Cynical Cinema

Season One of Transformers: Animated hits DVD today, August 19th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. It picks up right where Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out left off a few months ago. Transform and Roll Out was really the first three episodes of this series, episodes that you actually don’t get with this DVD. Five Autobots - Ratchet, Prowl, Bulkhead, Bumblebee and of course Optimus Prime - have found the AllSpark, which is some kind of big deal for Transformers, and they have stashed it safely on Earth. And they now live in Detroit. While in Detroit, they must do battle against numerous foes. Not only do evil Decepticon robots occasionally show up to attack them and snatch the AllSpark, but since their arrival on Earth, they have been enlisted several times to do battle against human comic book Supervillains as well.

Which means that although there is a story line to Season One of Transformers Animated, it is really told in just four episodes. And the other fourteen episodes are filler. Stand-alone episodes where the Transformers fight guys made entirely out of acid, and learn to play Twister. Finally, we get to the end of the season, when Megatron (the leader of the evil Decepticons) manages to trick a friendly Earth scientist into helping him rebuild his own body…ah, I won’t ruin it for anyone. But truly, there are only four episodes you need to watch. Episode 4, episode 6, episode 15 and episode 16. If you want to watch the episode about the guy who dresses up as Robin Hood and robs banks, or the one where Bumblebee stars in a WWE-style event against a human on tons of steroids, then go ahead and watch them all. Otherwise, I have just saved you seven hours.

Seven hours that you would spend, as I did, wondering how the character Prowl managed to, while growing up on the planet Cybertron, acquire ninja skills. Or how come the Decepticons are necessarily evil? The only way this appears to be determined is simply because they keep referring to themselves as evil. All we really know about them is that they hate Autobots and want to fight them. And they seem to be meaner when they fight. That’s about it. There are dozens of supporting characters who show up for one episode at a time, only to be killed off at the end of that episode, who then show up later having only been “presumed” dead. There are dozens of characters who don’t make sense. Like the “bounty hunter” transformer who shows up on Earth to collect the bounty on the head of Optimus Prime. But…how is he the only transformer in the world who knows that the Autobots are on Earth? If the Decepticons sent him to collect the bounty, why wouldn’t they just invade themselves in order to get to the AllSpark? Ah, so many questions with this show. Most of them best left unasked.

This series IS better than Transformers Cybertron, in that it makes a little more sense. A little. And it doesn’t have an opening theme song that drives through my brain like a white-hot railway spike. But this may be considered “faint praise” at best.