All this

Spoiler

Pecking Order talk

makes me think of Mr. Popo from DBZA.

 

Yeah, Peter Cullen hasn't been as "light" in more recent series. In G1 Prime was a real cut-up.

 

That was never once stated in the episode though.

Hell I kept waiting for Bee to explain what exactly Overload did to him personally and we never got anything.....it's like they couldn't come up with a reason other than he's a pompous jerk.

 

Maybe it will be revealed later on in the season.

 

That's what I'm hoping. Maybe Hasbro's saving the reveal for maybe when they decide to bring a Prime character back that has a connection with Overload as well.

 

Glass Cannon - TV Tropes

 

True, but he took almost the same, if not MORE back in part 1, so one punch shouldn't be enough.

 

Yeah, I think they're trying to set up Drift x Windblade, which disappoints me because I can't stand RID Drift.

 

Isn't Sideswipe suppose to be the equivalent of a teenager in age? Also, from the getgo, he put on this facade of showing up authority figures for kicks. I say 'facade' because I think there's a backstory to him (that we probably won't see) that is the reason he acts the way he does. To me, he's always come off as a kid who fears being forgotten and alone. I have a sneaking suspicion that he comes from a family with an older sibling who is always doted on, while he's pretty much ignored. So, he acts like a rebellious badass in a misguided effort to be noticed. I think maybe Bee sees through that facade. I also think Jazz saw through it too, and gave Swipe the kind of positive attention he seems to need.

I think that may be one of the reasons Swipe acts the way he does towards Prime. Optimus being ever wise, I think knows this. I took his jab at Swipe at the end, as a patient adult humorously sassing a stubborn child with self esteem issues.

I'm not sure yet, if Swipe has a crush on Windblade or sees her an older and patient sister. I do think Drift does have a crush on her. I'm all for it, since I like the character of Windblade.

As for Bee and Overload, I wonder if Bee's hatred stems from something Overload did while Team Prime helped rebuild Cybertron. Maybe Overload did something to one of Team Prime (Arcee, Smokescreen, Bulkhead, Ratchet, Magnus, WJ). Maybe he betrayed Bee in some way, pretending to be something he wasn't. That's my feeling on this. I don't think it has to due with physically harming Bee. I'm leaning towards a betrayal, given Overload's penchant for acting.

I actually thought this was an okay episode, though we were left with just as many questions afterwards.

 

What about optimus prime Sunswipe5

 

I think Optimus is still feeling out his place on this new team, without feeling like he's intruding on Bee's leadership. He wants Bee to be the capable leader he knows he is. I also think he's still working through what he learned from the other Primes and trying to offer the lessons he can, to the new team. Maybe it's just me, but I also think he's working through some self doubt issues of his own. He's definitely started to develop a sense of humor, which is refreshing.

I don't think he wants to be looked upon as a legendary hero, but more as a part of a team and family. That's always been important to him, it seems. That's just my humble take on him though.

 

So I'm confused... According to my DVR this is still season 1. Seriously, it's showing S1E30 and S1E31 for the Overload episodes rather than S2E1 and S2E2.

Aside from the title confusion... I'm also confused by the episodes themselves. Every single issue I have with these episodes is centered around Optimus Prime.

1. Optimus Prime said at the end of the last season that Bumblebee was still the leader yet he's not really following orders... he seems to be trying to take his command back despite the fact he was offered command and refused to take it.

2. There's a scene where he orders Windblade to take flight and all she does is walks up to falling snow and try to blow it back. There is a big difference between trying to blow snow away from you and taking flight.

3. At the beginning the power the Primes gave him was taken back. The only reason he was there at all is because he had that power. He was previously dead and that power is what resurrected him. They didn't even change his color scheme back to the non-powered up version. And they said that it's been months since their battle with Megatronus so why are the Primes only just now taking their power back from Optimus? Why didn't they do it right after the battle was over?

4. The scene of them scanning that truck to change colors... I've never seen a more blatant excuse to sell repaints in the toy line than that scene right there. Yeah they've done it before but it's not the fact that they did it that bothers me, it's the fact that they made such little effort to hide the fact that's what they were doing. I mean the only thing worse than that scene was Transformers Armada when characters who weren't in the Nemesis Prime episode started changing to their Powerlinx colors with no explanation at all. There is at least an explanation here but it's the worst explanation I've ever heard for a color change. Seriously, this is a skill the Primes had to teach you? I would think being able to scan only the color of a vehicle would be an easy enough skill that everyone would know it. But nope before this if you wanted to change colors you had to have a bucket of paint, scan the exact same vehicle in a different color scheme, or be given a power up that for some reason changes your color scheme. Now apparently, you can just scan colors without changing alt modes and it's a skill only the Primes knew about... WTF?

5. Optimus Prime is a terrible leader in these episodes. This is by far the worst offense. He should know what he is and isn't capable of but he's constantly putting himself and his team in danger because he seemingly has no clue what his limitations are. This would be great if we were watching Optimus Primal or Transformers Animated where he doesn't have a lot of experience as a leader yet but this version of Optimus is already an established Autobot leader and he's being treated and acting like he's Orion Pax. Seriously, I don't feel like we should even be calling this guy Optimus because all his leadership skills appear to be gone. He did come up with the plan of luring Polar Claw into the water but I'm not giving him credit for that because that plan shouldn't have worked. Why does being under water mean his sonic attacks no longer work? All the Autobots could talk under water and there are several animals who communicate threw sonic frequencies, plus there's radar on boats and subs that operates with sonic frequencies so there's absolutely no reason that being in water should have canceled out Polar Claw's sonic abilities. The one thing Optimus did right, makes no sense so he's still a terrible leader. I never thought I would have to say that about this version of Optimus Prime because he's been great up till now. Maybe a little boring and predictable some times but at least he knew what he was doing. Where the heck did his intelligence go? Did the Primes take that too?

I was much more interested in the Overload side of the story for these episodes. Considering I'm not a fan of the Beast to vehicle designs it's nice to start out this season with an actual robot. So far the fourth Decepticon in the series to actually have a robot mode. And considering Filtch is such an idiot he's only the third with an actual robot mode that I've actually liked. I already have Megatronus and hope to find a Fracture soon but I'm now hoping that we eventually get a Warrior class Overload. I'm not a fan of the Deployers figures. Also being an actor myself this dude is quickly becoming my favorite.

These episodes also left two unresolved loose ends. The Ground Bridge was never repaired so the away team is still stuck in the Arctic which we know is deadly for Transformers... except Polar Claw who seems to be specially designed to survive in the cold for long periods of time. And also they kept hinting at Bumblebee and Overload having a history together but never explained what it was. All we know is that Overload damaged Bumblebee in the past. The only damage I'm aware of is when he lost his voice but that was Megatron who did that. So what did Overload do to him? Are they ever going to tell us?

You know every time in this series when they have an episode telling two stories at the same time, I've always found that one is way better written than the other. It's like these dual story episodes are literally written by different people, one far more talented than the other. It's like the Bumblebee side was written by a real writer, and the Optimus side of the story was written by a first grader.

I think the missing plot threads in both stories were only left unresolved because these episodes had a lot of obvious toy selling influence as well getting in the way of what the writers actually wanted to do. More so on the Optimus side because we already got introduced to the Cyclones threw the shorts so they got a lot less focus in these episodes. Still I kinda feel like this should of maybe been three parts so they could tell a better story rather than condensing the Cyclones to the shorts and leaving this with no real ending, they could of made that a full episode leading into this, and with a third full episode it would leave more time to flush out the story more. That way it feels less like a toy commercial. It would still be a toy commercial of course because that's all Transformers really is anyway, but it'd be less obvious that's what it is.

 

1. Optimus has probably been leader for millions of years. I'd expect it's difficult getting used to taking orders after that.

2. She disobeyed him and saved everyone. I'm not certain what's hard to understand about that.

3. No idea.

4. True but at least it was relevant to the plot.

5. Optimus doesn't know his limitations, because he's literally only just gotten them. Until now, he was one of the most powerful Autobots and kept getting stronger. Now he's in a weakened state that he isn't used to.

 

I always got confused by the Windblade scene. People say she disobeyed Optimus orders, yet his line afterwards is what gets me, I don't remember tge exact words but I think it went something along the lines of of this "Great work, Windblade. Thanks to your jet turbines, the avalanche wasn't able to hit us with it's full force." I don't know just how he said it makes it seem like, that's pretty much what he wanted her to do.

A minor nitpick but I guess pretty the lines could have been written more clearly.

 

I forgot to mention in my confusion about the episode numbers... there was only 26 episodes in season 1 further confusing why they're listed as episodes 30 and 31. If they're going to count these as season 1 episodes they should only be 27 and 28. This might be confusing a bunch of people into believing they've missed three whole episodes of the season when in reality these are the first two episodes of an entirely new season.

1. If he thought it would be an issue he wouldn't have turned down the position when it was offered to him. Optimus wouldn't give leadership to anyone else unless he was comfortable taking orders from that person.

2. Because that's not what happened. If it was a simple matter of disobeying orders there would of been some mention of it either with her apologizing to Optimus and/or Optimus reprimanding her for it. Instead they both acted as if that was exactly what Optimus ordered her to do in the first place but it obviously wasn't. No one seemed to think it was odd that she did something completely different than what she was ordered to do. They all acted as if what she did was actually what she was told to do.

4. Again, not the point. My complaint was about how lazily it was written to fit the plot. Have you seen the Batman Unlimited movies? Those movies that are obvious excuses to sell toys, that's what it felt like. Sure there's a story that goes with them but it's not very subtle why they're included in the story. I'd rather have a story that's so good you forgot they're selling toys than to have the toy advertisement so obvious you forget there's a story. I don't really like power ups that change color schemes either for this reason but at least that's written in a way that makes some kind of logical sense rather than this blatant excuse to sell the Arctic repaints. I swear the reasoning for repaints to exist just get lazier every few years. I miss the days where repaint actually meant new character rather than whatever this is. I think it would work better if they just had that ability but it's the fact that the Primes had to teach Optimus to do it that totally takes me out of the story. It just seems like such a simple thing compared to changing your entire physical form that they should of been able to do that already without any special training.

5. That's not an excuse because he KNOWS he's in a weakened state and he's continuing on like nothing is wrong with him. It would make sense if he didn't know he needed time to recover but they literally told him that at the beginning of the first episode. Think back to the episode "Sick Mind" when Optimus was infected by a Decepticon plague he didn't continue on like there was nothing wrong, as soon as he realized he wasn't at full strength he took time to recover. The only reason Optimus would continue on like he did in these episodes is if he didn't realize he was injured. He'd keep going till he started to feel the effects of his injury but again, he immediately was feeling those effects at the very beginning, he knew he needed time to recover, and instead of taking that time to recover he went into an environment he knew could kill him on a mission he knew required speed and stealth, neither of which are skills he has ever possessed even when he was at full strength. Plus that doesn't even address the fact that he seems to have lost all his intelligence as well as his strength as his years of leadership experience is seemingly non-existent here. He may call himself Optimus Prime but he's acting like Orion Pax. This would be fine if this were a younger Optimus but this a character with thousands of years of leadership experience acting like this is his first time leading a team. Which also completely destroys your response to the first one. Not only can he not take orders, but he can't give them either.

Seriously, if this story was written for a younger, inexperienced Optimus, I would love it, but the fact that it's written for an older Optimus who should know better than this is what makes it terrible.

 

She disobeyed his orders, but Optimus realized in hindsight that she had made the right decision. The "thanks Windblade" was an act of tact on Optimus' part--tacitly reassuring her that he wasn't offended and wasn't about to get on her case.

 

Ah okay, that definitely clears things up.

 

1. Optimus wouldn't want to get in the way of Bee's rise to leadership by taking Bee's authority over the team, but he's still not used to following orders himself. He might not even see that there's a problem. This is someone who's spent a very long time shutting off their emotions, and never really had to face them, until now.

2. What LegionMaximus said. Sure, they could've made it more clear, but Optimus already had to deliver the awkward exposition that explained, while Windblade didn't stop the avalanche, her action did save them by protecting them from it's full force. Putting that dialog in the middle of Optimus scolding, then thanking her would be too much.

4. Can't really argue that colour changing being special wasn't forced, however I'm not certain it was to sell toys. I think it being something the Prime's taught Optimus was done so there would be more of a payoff to his time with the Primes. Still kinda weak but at least it's not "to sell toys".

5. What years of experience? Seriously, the insight into the war that the previous series provided showed weak-ass Decepticons that the Autobots beat through nothing but brute force. I can't really think of any times where Optimus showed any exceptional signs of intelligence in that series. Heck, in Sick Mind, he seemed too weak to even stand up. It's very possible that, if he could have, he'd have tried to solve the problem himself, even if there was no chance he'd succeed. RID is just addressing issues that TFP created.

 

I keep wondering if there is something more underlying this storyline with Optimus that the writers have put in there just incase they need fodder for a TV movie or future season (or something later in this season).

He's not really acting like HIMSELF... at least the Optimus we all know and love.
One minute he is cold and stubborn, the next he is "kind of" leading (but nowhere near his grace and sensibility in TFP) and then he makes that remark to Sideswipe towards the end with a devilish smirk on his face.

How did he go from no personality in Ep1 to mischievous/snarkiness to his fellow JUNIOR Autobots in Ep2? If this was Ironhide or Ratchet I could see him throwing a one liner like that out there. I can't see the former leader of the Autobots putting that kind of 'tude on a young bot who barely knows right from wrong yet (especially if he is the TFP Optimus). Sideswipe threw attitude at him in Ep 1 but the Optimus I expect would just see it as water under the bridge - he wouldn't push the issue.
Did the experience with the Primes change his personality?
Did dying and being forced to "train" with the Primes make him become a tired, grumpy old general who no longer believes in the philosophies he had in TFP and prior?
Is he an imposter (eg another Prime) using Optimus' body?
Is he intentionally acting like this to force the bots to strengthen their bond as a team?

Also, when they scanned the snow vehicle did anyone have images of Transformium going through their mind with the pixelated changes to OP? It seemed kind of lazy to me.

Having said that I do see much more potential in this season if they can just get Optimus right... there is certainly some humour there that made both my kids and I chuckle.

 

Optimus prime doesn't look old he's still young