Episode 2 - "Washington B.C."

Plot:
Today's episode sadly is a teaching episode, with Ben being forced to learn modesty for his hero work, whilst also fighting a giant frog and bird.

We open on a scene of Ben using Heatblast to save a mother and son from a burning building. This shows clearly that Ben has progressed since last episode, learning one of Heatblast's alien abilities to absorb fire into himself, rather than burning down the world around him.

However Gwen realises that this was just a distraction so the thieves that robbed the house could escape. Making chase in their RV (named the Rustbucket), Ben brutally obliterates their car with fireballs, forcing them to crash straight into a wall. Amazingly they don't die on impact.

Heatblast tries to do some intimidating while he has the thugs cornered, but the Omnitrix times out. Despite the police arriving to save Ben, they show him no respect, thinking he is lying when he says he stopped the robbery, leading to beginning Ben's downward spiral into greed for the day.

Meanwhile we are introduced to the first human Ben 10 villain, Dr Aloysius James Animo! He brings the science element of the show in full force. Having developed machines to control, grow and mutate animals, turning even a small frog into a devastating weapon, he poses a real threat to peaceful Washington DC.

While he eventually goes on to be one of my favourite more comic villains of the show he is fairly serious here, Ben obviously not having driven him over the edge yet. His importance in this episode is a parallel to Ben's greed for attention, Animo having gone insane after having lost a huge scientific award to his rival. For some reason he decides he needs to go to the supermarket to get something for his super weapon. The supermarket just so happens to be one that Ben is committing a crime in.

Ben has become obsessed with the Sumo Slammers card game that you apparently get in cereal boxes, his eyes being on the golden sumo slammer card. To do this he decides to abuse his alien all powerful device, to also turn into his smartest alien Greymatter (who for some reason doesn't see how stupid his plan was) and enters every single cereal box
in the store to steal the prize. Probably the worst debut of arguably one of the best aliens.

The consequences for this stupid, selfish action instantly come back to bite Ben when Animo and his giant frog invaded the shop, turning the pets into equally beastly monsters. Because of his messing around with Greymatter he was fully timed out, so is forced to man up and save Gwen and Max in human mode.

Here is the first example of basic Ben actually achieving something, managing to push a shelf on the newly giant mutated hamster and save the shop. At this point we see one of the biggest issues with the episode, because Animo makes a Washington BC pun whilst fighting Ben they instantly figure out where he will be heading next.

This is the point where the show may have needed a bit of a slowed down Scooby Doo-esque detecting sequence, where they found some clues, however as Ben 10 tries to normally keep the pace moving forward fast at all times this is far from common in the show.
Anyway the crew head to the natural history museum and find him, where a pretty cool fight scene ensues, Ben turning into Fourarms to fight a giant resurrected mammoth while Gwen and Max take on a giant bird with just a metal pole and winning for the most part.

However upon reaching Animo he escapes on his giant zombie T-Rex (which I have no idea what from the super market helped bring to life). Gwen is also captured by the bird and Ben attempts to give chase, only for time out to kick in, forcing him and Max to get in the RV. Yet again a massive stroke of luck happens when Dr Animo just happens to leave a leaflet from the award ceremony he lost right at the scene of the crime, allowing Max to suddenly realise he is going after his scientific rival.

Stinkfly manages to save Gwen from the bird's new nest atop the Washington Monument, with its very impressive speed and reasonable strength. Leaving the 10 year old girl and the 70 something year old man to yet again fight the massive bird Stinkfly races ahead to find Animo, about to feed his rival to the evil zombie dinosaur.


Stinkfly destroys Animo's device fairly easily which handily reverts all mutated monsters to their original form. A little too easy but there wasn't much more they could do with Ben stuck as Stinkfly, perhaps with Greymatter there could have been a cool technological element to the fight. At least they followed the rules of the Omnitrix, which is one of the most pleasing aspects of the original show that the many sequels fail to compare to.

This episode's most important introduction, aside from Animo and the new aliens, was the severity of the time-out function. While episode one was pretty lax when it came to the downsides of Ben's powers today really hammered home the issues with messing around with the watch outside of battle, as any moment Ben could need it and be forced to survive 10 minutes before the next DNA change.

Alien of Focus:
Surprisingly Stinkfly took this week's crown for alien MVP, despite Ben actually managing to get Fourarms when he wanted him. He has two fight scenes against both the zombie t-rex and the huge mutant bird and comes on top both times with his speed and strength. Fourarms put in a decent effort with the mammoth but he timed out before he could really do too much to stop Animo.

Final Thoughts:

While far from the best episode very solid establishment of the hard parts of Ben's hero work, even if  way too heavy handed with the moral aspects. Another thing to note that I forgot to cover last episode is I really appreciate the almost painful look of Ben's entire genetic code being overwritten for most of the alien transformations, something the later shows failed to show quite so well, this was always a big part of the world building and realism element that appealed to me as a young fan.

Also it's important to note that Max says that chasing the huge bird reminds him of the old days before he retired. What kind of Plumber was he in his prime?

Rating:

Plot: 7/10 - Interesting idea and well executed, felt a tad convenient at times when the characters knew where to look based on very vague clues left at each scene. 

Characterisation: 4/10 - Very heavy handed with the moral message of Ben needing to stop wanting rewards and fame, however Animo's side of it was an interesting watch. Terrible handling of a super intelligent being like Greymatter when he isn't questiong a plan of petty theft for a trading card.

Humour: 5/10 - Some good Gwen vs Ben snarking matches, but had some poor toilet humour aswell.

Action: 8/10 - Very solid fight scenes, from Fourarms brutally beating up a mammoth, to the Stinkfly zombie t-rex and bird fights.

Villain: 8/10 - While Animo may have appeared a little cartoony here in his debut, they did a very good job conveying his mindset and backstory, making him one of the most significant and relevent human villains in the show in future episodes.

32/50

Next Week: Episode 3 "The Krakken"