I'm Surprised you didn't touch more on Arcee's reversal of her character growth and how that touched on her previous activities directly related to Airachnid and Starscream and her issues over impulse control and partner death- she seemingly takes a bit of a step backwards - if Jack had been there he'd likely have been screaming at her to control herself. And perhaps she might listen to him more than she does Prime ?

It's almost like Bulkhead is not longer the dumb one who attacks without thinking - she is.

Optimus is standing their looking like he's just going to watch and see the outcome of the Insection/Megatron fight and Arcee just goes off half cocked even though she'd had the cheek to lecture Bumblebee about similar issues in recent weeks.

As for why the Insecticons do not obey anyone and why they are their the broad brush strokes Uber-cannon explanation seems to be that Shockwave left them their and they are conditioned to be personally loyal to him - and that the shared origin is that their Predacon like nature is a result of a Shockwave derived scientific experiment (Much as the uber-continuity Dinobots are too).

Oh one crazy thought if Jack gets his mits on the Solace Forge he might be able to use it if Prime keyed the Key to vector Sigma to him he might be imprinted with the recognition template of a Prime now and so the tech might read him as someone who as the permission to use it. and like the key the Force may well be able to mass-shift down to fit small being anyway - so he could use it.

I'm really wondering now if the Prime Ultra Magnus Cyberverse Commander toy has the Solus Forge as an accessory and if that it plot relevant - just as also is the handheld sword RID Voyager Prime comes with is Prima's ?

Make you wonder if the toy is spoiling the TV show ? - just as I also wonder about Auto-trooper on Prime due to the Autotroopers Kreons they have under the Prime brand.

I hope the next couple of episodes touch on Arcee's ongoing dangerously bad behaviour, Starscream no longer has to walk everywhere and June shows up again before to much longer and is given something fun to do.

I don't think Eye colour is relevant to Bulkhead as his old eye was destroyed by Bumblebee in Operation Bumblebee part 2 and he'd only have the one left.

Unless mech is lucky enough to stumble across the cave full of dead Vehicons and the Insection - as they can scan for Energon now so they might well be able to find that unless it's cleaned up by Fowler's lot or the Decepticons 'off camera'.

Oh and I don't for one second think The Insecticon attacked Breakdown It was all Airachnid in my view - thus the warning about her being dangerous when cornered - "Nothing else makes sense". She clearly had not seen the Insecticon before and i can't see how so many people are miss-reading it like they are.

 

RE: Airachnid's possible ancient heritage.
Well her eyes are Purple....

 

I was wondering when somebody would bring this fallacy up. If she hadn't reacted that way, it would have been out of character IMO. Sure, she learned revenge is bad but a grudge, especially one that has been carried for thousands of years, just doesn't disappear over night.

 

Glad to hear you thought of the same thing Vangelus. I was just telling my roommate when we went to eat yesterday that I don't think this is the end for the Hero of Kaon, and we're probably gonna see his original personality assert itself in that fancy new body.

 

On the topic of spoilers and other general horrible things, the Prime forum is a festering hive of misery and despair, avoid at all costs.

 

Yeah... hah

If anything, I think the people I feel for the most in regards to the spoiler thing are the staff members who had to go in there, despite not having seen the episode yet & wanting to stay away for a few days until they had. Like, I'm usually pretty good when it comes to not getting spoiled (I don't even look at facebook if I'm behind on wrestling because I know my entire page will be filled up with CENA WINS FFFFUU posts or whatever it is that I haven't seen yet, and I definitely avoid going into the wrestling sections/topics on the forums I frequent for the same reason if I'm behind, especially on a PPV), but sometimes you just can't avoid it.


However in my defense (since this was brought up), all I was really defending when it came to not having a spoiler warning in the title were threads like "Well, I guess we know who dies now..." . To me anyway, that title gave a pretty strong indication to NOT go in there if you weren't aware of what the OP was talking about, but I didn't even think of staff members basically not having a choice in the matter until I saw one of the topics made about em in the Tech Support section that Sol Fury got hornswoggled into clicking open.

The funny thing is that it's happen to me before on another forum when I was behind on a PPV, and what made it worse was that I was the only staff member online & whoever made the report made it sound a LOT more urgent & pressing than it really was. I even had one of my friends who doesn't care about wrestling go into the topic for me & link me to a specific post, but he couldn't find anything offensive or whatever, so I went in there literally squinting to avoid reading names... but 10 seconds in I stumbled on match results so I just gave up & read all of it.

 

I'm glad I was able to help by passing that Knockout picture to you guys.

I'm sure you've seen Peaug's review but that picture was the first ray of hope.

Also it was amusing to hear Vangelus attempt to say my name.

 

Great job on the discussion of this episode, guys. I especially got a lot out of the topic about Optimus Prime's stance on Megatron and how he needs to be eliminated. Somehow that bit had gone over my head while watching the episode. Keep up the great work!

 

Vangelus : when you said Unichronic "found another joint"on Knockout was that a subtle joke?

 

This.

I mean think about it people holding a grudge like that isn't easy to shake off. It may take years to finally get it out of you.

 

She disobeyed orders Optimus seemed like he was going to suggest they just sit and watch instead she sees red yet again and she's off on her "I've got to get her kick". Optimus yells at her to stop (which she ignores).

It's doubly objectionable as it's come up so many times, she's had the blind cheek to lecture Bumblebee about it and talk down to Bulkhead when he does dumb stuff - the girl is now a total liability she's like the stupid soldier who chases someone into a mine field and gets half their squad squat blown up in the process.


And despite being left hanging upside down seconds from getting her throat slit -I'm left with the impression she'd do it again. - They need to keep her on romper reigns or something like that like a toddler who's want to stray.

All she's proving is she's totally unsuitable to be a high up in the chain of command if she carries on like she is I'd say both Jack & Bumblebee should be the ones giving her orders.

Her behaviour is as bad as Miko running through space bridges into harms way in Season 1. as the end result is the same - she endangers others and nearly gets herself killed as often as not.

 

Yea, I dont think it was the insecticon either. I also disagree with Gogdog in that I think the insecticon was only under Airachnid's control when it heard the noise. I think it just hatched early and was scavenging for itself or something. However, one thing I didn't notice that Gog pointed out is the Optimus development, Bravo!

And yes, I think toys can spoil plot, cuz if you look on the bio of cyber verse dreadwing, it says that he is the decepticon second in command. We got that bio more than a week before this episode. Its also one think IM SURPRISED YA DIDN'T MENTION  

 

Bumblebee isn't really fit to give out orders too. He pretty much disobayed an order in Operation Breakdown part 2 when it concerns his T-cog which almost made him never to transform again if it wern't for Ratchet. He's still the kid of the group. Jack while certainly maturing doens't really have the leadership nor the command skills as Optimus has at least not yet for now he's like a brother to Arcee.

Yes Arcee's prone to make reckless decisons when it comes to Airachnid and Starscream however there were many times when they wern't around she's actually pretty capable of it. Optimus wouldn't have made her second in Command if she wasn't truely capable of giving out orders.

As for labelnig her as a hyprocite it's possible that she's actually making an effort to moving on from her urges but is going on about it the wrong way which may make her be a little unitentionlly insensitive thus her likely untentionally harsh comment on Bumblebee whcih could be her way of trying to get him out of the funk and do the best he can to get it back. While she makes cracks on Bulkhead's mistakes she doens't really dispsies him. It could be just her still being hard on herself thus making her be a little harsh on Bulk. Again it may be just her trying to move on and not letting her friend's end up the same way she's doing but going about it the wrong way.

Besides it's not like she doens't know what the others are going throug other then herself. she tried to calm Bumblebee down in One Shall Fall about Raf.

I'm not saying you're wrong and I hope I'm not going too far with this but I just wanted to share my thoughts on this that's all.

 

For storytelling/believably purposes, a steady and gradual (yet unwavering) character change over time is just as undesirable as a character that always resets after a "lesson learned" story point and never changes. Both are equally unrealistic and don't give a proper depth to a character, making it hard for the viewer to relate to them.

Having Arcee mostly improve over time but still succumb to her hot-headedness in some situations (Characters related to her partners deaths) makes for a more believable, relatable and empathetic character. Flaws are very important and should never be fully eliminated.

 

I also was wondering if the sword breaker Voyager Megatron has is something he finds on his scavenger hunt on the TV show ?

 

This!   Hoenstly that's how I view Arcee's character myself.  

Who knows?  

 

I've been rewatching Crossfire in HD and you can pick up subtleties that you miss in the SD version and one thing I did notice was Arcee's impatience when they first enter the cave and Optimus is 'speeching' she's almost twitching with impatience to go try to smack Airachnid about.

The reason so many people were swearing about this is it really is a reversal of all the character growth she's had in previous episodes to try to deal with this - she might be more tetchy than murderous towards Starscream these days. But she's just swapped one obsession for another instead of her Cliffjumper issues controlling her she's now emphasizing her Tailgate issues.

Personally I find this a bit eye rolling and actually harms her character a bit - I don't want her to be like Season 1 Miko with guns.

 

Honestly, it made sense to me. Yeah, she had time to cool off in the past about Airachnid, but that shit doesn't just go away, especially when there's chaos. If anything, I'd have been surprised to not see her revert to her nature.

 

Dunno dude, puff puff  

 

By the way, I just listened to this episode for the first time today. Thanks podcasters - especially Vangelus - for giving me a shout out.