Season II, Episode X:

"Walk on the Wild Side"

Writers: Cydne Clark and Steve Granat

Director: Frank Paur

Original Air Date: March 2, 2002

Synopsis/Review: This episode begins down in a sort of "under-construction" lower corridor of the Mansion, waaay underground. Cyclops goes down there via elevator and walks over to the rim of a pit- down lower, we see Jean dislodging a bunch of rocky chunks from a nearby dirt wall and carrying it over to a large gap between two walkways. Magma, under encouragement from Jean, manages to melt the rocks together to close the gap in the pathway. Scott yells down to Jean that Amara needs to leave for her first day of high school soon, and Jean mentions that they'll be right up after they finish with this. Jean examines the rock path, and tells Amara that it's almost perfect- just one little crack. Amara laments at her "failure", and Jean insists that it's alright. A large boulder above their heads starts to shake a little, though, and Jean hurriedly tells Magma to melt the boulder back into place. Magma tries, but misses, and the rock comes tumbling down. Jean manages to catch it at the last second via her powers, and Scott blows it up in their faces with his laser blasts.
    Instead of being, y'know, GLAD that Scott helped them out, Jean levitates herself and Amara up to where Scott is, both of them mad at Cyclops for helping them out. Scott, in an unusual 'bout of big-headedness, brags that they're lucky he was there to save them as they go up into the elevator. Now, Jean and Amara actually have a REASON for being ticked off, and Jean angrily tells Scott that they didn't NEED his help, they could have handled it themselves. He's just such a.... a guy! Scott's understandably like, "Yeeeahh..." Jean and Amara go back into their rooms in a huff, leaving behind a confused/exasperated Scott.
    We then go over to the Brotherhood house (yeah!). Boom Boom busts in Toad in the midst of his monthly shower, just because she ran out of mouthwash. Toad complains, and Tabitha throws one of her booms into his shower stall as she walks out. *shriek* *BAM!* Poor Toad... Tabitha walks down the stairs, ignoring Toad's shriek, and makes fun of Freddy's old-fashioned mohawk, then asks Lance if he has any gas left in his jeep. Lance answers yeah, why? His answer comes in the form of his jeep starting up, and Tabitha taking off for school in HIS ride without even telling him. Yep, that's ol' Tabby for ya....
    At Bayville High, Kitty's showing Amara to her new homeroom. Oh, and sit by the window, you can see the track team sweating! Uh-huh... So, Amara takes a window seat, and a couple seconds later Tabitha comes in, rockin' to her headphone music. Amara says hi, and Tabitha says hi, and she asks if Amara wants to go buddy-buddy with her to the mall after school. Amara says that it sounds like fun, okay. Tabitha says great- now look out the window, here comes the track team...
    After school, Jean's walking out of school when she sees Amara taking off with Tabitha in Lance's jeep. Jean realizes this is bad news, and asks Scott is she can borrow his car to catch up with them- she doesn't want Tabitha to get Amara in trouble or anything, as Jean obviously knows how Tabby can be. Scott says no problem, he'll go and get 'em- until he catches Jean's "look", and apologizes, he KNOWS Jean can do stuff by herself perfectly fine. Then Duncan comes up (boo!) and tells Jean excitedly that he got them tickets to the Sadie Hawkins dance next month. Jean says, pardon me, but isn't that a dance where the GIRLS ask the GUYS? Duncan said, yeah, but he figured... Jean throws a fit, and goes on about how guys always treat girls like they can't handle their own lives, and then grabs Scott's keys and leaves off in a huff. Geeze, get a grip, Jeany.
    Anyway, Tabitha and Amara are cruising in Lance's jeep (with Tabitha's music turned waaaaay up), when a carjacking takes place in the car in front of them at a stoplight. The carjacker makes a little smoochy-gesture at Tabitha before driving away in the car. No way Tabitha's gonna let him get away with that, and speeds after him. Jean, meanwhile, driving in Scott's car, finds Tabitha and Amara chasing the car and drives after them, managing to quickly push away a mother and child on the street before the speeding carjacker can run them over. There's a mini car chase for a while, until Tabitha tells Magma to melt the carjackers' tires, which she does. Then Tabitha throws a few of her booms into the car. The carjackers barely manage to get out of the car in time as the whole thing almost falls apart from the resulting explosions. Tabitha stops the jeep and both of the girls get out. The carjackers start run away... only to be blocked in by a moving wall of bricks. Big surprise, there's Jean, sitting in Scott's car, waving her hands like there's no tomorrow. Tabitha and Amara celebrate their victory in catching the bad guys, but Jean hears the police sirens, and tells the two that they'd all better scram and lets the police handle it from here.
    Later on, Scott, Jean, and Amara are watching the news report about the earlier incident involving the carjackers, and how the crooks were stopped by unknown heroes. The crooks were part of a larger carjacking ring currently running amuck in Bayville. Jean whispers to Amara that they'd better keep this under wraps, and Amara agrees- I mean, it's not like they're going to be doing something like THAT again...
    Well, yeah, right. The next minute-and-a-half is devoted to a hilariously bad "music video", in which the three girls get Kitty and Rogue to join them, and they all buy tight leather outfits to symbolize their vigilante-ness and kick some carjacker booty. And, um, thrown amongst it is a bunch of dancing and lip-synching and shopping at the mall. I'd have to say that this is probably the most embarrassing minute and a half in the entire series so far (as of this writing, 12/02). And to be honest, I hope it stays that way. The music is so horribly "let's-go-shopping-at-the-MALL!" girlish, and some of the behavior so.... girly-corny, that I usually sink into my seat whenever this part comes up. Still, there is part of a "so-bad-it's-good" charm to it... Thankfully, the music video part eventually comes to an end, and we see Risty watching the five from a corner, wondering what they are up to...
    We then go to Scott, who's watching a short news report in the Institute kitchen. It talks about how the five unknown vigilantes, called the "Bayville Sirens", have been single-handedly stopping the carjacking crime spree hitting Bayville so far. Scott raises an eyebrow, but leaves it at that.
    The next part shows the five girls walking through the school hallway in slow-motion, smiling, having a good time, and sometimes blowing kisses to any boys that happen to look their way. Scott sees the five walking down the hall like they own the school, and finally manages to put two and two together. He drags aside a passing Kurt, telling him that tonight, they've got a "secret mission" they're going on...
    Later, at the Brotherhood house, Boom Boom busts in on Toad taking a dump (thankfully, they don't visually show us this...), out of mouthwash again. As she leaves, Toad says that that's IT, he's buying her some more mouthwash. As if in thanks, Tabitha throws a boom into the toilet. Eeeewww... She walks down the stairs and bumps into Freddy, who's mad at having his mohawk shaved off last night while he was asleep by SOMEONE, hint hint. Tabitha just shrugs it off, saying that Fred was right- he DOES look better with the mohawk. She then walks out the door, and finds Lance's jeep chained to the side of the house. She rolls her eyes and yells to Lance that there's no WAY she's going to steal it now- right before she drops a boom on the chain and rides off with the jeep. Lance chases after her, but to no avail.
    Later at the X-Mansion, Tabby pulls up in the jeep and the other four Siren members pile into the car, and they take off. Kurt and Scott see all this, and follow them. Jean notices the two guys following them, though, and manage to lose them by having Kitty phase the jeep through a train passing by a nearby railroad crossing.
    Later, we see the girls driving down a road downtown, now dressed in their leather getup. Rogue mentions that they've got to find a better place to change, but Tabitha insists that it's no biggie, no one's going to believe the toll booth guy. (Joke Rating- 10/10. Mwahaha.) They spot a carjacking far up on the road ahead, and decide to tail the carjacker back to his "base". They get there, and manage to enter the warehouse unnoticed, where they find out that the carjacking operation's a chop shop- the cars are being scrapped down and sold for parts!
    The girls are soon discovered, though, by the chop shop boss, surrounded by a bunch of thugs. It turns out that the whole thing was a trap to lure the Sirens here. They had been hurting the business quite a bit, and the boss wanted to get rid of them ASAP. Some wonderfully cliche dialogue is exchanged, and then the two groups have at it- of course, it's no contest, the Sirens easily win, what with their powers and all. Boom Boom goes a little crazy with the booms, though, and sets off a gas can, triggering a noisy explosion. Scott and Kurt see the explosion from far away, and head towards its source. They arrive and see the jeep parked out front- yep, the girls are here, Kurt pops them into an out-of-the-way corner of the chop shop. They're about to help, when they see that the girls have everything under control, barring Tabitha's little mishap with the explosion, which apparently didn't do too much damage. So the two guys decide to wait it out- barring Scott secretly blasting an oil can away from a small fire. Tabitha and Magma manage to trap the fleeing chop shop boss in the trunk of a car, when the police show up. A female officer comes in, telling the vigilantes that they're under arrest. The Sirens protest- they're the good guys here- but the police officer insists that such vigilante practices are illegal. However... she knows what they're trying to prove, and they did a rather good job doing it, too. She'll cover for them this one time, but they'd better not do something like this again. Tabitha's about to protest, but Jean silences her, giving into the officer's wishes. The officer tells them that there's a exit out of this building down in the lower levels, and they hurry off- but not before Kitty tells the officer that the boss is in the truck of a car, heheh. Kurt and Scott, satisfied that everything went over smoothly, secretly 'port out. The female officer tells the other police officers that she didn't find the vigilantes, and then slips away, morphing into Mystique...
    Later that night, at the X-Mansion, Scott and Jean are in the kitchen. Scott's about to get the last cookie, but he notices Jean again and breaks the thing in half, giving her some. Scott asks what Jean did tonight, and Jean laughs and tells Scott that they knew he was following them. Jean admits that it was a blast, but she realizes that they took the "girl power" thing a bit too far. She wishes for the day, though, when they can use their powers out in the open, without fear of getting ousted from society or some such. Scott agrees, and they clink milk glasses to... "someday".

Last Words: This is defintely one of the least serious episodes of the entire series- a very obvious and deliberate parody of "Charlie's Angels" (or should I say, "Charles' Angels". Heheh). The vast majority of the episode was top-notch, with excellent humor, attitude, and dialogue, as well as animation. There was also a cliche "criminal organization" story behind the whole thing, and purposefully corny dialogue at some parts, especially the short exchange between the chop shop boss and the Sirens. However- and this is a rather large however- the music video was hway too over-the-top. And bad. Did I mention it was horrible? It's just... not something you'd expect from a series like X-Men: Evolution. And at times the whole "girly" thing went a little too far, as well. Bottom line: If you can ignore the music video and take this episode for what it is- a light-hearted parody of "Charlie's Angels", and not a serious, plot-intensive episode- then you'll love it to pieces. Otherwise, skip it.

Overall Rating: 8/10 Great

(NOTE: This episode was aired as the thirteenth episode of Season 2, even though, in actuality, it is the tenth.)

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