Jean's dealing with growing pains, psychically speaking.
Want to say two things before we
get started. One, sorry, I got the episode count wrong and thought the Christmas
episode was in the next five, not the next seven, my bad. Will probably do X-Men:
Evolution in January too, otherwise once I restart My Hero Academia the next
time I’ll get back to X-Men will be in July. And, on a more somber note, have
to let you know that Scott Summer’s voice actor Kirby Morrow passed away last
month. He died November 18th 2020 due to complications from a
substance abuse issue, just eight days after his father. His notable roles
include Scott Summers, Miroku the priest from Inuyasha, Teru Mikami from Death
Note, and Hot Shot from Transformers: Cybetron, to name some of the highlights.
He’s the third X-Men related voice actor to die in 2020, along with X-Men: TAS’s
Cyclops Norm Spencer and David Hemblen whom portrayed Magneto in the same
series. Not a great year all round, but these just made things worse.
Okay, enough downer talk, let’s
focus on the show.
Last time on X-Men: Evolution, Kurt
got involved with an explosive girl named Tabitha, aka Boom Boom. Their possible
romance was interrupted by Tabitha’s father, whom wanted to use his daughter’s
explosive power to help him steal money from a charity event at the school. The
Brotherhood boys tried to steal the money, but the X-Men hold them off. Tabitha’s
father was arrested, but Tabitha decided she wasn’t good enough for the X-Men
and left. She decided to crash at the Brotherhood house in Mystique’s old room.
She doesn’t officially join that group, though, she’s basically neutral from
this point on. Shame, but thems the breaks. Let’s get to it, shall we?
I'll take worst locations to be struck with out of
control telepathy for 800, Ghost of Alex.
We open with a school assembly
where Jean is getting an MVP trophy for soccer. Most of the group are excited
for her, even Rogue’s new friend Risty, but Rogue herself is lukewarm on the
subject. She’s a bit tired of perky Jean, as she puts it. Jean starts to give a
speech, but is interrupted when she hears Rogue’s judgy thoughts about her,
that opens the floodgates, overwhelming her with thoughts from her classmates.
She’s overwhelmed by the mental noise and screams for them to stop and let her
think. She knocks over the trophies, but is able to right her thoughts and
claims to have “lost her head” for a second. Afterwards, she and Scott have a chat.
He tries to lead her into talking to him about her freak out, but she deflects
and dodges, asking if he’ll be at Duncan’s party for her. He wasn’t invited,
but she asks him to go for her. Getting some mixed signals about this relationship,
just saying.
Meanwhile, Kitty and Lance are flirting
before their Chemistry class. Who’d have thought she’d be into bad boys,
(shrug). A beefy man walks in, quoting Lewis Carrol of all things. “The time
has come the Walrus said, to talk of many things,” as a means of apologizing
for being late. This is Henry “Hank” McCoy, the new Chemistry teacher that is
running double duty as the gym teacher. He opens class with a lesson on
creating a stink bomb. Way to go, Hank, winning them over with awesome.
Let's see, Books, check; Muscles, check;
Chipper Attitude, Check. We got ourselves a
McCoy here.
Later that day, Scott rushes out to
make it to the party he wasn’t originally invited to. He passes a bunch of
students, stumbling along the way, and almost eating it after slipping on Bobby
Drake’s ice getting to his car. At the party, Duncan is being a dick and ends
up throwing a soccer ball football style out a window. SOMEHOW, it hits Scott
as he pulled up. What are the odds? Scott marches in and somehow knew Duncan
hit him… now you’re just being paranoid, Summers. He passes Rogue as he comes
in, not noticing her and Risty. After seeing Scott, Rogue tries to storm out,
claiming that she’s bored celebrating Jean. Risty, on the other hand thinks she’s
got a thing for Scott and is annoyed he didn’t notice her. The two leave, Risty
hoping they won’t miss anything.
Scott and Duncan have a pissing
contest in the form of ping-pong match. Jean lets them battle for a few minutes
before “catching” the ball and calling the game herself. She grabs Duncan and
drags him off for a chewing out. She begins the chewing out but is distracted
by her telepathy going crazy again. It quickly becomes too much and she shoves passed
him to try to get some air. Scott, who’d also been on the balcony, goes to talk
to her, but she lashes out and telekinetically shoves him off. She’s able to
grab him before he hits the pool, but gets dunked when Duncan surprises Jean.
I'll take worst locations to be struck with out of
control Telepathy for 600, Ghost of Alex.
Scott and Jean apparently argue
about what’s happening to her all the way back to the mansion. She keeps trying
to brush it off, even when Kurt and Xavier ask how she’s doing. Rogue, who’d
been showing Risty around, comes in at just the worst time as they almost catch
Kurt while in blue, Kitty phases through, and Logan stabs an apple with his
claws. Thankfully, Risty doesn’t notice, somehow. Risty is sent home, and Rogue
get’s told off about not following the rule about scheduling visits. She storms
off, thinking that Xavier wouldn’t treat Jean that way. Jean disagrees, but
obviously Rogue is upset at Jean reading her mind. She hadn’t noticed Rogue was
thinking, not talking. Jean and Xavier have a chat, he’s concerned that her
powers are growing out of control. She, on the other hand, waves it off and
claims it’s just stress from her incredibly active schedule. Xavier seems unsure,
but she insists she’ll be fine after some rest.
The next day is track practice,
with Scott and Duncan still duking it out for supremacy. Scott wins with the
Javelin toss, Duncan wins with the pole-vault, and Duncan knocks Scott, knocking
his glasses off, during a foot race. McCoy sees that last one and benches Duncan
before going to help Scott up and then tells him to take five. Jean’s powers
start going haywire again, and she starts telepathically lobing things all
over. Lance causes a minor quake to save Kitty from a javelin, McCoy is able to
grab two hurled shotputs lobed at him, and Scott saves Duncan from getting
brained by a third… though it hits Kelly’s desk… oh well. Jean passes out.
Scott and Kitty rush Jean back to
the mansion. Xavier and Logan meet them and rush Jean to an exam room. Logan
forces Scott from the room as Xavier begins the examination. Jean starts moving
objects in her sleep as Xavier begins delving her mind. Her mind is tumultuous at
best, roiling with the thoughts she’d been hearing lately. Her powers go
farther out of control, and she causes a small explosion, wrecking the exam
room and almost injuring Scott and Xavier. They make it top side and inform the
others about what’s going on. Xavier thinks Jean’s powers are evolving too rapidly
for her to control. Rogue offers to drain Jean’s powers, hoping that would take
enough of the metaphorical pressure off for her to get control, but Xavier
doesn’t think it’ll work. She needs something to focus on, to ground her. Scott
thinks that if Rogue can drain her, he can ground her. Xavier isn’t certain, but
they’re dealing with limited options.
I know there's not a Phoenix cry here, but it feels
like there should be.
The team makes it to the lower
levels, with most of them blowing debris out of the air while Nightcrawler get’s
Rogue close to try and go for the drain. She’s able to get a hand on Jean for a
second, but Jean’s powers are still raging. Scott tries to talk her down, but
it doesn’t seem to work right away. Then she starts speaking through Rogue…
kay, and saying she can’t do it. Scott won’t have any of that, though, telling
her he knows her limits because he knows her better than anyone else ever has
or ever will. That’s able to get Rogue to focus enough to settle her down.
Later, Scott tells Rogue that the
professor thinks Jean will be okay. He asks why she’d risked so much to help
Jean. I guess he’d sensed the tension between them lately. Rogue admits while
the two of them are worlds apart, she knew Jean would do it for her, so
obviously she had to help. Scott thanks her. Outside, he gives Jean roses… curtesy
of Duncan… guess they told him she was having stress issues or something. Scott
asks Jean if she remembers anything from last night. She claims to not have,
but then says that line about Scott knowing her better than anyone, which seems
to give the bespectacled man hope just before the credits roll.
Overall, a solid episode. The series
unfortunately ended before they really did anything with the tremendous power
that Jean is barely able to constrain, but this is a nice nod to how strong she
is and the potential danger of the Phoenix Force locked within her. Also, a
nice example of how much telepathy would suck if you didn’t have an on/off
switch. Imagine being inundated with all that constant noise. A book series I
enjoy called “Super Powereds” by Drew Hayes had a character with that exact
issue, telepathy that she couldn’t turn off, and that gal ended up living alone
in the woods to escape the noise. I shudder to think how bad that could have
gotten. That all said, I wonder how they glossed over all that damage Jean caused
at the Track and Field practice. Like, I don’t see someone yada yading over
shotputs and javelins flying around and a localized tremor. Just saying. This
was also a nice intro to Hank McCoy. Obviously not a spoiler because of all the
other material he’s appeared in, Hank McCoy is the civilian identity of Beast,
the blue apelike X-Man with a genius IQ. This was sort of a backdoor pilot intro
to him. Despite only being in two scenes they nail that he’s intelligent as
well as strong, a compassionate man and a talented educator. And he doesn’t put
up with sport stars, which earns him a special place in my heart. This isn’t
the last we’ll see of him; I promise you that. Scott’s development was nice in
this one. While he’s still insecure enough to compete with Duncan whenever they
meet face to face, he’s still hands down the closest person to Jean. If they
weren’t a confirmed romantic couple in literally everything and Duncan not a
total asshole, I’d say that they’d have a great heterosexual opposite gender
best friendship. Which there does need to be more of, just saying. And that’s
all I have to say about that. Have a good night, everybody!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/45501924
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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