MX STL: "Old Friend, New Enemy".
It seems this perennial Batman Beyond imitator heard the competition was doing a Cobra ep and, well, Maxie see, Maxie do.
Max and Kat are on a mission to stop a former N-Tek scientist who is breeding poisonous snakes and scorpions on his farm with hte intent on creating a biological plague...and during a fight, the doc gets dunked in his own gene juice. Instantly he turns into a six foot-tall mass of writing cobras.
If that isn't enough to make you want to spit up your cereal, Kat gets bitten by one of his appendages and hovers near death. It's up to Max to milk venom from the snake-man for the antidote.
Wouldn't it have been easier to use one of the reptiles at the doc's farm without having to chase the walking snakeskin pump all the way to the New Mexican desert? Maybe. But they *did* have to fill a whole 30 minutes.

POK JJ: "Grin to Win".
Again we see a tired Team Twerp making its way to Azalea City--not only foot-weary, but thirsty to boot. They meet up with Sonrisa (Spanish for "smile"), who trains sunflower-headed Pokemon for competition in beauty contests.
It seems trainers go all out for this event by popping their little friends in tanning beds, feeding them steroids, slapping mud packs on them, etc.
The problem is that one of Soonrisa's flower-heads is a real crab-apple. Team Rocket tries to break into the greenhouse--where James shows amazing knowledge about this breed of Pokemon, noting one's insincere smile and anothers' droopy plumage like a veteran effiminate poodle groomer--but winds up caught and forced into a hasty retreat. Unfortunately in the rush Meowth gets left behind.
Now it gets more complicated. The cantankerous kitty'a paramour Snubble (who I've been waiting a while to see agian) has wandered into town, and she's looking for love, baby.
Meantime, Meowth has been remanded into Misty's custody and has been cajoled into playing Dr. Doolittle for the sad little flower-head. It seems it's lonely for an old friend who belonged to Sonrisa's neighbor but was sold to Nurse Joy. They track it down, and there's a joyful reunion--well, two reunions. TR comes back for Meowth and, though I applaud their intentions, their method of retrieval gets a D-.
The day of the competition dawns, and we see three finalists in the sunflower Pokemon competition: Sonrisa's baby, the neighbor's steroid-filled seven-foot-tall freak--and Meowth? Yes, that's our favorite cantankerous kitty dressed as a sunflower, complete with taped eyelids and grin, petal headdress, and green-painted body.
However, the plan goes awry when Snubble shows up and, crazed with lust, sniffs Meowth and gives him a love-bite right on his tail, causing him to out himself. Jessy picks her up and throws her for a pass that would do Mike Ditka proud...then unveils the sunlamps and mirrors. Instantly the suflowers' heads bloat up like an overpampered Hollywood starlet's nad render them unable to fight back.
Pikachu powers up to defeat Team Rocket, but watch as Chikorita gets jealous and knocks him down, not unlike one dog does another whose hogging all the attention. The misdirected thundershock does take out the equipment, and the Rocketeers blast off again, with seven years bad luck for every mirror broken.
Sonrisa's Pokemon wins, Brock tries to get Sonrisa's e-mail address (though since when do Ash and co. find time to go online?) and ends up getting his ear yanked by Misty, and poor lovesick Snubble continues her search for a piece of tail.

JCA: "The Dog and Piggy Show".
This one is notable for being the first involving a search for two talismans.
Tohru's incompetance has lost a talisman, the dog, as well as broken the searcher. So Valmont calls in a freelance hunter. Now Brainatra has commented on Jade's similarity to Scrappy Doo--but I'll be d***ed if this guy isn't a dead ringer for Fireball McFee (from the Scooby movie with Tim Conway). Freaky.
Uncle feels a hundred years old on his birthday, but when he learns the dog talisman brings youth and immortality, he can't resist invoking it. Soon he's doing stunts that would tire a man half his age.
Jackie, meanwhile, has learned of the existance of the pig talisman in a Bavarian chocolate factory, and reluctantly arranges for a trip back to Germany in seach of it. It seems a German chocolate maker discovered the pig talisman's power (fire) and built a candy empire on it.
Hok Fu, the freelancer, seems to shout absurd animal phrases when he makes a move, like "Monkey reaching for two melons!" or "Giraffe craning its neck to drink!" It was absudly funnny waching the guy, though, go through his gyrations....especially at the end, where he attempted to use the power of the pig talisman and only succeeded in doing a Harold Lloyd off the clocktower, followed by (crunch) Tohru.
Watch for the scene where Uncle, knocked unconscious by Hok Fu, talks to his own ghost. Psychedelic.
Uncle claims cheese constipates him--but doesn't lactose intolerance have the *oppoiste* effect?

XMEN: "Spykecam."
The X-Men still go to Bayville High? After learning htat their principal is a mutant terrorist, you'd think they'd have put in for that transfer by now. I'd have done it the day Avalanche enrolled.
Welcome to the Surreal World. Evan has an extra-credit project to make his own home movie of his life...which strikes me as a bad idea right off because this teacher could be in cahoots with "Darkholm", and anything on that tape could be used against the X-Men. It gets worse when Sabertoth crops up and uses the tape to sniff out Xavier's Institute.
Sabretooth is drawn all wrong in this series. He should look more bestial, but intead he comes off like some psychotic killer like they profile on "Unsolved Mysteries"--the type who wastes two dozen people in eight states and gets caught living in a trailer park somewhere in the Midwest. He looks like a beefier version of that crazed hitchhiker from TTA's HISMSV.
Evan's lucky Jean didn't telekinetically shove the camcorder up his a** sideways for playing voyeur in the bathroom.
Kitty and Rogue do look cute dancing together, I have to admit.
The "old business" between Sabretooth and Logan isn't discussed here, but as I recall, they were once old friends and fellow soldiers who had a falling out when Sabe stole Logan's girl.
This wasn't one of the beter episodes, though there were a couple of cute moments. Sabretooth felt more tacked on than anything and not as credible hare as in the Fox series. I mean, it was *really* stretching it when Jean clocked him with a concrete bench and he shrugged it off. Though if you're a sucker for mawkish sentiment, you'll enjoy the video Evan turns in at the end, at least.

POK JJ: "Foul Weather Friends"
Ash and company meet up with a girl who keeps a team of special lighter-than-air Pokemon. When the wind shifts, these little pink critters blow away like dandelion fluff, and can be used to track windstorms. The more creatures that go fying, the higher the breeze.
All except one--which is actually an Oddish who just dreams of blowing in the wind. It likes to paint itself pink and run about in windstorms, much to its own detriment...though it's harmless enough, and very loyal. Plus it makes an excellent bloodhound when one of the airy critters gets lost.
Meowth aspires to use these Pokemon in an air-mail delivery scheme which won't get off the ground because (1) banks don't give loans to Pokemon and (2) it's impractical as if the wind shifts or ceases the carrier and its contests would be lost and irretrievable. Still, you have to salute his entrepeneurial spirit.
TR tries to capture the lighter-than-air Pokemon with giant fans, but a thundershock in the blades sends them blowing away. A few minutes later, dirty, cut up, and sore, they are trudging along the road and, like even the most die-hard Pokemon fan is by now they are getting bored with ht ewhole blasting-off-again gag. Unfortunately, they end up caught in a tornado that sends them up in to the air for an encore performance! When they get pummeled, they do it in style.
It also scatters the lighter-than-air Pokemon, and a desperate attempt is made at retrieval. Watch as Brock plays action hero to impress the girl--"Let me handle this one, Ash!". Watch as he climbs up a tree and wades chest-deep through a raging brook to prove his bravado.
Team Rocket once again proves *their* bravado by netting the other five wayward critters in their balloon. Meowth brings up the delivery service idea again, but Jessy wants to put tiny pinwheels on their heads and wach them blow in the breeze.
"What do you think of that idea?" she asks, all starry-eyed.
"Hated it!" James and Mewoth say in an *eerily accurate* impersonation of the two fruity movie critics on "In Living Color". Aack! Meowth has been hanging around Jimmy-boy tooooooooooooo long.
TR's plans are popped--as is their balloon--by Starmie.
Oddish, tiny as it is, is the one who proves its mettle by sending the Rocketeers blasting off again--and Jessy screams at Meowth to SHUT UP ABOUT THAT DELIVERY SERVICE IDEA. A whole speech near the end about some people being better at some things than others, for all you mawkish sentiment lovers, end, roll credits.
Unfortunately Snubble was nowhere to be seen in this one, or even Jigglypuff.

ZETA: "Remote Control"
In search for the next person on his list, Ro and Zeta meet up with a ten-year-old genius who has buit a remote that can control any electronic device. When the boy learns Z's a machine, he uses his prototype to trah the competition at a scientific fair teach a plagiarizing scientist a lesson about passing off other's inventions as his own.
It's scary that a kid not even old enough to shave can succeed where Bennett failed in controlling that daarn robot.
Zeta snores?

SS: "Junior"
When Alva's only son feels his father disrespects him and considers him worthless, he decides to prove to the old man jsut how powerful he can be. He devizes a special belt containing capsules of the Bang Baby gas that, when popped, release small doses of power. Calling himself Omnifarious, he proceeds to decimate his father's factories and other holdings. He also learns Static's identity with his X-ray vision and threatens to expose him if the gets underfoot.
When Alva Sr. discovers Omnifarious' secret, he decides to stop the boy by any means necessary, but relents somewhat when he realizes his son could get hurt. However, his men refuse to obey orders, and Static is forced to generate an EMP that takes out the death machines (and half the city).
Junior, in a moment of anger, pops all the blister caps on his belt at once, and discovers he can't control his transformations (cf. Chimera at the end of B.B.'s "Splicers"). His words to his father come back to haunt him, "You would have been better off with a statue."
Virgil also has a few issues with his own dad about being responsible after he's late for an important appointment and considers telling Robert his own secret.
Virgil was fighting snake mutants early on in tte ep. Did someone declare this snake mutant day and I didn't get the bulletin?

BAT BEY: "Curse of the Cobra"
AS this ep opens, Terry awakes from a painful battle with a Cobra goon with amild concussion and four cracked ribs. Max awaks in an opulent bedchamber dressed as one of Caligula's concubines.
She learns of Xanders secret--how he was cultivated like a plant, bred in a synthetic uterus (yuk), and taught Cobra's unique brand of ethics and wafare. She also learn of their plan to clultivate a race of humanoid dinosaurs and to use the thermal bomb to increase earth's temperature to accomodate the cold-blooded devils, which would also doom mankind. Lastly, she learns her part in this eugenic nightmare, as Xander's mutant mistress.
This episode ended both confusingly and absurdly. Wouldn't the ship exploding have detonated the atomic bomb and ended up causing the nuclear winter--or summer, I suppose, in this case--Xander spoke of? Secondly, if Xander was bred to be Cobra's leader, why did he inject himself full of mutagen? If he was suppose to be a mutie, why wasn't he originally "concieved" one in the "womb"? Why bother creating him to be a man at all? Thirdly, did Xander and the old Japanese woman survive the blast, and did Xander ever make agesture to reclaim his humanity and assist his former sensei?
This episode was rather mediocre for a two-parter, and there weren't a lot of surprise twists or revelations, unlike "Legacy" or "Out of the Past" or even "The Call". I'm hoping they have a better episode or two to end the series on, if it comes to that.

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