Leap of faith: W.I.T.C.H. 15-17
Dec. 22nd, 2011 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameThe Mudslugs (Amanda Rudolph Schwartz and Julie Dufine): Previously on W.I.T.C.H.: The plot really kicks off when Phobos not only finds Elyon but manages to lure her into Meridian, turning her against the girls, and Cornelia and Will argue over Will’s choice not to tell Elyon anything.
This, I’d have to say, is one of season one’s strongest episodes. In retrospect, it’s overshadowed by the end of the season, but when I was rewatching it, I was really struck by how solid it is. They do some pretty spectacular stuff with the fight scenes, for one. It’s a very desperate struggle against the swarm of mudslugs coming after them, and it’s scary seeing how they’re being stalked by them (because for some creepy reason, the girls all decided to give Elyon a locket for her birthday that contained locks of their hair; that’s not something normal thirteen-year-old girls do, and I’ve only ever seen it as a romance trope that hasn’t been around since the Victorian era). The Guardians’ powers aren’t at full strength for reasons I’ll get to in a minute, and it’s one of those situations where their experienced member, Caleb, really doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with it. He admits that he’s never come across a mother mudslug completely out of its hole, and he’s actually pretty scared about it. Once Cornelia joins the battle, however, things pick up. You’ve got some great shots of Caleb ducking and dodging, which is always pretty cool to watch, and this great bit where they animate an escape in the air from Taranee. She’s trying her hardest not to get hit by the tentacles (or tendrils or something—I’m not up on my mudslug anatomy), and there’s a lot of weaving away from them. Sure, she gets hit anyway and her flight path is erratic, but it’s pretty well animated. And Cornelia totally steals the show by tearing up a massive section of ground to unearth the mother mudslug and hurl it into the portal, a move that completely exhausts her and leads to a shippy moment where Caleb catches her, which quickly turns into a friendship moment when Will puts her hand on her shoulder and then the other girls surround them.
Ultimately, this episode’s theme is FRIENDSHIP. Will and Cornelia’s friendship has taken a hit since they first found out that Elyon was the Princess and Will decided it was better not to tell her what was going on. Cornelia always believed it was a mistake and that it would be better to tell Elyon who to beware of, but Will thought it would protect her better if she could live some semblance of a normal life. This decision has now bit them all in the ass, since Elyon can’t understand why they didn’t tell her, and it’s given Phobos the perfect chance to manipulate the truth and make Meridian look like a Disney Princess kingdom—almost to the point of parody, to be honest—all in an attempt to turn her against the girls. So now Cornelia has lost her best friend, and she blames Will for that. This episode doesn’t try to make one side look better than the other. It’s clear that Will made a mistake, but it’s also clear that Cornelia’s not listening to reason. Cornelia quits being a Guardian altogether, refusing to listen to any of the girls. But she also fails to listen to Caleb, who tries to approach her on neutral ground, admitting that Will was wrong, but also admitting that they need Cornelia and that the Rebels aren’t thinking so much along the lines of the plan falling apart; they’re just trying to survive. It’s actually a nice way to start building the ship between them. You know, until Caleb starts insulting her taste in music.
It’s revealed that the Heart of Kandrakar’s power is strongest when all five Guardians are together. I’m going to assume this means when there’s no in-fighting, since the girls have been separated across distances before without too much trouble, but this is the first time they’ve been divided. Once Cornelia joins them again, the Heart reacts and the Guardians hit full power again. The Heart also displays the ability to hack into radio frequencies so Will can broadcast a message to Cornelia. In the wake of season two, this makes perfect sense: it’s foreshadowing to the fifth element of Quintessence, pure energy, which especially works with electronics. However, when you take into account that season two was produced by an entirely different writing staff, it just seems like a terribly convenient plot device in season one.
Tracking down the timeframe again: The cast is back in sweaters, so I guess it’s fall now. Caleb is probably now sixteen.
Ghosts of Elyon (Andy Guerdat and Steve Sullivan): Excuse me for a moment while I make the obvious joke at Caleb scaling a castle wall using Passling spit (which looks oddly like bubblegum): Spider-Caleb, Spider-Caleb, does whatever a Spider-Caleb does.
All right, now that that’s out of my system, back to the review.
After what was really a strong episode before it, this one falls a little short. The story itself is okay, nothing spectacular: Caleb and the Guardians are baffled by astral projections of Elyon appearing throughout the city. Meanwhile, Will is arguing that she needs a little privacy, gets into a tiff with her mother, and runs away—which I’ll get to in a minute. Caleb breaks from the girls and goes to investigate on his own and is captured. Before he can be apparently strangled with his own belt in front of Elyon—seriously, Elyon, you’re okay with executing a fifteen/sixteen-year-old, even if you think he’s just a dick who lied to you?—the Guardians arrive and rescue him. Then the second half of the story focuses on Phobos trying to recover Elyon’s sketchbook, and the team tries to rescue Elyon from his secret underground bunker. And somewhere in there is a plothole where the team searched Elyon’s bedroom, including her closet, and never came across a portal, and one just happened to open conveniently when Will was the only one there; Phobos does not have the ability to open portals, and Elyon was only seen to be able to reroute a portal to a magical terrarium. Also, why are the windows boarded up at the Browns’? They were taken away suddenly, and the official story the girls are spreading is that they’re on vacation. Why does their house look like it’s condemned? The split story, however, doesn’t quite mesh together well. It feels like it should have been two separate episodes, only there hadn’t been enough material to cover them separately or they’d simply run out of time and had to compress together two episodes.
What bugs me more is the characterization. Caleb reverts to his bratty, sexist, assholish self, when he’d learned his lesson not to be such a brat to the girls back in “Ambush at Torus Filney”—apparently months ago, judging by their clothing—and he spent the last three episodes acting fairly mature. I complain about this because they’re trying to push the Caleb/Cornelia ship here, and he is just not making his case that he is good boyfriend material. Who the hell tells their crush that they’re willing to be there for them as emotional support, so long as they’re not talking about “girly stuff”?
Furthermore, this episode really kicks off something I’m going to be bitching about into season two: a little trope I like to call “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Will begins getting into arguments with her mother, who wants her to step up and take a little responsibility. This argument revolves around Will’s room, where she’s strewn her clothes all over the place. She’s lost their phone somewhere in the mess, along with half of a sandwich from who-knows-when. She insists that her mom has to stop coming into her room and just give her a little privacy. Her mom just wants her to clean up the room.
Now, at the time of this review, I’m twenty-four years old. I graduated from college two years ago. I have a full-time job. I pay rent, taxes, and bills. I’m the first to admit that I’m probably too old to relate. But I just cannot feel sympathetic to Will for this. I complained about it a couple of times with the original Ben 10, in Kevin 11 and especially in Ken 10. Yes, Will has a rough life. She’s fighting to save an alternate universe from an evil dictator who had essentially kidnapped one of her friends from school and is manipulating her into believing her friends are against her. She just came off of a massive fight with Cornelia over what happened, and even she admits that it’s her fault that Elyon doesn’t trust them. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t come off as a brat. Her mother is just asking her to pick up her room. And then her mom is going in and cleaning up for her. Can’t Will cut her mom a little bit of slack here? She’s not keeping up with her chores, and if it’s because of her Guardian duties, shouldn’t she be a little grateful to her mom for picking up her laundry? Or at least apologize for not being able to do all of this. Hell, even if she’s making up excuses like she’s stressing out for her tests, then at least it would be something. But no, she decides to run away from home because her mom told her to clean her room, and when she didn’t, she got grounded. Yeah. Real heroic of you there. Yes, Will is a thirteen-year-old girl, and these are normal thirteen-year-old girl problems. But the way she carries on and the way we’re supposed to take her side only make her seem like an entitled little brat, and that is not how I want to see my heroes.
The Mogriffs (Jaime Becker): There is no way around this. I have to bring this up because it is so at odds with the rest of the episode and its theme of redemption. The episode opens up with the girls heading to a pet store owned by Matt’s grandfather. When they get there, the blinds on the windows slide down, the doors lock, and all of the animals’ cages open. Then they see that Elyon has possessed Grandpa Olsen—a frail old man—and all of the animals. She uses the animals to threaten the Guardians for a moment before dropping poor old Grandpa Olsen to the floor and then leaving the animals to their own devices. Seriously, Gramps is lucky that the only problem he has then is absolute confusion as to how all of his animals got free.
Over the past two episodes, Elyon’s displayed a distressing lack of concern with killing her former friends. Yes, she’s being manipulated by Phobos. But this episode exists to emphasize that she is still the friend that they know and love. So it’s highly disturbing to see these things. It’s very clear that Phobos was going to execute Caleb in front of her over teatime the previous episode, and she possesses a senile old man and his animals this episode! Ignoring the threat to the girls, let’s think about poor Mr. Olsen here. The Olsens are perfectly normal Earth humans, absolutely nothing special about them. And Matt doesn’t show up enough to be a target. Even if Elyon is that paranoid that everyone on Earth is against her, that doesn’t excuse what she did to Matt’s grandpa. He isn’t exactly Old Bruce from Batman Beyond. And we’re supposed to believe this is logical character development and that she is easily redeemable toward the end of the season.
If this sort of thing happened with a character in Kamen Rider or Super Sentai? They’d probably kill them off. Examples include Yuji Kiba of Kamen Rider 555 and Cid Bamick/Barizorg of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. If it happened in Power Rangers? It would be explained as brainwashing/magic spell, and the heroes would work their hardest to break that control, as what happened with Astronema and Tenaya of in Space and RPM. Hell, this did happen in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, and they did one hell of a job on it! Hero Kevin Levin fell prey to the insanity that plagues his people when they absorb energy, and the last four or five episodes of the season focused on the heavy question of whether or not Ben would have to kill his best friend to stop him from crossing the line. Especially since he did attack innocent people—their friends. And Ben’s grandpa. After all this emotional turmoil, they were able to find another way to save him when they cured his madness. Only then could Kevin get off without blame—he was explicitly described as being out of control, a “mad dog.”
But none of that happens here with Elyon. And even worse, I think, is that this is supposedly more development than the comics version got. Elyon spends this episode just missing the obvious signs that something is up. Phobos sees the sketch of Cornelia (which had been torn in half last episode; I guess we’re supposed to assume that Elyon fixed it with her powers, since Meridian is definitely not at the Scotch tape level of technological development) and sets it on fire in front of Elyon, saying that she shouldn’t keep a memory of her former best friend. In the same breath, he introduces new character Miranda, a young girl (who we will learn is not all she seems) to become Elyon’s new best friend, like a bond that precious can be so easily replaced. Furthermore, Miranda is voiced by Grey DeLisle. Anyone played by Grey DeLisle should be preemptively assumed to be an evil liar. It’s worse when the titular Mogriffs are introduced. They’re shapeshifting gargoyles who assume the forms of the Guardians. Only they can’t stand upright, don’t have elemental powers, and still drool and have fangs. You could put a W.I.T.C.H. mask on Blunk and have it be more convincing than this, and yet, Elyon is still fooled. Also, when the Guardians have clearly defeated the Mogriffs, she believes Phobos when he says that they’re the Guardians’ allies.
The redeeming characters here are, unsurprisingly, Cornelia and Caleb. Cornelia’s determination to prove Will wrong and try to reason with her friend—I just realized that if you change the name “Will” to “TJ” and “friend” to “sister,” you’ve basically got the Karone arc of Power Rangers in Space—leads her to steal the Heart of Kandrakar and sneak off to Meridian, where she poses as a kitchen worker to gain access to Elyon’s chamber. And it’s a heartbreaking moment where she tries to talk to her, has no clue what horrors Elyon is talking about, and Elyon ignores her and puts her in a bubble so a guard can take her away to Phobos. And sure, Will understandably and rightfully chews her out for this, but a humbled Cornelia is steadfast in her belief that the Elyon she knew is still there. Caleb is as entertaining as ever, and part of that comes from how on-the-ball he really is. He’s slightly smug to learn from the Astral Drop Cornelia that the real Corny has a crush on him, just before he clues in that he’s talking to an Astral Drop. He keeps his cool during the fight with the Mogriffs, and when he goes to rescue Cornelia and attempt to rescue Elyon, he raises his sword in a salute to the Princess, vowing that the Rebels do in fact support her, before he bows to her. This action confuses Elyon, who doesn’t quite buy Phobos’s insistence that it’s a trick, and it’ll play into her redemption later.
But a new plot point is introduced as well in this episode: the Book of Secrets. As Caleb puts it, it’s essentially Phobos’s magical diary. Every secret he has is recorded in there, and it’s impossible to open. Which, naturally, means they’ll figure it out in the course of the next few episodes. So, Phobos, let me ask you something: At what point does recording all of your evil plans for your sister, the true heir to the throne, in a single book and leaving it within reach in your castle sound like a good idea? Because the only reason the Guardians get their hands on it is because he left it on a shelf in the library, and the shiny, shiny cover attracted Elyon’s attention, so she took it to her room. Blunk spotted it when Caleb and Cornelia attempted their rescue, and Caleb figured it would be useful, so he stuffed it into his pants (…that’s the context, guys. I honestly thought he shoved it up his ass for a moment) before climbing out the window. All of his secrets are now in the hands of the enemy. Because he doesn’t try any security measures for the book. What a moron.
This, I’d have to say, is one of season one’s strongest episodes. In retrospect, it’s overshadowed by the end of the season, but when I was rewatching it, I was really struck by how solid it is. They do some pretty spectacular stuff with the fight scenes, for one. It’s a very desperate struggle against the swarm of mudslugs coming after them, and it’s scary seeing how they’re being stalked by them (because for some creepy reason, the girls all decided to give Elyon a locket for her birthday that contained locks of their hair; that’s not something normal thirteen-year-old girls do, and I’ve only ever seen it as a romance trope that hasn’t been around since the Victorian era). The Guardians’ powers aren’t at full strength for reasons I’ll get to in a minute, and it’s one of those situations where their experienced member, Caleb, really doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with it. He admits that he’s never come across a mother mudslug completely out of its hole, and he’s actually pretty scared about it. Once Cornelia joins the battle, however, things pick up. You’ve got some great shots of Caleb ducking and dodging, which is always pretty cool to watch, and this great bit where they animate an escape in the air from Taranee. She’s trying her hardest not to get hit by the tentacles (or tendrils or something—I’m not up on my mudslug anatomy), and there’s a lot of weaving away from them. Sure, she gets hit anyway and her flight path is erratic, but it’s pretty well animated. And Cornelia totally steals the show by tearing up a massive section of ground to unearth the mother mudslug and hurl it into the portal, a move that completely exhausts her and leads to a shippy moment where Caleb catches her, which quickly turns into a friendship moment when Will puts her hand on her shoulder and then the other girls surround them.
Ultimately, this episode’s theme is FRIENDSHIP. Will and Cornelia’s friendship has taken a hit since they first found out that Elyon was the Princess and Will decided it was better not to tell her what was going on. Cornelia always believed it was a mistake and that it would be better to tell Elyon who to beware of, but Will thought it would protect her better if she could live some semblance of a normal life. This decision has now bit them all in the ass, since Elyon can’t understand why they didn’t tell her, and it’s given Phobos the perfect chance to manipulate the truth and make Meridian look like a Disney Princess kingdom—almost to the point of parody, to be honest—all in an attempt to turn her against the girls. So now Cornelia has lost her best friend, and she blames Will for that. This episode doesn’t try to make one side look better than the other. It’s clear that Will made a mistake, but it’s also clear that Cornelia’s not listening to reason. Cornelia quits being a Guardian altogether, refusing to listen to any of the girls. But she also fails to listen to Caleb, who tries to approach her on neutral ground, admitting that Will was wrong, but also admitting that they need Cornelia and that the Rebels aren’t thinking so much along the lines of the plan falling apart; they’re just trying to survive. It’s actually a nice way to start building the ship between them. You know, until Caleb starts insulting her taste in music.
It’s revealed that the Heart of Kandrakar’s power is strongest when all five Guardians are together. I’m going to assume this means when there’s no in-fighting, since the girls have been separated across distances before without too much trouble, but this is the first time they’ve been divided. Once Cornelia joins them again, the Heart reacts and the Guardians hit full power again. The Heart also displays the ability to hack into radio frequencies so Will can broadcast a message to Cornelia. In the wake of season two, this makes perfect sense: it’s foreshadowing to the fifth element of Quintessence, pure energy, which especially works with electronics. However, when you take into account that season two was produced by an entirely different writing staff, it just seems like a terribly convenient plot device in season one.
Tracking down the timeframe again: The cast is back in sweaters, so I guess it’s fall now. Caleb is probably now sixteen.
Ghosts of Elyon (Andy Guerdat and Steve Sullivan): Excuse me for a moment while I make the obvious joke at Caleb scaling a castle wall using Passling spit (which looks oddly like bubblegum): Spider-Caleb, Spider-Caleb, does whatever a Spider-Caleb does.
All right, now that that’s out of my system, back to the review.
After what was really a strong episode before it, this one falls a little short. The story itself is okay, nothing spectacular: Caleb and the Guardians are baffled by astral projections of Elyon appearing throughout the city. Meanwhile, Will is arguing that she needs a little privacy, gets into a tiff with her mother, and runs away—which I’ll get to in a minute. Caleb breaks from the girls and goes to investigate on his own and is captured. Before he can be apparently strangled with his own belt in front of Elyon—seriously, Elyon, you’re okay with executing a fifteen/sixteen-year-old, even if you think he’s just a dick who lied to you?—the Guardians arrive and rescue him. Then the second half of the story focuses on Phobos trying to recover Elyon’s sketchbook, and the team tries to rescue Elyon from his secret underground bunker. And somewhere in there is a plothole where the team searched Elyon’s bedroom, including her closet, and never came across a portal, and one just happened to open conveniently when Will was the only one there; Phobos does not have the ability to open portals, and Elyon was only seen to be able to reroute a portal to a magical terrarium. Also, why are the windows boarded up at the Browns’? They were taken away suddenly, and the official story the girls are spreading is that they’re on vacation. Why does their house look like it’s condemned? The split story, however, doesn’t quite mesh together well. It feels like it should have been two separate episodes, only there hadn’t been enough material to cover them separately or they’d simply run out of time and had to compress together two episodes.
What bugs me more is the characterization. Caleb reverts to his bratty, sexist, assholish self, when he’d learned his lesson not to be such a brat to the girls back in “Ambush at Torus Filney”—apparently months ago, judging by their clothing—and he spent the last three episodes acting fairly mature. I complain about this because they’re trying to push the Caleb/Cornelia ship here, and he is just not making his case that he is good boyfriend material. Who the hell tells their crush that they’re willing to be there for them as emotional support, so long as they’re not talking about “girly stuff”?
Furthermore, this episode really kicks off something I’m going to be bitching about into season two: a little trope I like to call “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Will begins getting into arguments with her mother, who wants her to step up and take a little responsibility. This argument revolves around Will’s room, where she’s strewn her clothes all over the place. She’s lost their phone somewhere in the mess, along with half of a sandwich from who-knows-when. She insists that her mom has to stop coming into her room and just give her a little privacy. Her mom just wants her to clean up the room.
Now, at the time of this review, I’m twenty-four years old. I graduated from college two years ago. I have a full-time job. I pay rent, taxes, and bills. I’m the first to admit that I’m probably too old to relate. But I just cannot feel sympathetic to Will for this. I complained about it a couple of times with the original Ben 10, in Kevin 11 and especially in Ken 10. Yes, Will has a rough life. She’s fighting to save an alternate universe from an evil dictator who had essentially kidnapped one of her friends from school and is manipulating her into believing her friends are against her. She just came off of a massive fight with Cornelia over what happened, and even she admits that it’s her fault that Elyon doesn’t trust them. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t come off as a brat. Her mother is just asking her to pick up her room. And then her mom is going in and cleaning up for her. Can’t Will cut her mom a little bit of slack here? She’s not keeping up with her chores, and if it’s because of her Guardian duties, shouldn’t she be a little grateful to her mom for picking up her laundry? Or at least apologize for not being able to do all of this. Hell, even if she’s making up excuses like she’s stressing out for her tests, then at least it would be something. But no, she decides to run away from home because her mom told her to clean her room, and when she didn’t, she got grounded. Yeah. Real heroic of you there. Yes, Will is a thirteen-year-old girl, and these are normal thirteen-year-old girl problems. But the way she carries on and the way we’re supposed to take her side only make her seem like an entitled little brat, and that is not how I want to see my heroes.
The Mogriffs (Jaime Becker): There is no way around this. I have to bring this up because it is so at odds with the rest of the episode and its theme of redemption. The episode opens up with the girls heading to a pet store owned by Matt’s grandfather. When they get there, the blinds on the windows slide down, the doors lock, and all of the animals’ cages open. Then they see that Elyon has possessed Grandpa Olsen—a frail old man—and all of the animals. She uses the animals to threaten the Guardians for a moment before dropping poor old Grandpa Olsen to the floor and then leaving the animals to their own devices. Seriously, Gramps is lucky that the only problem he has then is absolute confusion as to how all of his animals got free.
Over the past two episodes, Elyon’s displayed a distressing lack of concern with killing her former friends. Yes, she’s being manipulated by Phobos. But this episode exists to emphasize that she is still the friend that they know and love. So it’s highly disturbing to see these things. It’s very clear that Phobos was going to execute Caleb in front of her over teatime the previous episode, and she possesses a senile old man and his animals this episode! Ignoring the threat to the girls, let’s think about poor Mr. Olsen here. The Olsens are perfectly normal Earth humans, absolutely nothing special about them. And Matt doesn’t show up enough to be a target. Even if Elyon is that paranoid that everyone on Earth is against her, that doesn’t excuse what she did to Matt’s grandpa. He isn’t exactly Old Bruce from Batman Beyond. And we’re supposed to believe this is logical character development and that she is easily redeemable toward the end of the season.
If this sort of thing happened with a character in Kamen Rider or Super Sentai? They’d probably kill them off. Examples include Yuji Kiba of Kamen Rider 555 and Cid Bamick/Barizorg of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. If it happened in Power Rangers? It would be explained as brainwashing/magic spell, and the heroes would work their hardest to break that control, as what happened with Astronema and Tenaya of in Space and RPM. Hell, this did happen in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, and they did one hell of a job on it! Hero Kevin Levin fell prey to the insanity that plagues his people when they absorb energy, and the last four or five episodes of the season focused on the heavy question of whether or not Ben would have to kill his best friend to stop him from crossing the line. Especially since he did attack innocent people—their friends. And Ben’s grandpa. After all this emotional turmoil, they were able to find another way to save him when they cured his madness. Only then could Kevin get off without blame—he was explicitly described as being out of control, a “mad dog.”
But none of that happens here with Elyon. And even worse, I think, is that this is supposedly more development than the comics version got. Elyon spends this episode just missing the obvious signs that something is up. Phobos sees the sketch of Cornelia (which had been torn in half last episode; I guess we’re supposed to assume that Elyon fixed it with her powers, since Meridian is definitely not at the Scotch tape level of technological development) and sets it on fire in front of Elyon, saying that she shouldn’t keep a memory of her former best friend. In the same breath, he introduces new character Miranda, a young girl (who we will learn is not all she seems) to become Elyon’s new best friend, like a bond that precious can be so easily replaced. Furthermore, Miranda is voiced by Grey DeLisle. Anyone played by Grey DeLisle should be preemptively assumed to be an evil liar. It’s worse when the titular Mogriffs are introduced. They’re shapeshifting gargoyles who assume the forms of the Guardians. Only they can’t stand upright, don’t have elemental powers, and still drool and have fangs. You could put a W.I.T.C.H. mask on Blunk and have it be more convincing than this, and yet, Elyon is still fooled. Also, when the Guardians have clearly defeated the Mogriffs, she believes Phobos when he says that they’re the Guardians’ allies.
The redeeming characters here are, unsurprisingly, Cornelia and Caleb. Cornelia’s determination to prove Will wrong and try to reason with her friend—I just realized that if you change the name “Will” to “TJ” and “friend” to “sister,” you’ve basically got the Karone arc of Power Rangers in Space—leads her to steal the Heart of Kandrakar and sneak off to Meridian, where she poses as a kitchen worker to gain access to Elyon’s chamber. And it’s a heartbreaking moment where she tries to talk to her, has no clue what horrors Elyon is talking about, and Elyon ignores her and puts her in a bubble so a guard can take her away to Phobos. And sure, Will understandably and rightfully chews her out for this, but a humbled Cornelia is steadfast in her belief that the Elyon she knew is still there. Caleb is as entertaining as ever, and part of that comes from how on-the-ball he really is. He’s slightly smug to learn from the Astral Drop Cornelia that the real Corny has a crush on him, just before he clues in that he’s talking to an Astral Drop. He keeps his cool during the fight with the Mogriffs, and when he goes to rescue Cornelia and attempt to rescue Elyon, he raises his sword in a salute to the Princess, vowing that the Rebels do in fact support her, before he bows to her. This action confuses Elyon, who doesn’t quite buy Phobos’s insistence that it’s a trick, and it’ll play into her redemption later.
But a new plot point is introduced as well in this episode: the Book of Secrets. As Caleb puts it, it’s essentially Phobos’s magical diary. Every secret he has is recorded in there, and it’s impossible to open. Which, naturally, means they’ll figure it out in the course of the next few episodes. So, Phobos, let me ask you something: At what point does recording all of your evil plans for your sister, the true heir to the throne, in a single book and leaving it within reach in your castle sound like a good idea? Because the only reason the Guardians get their hands on it is because he left it on a shelf in the library, and the shiny, shiny cover attracted Elyon’s attention, so she took it to her room. Blunk spotted it when Caleb and Cornelia attempted their rescue, and Caleb figured it would be useful, so he stuffed it into his pants (…that’s the context, guys. I honestly thought he shoved it up his ass for a moment) before climbing out the window. All of his secrets are now in the hands of the enemy. Because he doesn’t try any security measures for the book. What a moron.
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Date: 2011-12-23 04:59 am (UTC)The Mudslugs:
"almost to the point of parody, to be honest" Just like he's almost -but not quite- a parody of an over-the-top villain.
The Heart's ability to hack frequencies is convenient, but can still be seen as foreshadowing. They knew this type of thing was in the comics, so could very well have intended for it to be used later. I know we have Greg Wiseman's faq for things he might have done in season three, but I'd have really liked to see like a show bible, or an art of book since these tend to have this sort of background info.
Ghosts of Elyon
Confession time: There's a months-old cat pee stain in my closet. I couldn't find it when it was fresh and then I forgot because I keep the shoes I usually use under my bed for convenience. It's going to have to be cleaned by Christmas.
Otherwise, I have mixed feelings about this type of thing. I didn't exactly have this kind of tv childhood with these exact problems. My mom gets very angry and like she wants us to do stuff around the house sometimes, but we were never taught to do chores of any kind. In fact much of our childhood was spent in our grandmothers' houses even in the summer I think, and even when we started spending more time at home our grandmother and mother did the housework. It's still not expected for us to do anything. But if Will's mom asked me to clean up and only got angry if I then didn't, I'd understand.
Envying you having a full-time job by the way. I'm only two-and-a-half years younger than you and I live with my parents.
The Mogriffs:
Actually I remember the book being introduced earlier. It was in a scene of the bath where Cedric was holding it, and Phobos was telling him to put down what he was saying in it. And of course the plan is silly. It's just his ego in thinking that just putting it with books will be good enough (and apparently assuming his sister's not into reading or just forgetting about it). He should have at least thought of it after getting Elyon.
Anyway, I agree about Elyon. Though as I remember it, at some point she was trying to push them away hard because she was afraid they'd get in too much trouble with Phobos. But I don't remember when that scene is. She's still more sympathetic than in the comics, where she tries to kill them or drive them to despair. Dangers of extremist thinking, I guess? But Cornelia's story in these episodes really overshadowed the flaws for me, emotionally.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-23 01:30 pm (UTC)On Will in "Ghosts of Elyon," she still gets mad even when her mom starts cleaning everything up for her. And her response to this is to run away from home. I could see this reaction from a much younger kid, but from a thirteen-year-old? It's really immature.
I completely forgot about the Book appearing earlier! Well, at least it's been introduced to the heroes. Phobos at least should have considered keeping his magical diary on him at all times.
The scene happens in the very beginning of the episode. At first, I thought it was a nightmare of one of the girls or some illusion cast by Phobos, but Elyon implies that she knows full well what she did because she says she hopes she wasn't "too hard" on the Guardians. And that got really unsettling for me, given that this episode is supposed to emphasize that she's the same girl they know and love. Whether it's the comics or the cartoon, the writers should have planned better how to make it evident that she's acting without being brainwashed or under a spell but still be completely redeemable.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-23 09:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-23 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-16 06:47 pm (UTC)Completely agree about the episode being about friendship and how neither Cornelia or Will is help up as being completely right. Cornelia was completely right about telling Elyon. And she reacted to what happened completely the wrong way. I still sympathize with her, because Elyon is so important to her and she really is hurting. But her course of action was reckless and endangered several worlds (dropping out and taking the Heart). I thought Caleb's way of trying to get through to Cornelia (sans the music comments) was great. And Irma was in-character with her sarcastic remarks. I did cringe on Hay Lin's "best friends again tomorrow" and "pinky swear" bits.
For sheer amusement, I adored Caleb dragging in the Astral Drop and saying it wasn't Corny.
Loved Cornelia tossing the mudslug - especially all the unattractive faces and the sweat and how it really looked like work.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-17 01:40 am (UTC)I think I probably oversay this, but Caleb is awesome. He really is. It's like he wandered into the wrong show sometimes--he expects to be in a world that operates on more logic than this. So he's not fooled by an Astral Drop. And drags her over to the others. And he might not be great in terms of social skills, but he tries.