Flashwave wrote:I gotta admit, as cool as the Cons are, I'm starting to get tired of the Villan of the Day setyp. I really hope that as we get more info out of Prime and Fixit a-la this last episode, we start to adress what I think is the most important question of the series. One that even psj has missed (I think) and one that could be a complete gamechanger: Why did the Alchemor crash, in the first place? Was it "Instant Army, just add water" sabotge, or is it hust Earth's luck that starships rain down from the heavens?
Burn wrote:The Villain of the Day thing got old for me with the first few episodes. 20 episodes in and I'm left wondering "What's the point of this show?"
Aside from some "rising evil" which Bumblebee has to prepare for, it's usually just the same thing each episode with the Autobots having to capture a Decepticon or two, with some underlying message of team work and a member of the team learning a valuable lesson...oh and Bumblebee trying to come up with a catch phrase.
You get the same sort of thing with Rescue Bots only it's a case of "emergency of the week" and quite frankly, Rescue Bots is far more enjoyable.
I can understand these complaints and, while I'm enjoying the show as it is, I too wish for some more plot focus to be put into it.
But on the other hand, I feel the need to ask about a certain other series that a lot of people love whose first season similarly didn't have much going on in it: Beast Wars. Recall that the first season of Beast Wars had very little actually happening in it as well. Out of its 26 episodes, the only ones that seemed the least bit relevant to any ongoing story were episodes 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 (barely), 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 25, and 26. 12 out of 26 episodes, with the remaining 14 being fillers that could be excised altogether with little narrative value lost (some enjoyment value would be lost, yes, but the story would still endure).
While 12 relevant episodes may seem like more than what this show's had, it's actually less than this show's number of relevant episodes if you think about it. The first two episodes are obviously important, and the third introduced Steeljaw, so those three are keepers. Episode 5 shows how Bee keeps getting visions from Optimus, so it helps explain the nature of the visions to come in later episodes. Episode 6 introduces Thunderhoof, who joins up with Steeljaw. Episode 8 has Steeljaw acquire Underbite. Episode 10 has Jazz follow up on Bee's unauthorized space bridge use from Episode 1, and it's likely that we'll see Jazz again, so this one's gotta be important.
Episode 12 introduced both Drift and Fracture, the latter of whom also joins Steeljaw. Episode 13 is definitely important with Optimus's training under Micronus. Episode 14 has Clampdown also join up with Steeljaw. Episode 17 brings Drift back, who joins the Bee Team. But this episode also features the escape of both Quillfire and Springload, which retroactively makes their previous episodes (9 and 11) relevant. And episode 20 focuses on Fixit's true purpose with the Alchemor, the defenses he put around the scrapyard, and another vision from Optimus. But this episode also refers back to episode 18, twice, and has Chop Shop return from episode 4 (Righty's appearance in episode 15 didn't affect the story), making both 4 and 18 retroactively relevant too. So adding all these up (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11,
12, 13, 14, 17, 18, and 20) gives us 16 relevant episodes out of 20, making only 4 of them completely filler.
Now, one could argue that the difference between Beast Wars and this show is that one is simply more enjoyable than the other (as Burn has already stated about Rescue Bots vs. this show), but as enjoyment is in the eyes of the beholder, we're brought back to Burn's original question of what the point of this show is. As far as can be told from this point, its point is currently the same as it's been from the start: To recapture the escaped Decepticon criminals, with possibly something else bigger to come later on that's being built up at an extremely gradual rate.
As for why it's taking them so long to get the story going, they're still focusing on both character development and expanding the show's rogues gallery of convicts. At the very least, however, we do get to see some amount of change in the status quo such as
the Bee Team acquiring a GroundBridge, Drift's joining them for good, and now the new defenses from Fixit. What we really need more of is some focus on Steeljaw's gang since they're currently the primary antagonists and yet have rarely been seen. They're mentioned often enough, but they need more screentime.
But to return to my original comparison to Beast Wars's first season, recall how much better the show got after its first season ended and its second season began. Both that show and this show have 26-episode first seasons, and if you'll recall that, by the 20th episode of Beast Wars, that show was still having plots like "The Maximals have to get back to base while blinded", and then two episodes later would come the infamous "The Preds make Rhinox sick and get defeated by flatulence" episode. So Beast Wars was also still being silly so late into its first season. But once it got to season 2, things got much better, so there's still hope for the same to be had for this show as well.
Not to mention that, unlike Beast Wars, this show's set to have 78 episodes, so its second and third seasons can each have 26 episodes instead of 13, so there's more room for it to breathe and do more than what Beast Wars had room to do. Both Rescue Bots and Prime likewise had 26-episode second seasons and both of those were good seasons as well.
So if we're still not really feeling this show by this point 20 episodes in, it's okay if anyone wants to drop it, but there is precedence for having faith in season 2 being a step up from season 1, so if we hang in there for six more episodes, the show might just bear fruit (or more tasty fruit) in the end.
