Episode 71 -
Back when Bumblebee first appeared in his debut episode in season 1, Chief Burns noted how the sudden presence of a new Rescue Bot on the island might draw unwanted attention from the townspeople, yet the presence of newcomers Blurr and Salvage (and their obvious lack of human operators/partners) causes no such problems from the townsfolk. I guess Chief must have clued in the public on the arrival of two more Bots offscreen.
Blurr sure is reluctant to help the other Bots from being crushed by the platform.
Short theme song.
The whole thing was just a VR training simulation. Looks to be the same VR system as the one seen back in "A Virtual Disaster", only here it's used for rescue training instead of a video game.
Blurr didn't help for tactical reasons. Someone had to be free to handle things in case the rescue went wrong. Heatwave disagrees, citing teamwork as being more important, and suspends Blurr from Rescue Force training until further notice.
Heatwave left Optimus a voice message about things not working out with Blurr. Gotta wonder what Optimus was doing at the time for him (or anyone) to not be at the base to take Heatwave's call.
Each of the four Sigma-17 Bots are gonna school Blurr and Salvage on separate things, in a "Rescue Bots Academy".
Chase's curriculum takes the form of clip show style video logs of previous missions, on which they must take notes for a quiz.
Emergency call. A window washer is trapped on his malfunctioning hover platform. Blades and Boulder go out, while Heatwave and Chase remain on call. And after some persuading, Blurr and Salvage are allowed to go on the mission as well.
Salvage speaking to Kade is essentially Jason Marsden talking to himself.
Blurr nearly got the window washer killed!
Naturally, Chief is borderline furious with Blurr's rashness and carelessness.
Boulder suggests Blurr and Salvage might come to understand humans better if they learned more about them, starting with the Burns family. Enter Chase with more video clips.
Blurr and Salvage inquire about human genders and affections. Cue Chase trying to explain, and then showing more clips.
Blades notes how Cody seems to attract "falling objects". More clips from Chase.
The Burnses like to play a variation of Basketball that they and the Bots made up called Burns Ball.
Cody tells Blurr how he's a lot like how Heatwave was when he first came to Earth, always wanting Optimus to reassign him to something better. Blurr's not too sure he's cut out for this kind of stuff (just like Heatwave), but Cody's not going to give up on him.
Blurr mentions having been to Velocitron! "Nice planet. All roads, no speed limits, great spot to relax."
The voice chip from the window washer platform is used in an upgrade Salvage helps to install into the Sigma. It's call the Empathically-Reactive Voice-Interactive System, or ERVIS for short.
Blurr's out running red lights and speed limits, and without a driver.
Blurr toppled the statue of Horace Burns!
Jerry sees that Blurr was driverless. Luckily, Chief convinces him that it's a new experimental self-driving race car meant to making racing safer.
Heatwave. Is. CROSS!
Blurr is confined to the firehouse until further notice.
Blurr discovers the Sigma's hangar hidden under the basketball court.
Blades has finished the training video he was putting together for his own teaching session of Rescue Bots Academy.
Blades video is less clip show style and more of a homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Blurr overhears Heatwave deciding that, as soon as he hears back from Optimus, Blurr has to go.
Blurr's stolen the Sigma and takes off into the sky!
TO BE CONTINUED...
Lacey Chabert -- Southern Belle Voice
Maurice LaMarche -- Platform Voice
Jason Marsden -- ERVIS
Steve Blum -- Bad Kids TV Voice
Well, this episode sure had some surprises in it. For one, Chase's clips gave the initial impression of this being a typical clip show episode, but it wasn't. Chase's clips were only a small portion of the episode. Another surprise came in the form of ERVIS, who seemed to be added into the episode rather abruptly and for little reason, as though it were instead a seeding for something else to come later. But what surprised me the most was how the episode veered away from how I was expecting it to go into being something else entirely. What I was expecting was simply that, Blurr and Salvage being schooled by the Bots, combined with Chase's clips, that this episode could be used as sample episode to show to a new viewer what this show is like in a nutshell, with Blurr serving as the audience's gateway character in getting to understand the nature of the show. But that all changed when we started getting more of a serious-toned plot in the second half, with Blurr becoming more and more distant from the rest of the team, culminating in his outright abandoning the team altogether in a cliffhanger ending. On top of that, we got Blades' video with its MST3K-style setup and Blurr referring to Velocitron.
But at the root of it all, what this episode really did that made it stand out was show just how difficult training a young newcomer can be, especially when it's one that doesn't want to learn or go along with what he's being told. In past series, we got such difficult characters as Hot Rod, Cheetor, Nightscream, Side Burn, Wedge, Armada Hot Shot, Energon Ironhide, Cybertron Hot Shot, Animated Bumblebee, Prime Smokescreen, and RID 2015 Sideswipe. All were as inexperienced and hard to work with as Blurr, but all of them still tried to act in line with their teammates most of the time. No matter how much trouble those guys caused, they always managed to come around by the end of the same episode in which they got into trouble. With Blurr, however, he consistently remained uncooperative, and Heatwave was ready to give up on him and toss him to the wind. I honestly cannot think of any series in which the leader/mentor of the rambunctious youngster ever became so irate with said youngster that he even
considered giving up on the kid. Every one of those Optimuses (and RID 2015 Bumblebee) was still willing to give their guy a chance and believe that he was capable of following orders and being a team player when things would get hairy. This show, this young-aged preschool-aimed show, however, is the one that is willing to take its kid's misbehavior all the way into the territories of line-crossing insubordination and desertion, and likewise have its role model leader character get so cross as to want nothing more to do with said guy.
In many respects, this is WAY more fascinating than the relationships we've seen between the various Optimuses of the past (and RID Bumblebee) and their respective rebellious kid characters. Of all the TF cartoons we've ever gotten, it's THIS show that is willing to go as far as it has with this kind of relationship. An extent that is probably the most realistic and dramatic of any version of the leaderbot/kidbot relationship we've ever had. And arguably the least kid-friendly version, at that. This episode shows just how sugarcoated so many other versions of this relationship have been depicted up until now. The other versions would have the conflict between the leader and the kid usually resolved by the end of a single episode, with any new conflicts to come in later episodes being all new conflicts. Here, we started with Blurr's reluctance to comply with rescue commands in his debut episode, and said confict has continued straight into this episode, and has only gotten worse, ending with both parties resorting to extreme decisions. This is how character development is done, and done well! This show is one-upping a total of 11 other shows in how its handling the discontent between the leaderbot and kidbot. They don't see eye to eye, they flat out don't like each other, and they don't resolve everything (or even
anything) by a single episode's conclusion. The story of their relationship just keeps on going and growing from episode to episode, with no signs of their situation improving.
In a word: Boss.