SHOW:
Transformers: Animated
EPISODE:
A Fistful of Energon (no doubt a parody of the Clint Eastwood film
A Fistful of Dollars. Ironically, no references to energon were made in this episode.)
I freely admit that normally, this isn’t my kind of show-- for some reason I’ve never really found the concept of “robots in disguise” very fascinating. (And it certainly doesn’t help that my dad can hear a Transformers reference and break out into the theme music from a previous incarnation!) Recently, though, my friend Elizabeth told me that in this, the newest chapter in the Transformers’ saga, Autobot Jazz sounded an awful lot like Wilt, and for good reason-- Phil LaMarr is his voice actor. The idea of a giant alien robot sounding anything like our favorite tall red IF was fascinating enough to get me to check out his premier episode, season two's “The Elite Guard.” That was pretty much all it took to get me hooked!
This episode was pretty interesting, though not for the reasons I’d expected when I loaded the YT clips. The basic premise is that a bounty goes out for Starscream, and it attracts quite a bit of attention, including that of Prowl (voiced by Jeff Bennett, whom we all know as Bendy, Adam and Moose), who goes out to do a little searching of his own. This part of the episode brought about a scene that Elizabeth (the same one I mentioned initially) swore that I would die laughing from, because it was so out of character for Prowl. The scene in question was funny, yeah, but… I didn’t die laughing. (Maybe it would help if I knew more about this series and had seen more episodes.)
From here, Prowl teams up with a bounty hunter who more or less gives Prowl all these insane upgrades and modifications to hunt down Starscream. This is where the “interesting” part of my opinion comes into play: from here, I found the episode’s saving grace (as this was not the best of the few episodes I’ve seen, and not counting the scene ) to be the subtle commentary on the battles of being your normal self vs. a cool but faux copy and playing dirty vs. fighting with honor. I found the contrast between the “two Prowls”-- calm, cool and collected before the upgrades and modifications; and almost arrogant (to quote one of the other autobots, “[T]hinks sludge doesn’t stick to [his] tailpipe”)-- to be quite stunning-- I felt, as I watched the episode, that the real Prowl had been bound, gagged and locked in a closet somewhere in Detroit (the show's setting) and had been replaced with the fake Prowl I was watching. I greatly preferred the former Prowl to the latter, and also found that the latter Prowl lost a lot of himself emotionally, and thus lost a lot of his appeal as a caracter. My strongest example is when the veiwer realizes that Prowl’s fondness for Earth’s flora and fauna (first addressed in “Home is Where the Spark Is,” and a major part of his character) has taken a hit: at some point after his return to Earth, Prowl and a Decepticon fought a short (but underhanded from both parties) hand-to-hand battle, with Prowl coming out on top and the Decepticon in cuffs. I don’t remember how exactly, but the team medic, Ratchet (voiced by Corey Burton), points out a bird nest that Prowl destroyed, complete with crushed eggs, in the fight. The shocked, wounded look on Prowl’s face said a lot more than any amount of good scriptwriting ever could.
Final Verdict: 3.5 / 5 -- pretty good
As a side note, something I find kinda amusing about this show is that a few other Foster’s VA’s have lended their voices to the Transformers fandom: Tom Kenny voices Starscream, while Tara Strong plays Sari Sumdac, the little girl who befriends the main cast of Autobots.
<Man, I was LONG-winded…>