Last time on X-Men: Evolution, a
young woman’s powers manifest and she drains the strength and memories out of a
hapless football player. The young woman runs from the scene and is dubbed Rogue
from this point on. She’s chased by the X-Men, whom want to help her, and Mystique,
who is using her powers to convince the X-Men are out to get her. Rogue ends up
snatching the powers of Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) and Ororo Monroe (Storm) during
the extended chase. She’s almost overwhelmed by the power she took in, but
teleports away before she causes irreparable damage. After the chase concludes,
Rogue transfers to Bayville High, Mystique believing she’d created enough doubt
in Rogue’s mind to ensure her loyalty. But it’s revealed she kept a communicator
that Jean Gray had given her, implying she’s not completely on the Brotherhood’s
side. That was an emotional rollercoaster, let’s see what happens when the Blob
appears, shall we?
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| While the added BMI still makes this power undesirable, I can't deny that his strength is impressive. |
We open on a Texas Monster Truck
Rally. One of the evening’s entertainment is a performance by Fred “The Blob”
Dukes, an enormous rotund young man. He’s able to hold and pull together two speeding
monster trucks, to the crowd’s applause. But he ends up stumbling and hitting his
face in the dirt, causing everyone to burst out laughing, to his fury. Logan
and Jean are watching from the crowd, looking concerned, while Mystique looks
delighted. After the rally, Fred smashes up his dressing room in a fury, hating
the fact he was laughed at. Mystique in her guise as Raven Darkholme, approaches
Fred with an offer to join her team and attend Bayville high. Fred is initially
skeptical, but agrees to listen, about 5 seconds before Logan and Jean make it
back stage. Looks like the X-Men lost another one.
A few days later, Mystique welcomes
Fred to Bayville, giving him a schedule and assuring him that as Principle, she’ll
protect him from any… issues that may pop up. Outside her office, Fred is
almost immediately confused by his schedule and grabs a random kid to demand to
know where he’s supposed to go. Said kid is Jean’s scummy boyfriend Duncan whom
immediately makes a fat joke. Fred freaks out and nearly crushes Duncan with a
locker but Jean runs in to stop him from murdering the git. Jean does her best
to help friend and be nice to him, but even a complete social idiot like myself
could tell she’s really uncomfortable around him. Fred doesn’t notice
this and seems instantly smitten. Or the stalker equivalent.
We cut over to a Drama course that
Scott is apart. He’s randomly assigned a play that he’ll read a scene from,
King Henry V by Shakespeare, opposite Rogue. Well, isn’t that inconvenient,
what are the odds? Scott does his best to play it cool, and Rogue agrees to a
truce, so long as Scott keeps the other Xavier kids away from her. Sounds reasonable…
though I wonder why they aren’t trying harder to convince Rogue that her shapeshifting
boss is the reason why it looked like they were attacking her. Ah well.
At lunch, the Xavier kids, Kurt
specifically, are poking fun at Scott for having to work opposite someone that’s
convinced they tried to kill her last week. It’s not that funny, but you do
have to find humor where you can. Fred walks in with an extremely overladen
food tray and is immediately put on edge by Kurt’s laughter. How sad. He
accidentally launches his tray when he sits down at a lunch table too hard, dosing
asshole Duncan in food. Everyone starts laughing, other than Duncan who looks
murderous, which set’s Fred off. He triggers a massive food fight with most of
the kids bailing. Most of the X-Men bail too, but Jean tries to calm Fred down.
In his anger, he almost smashes Jean, but Scott blasts the table he was holding
to rubble before hitting her. Jean asks for time to talk to Fred, which Scott
gives though he promises to be nearby if things get heated again. Outside the
lunchroom, Rogue is clearly impressed by the X-Men’s camaraderie, and dare I
say, the chivalrous actions of one Scott Summers? Mystique arrives in her Darkholme
guise and breaks things up before Scott can try to mend the bridge between Rogue
and the X-Men. In the lunchroom, Jean does her best to try to convince Fred to
work on his anger issues. She goes so far as to show off her powers and mention
the Xavier Institute as a place where Fred could learn control, if he wanted
to. Fred seems open to the idea, well, specifically Jean talking to him about
the idea. Dude has one thing clearly on his mind and it’s not training. She
leaves with Scott, which Fred isn’t super happy with. He steals a photo of her
and Scott from her backpack, rips the Scott half off and keeps the Jean half.
Yeah, that’s not a good sign at all.
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| I'm not sure I can think of a scarier place to be than to be looking directly into the shaded eyes of a distraught Scott Summers. |
After class, Fred approaches Jean
and tries to ask her out. Jean does her best to disengage, claiming she has
stuff to do without slowing down. Fred doesn’t like being told no and starts
yelling at her to go out with him. When she continues to try to talk him down,
he grabs her and tries to force her go. I think that officially makes this a
kidnapping. Jean eventually decides talking isn’t helping, so she tries to make
Fred drop her by throwing some concrete bricks and scaffolding from a
construction project they passed at him. He’s got too tight a grip, though, and
all she does is cause a bunch of the scaffolding to fall on them. She’s knocked
out and Fred takes this as a sign he can take her. Yep, 100% kidnapping. He
takes her to an abandoned foundry that he’d tried to spruce up with candles and
seems to be under the delusion that he’s taking her on a date. The fact she’s
strapped to a chair with iron bars holding her in place doesn’t affect the
delusion at all. Not being able to bend her restraints herself, Jean calls out
to the Professor telepathically.
Back at the Mansion, Logan is running
a training exercise for Kurt and Kitty. They’re basically playing keep away
with their powers, to help them hone reflexes and strategic thinking, I assume.
Xavier is watching happily, but then get’s Jean’s call. He tells Logan, who
suits up and drives off to get the trail almost before Xavier finishes
speaking. The prof says he’ll gather the others to follow.
At a park, Scott and Rogue are running
lines. Rogue is clearly enjoying the lines “You are like an angle, Kate” from
Scott. How interesting. Their rehearsal is interrupted by Kurt Bamfing in. Rogue
observes that Kurt is “like an annoying little brother” before Kurt tells Scott
the news. Hearing that his friend and not-at-all-secret-except-to-her crush has
been kidnapped clearly pisses off Scott. He rather angrily asks if Rogue knows
anything, but she claims ignorance of the new Brotherhood boy’s antics. Scott
and Kurt make time to make a Star Trek teleportation joke before bamfing away.
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| Guys like this could probably save construction companies millions, me thinks. Forget supervillainy, start building. |
Logan makes it to the school, finds
the scene of the scuffle and seems to have no trouble picking up the trail. Xavier
is having a slightly harder time, as Jean doesn’t know where she is and he can’t
lock onto Fred’s mind, so he can only find a general location for where they might
be. Scott takes his car, which they seemed to have done an amazing job fixing after
Sabertooth’s bike was dropped on it a few weeks back, while Kitty and Kurt take
one of the X-Men’s vans.
Jean keeps trying to reason with
Fred, to make him see that this creepy, kidnapping behavior is no way to “make
friends,” but the big guy is fairly lost in his delusion. He walks off to get
her a “surprise.” It turns out to be a record player instead of something bizarre.
Logan makes it to the dilapidated
foundry and calls it in. Not waiting for backup, he bursts in and immediately
attacks the Blob. Unfortunately, Blob’s superhuman strength combined with his
nearly uncuttable skin mean that Wolverine is at a severe disadvantage. Blob tries
to smash him with an old furnace, but misses. He ultimately stops Wolverine by,
I kid you not, falling onto him and causing the raging Canadian to suffocate under
the Blob’s blubber. Probably the Wolverine’s single most embarrassing defeat. Cyclops
bursts and blasts Blob off Wolverine. Unfortunately, it seems like the force of
Cyclops’ optic beam is more irritating than debilitating to Blob. He picks up Wolverine
and throws him at Cyclops, knocking him out and causing both to fly out of the
foundry. We then see Rogue walk up and absorbs Cyclops’ power.
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| I do declare, Miss Rogue seems to have had it up to here with your Bull#%^@, Mr. Dukes |
Blob goes to try to restart his date, but Jean instead hurls a filing cabinet she’d mentally removed from the it’s place screwed into the wall. This, again, really only annoys Blob and he starts screaming at Jean about being “the worst” because she only tried to pretend to be his “friend.” Oy, this guy. He goes to crush Jean, but is stopped by an optic blast from Rogue. She pretty much tells him he either leaves quietly or violently. Blob isn’t too concerned. Rogue asks him if he knows what her power is. He doesn’t. She runs to grapple him while shouting “Yer power is mah power, and I can take more ‘en one!” I hope I was able to copy her southern accent in an understandable way here. She hurls Blob aside with her stolen strength and optic blasts him into some rubble. Blob gets up and announces that he’s too powerful to have his abilities completely stolen. He’s “The Blob!” To which Rogue scoffs and say, “Nah, yer just garbage that wanted a date.” She hits him hard again, launching into the air and optic blasting him up and out of the building. He slams into a pile of literal garbage a ways off and screams at the seagulls there to stop laughing at him.
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| Folks, show of hands, how many of you have had or know someone who's had an, I'll be nice since my mom and sister follow me an overly aggressive suitor that they'd like seen literally taken out with the garbage? I'm assuming it's most of ya'll |
Back at the foundry, the other X-Men
have arrived and are helping Cyclops and Wolverine recover. Rogue returns Cyclops
his visor, it having fallen off when he hit the ground earlier and he repeats
the ‘You’re an Angel, Kate,” line. When they asked why she helped them against
Blob, Rogue says she doesn’t know and runs off before they can ask more
questions. Jean looks like she was going to follow, but Wolverine stops her,
advising that he doesn’t think Rogue is ready yet. The team though collectively
agrees they owe her one.
This was an interesting episode to
watch. In some ways, I do find myself feeling bad for Fred, as he’s a big dude
with anger problems, few social skills and is in an entirely new and kind of
scary environment. I, at least, can kind of understand why he’d form a strong
attachment to Jean, who is a very pretty young woman who is probably one of the
few people who tries to be nice to him. And yet, even from their first
interaction, it’s clear that Jean is very uncomfortable around Fred. Either
from telepathy or by gut instinct she senses that he’s dangerous, is interested
in her in a non-friendly capacity, and does her best to keep him at a distance
once he gets more aggressive with her. I found it very interesting to see someone
as powerful as Jean be bested by someone whom simply is too heavy and durable
for her to hurt. While she never flaunts it, you do get the sense even by this
point that Jean knows she’s strong and is confident in her strength, so seeing
her strapped to a chair and largely powerless was an odd experience. And, not
going to lie, I give the show major points that it was Rogue to come in and
save Jean when her two usual “heroes” were bested. Feels like a very feminist message,
where even a woman that is technically Jean’s enemy isn’t going to let her “ally”
force himself on Jean. Strong character moment. I did also like see that Rogue
is observing the X-Men from a distance and seems to get that her “first
impression” as it was wasn’t completely accurate. She seems to like the groups
closeness and the general family vibe. And it’s pretty obvious that she’s got a
soft spot for Scott, something that will be explored a bit as the series
continues. She still doesn’t trust the group, after Mystique’s antics, but you
definitely see the cracks in her defenses already. Her character growth over
the course of the show is one of the best I’ve seen, and I’m looking forward to
experiencing it a little more. Also, while it’s a minor plot point, I loved
seeing Logan’s reaction to Jean’s kidnapping. Seeing him rush to try to save Jean,
not because of any romantic interest in her, but because someone F-ed with one
of his kids and he won’t stand for that, was really refreshing after many, many,
many stories that seem to push Logan and Jean together over Scott and Jean. It’s
good to see his guardian side is all I’m saying. Alright, so now that we’ve
gotten some solo Mutant recruiting episodes out of the way, we’ll return to
double features with the introduction of Quicksilver and Spyke. Woo.
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