Never Forgotten: a Foster's Home Community

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! :D

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�>