"Fun and Games"
Writer: Brian Swenlin
Director: Frank Paur
Original Air Date: October 20, 2001
Introducing: Arcade
Synopsis/Review: This episode begins
much like "Survival of the Fittest". We zoom in on the prison where they're
holding Juggernaut. A police guard is listening to music via headphones,
not really paying attention to the control room around him, when suddenly,
an alarm goes off. The guard doesn't hear at first- until he opens his
eyes and sees the red alarm blinking. He immediately takes his headphones
off and gazes at the readout screen- apparently, something's wrong with
Juggernaut's fluid tank! He calls the person in charge of the prison, and
they both enter the Juggernaut's chamber, where the alarm is coming from.
Everything SEEMS fine, but there must be something wrong with the valves
or something... Anyway, the guard asks his officer what they should do,
and the officer responds that they need to "make a call...".
Later, at the X-Mansion,
the X-Kids (the main ones, anyway... the New Mutants are strangely absent
from this meeting...) are awoken from their sleeping and called together
by Professor X, who tells them that he's gotten a call from the prison
where they're holding Juggernaut. Something's wrong with Cain's containment
tank, and he has to go there and help out the personnel before the tank's
effects wear off and Juggernaut wakes up. However, with Logan out on the
road and Storm visiting her relatives in Africa, he's forced to put Scott
and Jean in charge while he's gone. Scott and Jean confirm that they can
handle the responsibility while he's gone, and the Prof leaves, and the
kids go back to sleep. After shrugging off Scott's suggestion of an early
morning Danger Room session, heh.
Later, at Bayville High,
Jean is checking out the bulletin board in the front yard of the school
when she hears Scott and Terran talking on the other side. Curious, she
eavesdrops on the two. Terran trying to get all lovey-dovey with Scott,
but Scott manages to resist her flirting, at least enough to keep his glasses
on when she tells him to take them off so she can see the color of her
eyes. Terran reluctantly walks away, and Scott turns and walks straight
into Jean. Scott figures out that Jean was spying on them (even though
she unconvincingly denies it), and that Jean is a little jealous of Scott
and Terran's relationship. Ya can dish it out, but ya can't take it, ay,
Jean? Anyway, Scott just smiles at Jean's half-hearted denial of the whole
thing and walks off, leaving Jean a bit mad/jealous at him. Even though
he resisted Terran's flirting. Go figure.
Meanwhile, in the Bayville
High computer classroom, Kitty's managed to crash three computers while
trying to program them- she hasn't gotten much sleep, obviously. We then
shift over to the other side of the room, where Risty's watching a boy
named Webber play an arcade game on the computer. He's almost beaten it
("They don't call me Arcade for nothing!", he says), when the teacher comes
over and turns off the game. Awww.
After class, Risty's
talking with Kitty as they walk down the hallway. Risty asks if there's
any parties going on this weekend, but Kitty says that she hasn't heard
of any. Risty hints that "if annnyone didn't have their parents home this
weekend, we could pull someting together". It gets the right gears turning
in Kitty's brain, and she...
...later mentions to
Kurt, Evan, and Rogue about maybe having a party at the X-Mansion, since
all the adults are gone. Evan and Kurt are all behind it, but Rogue mentions
that Scott and Jean are DEFINITELY not going to be for this. Evan, Kurt,
and Kitty immediately frown upon this, until Kurt comes up with a plan...
Who says that they have to know?
Meanwhile, back at Juggernaut's
prison, Xavier helps the guards fix the malfunction with Cain's fluid tank.
It's a close call, though- Cain almost manages to break free before the
paralyzation fluid takes effect again. Xavier, after he finishes tweaking
the system, tells the guards that this malfunction was no accident- by
looking at the internals of the control panel, this was definitely sabotage...
Later, at sunset, Scott's
waiting by his car at a lookout point outside of Bayville when he sees
Duncan's car pull up, and Jean hops out and thanks Duncan for the ride.
Duncan just smirks at Scott, who narrows his eyes as Duncan drives away.
Jean comes up to Scott, asking him what she wanted her up here for. Scott's
like, whoa, wait a sec- I thought YOU wanted to meet ME here? After a moment
of confused silence, Scott replies that HE knows what's going on- Jean
wanted him up here so that he'd be away from Terran, since she's jealous
of their relationship and stuff. Jean's like, nuh-uh! So they argue a bit...
unaware that Kurt and Kitty pop up behind them, and Kurt silently fiddles
with the car's transmission while Kitty takes Jean's cell phone out of
her backpack via phasing it. The two dissappear as quickly as they arrive,
and Jean's finally like, take me home, Scott, you jerk! Yeah, like THAT'S
gonna get him to drive you anywhere... They get in the car, and Scott turns
the key... but nothing happens. He tries again, but the car's engine isn't
turning on. Jean's like, oooooh, okay, I get it now- you lured me out here
and then "conveniently" had car trouble! You jerk! And now Scott's on the
defensive side while they both sit in an idle car...
Back at the X-Mansion,
the party's on, and Kurt and Kitty celebrate their victory as the rest
of the X-Kids (New Mutants included this time) and many of the kids from
Bayville High par-tay! Arcade and Risty walk into the party, and Arcade's
in awe at the size of this place. Risty definitely affirms that it's neat
as they walk off, and as they enter a side hallway, she mentions that she's
been here before, and she thinks that they've got a big computer in one
of these rooms... And of course, that catches Arcade's attention, since
he's a nerd stereotype. "BIG COMPUTER! WHEEEEE! WHERE IS IT!?" And Risty
leads him off to where she thinks it is...
Meanwhile, back at Lookout
Point, Scott's finally decided to walk down to a pay phone, since Jean's
cell phone is missing. He and Jean are still rather angry with each other,
and Jean pulls him back to her via her psychic powers only to walk ahead
of him. Eh... yeah.
Meanwhile, back at the
Mansion, Risty leads Arcade downstairs to the basement, and to a locked
door. Uh-oh, now what are they going to do? No prob, Arcade says, I can
hack with the best of 'em. He hacks his way through the door, and is immediately
awed by the "big computer" behind it... Cerebro...
He immediately hacks
into Cerebro to get it to recognize him as its primary user, and searches
for "games". He finds pictures of some of the New Mutants in their X-Costumes,
but he apparently hasn't seen them before... game characters, maybe? Risty
hints that she could definitely use a copy of those files for her computer
class project... Arcade takes the hint and quickly burns her a copy, then
blatantly tells her to leave... he wants to see what this baby's capable
of. He comes across a "game" called "Danger Room".... hmmm...
There's then a short
scene in which Scott and Jean are in the process of riding home... squished
together in a pickup truck with a large man who's driving a bunch of farm
stuff to its destination. The ride's miserable.. and bumpy... and Scott
and Jean are understandably ticked at their situation.
Back at the X-Mansion,
Rogue's partying when she notices her X-Watch beeping. What's going on?
She gathers Spyke, Shadowcat, and Nightcrawler together at the entrance
to the Danger Room, where the problem's originating from. She can't get
the doors open, and it sounds like something's active inside their. Kurt
replies that it's no problem, he can just shut it off from the inside-
and teleports in, only to get hit by a blast from one of the active guns.
Shadowcat peeks in after wondering if Kurt's finished yet, but she finds
out that he's been hit. Getting ready to combat the Danger Room, Kitty
phases Evan and Rogue in and they manage to rescue an unconscious Nightcrawler.
Arcade, now in control of the Danger Room that he thinks is a "game", sends
all sort of stuff after them that they barely manage to evade, until Kurt
finally snaps out of it and teleports them away a little.
Arcade watches as the
"game" upgrades itself to Defcon 4, since the Danger Room "has been compromised".
Oh yeah, he likes the sound of that! We then zoom back to the main party,
where the various Bayville High teens and New Mutants are completely oblivious
to the all the outside doors and windows bolting up and having a sheet
of metal enclose over them. Er, yeah. I mean, I know it's loud party and
everything, but how can you NOT notice that you're being sealed in the
Mansion? Especially when there's so many people there? Riiight.
Elsewhere in the Mansion,
Risty's calling for help- she's lost in the lower levels, and can't find
her way out. Suddenly, some big robot comes up behind her and shoots her,
knocking her out. Down for the count, Risty... morphs into Mystique! (Odd
that she's not all scaly like when we last saw her in "The
Cauldron"... she looks mostly the same, except she has yellow eyes
now, and is wearing a different outfit. Weird...)
Meanwhile, Scott and
Jean finally arrive back at the Mansion, thanks to the truck guy. Seeing
all the cars in the driveway, they realize that they've been tricked- the
other X-Kids are having a party! They're about to go in and teach the other
X-Kids who's in charge, when the security systems all around the lawn suddenly
activate, targeting them! Via a bunch of close calls, Jean and Scott manage
to evade the various laser guns and schtuff and Jean manages to levitate
them to the secret base entrance behind the nearby waterfall, and they
enter the Blackbird docking area... only to have a huge guardian robot
try to stop them! They manage to evade and destroy the robot, continuing
on towards the center of the Mansion, where the main control room is. They
don't notice a recovering Mystique hiding in the shadows. She smirks and
runs out of the Mansion the other way.
Meanwhile, in a sub-corridor
of the lower levels, Kurt, Kitty, Rogue, and Evan are barely managing to
survive with all the stuff Arcade is throwing at them. Kitty manages to
phase Rogue out of the hallway as Kurt and Evan teleport out.
Scott and Jean, after
destroying a bunch of attacking security turrets, finally make it into
the control room, but Jean finds out that all control has been rerouted
to Cerebro. Kitty, Evan, Kurt, and Rogue manage to join them by phasing/teleporting
into the room. Scott and Jean are definitely angry at the other four for
having a party, but they're smart enough to save it for later. Arcade manages
to find the X-Men via camera video feed. Kitty recognizes that that's Webber,
one of her friends- but she doesn't know how he got into Cerebro... Arcade,
happy that he's found his prey, activates some more defense systems and
nearly electrocutes the X-Men in the process. The X-Men manage to escape
from the main control room and battle their way to Cerebro. Kurt teleports
Rogue up to Arcade, and she touches/knocks out Webber before he can turn
around to see what's going on...
Later, Kurt, Kitty,
and Evan are waving good-bye to the last of the party-goers. All the security
systems have been "discreetly" disabled, and the last party-goers thank
their hosts for a great party before driving off. The three X-Kids are
bummed, though, as they didn't get to do as much partying as running around
and fighting the defense systems. Boo-hoo, you got what you deserve, liars.
Nyeh.
We then switch over
to Arcade, who's apologizing to Rogue, Jean, and Scott about sneaking into
their computer. Apparently, he never caught on to the fact that Cerebro
wasn't a game, and he tells them that he couldn't resist such an awesome
computer, though. Rogue confused that Arcade thinks the whole thing was
a game, until Xavier enters, apparently back a bit early. He tells the
three X-Kids telepathically that Webber thinks that it was all a game,
nothing more, and he's not about to tell him otherwise. Xavier tells Webber
that his cab is waiting for him, and the stereotype takes off, sorry for
what he did- or at least, what he THOUGHT he did. Scott apologizes to Xavier,
shifting all the blame to himself. Xavier sternly responds that there's
plenty of blame to go around. But he realized something while at Cain's
prison- all of this was all set up so that someone could gain access to
the Mansion. Xavier knows that it's not Arcade, but someone else who cleverly
devised this opportunity to gain public access to the Mansion. The problem
is, who is it?...
We then switch to Mystique,
who's just exiting the Mansion grounds. She morphs back into Risty, smiles
and fingers the disk she got from Arcade, and then walks away...
Last Words: This episode had both its good parts and its bad parts. For one, I can't POSSIBLY believe that all those kids at the party didn't even notice the Mansion closing them in. I mean, there must have been dozens of people there. COME ON, kids aren't THAT unaware of their surroundings. And the whole idea that Arcade didn't catch on that Cerebro wasn't a game after all that time was kind of far-fetched too, especially after Rogue knocked him out and he woke up with seemingly no memory of what happened at the end of the "game". I mean, really- computers that sophisicated are NOT used for playing ultra-realistic games. Kitty and Kurt also acted a bit out of character in this ep- I couldn't believe that they'd actually "betray" Scott and Jean like that just so that they could have a party. Evan I could see doing that, and MAYBE Rogue, but Shadowcat and Nightcrawler? Nah, they aren't THAT irresponsible or rebel-like. However, there were many VERY cool and intense fight scenes between the X-Men and the automated defenses, which brings my rating of this ep up a bit, and the whole Scott/Jean/Terran/Duncan thing was pretty funny too, especially the arguement between Scott and Jean at Lookout Point. The Risty/Mystique thing was also a nice plot twist, although one could see it coming about five minutes prior to when it actually happened. Still, Evolution has definitely had better episodes than this.
Overall Rating: 6/10 Above Average