Cartoon Viewing Club: Zob's Thoughts on "The Immobilizer"

[Zobovor]

"The Immobilizer" is episode 22 of the original Transformers series.  It was written by Earl Kress, who had previously written "The Ultimate Doom" part 2 and would go on to write episodes I loved ("Hoist Goes Hollywood") and episodes I hated ("B.O.T.").  It's one of the first episodes from the second season, airing on September 24, 1985 but before any of the Hasbro toys from 1985 had been included in the series.

As an early second-season episode, this installment is also notable for being among the first to feature some of the 1985 musical themes that were shared with G.I. Joe.

Our episode opens with Wheeljack showing off yet another dangerous invention in a steady stream of dangerous inventions.  It's a orange egg-shaped thing with an antenna at the end (of course it's orange, because all Autobot technology is orange).  To demonstrate how it works, Hound produces a hologram of Laserbeak.  As we'll soon see, Wheeljack's invention freezes molecular movement, so I'm not sure how effective of a demonstration this is going to be.  Hound would have to simulate the effects of the immobilizer with his Laserbeak hologram, which really wouldn't prove anything.  But, anyway.  Ironhide shows up late to the demonstration and immediately opens fire on what he perceives to be a Decepticon intruder, blasting laser bolts all over the place.

Nobody is seriously hurt, though Ironhide feels like a doofus.  (And, really, he should. Didn't he notice all the other Autobots just calmly standing around, watching Laserbeak flying in a circle and not attacking? It's the thing with Cliffjumper attacking a Decepticon-shaped rock all over again.) The invention has been damaged, so Wheeljack sends Bumblebee and Spike on a supply run to pick up a new part.  While they're in town, they stop at a local video arcade.  (I've always questioned the validity of this scene.  Arcades were far more popular in the late 1970's than they were by the time this episode was produced.  As a child of the 1980's, I feel I can speak with some authority on this matter.  Local movie theaters and pizza joints would sometimes have a modest selection of arcade machines, but by the mid-1980's, home gaming machines were a far more popular fad.)

Right next to the Robots Video Arcade is a Vincenzo's Pizza, which is a real restaurant chain.  I think there was normally an edict about substituting fake satirical names in place of existing brand names (New Year Tires sponsoring the Autobot Run, for example), but I also think that the Japanese artists who worked on the background paintings sometimes copied English logos perhaps without understanding what they meant (hence the inadvertent free product placement for Coca-Cola and such).

Perhaps not surprisingly, Bumblebee is a video game savant. Of course he is; he's a robot.  His mad gaming skills garner the interest of Carly, a girl whose maiden name was never established at any point in the show.  She's far more interested in Bumblebee than she is in Spike, using Spike only as a means to get to know the Autobots. Sounds about right.  (There's an amusing scene where there is a video cabinet behind Spike that reads "SFX" but when he leans back and covers part of the logo, it looks as if it could read "SEX."  Those naughty Disney animators have got nothing on Toei.)

Spike and Bumblebee suddenly remember they had a job to do and promptly vamoose; Carly gets in her convertible and clandestinely follows them.  For some daft reason, Spike is sitting in the passenger seat with his hands behind his head; perhaps inevitably, a moment later there's a patrol car following him.  This show tries so hard to be funny sometimes, or at least mildly cheeky, and this is one of those scenes.  Spike explains that it's okay that he's too young to drive, because this isn't even a car; it's Bumblebee.  "Oh, yeah?" replies a deadpan John Stephenson.  "Let's see it buzz and make honey." Not laugh-out-loud funny by any stretch of the imagination, but mildly clever.

It's around this time that Ravage appears out of nowhere; it seems like Bumblebee is frequently the one to tangle with Ravage, because he can't really handle bigger Decepticons (or conversely, because the tiny Decepticons like to pick on tiny Autobots).  Ravage secretly plants a "micro-bug," a miniature camera and transmitter, to Bumblebee's side.  In a rare show of improvisation for Spike, he grabs the traffic cop's jumper cables, connects them to the patrol car's battery, and zaps Ravage good.

The Decepticons, watching through the micro-bug, aren't too thrilled about Wheeljack's claims that a larger, more powerful immobilizer device could deactivate the Decepticons for good.  Starscream threatens to "fuse their carcasses into Slag," because there's nothing worse than being permanently welded to the side of a Dinobot's chassis.  

Optimus Prime decides what they really need is to test the immobilizer somewhere safe (where Ironhide can't blast down any more stalactites on their heads).  What follows is one of the strangest, ugliest transformation montages in the history of the show.  The whole thing was cut from the Sci-Fi Channel run, and "The Immobilizer" wasn't one of the episodes aired for Transformers: Generation 2, so it wasn't until I saw this episode on DVD that I realized how appaling this sequence was. We get these weird close-ups of Brawn retracting his arms into his body.  Bumblebee's feet connecting together.  Jazz doing some freakish thing with his arms.  Cliffjumper's wheels popping out of his feet.  It's a stylistic choice that could have worked well, but they never took this approach again, and it's probably just as well.  There's just something more satisfying about watching a very basic, straightforward robot-to-vehicle conversion without getting all artsy.

The Autobots drive into a wooded area not too far away from their headquarters.  "Take the first watch, Ironhide," Optimus orders.  "You never know when a stalactite might sneak up on us and we need you to blast it to rubble."  Okay, Prime's not actually that funny.  Wheeljack turns the invention on, aims it at a river, and the entire body of water turns solid.  "Right now, that water is harder than any substance we know," Wheeljack claims.  Of course, my first thought is: Why aren't the Autobots making themselves out of immobilizer matter?  Surely they could benefit enormously from having armor panels made out of what Wheeljack has just said is the hardest substance in existence.  For some daft reason, Spike stomps on the remote control for the device; Wheeljack tries to push him out of the way of the device's beams, and Wheeljack gets frozen solid for his efforts.  He turns grey, which we'll learn later usually means "dead" in the Transformers universe, so this is pretty scary stuff.

Elsewhere, Carly is traipsing about in the woods, trying to sneak up on the Autobots.  Once again, Ironhide saves the day and blasts the trees, prompting Carly to scream as one of them comes down on her, crushing her body. Well, not really. She's actually okay.  When Ironhide chastizes her for being in an area off-limits to civilians (which in itself is kind of an interesting statement; is the perimeter of the Autobot base officially protected by the U.S. military?), Carly explains that she thinks the Autobots are boffo and that she just wanted to watch them do robot stuff.  Ironhide hears the sounds of laser fire and discovers that, in the interim, the Decepticons have arrived and have the Autobots cornered.  Ironhide blames himself--"the Decepticons took Optimus by surprise because I wasn't at my post!"  As soon as Ironhide saw movement in the woods, though, he realized it could be a Decepticon spy and acted immediately.  In other words, he was doing exactly what he was supposed to!

The Decepticons open fire; Trailbreaker erects a forcefield; Starscream leaps into the sky.  "Starscream's gonna penetrate our forcefield from above!" Bumblebee warns.  Yeah... not a good enough reason to use the word "penetrate."  Anyway, Skywarp lets loose with a weird weapon called a "bouncer bomb," which apparenty just ricochets off of stuff without actually blowing up.  Isn't that what all the missiles on this show pretty much do anyway?  Like, when Optimus Prime punches a missile, it should just explode and take his arm off, but it never does... it just ricochets off his knuckles.

Starscream grabs the immobilizer and Megatron orders the retreat.  "A Decepticon never retreats!" Starscream balks, espousing a strange point of view that we'll basically never see from him again.  I think he's just being contrary just for the sake of being contrary.  Also, Ironhide sprays some sticky goo that seems to hold Starscream in place, but a moment later, he's free from the stuff and walking into trees, claiming his "telemeter has been damaged."  It's like there's a whole scene missing.  Just then, the river that the Decepticons are standing on returns to normal and they all fall in.  "Rust in peace!" Trailbreaker quips, and the Autobots join him in raucous laughter. This is one of the few times Trailbreaker, the supposed Autobot cheerleader, actually gets to crack a joke.  The Decepticon flee; the Autobots take the frozen form of Wheeljack back to the base. Carly elects to tag along, because clearly she hasn't done enough damage in this episode yet.

In the aftermath of the encounter, Ironhide still blames himself, feeling as though he's too old to be of service to the Autobots.  He decides to retire from active service, and Optimus Prime doesn't even argue with him about it.  How old does a Transformer have to be, exactly, to be considered elderly?  We know that Cybertron is only about twelve million years old.  Blitzwing remembers the Quintessons, so he's one of the oldest characters we've seen in the show.  Alpha Trion was around eleven million years ago.  Nine million years ago, Megatron and Shockwave and Soundwave were already operating and Orion Pax and Ariel were turned into Optimus Prime and Elita One.  Also, Thundercracker remembers the Guardian Robots, so he was around during this period, too.  Kup was there when the Matrix was passed to Optimus Prime.  No sign of Ironhide whatsoever during any of these early time periods. (Then again, maybe he just wants to get out of the game before he goes senile like Kup and starts making things up at random.)

Carly recognizes that it's actually she, not Ironhide, is to blame for the forest incident.  She asks Ironhide for a tour of the base, but evidently it's a ploy to get into the armory and steal a grenade, which she stuffs into her pocket when Ironhide's not looking. Little thief. I bet she shoplifts make-up when she goes to the Central City mall, too.

Elsewhere, Wheeljack's immobilization effect wears off; he worries what will happen if the Decepticons learn how to make its effects permanent.  The Autobots resolve to recover the immobilizer, a decision that certainly makes sense, but which doesn't really pan out.  What are they planning to do, storm the undersea Decepticon base?  This notion kind of takes a back seat to the misadventures of Carly.  She gets suited up in some scuba gear and plans to attack the Decepticon base herself.  She plants the grenade on the hull of their underwater ship as planned, but Laserbeak spots her during her escape and takes her into the base.  With the other Autobots conveniently gone, it's up to Ironhide to rescue her.  He reconnoiters with Spike and Bumblebee and together they go after her.

Inside the Decepticon base, the grenade goes off and the hull of the ship is breached.  The Decepticons manage to more or less contain the damage, but the chamber where Carly is being kept is still flooding.  Megatron chuckles to himself for a moment as he watches her drown, then callously remarks, "The show's over.  Back to work."  I love this show, and I love the characters in it, but I really do wonder how the Decepticon Apologists could watch this scene and not come away with the notion that the Decepticons are evil.  If you're basically a good person, you don't just stand there and smirk while you watch something die.

Of course, Ironhide's managed to make it to the base at the last minute and rescues Carly, carrying her up to the surface and onto a beach.  How she manages to avoid suffering from the effects of nitrogen narcosis is not known to me.  I guess Sparkplug must have taught her whatever trick he used in "The Ultimate Doom" to avoid the same fate.   The Decepticons must have followed them back to the surface, though, because the next thing we know, Ironhide gets immobilized. The others take an inordinately long time to notice this. Ironhide's entirely grey and he's not moving, and they just berate him for being a slowpoke. Megatron rears his ugly head, boasting that they've done some tinkering with the gizmo and promising that the effect is permanent.

The other Autobots show up and retaliate against Megatron.  Weren't they on their way to the Decepticon base?  What happened with that?  Anyway, it's an all-out battle, with Rumble at the immobilizer controls, randomly zapping Autobots during the battle.  Perhaps the most interesting scene here is when Gears gets zapped in mid-transformation.  Of course, the way he transforms is absolutely nothing like his Hasbro toy, with his chest evidently forming the hood of his truck mode and his rear wheels somehow coming out of his knee joints.  It's weird.

Either Carly is a really, really fast learner (it's possible), or she's so obsessed with the Autobots that she's been studying them long before she ever met them (also very possible).  She's only just met them but she's already name-checking Sideswipe and Brawn and Jazz like she's known them all her life.  Meanwhile, I've sat through 64 episodes of G.I. Joe and I still can't tell the Dreadnoks apart.  I'm just sayin'.

So, Carly's clever plan to save the day involves using Brawn to tunnel into the ground and up next to the immobilizer (how did she know he could even do this?) while Jazz distracts the other Decepticons with a sound and light show (again, how did she know he had this ability?).  It is interesting that Brawn's front-mounted drill makes a second appearance, since it was basically something they just made up for "The Ultimate Doom" and not part of the character's Hasbro-established functions or abilities. Most of the abilities that the writers make up on the fly are never seen again.

Megatron is bent on getting Rumble to use the immobilizer against Optimus Prime, who is dodging and weaving and making his way towards the Decepticons.  When the sound and light show begins, though, Rumble drops the controller and the immobilizer stops firing.  This gives Carly a chance to sneak in and do some fancy rewiring.  Apparently of its own volition, the device starts targeting the Autobots who had previously been frozen (Ironhide, Sideswipe, Bluestreak, Gears) and returns them all to normal.  At Megatron's behest, Ironhide throws the immobilizer to the ground and smashes it to bits.  As with "Autobot Spike," there's a fun animation moment where, as the parts of the device go flying every which way, a hexagonal nut flies towards the screen and we're afforded an impossible view of the camera slipping right through the hole in its center.

The Decepticons retreat.  Ironhide asks if he can he reinstated as an Autobot, as if there were any doubt that this would happen by episode's end. It occurs to me that if Hasbro knew they were going to be working on The Transformers: the Movie soon and that they would be killing off a lot of the 1984 characters, there should have been a more organic approach. This episode would have been a great opportunity to just retire the Ironhide character, letting him go off into the woods by episode's end. In some ways this would have been an even more tragic and memorable end for the character than to just casually and brutally off him along with his buddies in the movie.

Wheeljack studies the blueprints to the immobilizer, puzzled as to how she figured out how to reverse the effects.  Carly's explanation is that she's an Massachusetts Institute of Technology student with a science major.  Not that you need an MIT degree to switch around a couple of wires.  In the end, Carly and Spike have become more or less an item, albeit a non-exclusive one.  They drive off in her convertible, apparently off to the malt shop, something else that kids didn't do in the 1980's.  (It kind of bugs me how they threw in the sounds of her tires squealing almost as an afterthought to try to bridge the two scenes together.  Of course, tires don't squeal on dirt.)

Any time a writer invented a new character and that character was utilized in additional scripts, the provisions for the Writer's Guild of America state that the person who created the character would earn royalties.  Earl Kress sure loved his human characters.  He brought back Carly for "Desertion of the Dinobots" parts 1 and 2 as well as "Hoist Goes Hollywood," and it was probably because of her repeated appearances that somebody figured out she was going to end up marrying Spike.  The Transformers: the Movie kind of left the identity of Daniel's mom up in the air, but "Five Faces of Darkness" made it pretty obvious it was Carly, and "Madman's Paradise" officially cemented it.  So, Kress earned himself some cash for that.  It seems like he tried to do it again with "B.O.T.," introducing a trio of obnoxious human characters.  I'll bet if Transformers season three had taken place in 1986 instead of 2006, he totally would have tried to bring them back.

So, this episode is mainly notable as being Carly's introductory episode, which unfortunately tends to overshadow the fact that it's really an Ironhide showcase episode.  I'm surprised this wasn't a Trailbreaker episode, since Trailbreaker's the guy who's a fuel-guzzling liability and is the one who, according to his tech specs, tends to feel down about it.  Once the 1985 toys got introduced, there was basically no turning back, and the show turned into showcase episodes for Powerglide and Seaspray and Red Alert.  You'd rarely, if ever, see the spotlight on a 1984 character again, so this was Ironhide's only chance to shine.


Zob

[Cappeca]

Em quarta-feira, 15 de abril de 2015 15:29:00 UTC-3, Zobovor escreveu:
> It's one of the first episodes from the second season, airing on September 24, 1985 but before any of the Hasbro toys from 1985 had been included in the series.

Thirty years later, I've come to realize these are the episodes I enjoy the most.

>
> I've always questioned the validity of this scene.  Arcades were far more popular in the late 1970's than they were by the time this episode was produced.  As a child of the 1980's, I feel I can speak with some authority on this matter.  Local movie theaters and pizza joints would sometimes have a modest selection of arcade machines, but by the mid-1980's, home gaming machines were a far more popular fad.)
>

Things were changing, of course, but by that time at least around here arcades were pretty popular, holding their appeal straight into the 90's with those big 4 player Simpsons and TMNT machines, the moving After Burner simulation box and other fighting games with huge screens. My local place got Pit Fighters, and you could play with Jean Claude Van Damme - no home system could beat that. I remember seeing the adds for Master System games in the Transformers comics, and most of the cool games were ports from arcade.

> Perhaps not surprisingly, Bumblebee is a video game savant. Of course he is; he's a robot.  

Back then the Transformers were quite cool being considered "machines" or "computers". Today there's much more social prejudice involved, because robots are people, too. I was watching DOTM yesterday with my kids, and seeing Sentinel Prime complaining they were gods once and now they're considered machines kinda bothered me, just as it bothered me when TF:Prime Arcee made a snappy comeback at Jack saying "You're human, Jack, can you make me a small intestine?" when he implied that since she was a robot she should understand how her internal parts worked. Well, Arcee, not only he could make you a small intestine out of stem cells - if not out of PVC tubes like an artificial heart -, but he can ALSO make you a new engine out of spare parts from his mom's car, so fuck you, because your doctor has not fixed Bumblebee's vocal box yet - which simply needs a replacement just like every other robot part does.

But not really, because today Bumblebee doesn't have a deffective vocal box, he's gone mute. Being an IT professional myself, I see this as a reflection of how we understand computers today. They were machines back in the day, you opened them up and replaced parts and wires, you worked with them as they were open, with their insides out. Now you just buy a small box in any shop and put it in your pocket, and it will never sleep until it dies and you buy another - they're not made of parts, they have acquired a life cycle, they're living beings. Back then Transformers were sentient machines, with values and moral, but still could have a whole arm disconnected for surgery. Now they're actual overcomplicated living organisms, and they may die if they lose an arm or a leg. For someone who has seen Robocop fisting a server, I don't like it. The most blatant example is the difference between the T800 and the T1000, maybe I'm just getting old.

> There's an amusing scene where there is a video cabinet behind Spike that reads "SFX" but when he leans back and covers part of the logo, it looks as if it could read "SEX."  Those naughty Disney animators have got nothing on Toei.

I was gonna say Pics or Didn't Happen, then I found the screencap on the TFWiki page for the episode.

> As with "Autobot Spike," there's a fun animation moment where, as the parts of the device go flying every which way, a hexagonal nut flies towards the screen and we're afforded an impossible view of the camera slipping right through the hole in its center.

Awesome!

[Zobovor]

On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 9:19:24 AM UTC-6, Cappeca wrote:

> Thirty years later, I've come to realize these are the episodes I enjoy the
> most.

I'm really a hypocrite when it comes to the first-season cast. By season two I got sick of the 1984 characters and I wanted the show to focus on the newer toys (which it pretty much did; but then you got anomalies like "B.O.T." and I wondered why three first-season Autobots were being featured so prominently). Then season three came along and was a total game-changer. Everything and everyone that was familiar was gone, and by this point I craved the appearances of the older characters. This is why I love episodes with Starscream's ghost so much, and also why I love "Carnage in C-Minor" (it's a Soundwave showcase episode!).

> Things were changing, of course, but by that time at least around here
> arcades were pretty popular

I would say it was not uncommon to find arcade machines here and there. I mean, the machines themselves didn't just up and vanish (though I am given to understand that a lot of them are now in the hands of private collectors). I just don't think there were too many places in 1985 that had the wall-to-wall arcade games like the episode depicts. (There's a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode called "Leonardo vs. Tempestra" where the Turtles visit the arcade, and this is even less plausible because the episode aired in 1990!)

Speaking of TMNT, the original Ninja Turtles arcade was the first and only arcade game I ever played through to completion. The port to Nintendo was so horrible by comparison. The arcade version didn't skim on colors or graphics, and even had voice samples from the cartoon voice actors!

> Back then Transformers were sentient machines, with values and moral, but
> still could have a whole arm disconnected for surgery. Now they're actual
> overcomplicated living organisms, and they may die if they lose an arm or a
> leg.

I think that is part of the lasting appeal. The Transformers have all these fantastic abilities, and are nearly immortal, and yet they're written like human characters, with human personalities and human foibles. Sometimes I think they took it too far (robot characters really shouldn't cry, or run out of breath) but there were also plenty of moments that only worked because they were robots (like Powerglide sitting there with his head in his hands, or the way the Decepticons just casually popped off their heads prior to binary-bonding with the Hive).

> I was gonna say Pics or Didn't Happen, then I found the screencap on the
> TFWiki page for the episode.

Well of COURSE the folks at the wiki took the time to make a screen capture of that scene.


Zob

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

Gah! It's the 15th! New job, working many, many hours defining a project. -- I'll get to it, I'll get to it!

[Cappeca]

Em quinta-feira, 16 de abril de 2015 23:12:56 UTC-3, Zobovor escreveu:
>
> I think that is part of the lasting appeal. The Transformers have all these fantastic abilities, and are nearly immortal, and yet they're written like human characters, with human personalities and human foibles. Sometimes I think they took it too far (robot characters really shouldn't cry, or run out of breath) but there were also plenty of moments that only worked because they were robots (like Powerglide sitting there with his head in his hands, or the way the Decepticons just casually popped off their heads prior to binary-bonding with the Hive).
>

I was thinking about this on my way to work. In DOTM, Sentinel Prime complains about his condition as a machine, while curiously in the end, he rips Optimus Prime's arm right off, thus asserting the mechanical condition of these beings. I don't even remember Optimus bleeding like the others, he actually walks around with his parts showing. As much as that's his Murderous Prime moment, that small detail made me appreciate the movie a liiiitle more.

One thing that Sentinel Prime does not understand is that this geewunner here considers these living machines actually overpowerful beings - /Choujin/ if you will - just for being machines, because they have transcended the physical matter. Transforming simply underlines it, because once you can pretty much replace every single part of your body with another, not only you live forever but you raise the bigger questions: who are we if not our body? What is it that makes us alive, where is the soul?

[Zobovor]

On Friday, April 17, 2015 at 7:54:26 AM UTC-6, Cappeca wrote:

> In DOTM, Sentinel Prime complains about his condition as a machine, while
> curiously in the end, he rips Optimus Prime's arm right off, thus asserting
> the mechanical condition of these beings.

There is something a lot more disturbing about the robot-on-robot violence in the movies than in the cartoons. Maybe it's just a matter of the movies being far more photorealistic?

In the same way, I think the cartoons are more bothersome than the comic books because the comics are just still frames, while the cartoons show movement. The reason I bring this up is because Apeface getting his arm ripped off (and using it as a weapon against Rampage!) really didn't bother me at all, but Optimus Prime getting his arm torn off in "Dark Awakening" left a lasting impression. Even that doesn't compare to the up-to-eleven violence from the movies, though. So I guess the hierarchy would be comics < cartoons < movies.

> Transforming simply underlines it, because once you can pretty much replace
> every single part of your body with another, not only you live forever but
> you raise the bigger questions: who are we if not our body? What is it that
> makes us alive, where is the soul?

It's possible Transformers aren't really alive at all and are just extremely elaborate simulations. I mean, they just barely got to the point last year where a computer was able to pass the Turing test and make people think it was human. Now imagine a society that's millions of years ahead of us in technology.

Beast Wars gave us the spark, which is basically a tangible container for the soul. By the time of Beast Machines it got kind of silly; when a robot "dies," his spark just pops out of his body, and all you have to do to resurrect him is catch the spark and stuff it into a new body.

Even G1 has Starscream's ghost, which seems to demonstrate that Transformers have a life essence that exists completely separately from their technological forms. Vector Sigma is evidently a soul-generating machine.

In real life, we are slowly getting to the point where we are introducing technology into our own bodies. Not just titanium hip replacements or steel plates in our skulls, but full-on cyborgs. There's a guy who implanted a chip in his arm that allows him to remotely activate doors and lights in his home. There's another guy who installed a flash drive in his prosthetic arm, so he pops the fingertip off like Inspector Gadget and plugs into a computer.

As technology advances, there will be nothing to stop us from replacing arms, legs, and internal organs. Maybe we'll get to the point where we can upload the contents of our brains into an electronic storage medium. (They say the storage capacity of a human brain might be somewhere between 10 terabytes and 100 TB.) Would a human who has transferred his consciousness to a computer still have a soul?


Zob (go, go, Gadget finger drive!)

[No One In Particular]

Gotta define what a soul is before you can figure out if it's
transferable from an organic vessel to a mechanical one. And folks have
been arguing about the definition of a soul for a whole mess'a years
now, without getting any closer to a definitive answer.

Brian.

[No One In Particular]

On 4/16/2015 10:19 AM, Cappeca wrote:
> Em quarta-feira, 15 de abril de 2015 15:29:00 UTC-3, Zobovor escreveu:
>> It's one of the first episodes from the second season, airing on September 24, 1985

but before any of the Hasbro toys from 1985 had been included in the series.
>
> Thirty years later, I've come to realize these are the episodes I enjoy the most.
>
>
>
> I've always questioned the validity of this scene. Arcades were far more popular

>in the late 1970's than they were by the time this episode was produced. As a child

>of the 1980's, I feel I can speak with some authority on this matter. Local movie

>theaters and pizza joints would sometimes have a modest selection of arcade machines,

>but by the mid-1980's, home gaming machines were a far more popular fad.)

I used to go kill time in the arcade in the Carbondale mall while my
wife got her nails done, and that would have been circa 1996-1997.
These were games like Pit Fighter,Simpsons, and Street Fighter, and the
Capcom X-Men games. Not long after that however, she stopped going to
the nail salon and I pretty much quit going to the arcade. So there was
still a popular active arcade in Southern Illinois in the mid to late
nineties.

If fact, there is still an active arcade at the Marion mall, down the
road from Carbondale, even now, today. But it is deserted, and many of
the games are the exact same ones I played fifteen years or more ago,
like the aforementioned Simpsons, alongside newer games like Dance Dance
Whatever. But most of the games are broken now, with buttons or
controllers that don't work, and there is no attendant; you just have to
hope that the change machine has been filled recently. For someone who
enjoyed going to the arcade a lot back in my youth, it's depressing. I
don't like going there. My son likes to go sometimes though, because
it's as close as he's ever going to get to that old time arcade experience.

Brian.

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 10:59:02 PM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> Gah! It's the 15th! New job, working many, many hours defining a project. -- I'll get to it, I'll get to it!

I watched this episode once before attempting to write anything about it, and I was really surprised by just how much happens -- everything moves very quick, and there is an almost complete lack of filler scenes or shots. It might actually have worked better as a two part episode to give everything a bit more space.

Major plot points include, but are not limited to: Wheeljack's immobilizer McGuffin, Ironhide's lack of faith in his own abilities, and the introduction of Carly as a complete bad-ass action-hero/scientist extraordinaire.

The episode opens with Wheeljack in fine form as a mad scientist, showing off his newest invention. He gets Hound to create a hologram of Laserbeak for demonstration purposes, and then Ironhide strolls in and shoots up the place thinking it is the real Laserbeak. Hilarity ensues as he indiscriminately sprays laser fire everywhere, showering everyone with rocks from the ceiling.

As Ironhide walks in, he has his right hand up in the air, as if his left hand was on a bible and he was being sworn in. It's really very weird.

Also, the Ark has stalactites, but no stalactmites. Weird. There are boulders leaned up against walls, but you would expect a stalactmite under each stalactite.

Ironhide curses himself for mistaking the hologram for the real thing, and Wheeljack comforts him, explaining that nobody is perfect. Anyone who has been around Wheeljack's inventions, and seen them in action, will doubtless realize that running into a room and shooting up the place is less likely to cause unexpected injury than actually using the invention.

Wheeljack sends Bumblebee into town to pick up a new polarizer, as the immobilizer is now damaged. The immobilizer is conveniently built out of earth technology.

Fun fact: Spike's boots match Bumblebee.

So, Bumblebee is in an arcade, where there are machines built to Transformers scale, and Spike is leaning back against the machine, snapping his fingers overhead, and looking cool. Carly approaches him, and asks to meet that cute Autobot he came in with. Also, her hair matches his boots. Spike gets annoyed that she is more interested in Bumblebee than him, and drags Bumblebee out of the arcade. "I hope to see you again, Carly," he says, as he has Bumblebee drive away.

Fun fact: Carly's car is parked half on the sidewalk, in front of a fire hydrant. With no other cars parked anywhere near it, this is one of the worst parking jobs in history.

Our heroes speed away from the sexually aggressive female with terrible parking skills, and that are pulled over by the police, in an odd segway that serves to demonstrate that Spike is underage. Since there is clearly romance in the air, we are left to wonder whether the state they are in has a Romeo and Juliet provision in their statutory rape laws.

Bumblebee transforms and explains to the officer that Transformers exist, because the officer was apparently in a coma the last few times the Decepticons have put the entire planet at risk. It happens. There's a scuffle with Ravage, Spike saves the day with jumper cables (good thing he has rubber boots!) and Bumblebee and Spike go on their way with a spy camera on Bumblebee's side.

They return to the Ark, give Wheeljack his new polarizer, and Wheeljack again explains the immobilizer for the benefit of the spy camera. The animation dives in towards the tiny camera is a fairly unsettling way.

Starscream and Megatron are watching, of course, and Starscream suggests that they kill the Autobots, but Megatron is more interested in using their own immobilizer against them. Ravage growls some kind of support for someone. This is just another incident which demonstrates that if Megatron had Starscream's ruthlessness, the war would have been over long ago.

So, the Autobots go off to test the immobilizer on some spotted owls. They drive into a forest, and leave Ironhide to watch for Decepticons. Just kidding, they don't test it on owls, they test it on a rushing river filled with turtles and stuff. The water is completely immobilized.

Since no water is rushing over the surface of the immobilized water, I assume that the water was immobilized all the way back to its source. I sure hope there weren't any people swimming in that river or anything.

Jazz, apparently colorblind, says that he cannot see any difference even though the water is now gray and not moving. So he tries to jump in and falls flat on his butt.

Wheeljack explains that the water is now harder than any known substance, so Brawn punches it.

Spike feels left out, so he runs over and steps on the remote control. The immobilizer aims for him, but Wheeljack leaps in to block the blast, and is immobilized. Ratchet uses this opportunity to try to tear Wheeljack's head off.

Optimus announces that a weapon like this must never fall into Decepticon hands. Optimus is clearly trying to tempt fate.

Meanwhile, Ironhide is distracted from his position as guard by Carly. He cannot see her clearly, so he starts shooting into the forest. People, Decepticons, whatever. He runs into the forest and discovers that he has pinned Carly under a tree.

"What are you doing here? This area is off limits to civilians" Ironhide asks, apparently imposing martial law. Carly explains that she just wanted to watch, because Autobots are totally incredible. There is laser fire in the distance and Ironhide runs off to discover the Autobots surrounded by the Decepticons. Had the Decepticons been killing them, rather than demanding the Immobilizer, the war would be over.

Megatron should have promoted Starscream to be field commander, and then stayed in the base, polishing his bearings or something. Starscream lacks vision and strategy, Megatron fails at basic tactics.

"The Decepticons took Optimus by surprise because I wasn't at my post! This is all my fault!" Ironhide laments, attempting to crush his head with his hands.

A scuffle then ensues, where Autobots completely fail to use their nifty new weapon. Trailbreaker once again demonstrates he has a force field instead of a personality.

Starscream berates Megatron, and then attacks from above, but is deflected by Sideswipe with his jetpack. And then ends up shooting the Decepticons. If Starscream weren't flying and attacking from above to spite Megatron, he would have taken a few Decepticons with him -- since the Autobots have very few fliers, his plan would have worked.

The Autobots press their advantage, but are foiled by Skywarp's bouncer missile, a weapon never seen before or after. Spike and Carly are reunited, as Ironhide has brought Carly into the war zone. At one point, Carly is drawn with a left forearm that is probably six feet long. Animation error, or is she a two-dimensional shapeshifter with a terrible sense of perspective?

The bouncer missile bounces off a tree, knocking it onto Optimus, and sending the immobilizer flying.

And then Ironhide attempts to get the immobilier, only to have it bounce into Megatron's hands. It's really kind of embarrassing. The animation cuts in close, so you think he had tapped it into the hands of one of the waiting Autobots (with light gray forearms and dark gray hands), but pulls away to reveal Megatron.

"This is all my fault!" Carly exclaims, revealing herself to be fairly intelligent and adept at handing out blame.

Somewhere in there Megatron called for a retreat, but no one bothered to follow his orders.

Starscream stumbles off into a forest, Megatron declares he will get what he deserves, and the immobilized river below him remobilizes and all the Decepticons fall in.

Trailbreaker exclaims "You deserved that, all-right, Mega Jerk. Rust in peace!" demonstrating yet again that he is just an accessory on the mobile force field generator. The Autobots then all laugh -- it's funny because the Decepticons have an amazing weapon!

The Decepticons just kind of wander off. And then the Autobots and Carly go back to headquarters.

Ironhide is getting a full service massage from Ratchet, and complaining that everything his his fault because he is too old to be useful. So, he retires from active service. Alas, no one repossessed his parts.

Meanwhile, Spike is trying to put the moves on Carly, but she is complaining that if she hadn't been sneaking around, Ironhide wouldn't have left his post. They make an odd couple, her with her leg warmers and him with his yellow boots -- novelty footwear will bring them together.

Carly runs after Ironhide and explains that she is entirely to blame, but Ironhide will hear nothing off it. He's found an excuse to get off active duty, and he isn't going to let some hairless ape with legwarmers take that away from him. He does agree to show her around Autobot headquarters.

Ironhide shows her many, many phallic missiles.

Ironhide and Carly also discuss how someone needs to pacify those Decepticons once and for all. Carly suggests pacifying their underwater headquarters as well. And then she pockets a grenade or something.

Meanwhile, Wheeljack returns to the land of the living, and Ironhide fills him in on his many failings.

Spike is helping Bumblebee steal a panel, and asks if Bumbler has seen Carly. "Not naked," Bumblebee says, and then Spike notices her car is gone. So they stalk her. Because she was upset. Hysterical even. There is no telling what she might do. Maybe she will vote and own property.

A whole bunch of Autobots, including Ironhide, leave to recover the immobilizer before Megatron uses it against them.

Meanwhile, Carly tries to blow up the Decepticons undersea base. But she is caught.

Sparkplug, searching Teletraan-1's video feeds for "wet bird", discovers Laserbeak carrying Carly away. Sparkplug says they have to do something, and Ironhide suggests that Spike will find her. Sparkplug pleads his case more.

Skyfire drops Ironhide off in front of Bumblebee, and joins up with them.

The bomb blows a hole in the Decepticon base, right where Carly is imprisoned. Hilarity ensues while they watch her start to drown. She is rescued by Ironhide.

Ironhide now realizes that he's not too old to make a difference. Ironhide is then immobilized.

Battle, battle, fight, fight. Optimus shows up, shoots Megatron and Starscream takes over. Carly then reverses the polarity after making Brawn tunnel his way over and having Jazz provide a distraction.

Attempts to immobilize Optimus Prime now remobilize everyone else. Ironhide to the rescue, and then he destroys the immobilizer.

Ironhide returns to duty, Carly mentions she is going to MIT. Bumblebee whispers something in Spike's ear, along the lines of "college babes like high school boys" so Spike asks her out and she accepts, pretending not to understand his fancy man-speak about emulsified CO2 with lactic acid.

Overall, a decent episode. Very, very fast paced, with character arcs for several characters. Much, much better than that terrible movie.

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 at 11:29:00 AM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
>
> Our episode opens with Wheeljack showing off yet another dangerous invention in a steady stream of dangerous inventions.  It's a orange egg-shaped thing with an antenna at the end (of course it's orange, because all Autobot technology is orange).  To demonstrate how it works, Hound produces a hologram of Laserbeak.  As we'll soon see, Wheeljack's invention freezes molecular movement, so I'm not sure how effective of a demonstration this is going to be.  Hound would have to simulate the effects of the immobilizer with his Laserbeak hologram, which really wouldn't prove anything.

I believe it would freeze the photons of light, or the air the hologram is being projected into. It would have been fine.

> Perhaps not surprisingly, Bumblebee is a video game savant. Of course he is; he's a robot.  

It is the Robots Video Arcade. So robots should do well.

> His mad gaming skills garner the interest of Carly, a girl whose maiden name was never established at any point in the show.  She's far more interested in Bumblebee than she is in Spike, using Spike only as a means to get to know the Autobots. Sounds about right.

It's the BGBs, isn't it? (Birth Control Boots -- footwear so repellant to the opposite sex that they serve as effective birth control)

> It's around this time that Ravage appears out of nowhere; it seems like Bumblebee is frequently the one to tangle with Ravage, because he can't really handle bigger Decepticons (or conversely, because the tiny Decepticons like to pick on tiny Autobots).  Ravage secretly plants a "micro-bug," a miniature camera and transmitter, to Bumblebee's side.  In a rare show of improvisation for Spike, he grabs the traffic cop's jumper cables, connects them to the patrol car's battery, and zaps Ravage good.

Good thing Spike isn't grounded, because he is wearing his boots!

>
> Optimus Prime decides what they really need is to test the immobilizer somewhere safe (where Ironhide can't blast down any more stalactites on their heads).  What follows is one of the strangest, ugliest transformation montages in the history of the show.  The whole thing was cut from the Sci-Fi Channel run, and "The Immobilizer" wasn't one of the episodes aired for Transformers: Generation 2, so it wasn't until I saw this episode on DVD that I realized how appaling this sequence was. We get these weird close-ups of Brawn retracting his arms into his body.  Bumblebee's feet connecting together.  Jazz doing some freakish thing with his arms.  Cliffjumper's wheels popping out of his feet.  It's a stylistic choice that could have worked well, but they never took this approach again, and it's probably just as well.  There's just something more satisfying about watching a very basic, straightforward robot-to-vehicle conversion without getting all artsy.

It is terrifying.

> The Autobots drive into a wooded area not too far away from their headquarters.  "Take the first watch, Ironhide," Optimus orders.  "You never know when a stalactite might sneak up on us and we need you to blast it to rubble."  Okay, Prime's not actually that funny.  Wheeljack turns the invention on, aims it at a river, and the entire body of water turns solid.  "Right now, that water is harder than any substance we know," Wheeljack claims.  Of course, my first thought is: Why aren't the Autobots making themselves out of immobilizer matter?  Surely they could benefit enormously from having armor panels made out of what Wheeljack has just said is the hardest substance in existence.  For some daft reason, Spike stomps on the remote control for the device; Wheeljack tries to push him out of the way of the device's beams, and Wheeljack gets frozen solid for his efforts.  He turns grey, which we'll learn later usually means "dead" in the Transformers universe, so this is pretty scary stuff.

As stupid as Spike is in this scene, Brawn is worse. "It's the hardest substance we know of!" "Ok, I'll punch it!" Idiot.

> Elsewhere, Carly is traipsing about in the woods, trying to sneak up on the Autobots.  Once again, Ironhide saves the day and blasts the trees, prompting Carly to scream as one of them comes down on her, crushing her body.

Ironhide really does have an itchy trigger finger. He is a danger to himself and others.

>Well, not really. She's actually okay.  When Ironhide chastizes her for being in an area off-limits to civilians (which in itself is kind of an interesting statement; is the perimeter of the Autobot base officially protected by the U.S. military?), Carly explains that she thinks the Autobots are boffo and that she just wanted to watch them do robot stuff.  Ironhide hears the sounds of laser fire and discovers that, in the interim, the Decepticons have arrived and have the Autobots cornered.  Ironhide blames himself--"the Decepticons took Optimus by surprise because I wasn't at my post!"  As soon as Ironhide saw movement in the woods, though, he realized it could be a Decepticon spy and acted immediately.  In other words, he was doing exactly what he was supposed to!

I'm not sure he was supposed to open fire without confirming the target, or calling in to the other Autobots.

>
> In the aftermath of the encounter, Ironhide still blames himself, feeling as though he's too old to be of service to the Autobots.  He decides to retire from active service, and Optimus Prime doesn't even argue with him about it.  How old does a Transformer have to be, exactly, to be considered elderly?  We know that Cybertron is only about twelve million years old.  Blitzwing remembers the Quintessons, so he's one of the oldest characters we've seen in the show.  Alpha Trion was around eleven million years ago.  Nine million years ago, Megatron and Shockwave and Soundwave were already operating and Orion Pax and Ariel were turned into Optimus Prime and Elita One.  Also, Thundercracker remembers the Guardian Robots, so he was around during this period, too.  Kup was there when the Matrix was passed to Optimus Prime.  No sign of Ironhide whatsoever during any of these early time periods. (Then again, maybe he just wants to get out of the game before he goes senile like Kup and starts making things up at random.)

I'm pretty sure it's just an excuse.

> Carly recognizes that it's actually she, not Ironhide, is to blame for the forest incident.  She asks Ironhide for a tour of the base, but evidently it's a ploy to get into the armory and steal a grenade, which she stuffs into her pocket when Ironhide's not looking. Little thief. I bet she shoplifts make-up when she goes to the Central City mall, too.
>
>

> Inside the Decepticon base, the grenade goes off and the hull of the ship is breached.  The Decepticons manage to more or less contain the damage, but the chamber where Carly is being kept is still flooding.  Megatron chuckles to himself for a moment as he watches her drown, then callously remarks, "The show's over.  Back to work."  I love this show, and I love the characters in it, but I really do wonder how the Decepticon Apologists could watch this scene and not come away with the notion that the Decepticons are evil.  If you're basically a good person, you don't just stand there and smirk while you watch something die.

Carly was asking for it. Trespassing. ETc.

> Of course, Ironhide's managed to make it to the base at the last minute and rescues Carly, carrying her up to the surface and onto a beach.  How she manages to avoid suffering from the effects of nitrogen narcosis is not known to me.  I guess Sparkplug must have taught her whatever trick he used in "The Ultimate Doom" to avoid the same fate.   The Decepticons must have followed them back to the surface, though, because the next thing we know, Ironhide gets immobilized. The others take an inordinately long time to notice this. Ironhide's entirely grey and he's not moving, and they just berate him for being a slowpoke. Megatron rears his ugly head, boasting that they've done some tinkering with the gizmo and promising that the effect is permanent.
>
> The other Autobots show up and retaliate against Megatron.  Weren't they on their way to the Decepticon base?  What happened with that?  Anyway, it's an all-out battle, with Rumble at the immobilizer controls, randomly zapping Autobots during the battle.  Perhaps the most interesting scene here is when Gears gets zapped in mid-transformation.  Of course, the way he transforms is absolutely nothing like his Hasbro toy, with his chest evidently forming the hood of his truck mode and his rear wheels somehow coming out of his knee joints.  It's weird.
>
> Either Carly is a really, really fast learner (it's possible), or she's so obsessed with the Autobots that she's been studying them long before she ever met them (also very possible).  She's only just met them but she's already name-checking Sideswipe and Brawn and Jazz like she's known them all her life.  Meanwhile, I've sat through 64 episodes of G.I. Joe and I still can't tell the Dreadnoks apart.  I'm just sayin'.

She's a stalker. She will use Spike to get to them.

> So, Carly's clever plan to save the day involves using Brawn to tunnel into the ground and up next to the immobilizer (how did she know he could even do this?) while Jazz distracts the other Decepticons with a sound and light show (again, how did she know he had this ability?).  

Stalker.

> The Decepticons retreat.  Ironhide asks if he can he reinstated as an Autobot, as if there were any doubt that this would happen by episode's end. It occurs to me that if Hasbro knew they were going to be working on The Transformers: the Movie soon and that they would be killing off a lot of the 1984 characters, there should have been a more organic approach. This episode would have been a great opportunity to just retire the Ironhide character, letting him go off into the woods by episode's end. In some ways this would have been an even more tragic and memorable end for the character than to just casually and brutally off him along with his buddies in the movie.

Ice flow. Old Autobots are stuck on ice flows and pushed out to sea.

> Wheeljack studies the blueprints to the immobilizer, puzzled as to how she figured out how to reverse the effects.  Carly's explanation is that she's an Massachusetts Institute of Technology student with a science major.  Not that you need an MIT degree to switch around a couple of wires.  In the end, Carly and Spike have become more or less an item, albeit a non-exclusive one.  They drive off in her convertible, apparently off to the malt shop, something else that kids didn't do in the 1980's.  (It kind of bugs me how they threw in the sounds of her tires squealing almost as an afterthought to try to bridge the two scenes together.  Of course, tires don't squeal on dirt.)

Carly is significantly older than Spike. She's just using him to get to know the Autobots, and I think Spike's character arc this episode is to swallow his pride and go with it.

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 7:12:56 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 9:19:24 AM UTC-6, Cappeca wrote:
>>. (There's a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode called "Leonardo vs. Tempestra" where the Turtles visit the arcade, and this is even less plausible because the episode aired in 1990!)

I think the turtles would have found one, since they are absolutely the right demographic. And that is why so few arcades are left -- just not enough turtles. There is one in Seattle that I know of, but we have turtles or something.

Fun fact: Every nation has Ninjas, but Japan has crappy ones people have seen.

> > Back then Transformers were sentient machines, with values and moral, but
> > still could have a whole arm disconnected for surgery. Now they're actual
> > overcomplicated living organisms, and they may die if they lose an arm or a
> > leg.
>
> I think that is part of the lasting appeal. The Transformers have all these fantastic abilities, and are nearly immortal, and yet they're written like human characters, with human personalities and human foibles. Sometimes I think they took it too far (robot characters really shouldn't cry, or run out of breath) but there were also plenty of moments that only worked because they were robots (like Powerglide sitting there with his head in his hands, or the way the Decepticons just casually popped off their heads prior to binary-bonding with the Hive).

I like it when they are robots.

[Zobovor]

On Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at 12:06:30 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> The episode opens with Wheeljack in fine form as a mad scientist

You know what? I have watched this episode so many times, and I know how it goes so well, that I literally did not think to mention that Cliffjumper had the wrong voice. Don Messick did his voice for part of "Changing Gears," too (which is weird since Casey Kasem took over at the mid-episode point).

> It might actually have worked better as a two part episode to give everything
> a bit more space.

I'm not sure it's a high-concept enough story idea to warrant a two-part story. At its core, the plot is "Wheeljack invents thing, 'Cons steal it, 'Bots get it back."

I will go on record as saying that I generally hate two-parters. It's bad enough that we get these artificially-created cliffhangers every seven minutes like clockwork. It's the nature of the beast, of course (a commercial break with zero suspense would seem weird), but the multi-part episodes crank it up to eleven for the end of part 1.

Two-parters that are done well ("The Return of Optimus Prime") are fun to watch. Multi-part episodes that are not done well ("The Ultimate Doom" or "Desertion of the Dinobots") drag endlessly. I reserve a special hatred in my heart for "Desertion of the Dinobots" part 1, because the first episode is so utterly amazing (every single Transformer is mysteriously malfunctioning!) but by part two, it's deteriorated into this long, pointless romp on Cybertron. Swoop stops a missile. Swoop stops a door from closing. Swoop rides the trolley. God, just kill me now.

> Hilarity ensues as he indiscriminately sprays laser fire everywhere,
> showering everyone with rocks from the ceiling.

I bet this doesn't happen to Autobots who became Targetmasters!

> As Ironhide walks in, he has his right hand up in the air, as if his left
> hand was on a bible and he was being sworn in.

I have literally never noticed this before. Very strange.

> Bumblebee transforms and explains to the officer that Transformers exist,
> because the officer was apparently in a coma the last few times the
> Decepticons have put the entire planet at risk. It happens.

This would have worked better as a first-season episode. Then again, we see instances as late as the very tail end of season two where humans have no idea what Transformers are. In "B.O.T.," the Protectobots arrive and the BFP High School kids go, "What the heck are THOSE things?!"

So, we must conclude that either the Autobots were making an effort to minimize an awareness of their presence on Earth (which is just about the only thing that makes Beast Wars Megatron's line about "the secret war between Autobots and Decepticons" actually make sense), or else word just doesn't travel very fast.

A week and a half ago, I was reading online about five Walmart stores in four different states that abruptly and mysteriously closed down, all on the same day, for supposed plumbing problems. I tried to talk to other people about it at work and literally nobody had heard about it, not even my store manager. This is fairly big (and very suspicious news) but I was the only one who even knew about it. And this is the age of the Internet.

So, think about 1985. Stuff happens in Oregon (or wherever the cartoon takes place) and other states might not find out about it for months.

> The animation dives in towards the tiny camera is a fairly unsettling way.

That was a really good directorial decision. It really drives home the creepy, eerie feeling that the Autobots are being secretly watched.

> This is just another incident which demonstrates that if Megatron had
> Starscream's ruthlessness, the war would have been over long ago.

Megatron doesn't want to just slaughter the Autobots. He wants to do it artistically, in a manner that's rife with irony (or something close to it) and poetically just. Starscream is no poet.

> Jazz, apparently colorblind, says that he cannot see any difference even
> though the water is now gray and not moving.

I love Jazz dearly, but episode after episode, and scenes like this one, continue to demonstrate that he really is an idiot.

> Wheeljack explains that the water is now harder than any known substance, so
> Brawn punches it.

I think what Brawn was expecting to happen is this: Brawn punches the water, it shatters, and everybody laughs at Wheeljack for building yet another worthless invention. Nobody expected that it would actually work!

> Spike feels left out, so he runs over and steps on the remote control. The
> immobilizer aims for him, but Wheeljack leaps in to block the blast, and is
> immobilized.

This is a particularly telling scene. Wheeljack created the thing so he should have known what it was, and was not, capable of doing. He was surely well aware that its effects were only temporary. He also knew to prevent the immobilizer beams from hitting Spike, so I suspect the immobilizer is lethal to humans. If all molecular movement ceases, then it kills living things. When the beams wore off, Spike would be a corpse. That's my theory.

> Ratchet uses this opportunity to try to tear Wheeljack's head off.

RATCHET: Zero points of articulation! Really, Hasbro? FAIL.

> Optimus announces that a weapon like this must never fall into Decepticon
> hands. Optimus is clearly trying to tempt fate.

Optimus Prime does learn from his mistakes, at least. Compare this to "The Master Builders," when Optimus won't even allow Grapple to build an invention, precisely because he's afraid of it falling into Decepticon hands.

> Megatron should have promoted Starscream to be field commander, and then
> stayed in the base, polishing his bearings or something.

Megatron is Serpentor. Starscream is Cobra Commander.

> Because she was upset. Hysterical even. There is no telling what she might
> do. Maybe she will vote and own property.

Spike is very sexist. When she shows up in the forest, he's all, "Carly, what the hell do you think you're doing?! You should be in the kitchen, making me sammiches!"

> Skyfire drops Ironhide off in front of Bumblebee, and joins up with them.

I always liked when the writers remembered that Skyfire existed. There are so many characters in this show that it's really difficult to feature every one of them in every episode. You have to make a lot of allowances (oh, the Insecticons were probably off somewhere causing a famine; Dinobots were probably just locked in the closet; etc.)

> Overall, a decent episode. Very, very fast paced, with character arcs for
> several characters. Much, much better than that terrible movie.

For memorable characterization, I would have to agree. The biggest problem is that the episode teases up with a change to the status quo (Ironhide quits) but everything is back to normal by episode's end. I hate that. Like I said, this would have been a great chance to write Ironhide out of the show. It would make the episode meaningful, instead of just "oh, yeah, that's the one when the blonde chick shows up."


Zob