07.05
Read the first article here!
“The Renegade, Part 1”
Pictured from left to right: Cutler, Beck, Dude who's about to be killed off
So, we continue our adventures with Beck in the official beginning of the series, which is an appropriately-sized two-parter. This first-part of the episode sets up two plot-points. One involves Beck getting “accidentally” captured along with a group of prisoners, and he is forced to participate in games within the coliseum that was foreshadowed in the previous episode. The other plot involves Zed, one of the supporting cast, trying to work a little on his love-life… and somehow leading from that into getting a rare light-cycle of one of his friends stolen.
In regard to the plot involving Beck, it does tend to go a little bit too much into familiar territory for action-type cartoons for my liking, but it has some strong points to it, nonetheless. My main issues with it rely on character tropes that I’m not too fond of. Beck is still playing the “I’m not sure if I’m good enough to be the hero” sort of sympathy card, and its a cliche that I’ve grown rather tired of, especially since he proved to himself in the previous episode that he was perfectly capable of carrying forward Tron’s role, and even got assurance from Flynn himself. I see no point in resetting that area of his development when he had already been shown to work past it before. But, where we get one weak character bit with our established main protagonist, the show does thankfully make up for it with the addition of a potentially strong new supporting character: Cutler.
Early on in the episode, all of the fodder other prisoners get killed off without much of a struggle, and the only two participants skilled enough to stay alive through the games are Beck and Cutler, who quickly form a mutual alliance, given how both characters have a strong sense of pursuing justice. One thing I like in this series so far has to do with what justice means to different characters, and how Tron as an icon in The Grid represents justice. Some characters are seen to hate his very existence because his “uprising” (hmmm… I wonder if that has anything to do with the show’s namesake) against Clu is forcing stricter rules and policies on all of them as a consequence, and many view Tron as a real problem who is only serving to make their lives worse. Others, like Cutler, realize that the problem is inevitably going to get worse before it gets better, and thus he strongly supports Tron and what he stands for, and indicates to Beck that he wishes to join Tron’s uprising (clearly not knowing that Beck IS the aforementioned Tron; at least not yet). This in turn gives Beck new insight into the vast influence and responsibility of the other identity which he has assumed, and may lead to very interesting developments in the future. As far as this episode goes, though, Beck’s portion of the plot cuts out with both him and Cutler being pitted against one another as the two remaining survivors of the games, in a battle to the death in which the winner gains their freedom, and the loser… well, I think “battle” to the death kind of says it all, doesn’t it?
I think we're supposed to pity this guy... maybe
As far as Zed’s portion of the plot in this episode goes… I can already tell you that I don’t like this character. So, essentially he has a crush on his friend, Mara. They are at some dance club, and he is upset at the fact that she only thinks of him as a friend (she obviously has feelings for him, but he’s too dense to tell, you know the drill). So some other chick comes in and pretends to be interested in Zed, and naturally the guy falls for it. She then gets him to take her back to the work-shop where his job is at, and then notices the rare light-cycle that belongs to Able, and asks Zed if she can get a closer look at it (you can probably tell where this is going). So, naturally the dude wants to show off, and when the opportunity presents itself, she knocks him out and steals the bike, and Zed realizes what all of us in the audience could see from his first appearance: that he’s a dumb-ass. This plot itself seems to be more about setting up his relationship with Mara, I suppose, but its a really by the books sort of plot, and the characterization is equally as predictable, so as far as this episode goes its definitely the weaker of the two stories, here.
“The Renegade, Part 2”
So, apparently neon green and pink are supposed to be threatening...
This episode obviously picks up where the first part left off. On the subject of Zed’s portion of the plot, we get a mostly predictable conclusion to an already predictable set-up. Zed has to find a way to get the stolen light-cycle back before Able finds out that it was stolen in the first place. Mara catches onto the situation quickly and immediately offers to help Zed, cleverly using a tracking device right off the bat to track the whereabouts of the light-cycle, clearly showing herself to be a much more resourceful supporting character, and probably the one that we should give more of a shit about. This portion of the story goes through a series of events that ultimately leads up to Zed and Mara confronting the girl who stole the light-cycle and the rest of her gang. Now, since I’ve been harsh on Zed this whole time, I’ll be fair and say that he does have one genuinely good character moment in this episode. After Mara knocks that other lady off her feet for insulting Zed (once again, showing how much more dominant of a character she is), they quickly steal the light-cycle back and a chase ensues until they get cornered. Its at this point that we realize two things: (1) Zed ain’t half bad at riding a light-cycle; (2) despite his previous incompetence, the guy has the ingenuity to outsmart his opposition when he is at a severe disadvantage and outnumbered, by using that seeming corner he was in to lead them into a trap of his own. It turns out he is next to a switch that operates a crane and drops a cargo box in front of the gang, buying him and Mara time to escape.
Back at Beck and Cutler’s side of the story, we get to see how they handle the forceful ending of their alliance. Usually when two-guys are pitted against each other like this, they refuse to fight one another and just find some way to escape. To prevent this from happening, General Tesler (one of Clu’s highest ranking subordinates) has a wall surround them and slowly close in on them, meaning that if one doesn’t finish off the other in a certain amount of time, they will both be crushed to death. So, in a refreshing change from the usual cliche, Beck actually insists that they have to fight in order for one of them to live and carry on the uprising against Clu and his forces, and Beck volunteers to take the fall for the both of them. Cutler, however, is not down for the idea, so Beck has to take action to force him into confrontation. We get a pretty cool and intense fight scene followed by Cutler flat-out forfeiting when he realizes that neither of them have it in them to kill the other guy (in the battle itself, they each have an opportunity at one point to take the other’s life, and both of them hesitate). Tesler is pretty irked by this and is ready to kill them both, until Paige intervenes and says that he has to uphold his image and keep his promise to free one of them, which I would find to be clever if it weren’t for the fact that I think everyone would already hate Clu and EVERYONE who works for him, anyways. On that end, I’m not exactly sure what kind of image needs to be upheld for his top-ranking general, but I suppose I might be looking too much into that.
Let me get this straight: The guy surrounded by sinister red and orange is worried about protecting his image in the public's eye?
So, Tesler essentially sets Beck free, and condemns Cutler to death, with Beck promising Cutler that he won’t be meeting his end today. This leads to another sappy scene in which Beck is talking to Flynn and basically needs even more re-assurance from the guy that he’s not a failure. I could live with that alone, but what annoys me here is that Flynn himself has to point out that if Cutler isn’t dead yet, then Beck should get off his ass and try to save him. Why does Beck even need to be told that in the first place? A stronger protagonist wouldn’t have come to seek advice or reassurance. He would have just worked on saving his new ally right away. At any rate, we get a series of cool action scenes with Beck disguised in the Tron suit, and then its followed up with him busting out Cutler and them partaking in… another bunch of cool action scenes. And I will stress the word “cool” here, because if there’s one thing that this series definitely gets right, its taking full advantage of the unique world of The Grid, and how awesome the action can look in this Universe when fully realized. In a scene that ties in with Zed’s story-line at the end, the gang riding the bikes end up bumping into Paige as she’s fighting Beck and Cutler, allowing them to get away. I’m not too fond of having things miraculously tie together between two mostly unrelated plots at the end, but its a nit-pick more than anything else.
After they are in the clear, Cutler mentions Beck, and “Tron” says that Beck is fine and was the one who told him to rescue Cutler. How Cutler at this point can’t seem to recognize that both Beck and Tron have the same strange voice of Elijah Wood sort of perplexes me. At any rate, Cutler swears to help spread the word of Tron’s revolution and find him recruits to aid him in his endeavors. The episode more or less ends there. Well, actually its with a gag of Beck fixing Able’s bike to cover Zed’s ass, but then Zed being a moron and all wrecks it again, anyways. Its silly stuff, but totally appropriate for a kids show. The main point of the episode, though, was to help Beck further realize his influence as Tron, and to set-up what seems to the the titled uprising that this series alludes to. On that note, this two-parter was certainly effective in escalating the scope of the series to the next level, and in that regard I can’t wait to see where future episodes take this story-line and these characters. We will just have to see as things progress, or in other words, until the next episode. See you all then!