"Walk on the Wild Side"
Writers: Cydne Clark and Steve Granat
Director: Frank Paur
Original Air Date: March 2, 2002
Synopsis/Review: This episode begins
down in a sort of "under-construction" lower corridor of the Mansion, waaay
underground. Cyclops goes down there via elevator and walks over to the
rim of a pit- down lower, we see Jean dislodging a bunch of rocky chunks
from a nearby dirt wall and carrying it over to a large gap between two
walkways. Magma, under encouragement from Jean, manages to melt the rocks
together to close the gap in the pathway. Scott yells down to Jean that
Amara needs to leave for her first day of high school soon, and Jean mentions
that they'll be right up after they finish with this. Jean examines the
rock path, and tells Amara that it's almost perfect- just one little crack.
Amara laments at her "failure", and Jean insists that it's alright. A large
boulder above their heads starts to shake a little, though, and Jean hurriedly
tells Magma to melt the boulder back into place. Magma tries, but misses,
and the rock comes tumbling down. Jean manages to catch it at the last
second via her powers, and Scott blows it up in their faces with his laser
blasts.
Instead of being, y'know,
GLAD that Scott helped them out, Jean levitates herself and Amara up to
where Scott is, both of them mad at Cyclops for helping them out. Scott,
in an unusual 'bout of big-headedness, brags that they're lucky he was
there to save them as they go up into the elevator. Now, Jean and Amara
actually have a REASON for being ticked off, and Jean angrily tells Scott
that they didn't NEED his help, they could have handled it themselves.
He's just such a.... a guy! Scott's understandably like, "Yeeeahh..." Jean
and Amara go back into their rooms in a huff, leaving behind a confused/exasperated
Scott.
We then go over to the
Brotherhood house (yeah!). Boom Boom busts in Toad in the midst of his
monthly shower, just because she ran out of mouthwash. Toad complains,
and Tabitha throws one of her booms into his shower stall as she walks
out. *shriek* *BAM!* Poor Toad... Tabitha walks down the stairs, ignoring
Toad's shriek, and makes fun of Freddy's old-fashioned mohawk, then asks
Lance if he has any gas left in his jeep. Lance answers yeah, why? His
answer comes in the form of his jeep starting up, and Tabitha taking off
for school in HIS ride without even telling him. Yep, that's ol' Tabby
for ya....
At Bayville High, Kitty's
showing Amara to her new homeroom. Oh, and sit by the window, you can see
the track team sweating! Uh-huh... So, Amara takes a window seat, and a
couple seconds later Tabitha comes in, rockin' to her headphone music.
Amara says hi, and Tabitha says hi, and she asks if Amara wants to go buddy-buddy
with her to the mall after school. Amara says that it sounds like fun,
okay. Tabitha says great- now look out the window, here comes the track
team...
After school, Jean's
walking out of school when she sees Amara taking off with Tabitha in Lance's
jeep. Jean realizes this is bad news, and asks Scott is she can borrow
his car to catch up with them- she doesn't want Tabitha to get Amara in
trouble or anything, as Jean obviously knows how Tabby can be. Scott says
no problem, he'll go and get 'em- until he catches Jean's "look", and apologizes,
he KNOWS Jean can do stuff by herself perfectly fine. Then Duncan comes
up (boo!) and tells Jean excitedly that he got them tickets to the Sadie
Hawkins dance next month. Jean says, pardon me, but isn't that a dance
where the GIRLS ask the GUYS? Duncan said, yeah, but he figured... Jean
throws a fit, and goes on about how guys always treat girls like they can't
handle their own lives, and then grabs Scott's keys and leaves off in a
huff. Geeze, get a grip, Jeany.
Anyway, Tabitha and
Amara are cruising in Lance's jeep (with Tabitha's music turned waaaaay
up), when a carjacking takes place in the car in front of them at a stoplight.
The carjacker makes a little smoochy-gesture at Tabitha before driving
away in the car. No way Tabitha's gonna let him get away with that, and
speeds after him. Jean, meanwhile, driving in Scott's car, finds Tabitha
and Amara chasing the car and drives after them, managing to quickly push
away a mother and child on the street before the speeding carjacker can
run them over. There's a mini car chase for a while, until Tabitha tells
Magma to melt the carjackers' tires, which she does. Then Tabitha throws
a few of her booms into the car. The carjackers barely manage to get out
of the car in time as the whole thing almost falls apart from the resulting
explosions. Tabitha stops the jeep and both of the girls get out. The carjackers
start run away... only to be blocked in by a moving wall of bricks. Big
surprise, there's Jean, sitting in Scott's car, waving her hands like there's
no tomorrow. Tabitha and Amara celebrate their victory in catching the
bad guys, but Jean hears the police sirens, and tells the two that they'd
all better scram and lets the police handle it from here.
Later on, Scott, Jean,
and Amara are watching the news report about the earlier incident involving
the carjackers, and how the crooks were stopped by unknown heroes. The
crooks were part of a larger carjacking ring currently running amuck in
Bayville. Jean whispers to Amara that they'd better keep this under wraps,
and Amara agrees- I mean, it's not like they're going to be doing something
like THAT again...
Well, yeah, right. The
next minute-and-a-half is devoted to a hilariously bad "music video", in
which the three girls get Kitty and Rogue to join them, and they all buy
tight leather outfits to symbolize their vigilante-ness and kick some carjacker
booty. And, um, thrown amongst it is a bunch of dancing and lip-synching
and shopping at the mall. I'd have to say that this is probably the most
embarrassing minute and a half in the entire series so far (as of this
writing, 12/02). And to be honest, I hope it stays that way. The music
is so horribly "let's-go-shopping-at-the-MALL!" girlish, and some of the
behavior so.... girly-corny, that I usually sink into my seat whenever
this part comes up. Still, there is part of a "so-bad-it's-good" charm
to it... Thankfully, the music video part eventually comes to an end, and
we see Risty watching the five from a corner, wondering what they are up
to...
We then go to Scott,
who's watching a short news report in the Institute kitchen. It talks about
how the five unknown vigilantes, called the "Bayville Sirens", have been
single-handedly stopping the carjacking crime spree hitting Bayville so
far. Scott raises an eyebrow, but leaves it at that.
The next part shows
the five girls walking through the school hallway in slow-motion, smiling,
having a good time, and sometimes blowing kisses to any boys that happen
to look their way. Scott sees the five walking down the hall like they
own the school, and finally manages to put two and two together. He drags
aside a passing Kurt, telling him that tonight, they've got a "secret mission"
they're going on...
Later, at the Brotherhood
house, Boom Boom busts in on Toad taking a dump (thankfully, they don't
visually show us this...), out of mouthwash again. As she leaves, Toad
says that that's IT, he's buying her some more mouthwash. As if in thanks,
Tabitha throws a boom into the toilet. Eeeewww... She walks down the stairs
and bumps into Freddy, who's mad at having his mohawk shaved off last night
while he was asleep by SOMEONE, hint hint. Tabitha just shrugs it off,
saying that Fred was right- he DOES look better with the mohawk. She then
walks out the door, and finds Lance's jeep chained to the side of the house.
She rolls her eyes and yells to Lance that there's no WAY she's going to
steal it now- right before she drops a boom on the chain and rides off
with the jeep. Lance chases after her, but to no avail.
Later at the X-Mansion,
Tabby pulls up in the jeep and the other four Siren members pile into the
car, and they take off. Kurt and Scott see all this, and follow them. Jean
notices the two guys following them, though, and manage to lose them by
having Kitty phase the jeep through a train passing by a nearby railroad
crossing.
Later, we see the girls
driving down a road downtown, now dressed in their leather getup. Rogue
mentions that they've got to find a better place to change, but Tabitha
insists that it's no biggie, no one's going to believe the toll booth guy.
(Joke Rating- 10/10. Mwahaha.) They spot a carjacking far up on the road
ahead, and decide to tail the carjacker back to his "base". They get there,
and manage to enter the warehouse unnoticed, where they find out that the
carjacking operation's a chop shop- the cars are being scrapped down and
sold for parts!
The girls are soon discovered,
though, by the chop shop boss, surrounded by a bunch of thugs. It turns
out that the whole thing was a trap to lure the Sirens here. They had been
hurting the business quite a bit, and the boss wanted to get rid of them
ASAP. Some wonderfully cliche dialogue is exchanged, and then the two groups
have at it- of course, it's no contest, the Sirens easily win, what with
their powers and all. Boom Boom goes a little crazy with the booms, though,
and sets off a gas can, triggering a noisy explosion. Scott and Kurt see
the explosion from far away, and head towards its source. They arrive and
see the jeep parked out front- yep, the girls are here, Kurt pops them
into an out-of-the-way corner of the chop shop. They're about to help,
when they see that the girls have everything under control, barring Tabitha's
little mishap with the explosion, which apparently didn't do too much damage.
So the two guys decide to wait it out- barring Scott secretly blasting
an oil can away from a small fire. Tabitha and Magma manage to trap the
fleeing chop shop boss in the trunk of a car, when the police show up.
A female officer comes in, telling the vigilantes that they're under arrest.
The Sirens protest- they're the good guys here- but the police officer
insists that such vigilante practices are illegal. However... she knows
what they're trying to prove, and they did a rather good job doing it,
too. She'll cover for them this one time, but they'd better not do something
like this again. Tabitha's about to protest, but Jean silences her, giving
into the officer's wishes. The officer tells them that there's a exit out
of this building down in the lower levels, and they hurry off- but not
before Kitty tells the officer that the boss is in the truck of a car,
heheh. Kurt and Scott, satisfied that everything went over smoothly, secretly
'port out. The female officer tells the other police officers that she
didn't find the vigilantes, and then slips away, morphing into Mystique...
Later that night, at
the X-Mansion, Scott and Jean are in the kitchen. Scott's about to get
the last cookie, but he notices Jean again and breaks the thing in half,
giving her some. Scott asks what Jean did tonight, and Jean laughs and
tells Scott that they knew he was following them. Jean admits that it was
a blast, but she realizes that they took the "girl power" thing a bit too
far. She wishes for the day, though, when they can use their powers out
in the open, without fear of getting ousted from society or some such.
Scott agrees, and they clink milk glasses to... "someday".
Last Words: This is defintely one of the least serious episodes of the entire series- a very obvious and deliberate parody of "Charlie's Angels" (or should I say, "Charles' Angels". Heheh). The vast majority of the episode was top-notch, with excellent humor, attitude, and dialogue, as well as animation. There was also a cliche "criminal organization" story behind the whole thing, and purposefully corny dialogue at some parts, especially the short exchange between the chop shop boss and the Sirens. However- and this is a rather large however- the music video was hway too over-the-top. And bad. Did I mention it was horrible? It's just... not something you'd expect from a series like X-Men: Evolution. And at times the whole "girly" thing went a little too far, as well. Bottom line: If you can ignore the music video and take this episode for what it is- a light-hearted parody of "Charlie's Angels", and not a serious, plot-intensive episode- then you'll love it to pieces. Otherwise, skip it.
Overall Rating: 8/10 Great
(NOTE: This episode was aired as the thirteenth episode of Season 2, even though, in actuality, it is the tenth.)