April Moon

It’s sure fun writing this stuff at work. A dimly lit office where I occasionally answer a phone and listen to the hum of ticket printers is highly conducive to humorous writing. But hey, typing them up in Thunderbird to e-mail to myself does offer the advantage of having a spellcheck. Which I need terribly because I’m stuck using one of those stupid keyboards and I keep hitting “b” instead of “v” and I keep hitting a big space of nothing instead of “b.” Fuck.

I know you guys are all waiting with bated breath for my Static commentary on Friday, but for now you get some Batman Beyond.

FUN TRIVIA FOR THE DAY:

Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it has the meaning “reduced, lessened, lowered in force.” So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing through terror, awe, extreme anticipation, or anxiety. (From worldwidewords.org)

The episode April Moon starts with some hooligans in a flying car heading towards a place to steal something, as hooligans oft do. They climb out of their vehicle and my first reaction is that these guys are the fucking Power Rangers.

Seriously, who fucking dresses like? Do they call each other before a heist? Let’s pretend for a moment that you actually do just wear red clothes all the time. What are the odds that you will meet three other dudes, and they all wear the same color all the time too? Perhaps they started their little club and decided to draw pieces of paper out of a hat to see who gets what color.

The red, green, and yellow rangers all head inside and leave the blue ranger outside to stand watch. They start busting their way into the vault and we find that there is more to these punks than coordinated dressing.

And it’s not that they all have giant robots that hook together.

(Did the Power Rangers ever use those damn robots in their separate form?)

These assholes have tech implants of some sort. Red Ranger gets some armor plating, Green Ranger has some whips that come out of his arms, Blue Ranger has giant fist things, and Yellow Ranger has fucking saws that come out of his hands and knees. Fucking saws. They all have names too: Terrapin, Bullwhip, Knux, and Kneejerk, respectively. But christ, Knux? We’ll stick with the Power Ranger thing.

As they’re robbing the joint, Batman shows up and takes out the watch guy. He heads inside and starts putting a stop to their shit. A fight ensues, and we see a huge disadvantage to having saws in your knees: sometimes you will accidentally saw into the floor if you fall over. The knee breaks and a piece of the tech used to make it falls out or breaks off or what have you. They manage to get away but Terry picks up the piece and looks upon it, thinking quietly to himself, “A clue.”

In another part of town, a nice old man is sleeping when he hears a knocking, knocking on the chamber door. He gets up and puts on his robe over his pajamas. At the door he finds the Rangers, banged up from the evening’s fight. The man insists that this is bullshit and not part of the deal. He asked what happened and is politely informed that it is none of his beeswax, except not as politely as that because he didn’t actually say beeswax. They insist that he fix saw guy’s knee.

In the Batcave, Terry is showing Bruce the piece of tech he found and absolutely no one is stunned to find out that he recognizes it. He tells Terry that it’s the same tech used in the Batsuit to keep him from having to lift weights and down protein shakes and the like. Bruce informs him that they were made by a Dr. Corso, who specializes in prosthetics for people who have lost limbs, and for people who just want an extra arm to carry around with them.

Speaking of extra arms, there’s these identical twins that were into piercing and all that shit and they saw people into amputation so then one of them had his arm cut off and they reattached it to the other one. God, why would want just one arm? And why would you want an extra you can’t even use? It’s like “great now shirts don’t fit properly, have fun.”

Bruce has sent Terry to see the good doctor but when he gets there, Corso pulls a fast one on him and injects Terry with some knockout something or other. When Terry wakes up, the doctor is gone and he feels dumb. He goes to Max to try to make her seem vaguely useful (and because she is incredibly less scary than Bruce, especially when you screw up) and she says that since Corso didn’t kill him, he can’t be entirely bad. Which would make more sense, if I hadn’t seen people who had left Bats alive when they could’ve killed him before. It’s possible he didn’t kill him, because he needs to construct some overly elaborate killing device with which to do it.

The Rangers at this point have gotten Corso set up a new joint and he is completely pissed about having to leave his house, because he’s a fucking doctor and he’s probably got some kickass shit back there. While he’s yelling at the Green Ranger, he gets a phone call. He says into the phone “Both legs, you say?” which is the type of thing you say into a phone when you want someone nearby to think “What the fuck does the other half of that conversation sound like?” Green Ranger doesn’t like it, but the doctor insists on going to make this little house call.

He heads to wherever the caller told him to head, a nice little joint that looks like a halfway house or something but it’s cool because he’s got his little doctor lunchbox.

I wonder what’s in there that he thought he would replace two legs with. Sandwiches? Do you think the answer is sandwiches?

He finds the room and walks in only to be jumped by Batman. Corso freaks out about how “they” are going to kill “her.” He explains that the Rangers are holding his totally fucking hot wife hostage and forcing him to do stuff for them in order to get her back. What sort of love could be so true, you ask? So pure and undying? It’s cool, there’s a flashback comin’ up.

WELCOME TO FLASHBACK TIME, HERE BE THE PAST

The doctor was at work. He got a new nurse. She was hot. She brought him some cereal, as all nurses do. It was called “Flakey Flakes” which is a good name for a cereal. The doctor’s heart was taken by this “cereal” and its deliverer. He stuck a ring in a test tube. A test tube of LOVE.

They get married and shit. Green Ranger shows up, thinks maybe some awesome whips might be cool. Doctor says “fuck you, man.” They kidnap his wife.

OK BACK TO THE FUTURE. OR THE PRESENT. OR…THE PRESENT IN THE FUTURE.

Terry is looking at a picture of April with a moon behind her and makes note of it being similar to “that old song, April Moon.” Which is old in today’s terms and probably really old at this point. And I have no fucking idea how Terry even knows that song. Do any of you know the song? I looked up the lyrics, I still don’t know what it is. Bruce has probably been making him study everything, including old songs that might come up someday, maybe.

The doctor also tells Terry that he put failsafe devices into all the Rangers enhancements, and he’s gonna deactivate the fuck out of them, once he gets his woman back. Right about then, the Rangers show up and awkwardly cut the door open, even though the big armored guy could’ve probably just smashed right through it.

Corso, not wanting his wife to get killed or his shit to get tore up, exclaims that it was a trap! And Batman tricked him! And shit! Some fighting ensues, and that stupid Yellow Ranger ends up with his stupid chainsaw knee in the floor again because maybe knees aren’t the best places for chainsaws, as cool as it may seem on paper.

Bats drops a flash/smoke bomb and makes a run for it, and the Rangers declare that his retreat means the town now belongs to them. Even though they had his ass on the floor earlier in the episode. As they take off though, Terry follows them because he intends to get Hottie McCereal back for the good doctor. As he cruises along, trying not to be completely obvious in his pursuit, Bruce calls to tell him that the failsafe in the device is voice-activated, and that the code is probably something with a special meaning to the doctor. At this point everyone watching thinks “well, it’s probably ‘april moon’ then.” But Terry doesn’t know that that’s the title of the episode, so it doesn’t hit him quite as fast.

The Rangers do a terrible job of parking outside their hideout.

which is especially sad when you realize they fucking have floating cars and there isn’t another car anywhere nearby. So now if a cop does happen to pass by, enjoy your parking ticket assholes!

Inside, one of them asks if anyone is thirsty and retrieves for them three glasses of a strange green liquid and one orange soda in a bottle with a straw.

These guys are fucking badass. “Yeah, I got chainsaws comin’ outta my knees, and I looooooooove orange soda. By the way, have you met my pal Kenan? Naw, he ain’t got chainsaws, he’s a fat fuck.”

Terry waits outside for a moment to strike, but is startled to find that Dr. Corso followed him. He doesn’t want Batman to do anything rash that’ll cause his wife to end up on the business end of a chainsaw knee. He blubbers on some more about how much he loves his wife and right about then she comes strutting up to the Rangers in some slut suit and starts making out with the Green Ranger! What in the fuck!

Dr. Corso sees this and completely flips his shit. I mean what in the holy fucking hell, she fucking married him and now this shit? This bullshit? How the fuck did she even get that job as a nurse? Is she even actually qualified for it or did she just pass some cereal quiz and then cleaned a test tube and they were like “go on in?” IS SHE EVEN NATURALLY BLOND? As he reels from his life getting flipped, turned upside down, he manages to alert the Rangers to their presence.

They come outside and start fighting with Batman who right around then realizes that the code phrase is “april moon” fuck, it seems so obvious now! As he gets close to the various rangers, he says the phrase in his deep, husky Batman voice, which…sounds…fucking weird. It’s like if the code phrase were “kitten caboodle” or something.

He beats all the rangers, except for the green one who manages to escape with April. Bruce assures Terry that they’ll be back but then asks if Greeny knows the doctor saw him tongue-twiddling with his wife. Terry doesn’t think so, and Bruce says he might not be back then.

Cut to the doctor’s workstation thing, where Mean Green is telling the doctor all the cool shit he wants now and that he better do it, or he’ll kill his wife and fuck her corpse instead of just fucking her. Dr. Corso says “ok sure thing, lemme just knock ya out here and go at you with a drill, everything’s cool.”

And the rest is up to the viewer oooooooh

Oh, and another disadvantage to chainsaw knees? This: