The Fantastic Four (Episode 7: Zoned)
by: Average Joe 1 year, 11 months, 1 week, 5 days, 17 hours, 14 minutes ago
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Cartoon Network
When Johnny brings a friend into Reed’s lab she opens up a portal to the negative zone and gets sucked in. Determined to bring her back before anyone can find out Johnny goes in after her, but what he doesn’t realize is that right before he went in, something came out.
This week’s episode was supposed to be “De-Mole-Lition” which would’ve introduced the Mole Man into the new Fantastic 4 series, however at the last minute it was switched to “Zoned.” This has happened a few times, and I’m wondering they they suddenly decide to change these episodes right before they air. I had my hopes up to see the Mole Man since this episode was supposed to pay homage to Fantastic Four #1 where the team battles the giant creature known as Giganto in the middle of New York.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, on to this week’s review. The episode “Zoned” really felt like more of a “filler” episode than anything. There was no main villain other than a few interdimensional bugs, and the whole episode just seemed like it was made to air before something big happened in the series. Having said this, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was bad, it just means it wasn’t as action packed as the last few episodes have been.
One part of the episode I did like was that as powerful as the Fantastic 4 are, they still have to deal with neighbors that have had their fill of the team’s antics. In one scene Susan is attending a meeting with her neighbors and she goes on saying “no we don’t plan on any super powered villains attacking the building any time soon,” this was pretty funny since it really shows how the team is forced to answer for their actions, just like any of us would have to.
The rest of the episode consisted of Reed and Ben chasing down a giant alien queen bug that was destroying their building and hatching smaller bugs. Since the team was separated for most of the episode it kept flipping back between Reed and Ben in their pursuit for the Queen, Susan dealing with the neighbors and their complaints, and Johnny trying to rescue his friend while trapped in the negative zone.
While this wasn’t a terrible episode, I would probably say it was the slowest of the series so far. It might just be the fact that I was looking forward to seeing the team square off against Mole Man and his Giganto creature, but I found myself losing interest in the episode about half way thru. This is a small complaint seeing as how I’ve really enjoyed this show since it’s debut. I think it’s fair to say that as great as I think this show is, every episode can’t be a winner.
Oh well, I still have episodes like "Hard Knocks" saved on my DVR to keep me satisfied until next week when we’ll HOPEFULLY get to see the Mole Man.