If you have not watched this episode, please do so before continuing!
Episode 12 of 13... we're almost done! Okay, so to recap from the end of last episode, Jafar gave the Knave back his heart... and then killed the woman he loved right there before his eyes (what is this, Game of Thrones? Hamlet? The show's not over till there are no characters left??).... and Alice just found out her mother-in-law is a "snake stick."
Wonderful; what else can happen? In a world where a writer can make people act out his darkest imaginings... Plenty.
Random Thoughts, Observations, and Best Scenes and Quotes:
-I'm not overreacting, I promise; want me to prove it? OVER ANASTASIA'S DEAD BODY, which apparently he has taken it upon himself to dress her in a nice dress and arrange her beautifully in a glass coffin (a là Snow White), Jafar manipulates the now-emotion-ridden Will into thinking that Jafar is actually someone who can "relate" to the feeling of "someone who's risked everything for love." (What the WHAT?? Since when??) and offering him the chance to be reunited... so long as Jafar receives Ultimate Power. (Because why do something yourself if you can warp others into doing it for you??)
-Well, that's interesting... when the Queen of Hearts rips your heart out, she uses you to do her dirty work... like chasing down an irrepressible "thief and murderer": our very own Alice.
Of course Alice can escape the soldiers, but poor Will--the newest Knave--is compelled to keep pursuing her, no matter what. It makes for some funny scenes though... gosh, I love this guy!
-Meanwhile, Will is released by Jafar to go and tell Alice and Cyrus that the "only way" to be able to resurrect Anastasia and finish his love story, after all he went through to help Alice finish hers--is to give up the staff and let Jafar win?? Umm, I don't know if he's listening to himself just then... because what part of letting the PRAT get what he wants is ever a good idea, or even remotely effective in making good things happen??
-Ugh, I can't take much more of this Jafar-the-schoolyard-bully crap! He can't even think for himself anymore, so he's got Jabberwocky to exploit fears and do all his thinking for him... and all he does is threaten her with the Vorpal Blade! Jeez...
-Oh SNAP. Alice and Cyrus are on their way to trying to find out how to free Amara from the staff, but the Knave--after agreeing to go along with them--waits till they're asleep and then takes it from them! Good thing Cyrus was awake when he first tries it, and he's being all nice to Will and stuff... so Will freaking punches him in the face and takes it anyway! You know the show is coming to an end when one of the greatest heroes does something so incredibly selfish and stupid that gives power to the enemy and is so incredibly traitorous toward his fellow heroes... |
| PSSST!! HEY GUARD!! LOOK TO YOUR RIGHT!! |
-Luckily our True Love Couple still have the Lost-And-Found... because the Knave ends up getting lost, himself, so that makes him so much easier to overtake!!
-And then this happens: Alice catches up to him at the edge of a cliff overlooking a rushing river, HE THREATENS HER WITH A KNIFE??? He points out the fatal flaw in every tale of "true love": "You think your love story is the only one worth fighting for." Hmm.... good point... Alice slips... and Will--who has reminded us repeatedly that he can't swim and he is afraid of water, dives off of that cliff to rescue Alice! And thus exploding the warmfuzzies of every Will/Alice shipper everywhere!-The poor guy takes it all really well; he and Alice discuss the difficulties he's having with his restored heart, and he's now learning how the head and the heart must work together to accomplish the right thing instead of just anything.
-Abruptly, the sound cuts out again... and the Jabberwocky descends on our brave heroes! OH NO!! But actually... she's realized that working for Jafar is not as villainously glamorous as she thought it would be... so she's ready to make a deal with the heroes: she'll help them get into Jafar's castle to be able to steal the other genies back and stop Jafar, and they'll get the Vorpal Blade for her. Why should they help a monster like her, you may well ask? "Nobody's born a monster," she maintains, "We're made." Hmm... What would the writers have done with a Jabberwocky flashback story, I wonder?-Of course, the side benefits for her is the freedom to move on to other unsuspecting worlds--with Jafar gone, people won't have as much to fear; she makes it sound like such a bad thing... but an ally's an ally when you're playing against a cheater who's hogging the board, right?
-So back in the past, Alice retrieved Will's heart from the Queen's vault... then there is a brief moment of funny while Alice discovers exactly what happens when someone holds a person's magically-extracted heart... (which may or may not include her commanding, "Stand on one leg; now flap your arms like a chicken!" Kudos to Michael Socha for playing along!)
-So the group splits up. Jabberwocky presents Cyrus to Jafar (who is not satisfied; it wasn't Cyrus he wanted, it was the staff!) and tries to pass off the lie Cyrus is feeding about Alice and Will's whereabouts (wants him to believe they're long gone, when really they're just downstairs, in the process of breaking the Sultan out of jail...)
-Of course, Jafar can't resist using the moment to gloat; he knows it doesn't matter where Will is, because all Jafar has to do is rub, and he'll be "Yanked back into [his] bottle." But of course Cyrus knew this all along... he was just a plant to get Jafar to bring Will up there right at the moment when Jafar's guards were going to capture him for breaking into the dungeons!
-Jafar gets mad, and of course starts in with the Force-choke... only to be interrupted by... OHMY... WAIT, WHAAA???? Did I miss something? How exactly did Alice get her out of there? If it was all her doing, WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY DID SHE WAIT SO LONG???-Amara can only distract him for so long; all it takes is that one look, and Jafar--who has now seen all three of his genies, though his interaction with Cyrus' brothers has been very slight--cannot possibly miss the family resemblance.
-And so begins an epic Sith--er, sorcery--battle of wills, solely relying on telekinesis and Indiana Jones references (when Amara actually does something with her magic and turns the chandelier into a knot of giant serpents, Jafar delivers the line, "Snakes! It was always snakes with you, Amara!")
-I'd hoped that the episode would end here; I wanted Amara to have a change of heart in the middle of the spell-casting, so that she'd turn and blast Jafar out of the castle and they'd set about resolving everything just in time for the last episode. I wanted an end to the whole "evil-always-wins" kick that these writers seem to be on. I thought, surely they're not going to let the bad guy win just for the last episode just because they can!!
-No dice. The final scene:
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| Aww, crap! It worked... |
FINAL SCORE: Heroes win FREAKING EVERYTHING. Finally, Alice and Cyrus are done being mushy-gooshy and are actually getting serious things done and thinking about something other than each other. Finally, the Knave has his heart back and he's re-learning how to use it properly. (and doing a capital job of it, by the way!) Finally, battle lines have been drawn and we're done with the wishy-washy fence-riding, back-and-forth, flip-floppers!
And the Villains... well, the writers are certainly making no bones about what a BloodyAbsoBloominAwful character Jafar is anymore... No more feeling sorry for the poor rejected street rat... No more wondering if possibly he could have had a noble motivation for his heinous acts he was forced to make. Not even Jabberwocky's badly-timed and totally-misguided crack about monsters being made, not born, can drum up any sympathy for him now. Jerky McJerkFace....
Graphics get the ding for the EXCESSIVELY LAZY ANIMATION TACTICS! Seriously? I just can't get over that "Pseudo-Jedi face-off"... And furthermore, this is detrimental to the Conflict/Resolution because What the heck, Amara? You had to wait till Jafar would be just at the right place and have the best opportunity to kill your son before you came out of your beauty sleep inside that staff with no explanation or exposition (boo on the writers for that one! You could have cut out half of Jafar's throw-away power-monger sound bites and given us a little bit of that old Disney magic by showing that transformation!)... Unfortunately for you, Jafar uses his eyes better than his mouth and his brain, and that sixth sense immediately picked up on the family resemblance... Oh gosh, I can't take this...
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| YOU. CALL. THAT. WRITING????? |
Heroes: 5/5
Villains: 4/5
Graphics/VFX: 3/5
Banter: 5/5
Conflict/Resolution: 3/5
TOTAL SCORE: 7.5/10
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