DR. BELCH
11-17-2001, 05:05 PM
POK:JLC
*#419--"Ariados, Amigos!"
Team Twerp meets up with an old friend--Ainya from "The Ninja Poke-Showdown". She's the owner of a Ariados, the evolved form of Spinarak--basically a spider the size of a small dog who likes to hang out in bushes with its claws showing and imitate flowers, presumably to ensnare prey (like pretty, albeit tomboyish, lasses). This freaks Misty, card-carrying bugophobe, out to no end.
Ainya is training hard at the local Pokemon facility, which is half karate school, half college campus, and half beauty academy. While Ash is happy to be in enrolled with the physical training students and Brock with the strategy engineering students, Misty wonders why she's basically being corralled into what is essentially Pokemon home ec. Ainya, trying to downplay the sexistness of it all, explains that it will show how how to be beautiful. The debutante hiding behind the Daisy Dukes and suspenders awakens, and she consents wholeheartedly. What she doesn't understand till too late is that the class involves sitting perfectly still while a Spinarak squirts a sticky white gob of web in her face, calling it a beauty treatment. Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy.
Ainya and Ash have both gotten stronger since season one, and she's impressed at what tricks the boy's picked up. Team Rocket, woefully underused in this one, tries to crash the party but ends up trapped like flies in a giant web ("I said Web, not wob!" says Jessy to Wobafett at one point, one of her better lines) and dangling over a canyon for their trouble.
*#420--"Wings 'N' Things"
In this epsisode we meet both a bug Pokemon that Misty doesn't get fitful over and see Team Rocket almost succeed with a halfway decent scheme.
The son of a local glass maker owns a dragonflylike Pokemon, Yanma, that's a living sonic boom. Every time it flaps its wings it blows out every pane of glass withing fifty yards. The local shopkeepers are furious, and his old man demands he take Yanma out and get rid of it. Deeply attatched to Yanma after having saved it from drowning in a rainstorm and drying it with a hair dryer (which would've been a great pun if this were a rabbit Pokemon), the boy is reluctant to ditch the bug, but does so.
Who should find it but Team Rocket, who upon learning its talent decide to explotit Yanma. First they send it to blow out the glass in the Main Street shops...then Jessy and James come by with an ice cream cart full of "glass" panes (actually ice sheets) and reglaze their windows, for a small fee. Which is actually pretty cerebral--they could have just blown out the windows and looted the joints...but they chose playing on their sucker sympathies (after all, who ever heard of a glazier who just showed up when they were needed, or sold their wares out of an air-conditioned cart?) instead.
Theyd've gotten away with it too if they'd chosen another road out of town. Unfortunately all the townsfolk, whose storefronts are now puddles of water and who are screaming for the boy's blood, thinking he's in on the scam, are gathered in front of a building--either a church or a very fancy Pokemon center, because it has stained-glass windows being put in--when Meowth and Victreebell pass by with the goods, and Ash and company spot them.
The catch is, they can't fight near the building because Yanma might break the expensive and hard-to-make windows, so it looks like Team Rocket may actually win. The glassmaker, however, realizes the lives of the people and the Pokemon are worth more than some colored glass and says that if it must get broken, it must get broken.
That's when the boy realizes he can train Yanma to focus the beating of its wings into an attack and control it...basically directing the sonic boom forward and hitting a target without causing collateral damage. The Rocketeers wind up booming into the stratosphere.
Note Misty diffrentiates between "cute" and "creepy" Pokemon here, as with Liddyba. SHe never freaked at Tracey's Venonat, which resembles a hideous wet poodle...though Caterpie, which looks perfectly innocuous, still gets her. Go fig.
Jessy tries her hand at poetry again, and I think her verse is worse. I'm not sure how well that was translated, but she notes that a Yanma is juut a Caterpie with wings. Note also she calls it "Yoyo" at one point.
Listen to the female shopkeep--it's Rachel Lillis, using the creamier, calmer voice she does for Hella on Cubix.
JCA#208--"Armor of the Gods"
Jackie uncovers a magical suit of armor in some ancient Chinese temple that belonged to the ancients of legend--but barely gets away with it before the Shadowkhan show up. The ensuing fight wrecks the temple, sending it sliding down a steep precipice with Chan riding it like a kid on a sled (again, one of those stunts I'm sure Chan always wanted to do in a movie but budgets and physical ability prevented) and off the edge of a cliff. He lands right through the roof of a hut where a family is eating lo mein and, with that trademark understated Chan wit, he says, "Please pass the bok choy " before he faints.
Uncle, meanwhile, is overworked, overtired,and borderline schizophrenic ("Do you hear that? The books are laughing at me!" "Why don't you try counting sheep?" " I try, but demons keep eating them!") Jade mixes a sleeping potion into Uncle's tea--which I hope doesn't give kids at home ideas--that calms him down well enough, but the concern is that he won't be awake soon enough to recite the chi spell for the earth demon. Jade tries astral projection and enters Uncle's dream, where she asks for the ingrediants to the spell. Uncle tells her that the flower is the symbol of the ancient wh odefeated the demon of earth, an essential ingrediant to all spells is "hair of ewe", but Jade thinks he means "of you".
The Dark Hand is in Pamplona, which Ratso knows is famous for something, but can't recall what it is (he confuses Spain for Mexico at one point, for which Chandu/Valmont yells at him). Though I'm surprised neither Hok nor Valmont knew it was the running of the bulls (which they discover very graphically a short while later).
The scene with Jade and Tohru pretending Uncle is awake is priceless, as is Jade trying to defeat the demon with her own hair wrapped around a flower stalk ("If I keep plucking, I'm going to end up with a bald spot!"). No door opens, but it still packs enough punch to knock the demon on his butt (either chi spells are pretty powerful stuff, or Jade uses a good conditioner).
Great line: "Either you are a very big grub, or you are the Jackie Chan all demons speak off!" "Grub! Grub!"
Uncle awakens and clarifies the misunderstanding about the hair--convenient that his vest is wool, and made from female sheep. They'd have been goners if the old guy wore polyester or some natural/synthetic blend.
Another funny bit was Uncle driving the earth demon back through the door by reciting the chi spell at high speed.
Jade is happy with Uncle being his old ill-tempered self--it's noted there's not enough tea in China to mellow him out for good.
DYN that the glasses-wearing goon wasn't in this ep?
XMEN: "The Perfect Storm"
Though this is promoted as a Storm-focused episode, it seems to dwell more on Spyke (Evan). It seems he's having difficulty in school, although the incident that tears it is technically Jean's fault--she (jealous and sulking over Scott paying attention to some other girl, and uncharacteristically mean) telekinetically throws him off balance on his skateboard and causes him to crash into a table in the caf. She never fesses up once, either.
Meanwhile, a crazed African shaman who wants revenge on Ororo for ruining him ten years ago keeps haunting her--sabotoging her workout in the danger room (here we see her claustrophobia come to light, although the Fox series handled it better), leaving his calling card in the steam on the bathroom mirror, playing withthe elecricity, fogging up the grounds outside the mansion, and finally kidnapping her. It seems the shaman has a plan to exploit her power to rule Africa...which is odd, because, though admittdly my African politics are vague, with apartheid and all it's a small minority of whites who rule the dark continent, and they won't take kindly to ol' skullface stepping in and saying he wants to take over. Someone call Neslon Mandela for his thoughts on this.
Evan is on his way out after Charles and his aunt talk with Storm's sister and decide it'd be best if he return home. However, Spyke saves Storm using something he picked up in danger room training, about using his other senses to guide him, and redeems himself by breaking the shaman's walking stick and releasing Storm's soul.
Hank McCoy ("I get that a lot these days," he sighs after Ororo startles when the lights come on in the hall and he's the first thing she sees) has a small appearance in this episode playing powers-free ball with the newbies--and it has been a while since I've seen the Fox series, but I don't recall him shuffling about on his knuckles like a gorilla.
Note Mystique, still disguised as Rogue's little goth-girl buddy, almost slips up here by mentioning Storm's claustrophobia, which she learned about from the disk she stole. She passes it off as idle teen gossip, but Rogue is now suspicious.
DYN the security code on the mansion doors Rogue punches in is 537? Any special meaning to this number, or is it just random?
Finally saw The Nightmare Room today, and honestly I don't see why KWB bought this show. Besides being badly-fitting live-action in a cartoon block, this episode, about a forgetfulness house, was insipid, juvenile, and full of plot holes. It's like a cut-rate kiddie Twilight Zone. In the old days if a show was weak it died fast after two or three weeks (cf. Brats of the Lost Nebula). Obviously with the reshuffling in management standards dropped somewhere along the line. :mad: Definitely not a "hated-at-first-but-after-a-while-warmed-up-to" show like Pokemon (which some say began the decline in KWB, but that's like blaming bananas for the high divorce rate in America. Obviously there's something far deeper here).
On a lighter note, Sunday the 25th Fox is broadcasting Star Wars: The Phantom Menace...and the day before that two eps of The Ripping Friends at ten a.m. (Central). I have to wonder, watching this show, who those guys' daddy is...or, taking Slab into account, if there's more than one proud poppa out there.... :rolleyes:
*#419--"Ariados, Amigos!"
Team Twerp meets up with an old friend--Ainya from "The Ninja Poke-Showdown". She's the owner of a Ariados, the evolved form of Spinarak--basically a spider the size of a small dog who likes to hang out in bushes with its claws showing and imitate flowers, presumably to ensnare prey (like pretty, albeit tomboyish, lasses). This freaks Misty, card-carrying bugophobe, out to no end.
Ainya is training hard at the local Pokemon facility, which is half karate school, half college campus, and half beauty academy. While Ash is happy to be in enrolled with the physical training students and Brock with the strategy engineering students, Misty wonders why she's basically being corralled into what is essentially Pokemon home ec. Ainya, trying to downplay the sexistness of it all, explains that it will show how how to be beautiful. The debutante hiding behind the Daisy Dukes and suspenders awakens, and she consents wholeheartedly. What she doesn't understand till too late is that the class involves sitting perfectly still while a Spinarak squirts a sticky white gob of web in her face, calling it a beauty treatment. Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy.
Ainya and Ash have both gotten stronger since season one, and she's impressed at what tricks the boy's picked up. Team Rocket, woefully underused in this one, tries to crash the party but ends up trapped like flies in a giant web ("I said Web, not wob!" says Jessy to Wobafett at one point, one of her better lines) and dangling over a canyon for their trouble.
*#420--"Wings 'N' Things"
In this epsisode we meet both a bug Pokemon that Misty doesn't get fitful over and see Team Rocket almost succeed with a halfway decent scheme.
The son of a local glass maker owns a dragonflylike Pokemon, Yanma, that's a living sonic boom. Every time it flaps its wings it blows out every pane of glass withing fifty yards. The local shopkeepers are furious, and his old man demands he take Yanma out and get rid of it. Deeply attatched to Yanma after having saved it from drowning in a rainstorm and drying it with a hair dryer (which would've been a great pun if this were a rabbit Pokemon), the boy is reluctant to ditch the bug, but does so.
Who should find it but Team Rocket, who upon learning its talent decide to explotit Yanma. First they send it to blow out the glass in the Main Street shops...then Jessy and James come by with an ice cream cart full of "glass" panes (actually ice sheets) and reglaze their windows, for a small fee. Which is actually pretty cerebral--they could have just blown out the windows and looted the joints...but they chose playing on their sucker sympathies (after all, who ever heard of a glazier who just showed up when they were needed, or sold their wares out of an air-conditioned cart?) instead.
Theyd've gotten away with it too if they'd chosen another road out of town. Unfortunately all the townsfolk, whose storefronts are now puddles of water and who are screaming for the boy's blood, thinking he's in on the scam, are gathered in front of a building--either a church or a very fancy Pokemon center, because it has stained-glass windows being put in--when Meowth and Victreebell pass by with the goods, and Ash and company spot them.
The catch is, they can't fight near the building because Yanma might break the expensive and hard-to-make windows, so it looks like Team Rocket may actually win. The glassmaker, however, realizes the lives of the people and the Pokemon are worth more than some colored glass and says that if it must get broken, it must get broken.
That's when the boy realizes he can train Yanma to focus the beating of its wings into an attack and control it...basically directing the sonic boom forward and hitting a target without causing collateral damage. The Rocketeers wind up booming into the stratosphere.
Note Misty diffrentiates between "cute" and "creepy" Pokemon here, as with Liddyba. SHe never freaked at Tracey's Venonat, which resembles a hideous wet poodle...though Caterpie, which looks perfectly innocuous, still gets her. Go fig.
Jessy tries her hand at poetry again, and I think her verse is worse. I'm not sure how well that was translated, but she notes that a Yanma is juut a Caterpie with wings. Note also she calls it "Yoyo" at one point.
Listen to the female shopkeep--it's Rachel Lillis, using the creamier, calmer voice she does for Hella on Cubix.
JCA#208--"Armor of the Gods"
Jackie uncovers a magical suit of armor in some ancient Chinese temple that belonged to the ancients of legend--but barely gets away with it before the Shadowkhan show up. The ensuing fight wrecks the temple, sending it sliding down a steep precipice with Chan riding it like a kid on a sled (again, one of those stunts I'm sure Chan always wanted to do in a movie but budgets and physical ability prevented) and off the edge of a cliff. He lands right through the roof of a hut where a family is eating lo mein and, with that trademark understated Chan wit, he says, "Please pass the bok choy " before he faints.
Uncle, meanwhile, is overworked, overtired,and borderline schizophrenic ("Do you hear that? The books are laughing at me!" "Why don't you try counting sheep?" " I try, but demons keep eating them!") Jade mixes a sleeping potion into Uncle's tea--which I hope doesn't give kids at home ideas--that calms him down well enough, but the concern is that he won't be awake soon enough to recite the chi spell for the earth demon. Jade tries astral projection and enters Uncle's dream, where she asks for the ingrediants to the spell. Uncle tells her that the flower is the symbol of the ancient wh odefeated the demon of earth, an essential ingrediant to all spells is "hair of ewe", but Jade thinks he means "of you".
The Dark Hand is in Pamplona, which Ratso knows is famous for something, but can't recall what it is (he confuses Spain for Mexico at one point, for which Chandu/Valmont yells at him). Though I'm surprised neither Hok nor Valmont knew it was the running of the bulls (which they discover very graphically a short while later).
The scene with Jade and Tohru pretending Uncle is awake is priceless, as is Jade trying to defeat the demon with her own hair wrapped around a flower stalk ("If I keep plucking, I'm going to end up with a bald spot!"). No door opens, but it still packs enough punch to knock the demon on his butt (either chi spells are pretty powerful stuff, or Jade uses a good conditioner).
Great line: "Either you are a very big grub, or you are the Jackie Chan all demons speak off!" "Grub! Grub!"
Uncle awakens and clarifies the misunderstanding about the hair--convenient that his vest is wool, and made from female sheep. They'd have been goners if the old guy wore polyester or some natural/synthetic blend.
Another funny bit was Uncle driving the earth demon back through the door by reciting the chi spell at high speed.
Jade is happy with Uncle being his old ill-tempered self--it's noted there's not enough tea in China to mellow him out for good.
DYN that the glasses-wearing goon wasn't in this ep?
XMEN: "The Perfect Storm"
Though this is promoted as a Storm-focused episode, it seems to dwell more on Spyke (Evan). It seems he's having difficulty in school, although the incident that tears it is technically Jean's fault--she (jealous and sulking over Scott paying attention to some other girl, and uncharacteristically mean) telekinetically throws him off balance on his skateboard and causes him to crash into a table in the caf. She never fesses up once, either.
Meanwhile, a crazed African shaman who wants revenge on Ororo for ruining him ten years ago keeps haunting her--sabotoging her workout in the danger room (here we see her claustrophobia come to light, although the Fox series handled it better), leaving his calling card in the steam on the bathroom mirror, playing withthe elecricity, fogging up the grounds outside the mansion, and finally kidnapping her. It seems the shaman has a plan to exploit her power to rule Africa...which is odd, because, though admittdly my African politics are vague, with apartheid and all it's a small minority of whites who rule the dark continent, and they won't take kindly to ol' skullface stepping in and saying he wants to take over. Someone call Neslon Mandela for his thoughts on this.
Evan is on his way out after Charles and his aunt talk with Storm's sister and decide it'd be best if he return home. However, Spyke saves Storm using something he picked up in danger room training, about using his other senses to guide him, and redeems himself by breaking the shaman's walking stick and releasing Storm's soul.
Hank McCoy ("I get that a lot these days," he sighs after Ororo startles when the lights come on in the hall and he's the first thing she sees) has a small appearance in this episode playing powers-free ball with the newbies--and it has been a while since I've seen the Fox series, but I don't recall him shuffling about on his knuckles like a gorilla.
Note Mystique, still disguised as Rogue's little goth-girl buddy, almost slips up here by mentioning Storm's claustrophobia, which she learned about from the disk she stole. She passes it off as idle teen gossip, but Rogue is now suspicious.
DYN the security code on the mansion doors Rogue punches in is 537? Any special meaning to this number, or is it just random?
Finally saw The Nightmare Room today, and honestly I don't see why KWB bought this show. Besides being badly-fitting live-action in a cartoon block, this episode, about a forgetfulness house, was insipid, juvenile, and full of plot holes. It's like a cut-rate kiddie Twilight Zone. In the old days if a show was weak it died fast after two or three weeks (cf. Brats of the Lost Nebula). Obviously with the reshuffling in management standards dropped somewhere along the line. :mad: Definitely not a "hated-at-first-but-after-a-while-warmed-up-to" show like Pokemon (which some say began the decline in KWB, but that's like blaming bananas for the high divorce rate in America. Obviously there's something far deeper here).
On a lighter note, Sunday the 25th Fox is broadcasting Star Wars: The Phantom Menace...and the day before that two eps of The Ripping Friends at ten a.m. (Central). I have to wonder, watching this show, who those guys' daddy is...or, taking Slab into account, if there's more than one proud poppa out there.... :rolleyes: