Oh, how they’ve not only gone off the rails but lost the whole damn train.
No gif encapsulates how I feel better than Rocket for this one. Session 3, which in the anime, was supposed to give us our first taste of Faye Valentine, gives us a boat-load of padding, three stereotypes, and a screwed-up plot device.
Let’s get into it.
In this episode, we get Spike threatening Vicious, Jet chasing a doll, and a bounty that is a plot device gone awry. That’s it. That’s the session. The name?
Dog Star Swing
They should have called it
The Infinite Paderomi or The Search for Sally
Since this is another one that doesn’t have anything to do with the anime episode, I’m going to dive right into it.
Spike…
In his ongoing crusade to keep his past away from Jet, we find him talking to a contact and learning that Vicious knows he is alive. He entreats the contact for help, and after sliding 100 Woos, the contact agrees. This later leads to Spike on top of a silo with Vicious in his sniper sites, showing Vicious that he is not untouchable.
Jet…
The ENTIRE episode is about a doll, Jet not being there for his family, and the reveal of his partner stealing his life. I can’t with this shit. This has NOTHING to do with the original storyline. Something was nagging at me about this addition to Jet’s background, and it was not until I saw this post on Twitter that it hit me.
They turned Jet into a damn stereotype. Not only did they race-swap him, but they also made him into a trope, a negative depiction of a father, a deadbeat who is never there and can’t do anything right.
As Kaelan states in the thread, Jet is someone who is pining for a love lost, someone who wants a family, not someone who threw one away. This also screws up the dynamic between Spike and Jet, adding to the age problem in the casting. They’ve changed this character so much, it’s disheartening and hard to watch.
Who the heck is Woodcock?
Why another shoehorn, of course.
And another horrid stereotype, a horny redhead with a penchant for black men. She also has a lisp… A lisp… A speech impediment, talk about forcing representation. I am NOT even touching the obvious pun that is her name. Nope. Not going there at all. Uh huh.
Enter stereotype number three…
What trifecta of stereotypical bullshit would be complete without a Dominatrix being German? That’s right. They went there. They even inserted the “can’t understand a heavy accent” joke. These are the people that said the original was problematic, remember?
Hakim Abdul… I just can’t with this one.
How do you screw up a plot device? How do you take a dognapper and try to make him a “good” bad guy? You give him a tragic backstory and then have the cowboys try to talk him out of killing himself. That’s how. I would say you can’t write this shit, but they did.
They had him kidnapping dogs and killing the owners because the owners saved their dogs instead of his family when it came time to hop in escape pods and land on another planet. That’s it. That’s the backstory. He was also kidnapping dogs to KILL them, not ransom them, but couldn’t kill the dogs in the end.
I can’t shake my head enough at this. I’ll give myself a headache.
Ein
They couldn’t even get Ein’s story right. How do you screw up stuff THIS badly? We see him for the first time leading the bumbling duo to Hakim. He may, or may not be a data dog. The fact something opened a digital cage from the inside could be a hint that Ein is, but that would mean he is a legal experiment and not an illegally modified dog. Yes, I am nitpicking the crap out of this.
Fight Scene…
It’s completely clear to me now and that they can’t choreograph a seamless fight even if Spike had them in his sniper sites. In case you are about to write a rebuttal in the comments, I have a name for you…
Jackie Chan… If he can do seamless fight scenes in his movies without clunky slow-motion clips, and the action be as smooth as silk and not look forced, what’s stopping these people?
I just can’t. I’m done. Unless something happens in future fight scenes, I will not have anything more to add. I would just be repeating myself.
This one doesn’t even get one espresso shot. I am thoroughly disgusted.
See you space Cowboy…
Anissa “Maddy” Walker
House of Geek 