Ben 10 2016 Reboot Episode Review: Brief Career Of Lucky Girl
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Episode Link:
http://kisscartoon.me/Cartoon/Ben-10-2016/Episode-15?id=72441Episode Review:
So, ever want to watch an episode of the Ben 10 reboot that undermines the concept of Gwen having her own hero persona, Lucky Girl, as well as also undermining and discrediting Hex as a villain to a cringingly bad level? Well then, this episode is for you.In this episode, Ben, Gwen, and Max go to a convention to do stuff. Max goes off to be more of the generic and bland grandfather character that he now is in this show, not providing any help at all with Ben and Gwen fighting Hex...much like the other times where he provides little to no help with fighting most of the villains in this crappy reboot. Ben goes off to try and get people to take pictures with him in his alien forms...with no one berating him of the sheer irresponsibility of his actions and misuse of the Omnitrix...again. As for Gwen, she dresses up as her series iconic Lucky Girl...and tries but fails to participate at the panel for the Lucky Girl movie. Wait, panel for a Lucky Girl movie? Shouldn't Lucky Girl be a persona that is of Gwen's own creation for the purpose and sole reason of Gwen wanting to be just as important and significant of a hero as Ben is? If that's the question that anyone reading this review is asking, yes, that's right. That's exactly what Lucky Girl should be. However, the team that's working on the reboot decided to pretty much butcher that. In this reboot, Lucky Girl is already an established concept and series not created by Gwen and Gwen initially decided to don the Lucky Girl persona because she's a fan of the Lucky Girl series, only later sticking with using the persona considering the situation with Hex that Ben and Gwen found themselves in. Basically, Lucky Girl was a series iconic hero persona for Gwen but has now been reduced to just being Gwen's version of Sumo Slammers thanks to this episode. The concept of Gwen being Lucky Girl, at least to me, has lost it's meaning and purpose.
It gets worse from here as well because, like I said, this episode greatly discredits and undermines Hex as a villain. I can no longer take Hex as a villain seriously now due to this episode. In this episode, Hex is after some powerful, magic casting wand that some random kid just so happened to have in his possession. Like with Max in Clown College, it's nice to finally see Gwen REALLY contribute to helping Ben fight a villain but also like Clown College, this is done in a very stupid way. Gwen's plan is to trick Hex into thinking that she has the actual magic wand even though Gwen has a fake wand. Ok, great, that sounds like something that Gwen would actually think up and in this episode, we really do get to see Gwen be Gwen and actually do something that is very smart of her to do. This is part of what Gwen is supposed to be. It would go fine for the episode and make the episode good if done well. However, this is done in a way that it actually discredits and undermines Hex and makes him look like an idiot. Hex had the actual magic wand in his hand. He used it briefly to cast magic. The very tip of the wand glowed indicating that it's the real deal. In the Ben 10 series, magic involved the use and manipulation of mana (aka life energy that every living being and magical object has). Shouldn't Hex be feeling all that mana coursing through the wand the moment he touched it. It would make more sense if Gwen managed to knock the real wand out of Hex's hand and swapped it for a fake wand, pretending that she has the real wand but that doesn't happen. Hex lost possession of the actual wand after Gwen tricked him. This charade ends up going on till near the end of the episode when the moment Hex realized that the wand that Gwen had was fake, Gwen tricks Hex again by making him believe that a crowd of people dressed as zombies were actual zombies. Apparently, Hex has never been to a convention before or has never heard of cosplaying before. Even then, he's at a convention and should've been there long enough to realize that everyone participating at the convention are all wearing costumes. Even then, the last time I checked, zombies are rotting, decaying, disease ridden corpses with a desire to feed on the flesh of the living yet Hex is too oblivious to notice that the air isn't filled with a rotting stench and that none of the "zombies" had gone up and tried to eat him. EVEN THEN, Hex is a powerful sorcerer with many different powerful magic abilities...including flight. Why is he so afraid of zombies? Again, Gwen's plan of tricking Hex into thinking that she has the actual magic wand could've made the episode good, or at least a little better than average, if done right but no, the writers have to do this in such a stupid way that makes such a significant villain of the series look like an idiot and thus discredit him as a villain.
So there's my thoughts and review on this episode. My recommendation, if anyone reading this hasn't watched this episode yet, don't bother with watching this episode. Brief Career Of Lucky Girl is, once again, another mediocre and poorly written and made episode that undermines the concept of Gwen's Lucky Girl persona and Hex as a villain. At least we get to see Gwen greatly contribute to Ben fighting a villain compared to the other episodes so that's at least a good aspect of this episode.
If you hadn't seen it yet, I recommend for anyone to go and watch the episode, Lucky Girl, from the 2005 Ben 10 Original Series instead. It is a much better episode to watch than this reboot episode and does a great job of introducing Hex as a villain and implementing the concept of Gwen's hero persona, Lucky Girl, as well as also having some good character development for Ben and Gwen and their relationship with each other.
