Belch's Brief Reviews (September 30)
DR. BELCH
Sat Sep 30 17:17:07 2000 

MIB #404. "The Back to School Syndrome"
After an alien kingdom is decimated by rebels, the king contacts MIB, concerned for his son Rex. Rex is attending a high school on earth, and Zed picks J ("because you're the youngest, and definitely the most immature") as undercover man. Besides looking like the world's oldest sophomore, J fast runs afoul of a couple of gorillas who seem to have both he and Rex on their hit list. Add to this the worms, who hear the term "bookworm" and think they've got some long-lost cousins going to school on earth. (Those worms--always getting into some scrape or another. I wonder if overindulgence in coffee rots the brain?) The two goons target J after a worm prank involving two buckets of coffee balanced over their lockers is attributed to him. These guys may be a couple of mean bugggers, but they're no threat to Rex. K goes undercover as physics professor "Mr. Kaye"--was anyone else thinking of Ben Stein in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"?--and it is learned that three beautiful cheerleaders are the alien hitmen after Rex. I suspected them the moment I saw them--no way dames that beautiful pay attention to a bookworm unless they're up to something. Plus they reminded me too eerily of the Fashion Club on "Daria". J tries to put what he's learned in class to good use in vanquishing the aliens' force field--but he can't get "refraction" and "reflection" straight. Just remember--reflection is when light bounces from an object straight into your eyes; refraction is the bending or distorton of light (like how a straw in a glass of water looks crooked seen from the side.)
Most amusing scene: the James Bond-ish exchange between J and the new lab guy on his school supplies. "What does it do?" J says, referring to a backpack and expecting it to be a plutonium bomb or something. "You...put your books into it," replies the lab guy, befuddled. Same with the calculator. "You can buy this stuff at a drugstore!" "Really? I'll make a note of that." But the pen has a death ray in it that J doesn't know about. The lab guy is going to be the comic relief in season four, in effect replacing Troy the Symbiote.
BTW, still wondering when we'll get to see L and her new partner in the field. Unless she had enough of him and blasted his alien butt to Bacos.

POK #308. "Viva Las Lapras."
I thought the crew was going to sail to Poke-Mexico in this one, from the title, but guess not. It involves a pod of Laprases (or is it Lapri?) who appear to be the family of Ash's Lapras. They are being tortured by pirates led by Cap'n Crook (honestly, couldn't they have at least translated that into something cooler, like "Corsair" or "Mano del Muerte" or "Malebarba"?) Ash immediately shows some prejudice and assumes that Team Rocket is in cahoots with these goons--which they aren't; a moment later they stagger in bandaged from head to toe and complaining of running afoul of the scurvy sea dogs. Note that even with fractured limbs and a couple of cracked ribs Jessy is still b*tchy as ever. Gotta love her.
Ash and his friends set out to mop up the pirates. DYN that the bozen sounded like Meowth with a cockney accent? Is he any relation to Seymour the scientist from "Clefairy and the Moonstone?" TR gets in on the action, too, but their plan falls apart--and they wind up being arrested along with the pirates, one of the few times they don't simply "blast off again" but actually are persecuted by the law. The last time was "Mystery Menace", you may recall, when Jessy sneezed her way out of the clink. Seems when her face was thrust forward by the sneeze, her forehead knocked the bars out. Hurrah for Jessy and her hard little head!

J.C.A. #4: "Enter the Viper"
This plot revolves around the viper talisman in a museum next to the Pink Puma diamond (no doubt a ref to Peter Sellers and the "Pink Panther" movies--if Friz Freleng were alive, he'd roll over in his grave). The Dark Hand, Jackie fears, will go for the talisman--but he is surprised when a leggy jewel thief called The Viper (helloooooo, naughty ninja nurse!) shows up. There is a struggle, and the diamond ands the talisman are switched. Jackie goes to the clink (with no way out, unless he wants to try Jessy's sneeze trick--though I wouldn't, because I hear that noggin has a hole in it stuffed with brown paper) and The Viper discovers that the talisman has invisibility power.
Great scene involving a tussle between Jackie, The Viper, and the Dark Hand goons on a Bullwinkle parade float. I have a feeling Chan always wanted to do that in one of his movies but couldn't find a director with the cojones to tackle such a risky stunt. That and the look on somebody's kisser when they take a punch from either invisible Jackie or Viper. Jade is smitte nwith Viper and wants to model herself after her--to Jackie's chagrin--though her infatuation fades fast when she slips them a dummy talisman. Though she has skills as an expert pickpocket and a sneak (note her Warneresque pop-up-out-of-nowhere-behind you bit on the balloon). And to top it off, a David Copperfield bit with the Statue of Liberty. Like I said, this is like a Chan movie--great fun, not overly cerebral.

CRDCAP #12: "Ice Breaker"
The freeze card invades an ice rink where the kids are skating. Actually this one seems pretty dangerous--more so than most, because hypothermai can be fatal.
The funny part here was Mei Lin griping about the cold and saying it wasn't like this where she's from. Possibly a ref to the mild climate of Japan and how exchange students find it hard to adapt to America's temperate weather. Many of the Japanese students at ASU got nasty head colds from the radical shift in climate.
Regarding the shadowy vision in Sakura's dream: who is this Yui Kero speaks of? I thought it looked like Ms. Mackenzie (recall Sakura's first meeting with her and how she went on about cats; the shadow had catlike eyes). Which again leads me to wonder what is her angle, and are she and Yui one and the same?
Anyone else thinking Madison might offer to keep Sakura warm when the temperature in the rink hit zero below? >8D

POK #309: "The Underground Roundup"
I started nodding off about this point and missed most of the ep...though from what little I saw it reminded me of both "Dig Those Diglett" and the ep with the Magnetite rancher. The Diglett rancher, who sounded like Clint Eastwood, *did* have the coolest beard though, just like mine.

SS #2: "Aftershock"
Still dozing. The gassed teens, now mutants (a purple werewolf?). are trashing the town, and Francis the Firefly, or whatever he calls himself, is making it hot for Shock. Shock cools him off at the end by hosing him down with an underground pipe full of sewage and crap. Something about Shock fighting villains while worrying about his personal health--a test at the doctor's office showed irregularities--reminded me of the Spiderman serial "Neogenic Nightmare", where Spidey is turning into a giant tarantula and at one point is running about with six arms.
I hate dozing while watching TV because my mind really wanders and plays tricks on me. I'm pretty sure I dreamed the bit with Shock taking time off of fighting Frankie the Firebug to stop a slovenly and obese fry cook from spitting on the burgers while they grilled. Though I think the line about "bad cooking" was real. Uh, anyway--

BAT BEY #46: "Inqueling"
I'm awake now and watching the last part of the Inque trilogy, which involves the gooey villianess sabatoging an aeronautics plant and ripping apart their latest rocket. Bruce is off visiting an old guru friend (could it be the old man from "Day of the Ninja" and "Night of the Samurai"? He'd be ancient--though I hear those monks live to be 120 by eating nada but rice and yogurt). Max returns--you know, after the mental spanking she got from Bruce in "Where's Terry" she'd want to stay out of the crimefighting biz, but I WAS WRONG!--and helps Terry figure out what Inque's angle is. She seems to be working for one of the firm's rivals, but which one?
Meantime, we meet Inque's daughter Deanna, a compusive credit card abuser who is in debt up to her pits and spends her days trying to juggle them from card to card (me when the student loan people come a'knocking). From the title I knew there'd be a kid. Seems she was born before Inque became a mutant freak; we learn she did it for the money to support Deanna (no mention of her father, so no telling if he died or walked out on them), and she's not exactly a model mother. More like a Kennedy mother--give the kids a wad of cash and stay emotioanlly/physically distant. Now she needs her little girl to swipe some drugs to keep her dissolving but intact.
This is where it gets interesting. The aeronautics firm's CEO is the one sabotaging his own rockets for the insurance and has been paying Inque a buttload of money to do the dirty work. Inque chips off a bit every so often to send to Deanna under the guise of a trust fund created by her foster parents. Follow me so far?
Nit, BTW: Batman freeezes Inque with CO2, the goop found in fire extinquishers. That wouldn't work. He'd require frozen N2, nitrogen. This isn't a Bader script, is it? >8D
BTW, Dana has forgiven Terry for neglecting her and apparantly holds no grudge over the infatuation with Irene in "Untouchable". Maybe it *isn't* a Bader script--she would have milked the jealous chick angle for all it's worth.
Deanna brings Mama Inque the drugs, but with one hitch--she slipped her a Mickey. A solvent in the brew turns Inque from sleek to slop in sixty seconds flat. Turns out the little suckling betrayed her mother for the money, saying in true Kennedy fashion, "You only gave me the money. You never gave me love."
A theme winds through Batman Beyond: parents. Bruce lives under the shadow of his dead parents. Terry is haunted by his father's ghose. Bruce is surrogate daddy to Terry, as Max suggests, just as he was to Tim and Dick and Babs. King and Queen of the Royal Flushers had a family until Melanie betrayed them the house of cards fell down. Paxton was sent into exile by his old man, and when her returned, betrayed him to a watery grave. So now we see a second theme: backstabbing, often in the form of patricide/matricide. I wonder if any other Batvillians have children who will surface? Son of Stalker? Daughter of Curare? Joker Junior?
Deanna may be rich, but she will live in fear...for mother may come home soon.

MX STL #12: "Scions"
A volcano thought to be dormant is erupting on one of the Canary Islands, and Teem Steel investigates. Josh, faced with academic proation and the impending breakup with Laura, considers "killing" himself and become Max from then on. Turns out Dread is mining plutonium in the crater and drilling into the lava bed...and the long-thought-dead Psycho is the foreman. Some interesting pyrotechnics here as Psycho gets fried in the volcano. Nit: that new monster claw, if real, would be to unweildy to lift, let alone use as a weapon. Die, Smiley, die, encased in solid lava forever, you metal-face piece of [bleep] [bleep]. [mad laughter]
In the end, Josh, after listening to his old man's voice on a mission log tape, decides to "live" after all. Interesting juxtaposition, how all of Max's dialogue was eerily like his old man's supposedly over a decade ago.

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