"Middleverse"
Writer: Adam Beechen
Director: Steven E. Gordon
Original Air Date: January 27, 2001
Introducing: Forge
Synopsis/Review: This episode starts
at Bayville High, in the little lunch area outside. The teenage X-Men are
all gathered around a table, talking about Duncan Matthew's party that
night. (Meanwhile, Spyke is grabbing and drinking everyone's milk. Heheh,
I found this really funny. Since the guy grows new bones so quickly, he's
gotta need all that extra calcium.) Scott is completely opposed to the
party. On top of the fact that Duncan's an idiot, he's worried about anyone
discovering that they're Mutants. Kurt's holowatch, for example, only projects
his human image- it won't stop others from feeling his fur if they touch
him. Kurt just tells Scott to lighten up, and Scott comes back with telling
Kurt to quit goofing around all the time- right before Kurt jumps on top
of the table and does an annoyingly stupid little dance. During which his
tail falls out of his pants. So Scott ends up yanking down Kurt by his
tail before anyone sees his freakiness, and reprimands the blue elf. They
both get in each other's faces, and Kurt eventually ends up teleporting
away in a humph. (Of course, no one SEES him do it...)
Rogue, meanwhile, is
reading a book on the side lawn of the school (Dracula, in case you're
wondering.) when she hears Kurt teleport into the school's basement a couple
yards away. For some reason, though, she doesn't know that it's Kurt right
off the bat (although you think the teleporting sound would be a dead giveaway),
and goes down the steps into the basement to investigate.
Meanwhile, it's revealed
that Kurt's teleporting right in the middle of a bunch of dusty boxes in
the basement made his holowatch malfunction and short out. Delicate little
thing, ain't it? Anyway, when he hears someone coming down the stairs (again,
Rogue's voice yelling, "Who's there?" should be a dead GIVEAWAY, but somehow,
he doesn't figure out that it's her). He quickly teleports into a nearby
room in panic- a room which has a "DO NOT ENTER" sign on the door. Hmmm...
The room has a bunch of funky mechanical stuff in it, and, while checking
it all out, Kurt accidentally trips a little motion sensor thingie. A guy's
face comes on the screen, and starts to say something about an entry into
the computer in 1978. He says, very cheerfully, I might add, that the lab
will self-destruct in 10 seconds. Have a nice day!
Kurt tries to shut the
darn thing down before it explodes, but he fails, and it blows him out
of the room and right past Rogue, into another bunch of boxes. (Oddly,
he's not really hurt- that would have severely injured, if not killed,
most people.) Rogue asks Kurt what's going on, and Kurt points her in the
direction of the lab that just blew. Rogue goes in, and most of it is all
shorted out- except for a little device sitting on a counter, which looks
just dandy. Kurt follows her in and tries to take it from her- after all,
Rogue is still the enemy, and he doesn't want her to have it. They both
struggle over it, and Rogue accidentally pushes a button on the thing-
making it zap Nightcrawler into nothingness! Rogue is, of course, freaked
out, and tries to throw the thing in a garbage dumpster- while holding
it as far away from her as possible with a stick. Since the thing is difficult
to manuever when it's on the end of stick, she accidentally bangs the gizmo
on the side of the trash dumpster, and it falls on the floor. Rogue cowers,
but nothing happens. Gosh, Rogue, it's not going to bite you! Just don't
press any of the buttons! Toad comes up (right after being blown off by
Principal Darkholme for getting near her new car) and asks what the heck
that thing is. Rogue tells him that it's really none of his business, but
Toad takes it upon himself to investigate it anyway. Rogue reluctantly
gives up and tells him that she accidentally zapped one of the X-Men away-
which, of course, she pretends to not really care about, even though it's
a bit obvious she does. Foolishly, she walks away, leaving Toad with the
gizmo. He presses one of its button, and ZAP! goes the garbage dumpster.
Ooooo....
Nightcrawler, meanwhile,
finds himself in a very odd place. He's in the school hallways, but the
kids around him continually phase in and out of existence. And even when
they're phased in, they're still transparent. They apparently can't see
Kurt, and Kurt can't interact with them. Weird...
In another hallway,
Scott and Jean are walking around, talking about the confrontation during
lunch. Scott admits he may have been a little harsh on Kurt, but then two
kids come running out of the nearest bathroom, screaming something about
a blue demon-ghost. Scott, of course, knows that it's Nightcrawler, and
goes into tell Kurt to quit messing around- only the blue guy's not in
there. Perplexed, Scott tells Jean to contact Kurt via her telepathy and
tell him to knock it off. Jean tries to- only she can't find Kurt anywhere...
Blob and Avalanche come
waltzing down the hall towards them, and Scott says that he bet they did
something to Kurt. Slamming Avalanche against the wall, Scott tries to
force Avalanche to give him info- of course, Lance doesn't know what he's
talking about. Blob roughly picks Scott up by the shirt and tells him to
back off, until Jean threatens him to put Scott down, and Lance threatens
Jean, and...well, you get the picture. They're about to fight (and foolishly
expose their powers in front of a bunch of fellow classmates) when Darkholme
comes along and tells Jean and Scott to come to her office, NOW. As soon
as she enters her office with Jean and Scott, though, she finds all the
furniture in her office gone! She runs out, screaming at the other schoolboard
members in the lobby over who took her furniture. It turns out Toad was
in there just a moment earlier, having fun with the gizmo he found and
taking out his frustration with Darkholme on her furniture.
Back in Nightcrawler's
"zone", he leaps and then teleports out of the way as a bunch of furniture
and then a car suddenly appear above him, nearly falling on him as they
smash into the ground. Jean and Scott, still in Miss Darkholme's vacant
office, see Nightcrawler's silohette as he teleports from one place in
the "Middleverse" into another. Scott is perplexed- was it a ghost? Jean
confirms that it wasn't, as she got a brief mental reading, like he was
trapped somewhere. They look out the window, and find Toad hopping around,
the gizmo in his hand- after having just used it on Miss Darkholme's car.
(He's hopping around the schoolyard in his full costume and no one notices.
Riiight.)
Nightcrawler, meanwhile,
has teleported into the school gym. There, he finds someone else who can
see him, and who is apparently trapped here too- Forge, another teenage
Mutant who can turn his arms into nifty electronic gizmos. OOooo. Anyway,
Forge (who oddly doesn't give out his real name) explains to Kurt that
he made the dimensional gizmo as a Science Fair project back in 1978. (Apparently,
Forge is insanely smart. Makes you wonder why he was still in a public
high school.) It malfunctioned and moved him into the "Middleverse". The
school completely freaked out and locked up his invention in the basement.
Although he'd been stuck in the Middleverse for over 20 years, he still
looked the same, oddly- apparently people didn't age in this pocket dimension,
or something. Still even more odd was the fact that Forge had essentially
spent more than half his life by his lonesome and was still, with the exception
of his great intelligence, a normal guy. You'd think he'd be a bit weird,
or maybe even insane, but nope... Anyway, Forge obviously wants to get
back, and he thinks that Nightcrawler may be the key. He starts to construct
a device that, when worn on Nightcrawler, will allow him to teleport back
to the real world. But only for a couple of seconds- the batteries that
power it won't be able to last that long.
Back in the real world,
Scott and Jean have assembled the other X-Men, and, after donning their
superhero suits, chase after Toad. In broad daylight. Near the school.
And no one notices. Uh-huh... Anyway, after half-heartedly Toad fires the
gizmo at the X-Men a few times and missing, the X-Men eventually corner
him in a tree, and forceably take the gizmo back. They ask what Toad did
to Nightcrawler, and Toad responds that he didn't do anything- Rogue, coming
up to the bunch of Mutants, confirms it- she used the gizmo on Nightcrawler,
not Toad. Rogue threatens that if they ever want to see the 'Crawler again,
they'd better let Toad go- which they do, and follow Rogue back to the
basement, where she explains what happened. Shadowcat and Spyke look the
gizmo over, and, after "examining" it, tell the other X-Men that the device
is putting out steady, faint pulse wave that just dissapears into thin
air. And they conclude that it must have trapped Nightcrawler in another
dimension. This is the most unbelievable part of the entire episode- so
Shadowcat, and, more important, SPYKE, the guy who has a hard time even
getting good grades in school, figure out a device has trapped Nightcrawler
in another dimension by THEMSELVES!? Without even having seen or known
about a gizmo that could do such a thing before!? And, even more oddly,
Scott and the others just sort of shrug it off like an everyday thing.
"Huh, what? Teleported to another dimension? Yeah, that happened to my
uncle a few years ago..." Riight. So, Scott prepares to trash the thing
so they can get Nightcrawler back.
Meanwhile, Kurt is there
in the basement, watching the others, as Forge finishes attaching the suit
to him. Forge tells Kurt that if the others destroy the gizmo, they'll
be trapped here forever! They need to reset the thing instead. So, Kurt
quickly manages to teleport to the real world, and, in the few seconds
he's there, manages to spurt out "Reset...don't!" before being forced to
teleport back again. Although they initially think Kurt MEANT that he wanted
them to blow it up, the X-Men eventually figure out that, because of Kurt's
placement of the words in his warning, that he WANTS the X-Men to reset
the gizmo instead of destroying it. So they do, and it creates a pink portal
through which Kurt and Forge can be seen. Kurt gets ready to teleport them
both through, but Forge stops him- the batteries on the suit are tapped
out, and they need some more power before they can teleport home. (Even
though Kurt needed no power source to teleport to the alternate dimension
in the first place...) Kurt says he knows where another power source is,
and teleports them both to the trashed car that "fell from the sky" earlier.
Forge begins to get the car up and running again via his mechano-hand...
Meanwhile, back in the
basement, Toad, Avalanche, and Blob enter. They obviously want the gizmo
that Toad told them all about, and, of course, the X-Men refuse to hand
it over. (Why isn't Quicksilver there, anyway? Oh, I get it... it's because
he'd be able to snatch the gizmo up before any of them could react, and
the X-Men would lose... Uh-HUH...) Rogue, not wanting to fight, leaves,
and soon afterwards follows a fight scene in which the Brotherhood tries
to fight the X-Men using the least effective tactics possible. So, of course,
the X-Men win. Wheee. The Brotherhood are about the try "some serious smashing"
this time when Nightcrawler and Forge suddenly teleport through the shrinking
portal, the car on full throttle. Blob manages to stop it in its tracks
via his massive bulk, but not before the car runs over the dimensional
gizmo, destroying it. The Brotherhood, seeing their prize ruined, reluctantly
leave. The X-Men also follow suit, with Forge tagging along behind them
all. Rogue watches them all leave the basement from behind a nearby tree,
obviously having second thoughts about her allegiances...
Back in the school parking
lot (it's now nighttime, by the way), Scott and his friends prepare to
leave. They offer to let Forge join them, but Forge declines- his house
is just a few blocks down, he'll talk to them later. Although I have know
idea how Forge even knows his parents still live there, or if they're even
alive, since the Middleverse only extended through part of the school...
Anyway, Scott and Kurt apologize to each other, each promising to lighten
up and be serious when necessary, respectively. And Scott finally gives
in and lets all the X-Men go to Duncan Matthews' party (which I still think
is a bad idea), right after they get Kurt's holowatch fixed. Awww, such
a happy ending... *sniff*
Last Words: Besides the obvious corniness of the overall plot line- a regular guy builds a dimensional machine, yet it doesn't make national headlines and become a historic event, and then traps himself in it- this episode had a lot of corny and disgustingly "cool" slang lines in it. Not to mention several plot holes, many of which are mentioned above. Overall, this is one of the few X-Men: Evolution episodes that I like to pretend never happened. It's really not good at all. Unless you really like Forge or something, it's not really worth watching a second time.
Overall Rating: 4/10 Below Average