’s up to the kids to do it.
A worried Ben keeps a close eye on his mother while she does her balance exercises, but when his dad has to go shopping, he calls the others to make sure he gets there safely. Sure enough, a team of villains is waiting—Charmcaster and Vulkanus, led by the guy who put out the hit, Zombozo the clown. The team takes them down, and Zombozo covers their escape, and Ben is relieved to see that his dad never even knew about the danger. Still, Ben has Gwen act as a bodyguard for his mom when she goes shopping, but Zombozo and the gang catch Gwen off-guard. They kidnap Sandra and knock out Gwen, hauling off Charmcaster so she remembers the priority: she can’t kill Gwen now because they need a witness.
When Gwen tells Ben that she failed to save his mother from a psychotic clown, he has a bit of a Bale-out. Kevin manages to remind him that the important thing to do is save his mom and not play the blame game, and Ben apologizes before getting Highbreed-arc serious. Showing off his detective skills once again, he realizes that the clown is hiding out at the Old Abandoned Amusement Park, but they’re forced to split up to cover more ground. All three hear a scream and race to find Sandra, but Ben finds Vulkanus and Kevin finds Charmcaster. Interestingly, Kevin outwits Charmcaster while Ben is too pissed off to think straight, and he goes Ultimate Big Chill, muscling his way past Vulkanus (while Ben has been relying more on his muscles than his brain since Vilgax’s return, usually you don’t see him lose his temper or Kevin fighting smart; it’s an interesting trade in battle tactics). Gwen, meanwhile, has found Zombozo, who has Sandra precariously balancing on a tightrope. But two firebombs on the ends of the rope blow up, igniting it. Gwen has a Bale-out of her own, going into her Anodyte state and threatening Zombozo if he ever touches their families again. Zombozo reacts the way anyone would when faced with a glowing energy being with a reverberating voice who’s suddenly displayed the ability to change her size and is very, very angry: he screams like a little girl.
We don’t see the outcome, and it’s probably for the best, but Gwen manages to rescue her aunt and enjoys some cotton candy in the face of her victory. The boys arrive, and Ben is relieved to see his mother safe, but when Kevin asks what happened to Zombozo, Gwen smirks and insists they “came to an understanding.”
The number one reason a hero keeps a secret identity is to protect the people in his normal life. When this comes out, suddenly, everyone he loves is in mortal danger. As Zombozo explains to Gwen, he put a hit out on Ben’s family not simply to destroy Ben, but to make him suffer. And it’s a very effective plan—Ben puts everything on hold so he can keep an eye on his parents, and he worries about their every move. When his mother is kidnapped, he reacts in a way not at all unlike Katara in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode “The Southern Raiders.” There is no honor among these villains—as long as it’ll piss Ben off, it’s fair game. I have to say that I’m surprised that they haven’t used this tactic earlier; the only times family members were targeted by enemies in the past for Alien Force/Ultimate Alien were Ken in “Max Out” and the Levin family in “Vendetta.” Both times, it had been to settle a score with the Plumbers—to lure Max into a trap and to uncover where Devin had hidden the key. But Zombozo wants Ben to know how it feels to lose his loved ones, rather than just lure him into a trap. Call it a “bad day,” if you will. Either way, I’m still not sure why they waited until now to attack, given that Ben’s identity has never been a secret from his enemies. Consider how many times Rita and Zedd attacked the Power Rangers’ parents and assorted cousins and tell me how hard it is to google “Ben Tennyson.” Those reporters had to find his house somehow; are the villains seriously that much lazier than the media?
I’ve described Ben as having two “modes”—whatever his default personality is this season (whether it’s serious in AF season 1, cheerful and optimistic in season 2, or egotistical in season 3; UA season 1 has only just started, and there’s enough personality drift across the three episodes that you can’t always tell) and “hero mode.” Hero mode—or sometimes “leader mode”—is when he stops goofing off and begins taking things deathly seriously. Typically, it happens when he knows he’s got a particularly tough mission or when Grandpa Max asks him to do something. Here, Ben seems to go beyond his normal hero mode. The moment he learns of the threat to his family, he’s on constant vigilance. He doesn’t even react to Kevin’s teasing him about his phobias; he’s too intent on checking up on his dad and being sure he’s okay. And when they get his mom, he’s pissed. Listen to the way he freaks out on Gwen. Then go back to “Ben 10 Returns” and listen to him freak out on Gwen for a joke about Max dying. Both times, Kevin has to remind Ben to get a grip, and it’s clear that Ben has a very intense fear in the front of his mind about these possibilities. His family is extremely important to him. Family is important for all the Tennysons—Ken’s kidnapping resulted in the clan blowing stuff up in “Max Out,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” indicated that Gwen’s parents wanted to protect her from the truth of her heritage for fear of losing her, and Ben’s parents did whatever they could to protect him in “Grounded” by either grounding him or beating the shit out of the alien that dared lay a hand on him. I’ve said before: if you mess with this family, they will fuck you up. And you see just how personally Ben takes this. He won’t rest until his mom is safe and sound. He’s glaring the entire time throughout the search. He doesn’t even stop to banter with Vulkanus—he tells him to shut up; Ben isn’t exactly polite to his rogues, but he’s never told them to just shut up and fight, like Batman would. And of course, he hurries the fight along and even goes to Ultimate just to get the battle over with. Vulkanus is suitably freaked out. Ben’s never really lost his temper like this before. He gets angry, but he usually keeps it under control during a fight—even Rath is more coolheaded than Ben was this time around. Given how this series deals so much with Ben’s identity being public and all of the consequences that go along with it, I really wonder just what else we’ll see from Ben in response to these bad consequences.
And I found it absolutely fitting that Gwen was the one who found Sandra in the end. She needed to redeem herself—in her own eyes, if no one else’s. She’s really not to blame for being unable to stop the kidnapping; as Bruce Wayne and Terry McGinnis can attest, psychotic clowns keep insanely high-voltage joybuzzers on-hand. And Ben apologized for blaming her—Kevin pointed out to him that passing the blame would just waste precious time that could be spent finding Sandra, and just like in “Ben 10 Returns,” Ben’s apology was heartfelt, indicating he didn’t want to hurt her; he was just reacting in fear, and fear leads to anger. But Gwen was taking it hard to begin with—she’d promised to protect her aunt, and she failed to do so, and Gwen is a protector at heart. It wasn’t even one of her normal enemies who took her down—it was a clown! A one-shot villain Ben couldn’t remember. A one-shot villain who didn’t even remember her! She also gets even more violent than Ben when it comes to family members in danger, as seen with her lightning and explosions back in “Max Out,” and here with the Anodyte State (TM). The last time we saw her reach the Anodyte State was in “War of the Worlds,” to protect Kevin from a vicious beating by a Highbreed. Kevin had to talk her down so she wouldn’t give into it and ascend completely. Here, Gwen knows how to control her transformation back quite well, along with some of the powers of her Anodyte form. As she tells Zombozo, pissing off Ben isn’t nearly as dangerous as pissing her off. No kidding.
A lot of people noticed that Zombozo was played very much like the Joker—he even sounded like Mark Hamill (Batman: The Animated Series) at a few points, and he licked his lips at one point which reminded me of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. I think it just sets things up as more satisfying when Gwen scares the shit out of him. Forget Batman; Gwen does enough of a job scaring villains. We also see that he uses confetti to mask his escape, which could explain how he survived at the end of “Last Laugh,” his one and only episode in the original. Otherwise, there’s really not a whole lot to say about this guy. He only showed up once, aggravated Ben’s coulrophobia, was scared away by Ghostfreak, and now was scared away by Gwen. Yeah, he kidnapped Gwen, but it wasn’t something noteworthy; neither he nor Ben remembers the incident at all!
Ben achieves Ultimate Big Chill this episode, and this time, there’s no freaky flashing eyes when he reverts to human form. So no Avatar State or evil whatever right now. Ultimate Big Chill purposely keeps the battle short, so all we see out of him is more intense ice breath and “freezing flames.” At first, this seems impossible, but I remembered the laws of thermodynamics, and they actually support the idea—the flames probably are endothermic, meaning that they absorb heat rather than releasing it, thereby causing ice crystals to form all over whatever he’s attacked until it’s frozen solid. In any case, the form gives some kind of connection to Big Chill’s devouring molten metal and his babies needing to survive off solar plasma (“Save the Last Dance”).
The writer for this episode also did “Vendetta” in Alien Force season three, so appropriately, there are some throwbacks. It’s a nice touch when Kevin tells Ben what he’d do if it was his mother who’d been kidnapped, given that his first reaction when he found his house ransacked and half-destroyed was to rush inside looking for his mother, hugging her in relief when she comes home and says that she’d been out during the attack. When Max warns the kids about the attacks on Ben’s parents, Kevin vows that if his mother was attacked, he’d put an end to it “permanently.” Gwen is disturbed by this, but Max doesn’t call him on it. Both reactions are appropriate, given “Vendetta”—Gwen worried the whole time that Kevin would kill Ragnarok, and Max knows that Kevin has every right to react that way, given his father’s murder and how the family was still targeted afterward. Gwen continues to worry about Kevin’s potential reaction, and once Ben splits off from them, she warns Kevin not to take the law into his own hands. He responds that “unfortunately,” he’ll play by Gwen’s rules this time. Again, neither Ben nor Gwen knows exactly what happened to Ragnarok, and Gwen’s just as vague to explain to Kevin what happened to Zombozo as he’d been to explain how Ragnarok didn’t escape.
“Hit ‘Em Where They Live” was written by Len Wein. Beth Littleford reprised her role as Sandra Tennyson. Kari Wahlgren played Charmcaster. John DiMaggio played Vulkanus and Zombozo.
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Date: 2010-05-09 03:15 am (UTC)Noticing Kevin's reaction was quite intriguing in it's own way, and it makes one wonder if this particular subject will come up again - if they come across an enemy who targets their family, he deems that they need to be taken down...permanently. Gwen will never approve of that tactic, which shows that she values all life no matter the decisions certain people have made; Charmcaster, for example.
I was really impressed when Gwen went Anodyte on Zombozo willingly at the end, which showed that she really has a handle on her powers since War of The Worlds as she returned to normal. Sandra being concerned about Gwen's diet was amusing, but not nearly as hilarious as when she stated she was gonna stay back and let her super-powered niece take care of her archnemesis.
Ben's transformation into Ultimate Big Chill was excellent to witness, and there isn't much I can say on him that wasn't already touched on-though him demanding that Vulkanus shut up was slightly amusing in it's own way. Ben acting like this ever since finding out that his parents were targets hasn't been seen quite often but when it is that shows he's realized his life isn't always gonna be about fun, going Hero or even his newfound fame. As Max stated, his fame has become his problem even if he won't admit it.
Switching to the icon I was tempted to use
Date: 2010-05-09 06:08 am (UTC)I've seen people complaining about Kevin and his willingness to kill in this episode and "Vendetta," saying that it's too late to throw in the references to him being a bad boy. But honestly? This hit home for him. He pretty much just went through this shit with his own mother. And looking at it from an outside perspective, there's nothing Ragnarok can gain from targeting Devin Levin's family--the man is dead already!
Kevin's always been more pragmatic than the cousins, and he also is very protective of them. It's obvious how protective he is of Gwen, but less so how protective he is of Ben. I've said it before--these two were destined to be best friends. They just ended up on the wrong sides, simply because they were both too stubborn to see things the other guy's way (they could have been the greatest hero team or the greatest villain team, depending on whose ideals were stronger). They've stood by each other and they've hurt each other more personally than anyone else ever could have. But they always recover and watch each other's backs. I'd have to say that Ben's the only family that really matters to Kevin (with Gwen in a category separate from "family").
I love Ben's parents. Especially his mom--she's so...spacey, it's awesome. I really think they might be the descendants of the hippies from Avatar.
Yeah, Ben seems to have a love-hate relationship with his fame. He started off hating it, mostly because he only got hate. Of course, Jimmy got to him about the "attention" thing (I swear, I'm not starting a thesis on what it means to him, given his childhood and all), so he's trying to enjoy the positive aspects... I don't know. All I know is that the Power Rangers never had it this hard. They could go to a press conference, and the worst they'd have to worry about was a kid calling the suits "spandex."
Okay, and Dillon being a smug but loveable asshole in front of the kids.