Past the Expiration Date: Beta

I know you thought we reached our apex of bad X-Men TAS episodes back when I covered Jubilee's Fairy Tale Theatre... and suddenly I wish I'd make a joke about Shelly Duvall in that one. Sigh. Life is always so much clearer in hindsight.  Alas. However, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Many people accuse it of being the outright worst entry in the series, but I would argue that it is simply the most remarkable of the bad episodes.

In "The Fifth Horseman," the show runners were probably blitzed and tosses together a bunch of elements from the comics that aren't strong enough to form their own distinct plots then merges them together in ways that don't make sense. The basic premise is that Beast is taking Jubilee on an educational trip to Latin America where they foil a plot to revive Apocalypse.

Before I continue, however, I feel like we need to ask ourselves an important question that will perhaps guide us through this experience: how does a writer adapt years and years of storylines and characterization into easily digestible 20 minute episodes? When adapting a comic like X-Men into mostly stand-alone episodes, you would think that the ethos would be to distill the essence of the story you're trying to tell into something that can be easily digested in a half-hour's viewing. "The Fifth Horseman" takes quite a different approach, as we shall see. 

After the opening credits, we are introduced Caliban, a former Morlock (not that he'd ever appeared in the series before now) and now a Horseman of Apocalypse. Instead of working with other Horsemen though he is working with Ahab's Hounds. The hounds are from one of the X-Men's many dark futures, Days of Future Past. They are mutants enslaved by humanity because their particular abilities make them ideal tracker/hunters for mutants. living outside of captivity. There is no reason to make these guys henchmen of Apocalypse except that their character designs are more or less uniform and less complicated than the actual Horsemen. 

Trick or Treat! Give me your soul!

Also, this just might be a matter of taste, but the less conventionally human a character in this series is, the more likely they will look like butt-ugly nightmare fuel with the budget cut animation of these last episodes. Caliban's face looks more like a kindergartener's "spooky" Halloween mask than a fully believable face, albeit even that of someone with a physical mutation. Of course having light up irises and blackened out whites of the eyes isn't helping on that front. 

The episode isn't even a full minute in and we can already see that the writers don't know how to adapt the material. Perhaps the writers had forgotten that the rest of the Horsemen were still on the proverbial chess board. Perhaps they knew the show's number was up and didn't want their character design for the Hounds to go to waste. Regardless of motive, the result is that this feels like a story cobbled together from the scraps of other stories. 

Recruited from the same leatherbar as Trollverine.

The Hounds themselves are pretty nondescript and in the future I probably won't be citing them much as individual characters, but just to prove I did the assignment... one is big and either hunchbacked or has muscles on his muscles on his muscles, making his head look lower than his neck. The other two are both dollar store knock offs of Green Lantern. The female uses hers to form energy boomerangs while the male (who has pretty decent mutton chops) uses an energy whip. I'll be shocked hereafter if I refer to any of them individually moving forward. They might as well all be joined at the hips for all the individuality they're given. 

They are tracking down a boy who is intended to be a sacrifice, but he manages to escape. Have I mentioned Caliban's primary ability is tracking? As in he can actually sense the presence of other mutants? He had one job...

They stole the set design from Yogurt's Temple in Spaceballs.

This comes as quite a setback to Caliban's master, Apocal-- Fabian Cortez?! Um, okay, yeah, Cortez, who is communicating with his beloved master Apocalypse who is now a floating extra-dimensional ghost head in an Incan temple. Yeah, again this episode is just throwing elements that have nothing to do with each other in. Of course, you could make the argument that the series was forever doing that with Mystique except for the fact that they were forever addressing the fact that her sense of allegiance was sticky to say the least. Instead, this just feels like the writers were playing X-Men Mad Libs and accidentally submitted it for production. Either that or they were limited to voice actors who they could afford on their newly limited budget and they were determined to fit Fabian Cortez into an Apocalypse story somehow. 

We then cut to the pre-Columbian temple that serves as villain HQ in this episode. Cortez and the Apoca-head exposit that they needed that mutant boy for a ritual sacrifice at a specific time (a Celestial alignment, natch). Cortez needs to find Apocalypse a new mutant, who has to be particularly powerful, in order to fit their needs. Oh, and Apoca-head gives a very threatening "don't fail me again" before he fades away. But what kind of threat can be given by an incorporeal head floating in an ether of nothingness? It's about on par with when a parent tells their kids to behave because Santa's watching. 

Worth all those Nobel Prize snubs over the years.

Elsewhere, Beast is parked outside a shop waiting for Jubilee to get some supplies for the their trip. It's one of those rare episodes in which in lieu of his usual blue X-briefs, he has opted to actually be fully dressed, decked out like he's going on safari. He's also wearing thick glasses in this episode so that they don't have to take the extra time to animate his eyes. Jubilee comes out of the shop with a box of groceries and I right away it becomes obvious that she is once again off-model. And I mean from the previous episode. This cheap animation studio cannot maintain a sense of consistency from episode to episode. Jubilee has purchased a little gift for Hank in the store: a "World's Best Teacher" mug. Oh, I'm sure that all the grocery stores in South America are always fully stocked with "World's Best Teacher" mugs. In English. Again, in the Peruvian Andes. 

This totally feeds into Cortez' pre-existing god complex.

Back at Club Cortez, Caliban returns empty handed. Just to demonstrate his rage, he uses his powers to remove the enhancements that apparently he gave Caliban, reducing him from a big, roided out behemoth into a wormy looking little green guy. Okay, backstory time. Cortez has the ability to supe up other characters existing powers. As I said, Caliban is a mutant tracker, so how they thought they could use Cortez to explain his big Horseman form is amusingly stupid. This is the sort of mental gymnastics that has to happen when a series kills off its biggest antagonist a season and a half before it goes off the air. Having proven his point, he restores Caliban and orders him to seek out another mutant powerful enough to house Apocalypse's essence. 

Meanwhile, Hank and Jubilee go from excellent adventure to bogus journey when due to a lack of a roadmap, Beast apparently loses the ability to see their surroundings (see what happens when they forget to animate your eyes?) and nearly drives their jeep off a cliff. They continue on foot and go immediately to a rope bridge across a waterfall. Okay, I guess we can Allan Quartermain/Indiana Jones/Scrooge McDuck to the list of things this episode is throwing at the wall to see what sticks. I love that in their line of work, they don't even question how strangely convenient to find a rope bridge literally right next to them. Between his book smarts and her street smarts, there is not one genre savvy bone betweeen them. 

Something about Jubilee's voice triggers Caliban's mutant detecting powers... and it also triggers some flashbacks of some much better animation of Jubilee. Although that seems to be for the audience's benefit (apparently the animators either thought we were stupid or saw it as 72 fewer frames to animate), as Caliban will later be shocked to discover who it is he has found. 

Despite being lost and clearly nowhere near what few cellphone towers existed in 1997, Beast is more focused on sussing out the origins of the temple. Despite having a lot of surface-level Incan indicators, upon closer inspection it's Mayan. He also has to dispel the notion in Jubilee's head that the Mayans were cannibalistic murderers. Sigh, the problem with having Jubilee being the only student-aged member of the cast is that she makes the education offered at Xavier's look incredibly under-achieving. 

Maybe that's why so many X-Men become part of the teaching staff. They don't have any real-world skills. In the comics, you see them teaching things like temporal mechanics, quantum biophysics, aerial combat, and outer space survival skills [sidebar, the Jean Grey School's courses are listed on www.Marvel.com/jeangreyschool. Kitty Pryde taught a course called "Ethics 101: Forgetting Everything You Ever Learned From Emma Frost, and it's probably my favorite of the lot. Meanwhile, Gambit teaching sex ed is undoubtedly, objectively the worst.]. Seriously, the only one who could survive a normal 9-5, is Iceman, who somehow ended up with a fairly "average Joe" degree in accounting. 

That little "the more you know" moment feels a little out of place, even when it's coming out of human text book Hank McCoy's lips. By that token the fact that Jubilee is familiar with ancient Meso American cultures at all sounds a bit suspect. Still, that little bit of info counts as the episode's educational lesson, such as it is. 

Beast's translation of a Mayan stele (because of course in addition to everything else he knows, we can add ancient Mayan) culminates in the realization that the temple was consecrated to Apocalypse, then as if on cue the Hounds attack. 

Yup. These guys are totally typical of modern Peru. 

Much to Caliban's chagrin, he recognizes his quarry as Jubilee, with whom we are inferred has a standing relationship. I'm just going to assume that they definitely played extended sessions of gin rummy or something off-screen somewhere whenever there was a Morlock episode. He saves her from falling down the waterfall after one of the Hounds breaks the rope bridge. This seems to be framed as altruism, but he's just keeping the new Apoca-bod from getting ruined. With Jubilee captured and Beast in tow, he leads our protagonists to the Temple of Apocalypse... or the other one, since they were apparently already at a Temple of Apocalypse.

Oh, and we scored the jackpot! Behold the Apocalypse cultists. I'm dying here. I love when Americans try and fail to respectfully depicts other cultures. Believe it or not, modern Peruvians do not dress like pre-Columbian Incans... not even pre-Columbian Incans with Apoca-lips.

CaveBeast gets hella shoulder pads. 

Cortez uses his powers on Beast to turn him into a hyped up feral version of his existing powers, causing him to grow much larger, bursting through his clothing... except for his shorts because Standards and Practices would not be cool with exposing young viewers to Dr. McCoy's big blue butt. Again, how do Cortez' abilities work? Somehow, making Beast even more apishly bestial involved making him grow big blue spikes along with back and forearms. Well, it was the 90's. Spikes were totally in vogue. 

This is chilling and it would be cool if cruel, impenetrable logic didn't have to keep rearing it's ugly head. Cortez' powers are to amp up a mutant's existing abilities, which in Hank McCoy's case don't include a funny feral temperament. Was Wolverine originally supposed to be in this episode? 'Cause that would have made a lot more sense. However, does imply that Apocalypse granted him this new power, granting the ability to turn people into roided up primitives seems pretty dubious. How would you control them? Why do the Hounds all look like they only got the muscle treatment? This makes no sense. Oh, and like I was saying about being able to control the primitives? Yeah, uberBeast just goes bounding off and Cortez couldn't give any fewer fucks. 

He is only too happy to retreat to the bowels of the temple where he can report to Apocalypse that everything has been fixed and collect his brownie points. Caliban interrupts the seance, which ticks Cortez off. He suggests that maybe he can find a different mutant to be Apocalypse's vessel, which only serves to aggravate him further and accuses Caliban of... well, from the tone it sounds like an accusation of betrayal, but the actual spoken text could easily be replaced with simply being accused of "being a decent person." In short, no. Caliban doesn't get a third go at recruiting a victim. 

Later that night, CaveBeast is leaping about until he arrives at their jeep. Even for an amped up Beast, it's fairly impressive that he managed to leap across that waterfall. And that's when I notice that even in ripped up khaki shorts, still he sports his x-belt buckle. Granted in the animated series, the X-belts/badges function as communicators, but they are a hemisphere away. My guess is that it's his security blanket. He totals the car, flipping it over and knocking out its contents, then finds a picture of the team, the new (and now-broken) World's Best Teacher mug, and a polaroid of him and Jubilee. Well that triggered something in his primal brain, so he bounds off into the night. 

I'm still not comfortable with the new animation's
obsession with giving Jubes cleavage.

The following day there are three planets (asteroids?) hovering in front of the sun, meaning the Celestial alignment is at hand and thus it is Apocalypse O'clock! The hounds bring forth Jubilee, who is now dressed in Mayan garb, including a feather headdress. And it dawns on me that this is the third episode in a row in which Jubilee ends up in a ridiculous outfit. Cortez conducts the ritual while Jubilee pleads to Caliban, reaching his better angels. Caliban pleads to take him in Jubilee's place, but Cortez scoffs at the notion, and makes some really racist remarks about Caliban being a Morlock. 

Because insulting your hired muscles' family right before
an critical event always goes well...

Did the writer not understand that Morlocks are just mutants who tend to have physical mutations or otherwise are denied passing privilege and have abjured mainstream society? Granted, elitism and sycophantic behavior sound like they'd go hand in hand with racism, but this really sounds like episode doesn't quite grasp what the Morlocks are. 

Well, badmouthing the Morlocks seems to be the straw that breaks the camels back and he strikes against Cortez, only to be subdued by the Hounds. Cortez disempowers Caliban, turning him back into the mousy little guy he truly is. This is yet another aspect of Cortez's newly revised power set in this episode that I don't buy in the episode. Ignoring the fact that I don't know how Apocalypse managed to subject him to his Celestial technology to grant him the new powers, I'm not buying this on/off switch kind of transformative power. On a physical level, there are questions to be asked about this ability to create the mass that is added to/subtracted from Caliban and the hounds when he transforms them. More to the point, I don't buy it in the story because it makes the story feel a bit too pat. If Caliban had been a series regular and this had been a story about his temptation, removing the gift would have basically been like his personal reset button for the next episode.

Floating around like Glinda the Good.

The temple starts to shake as Cortez preaches the glory of he who walks behind the rows Apocalypse. A green swirling portal appears with Apocalypse on the other side. Cortez offers him Jubilee, but just then we have an attack from a wild were-badger/CaveBeast. While they are busy contending with the big, spiky blue behemoth, Caliban uses the distraction to unstrap Jubilee from the sacrificial altar. Remember what I said about Cortez' powers acting as a reset button? Yeah, he resets Beast back to standard issue. Man, does this episode have absolutely zero consequences.  CaveBeast's entrance includes busting up all the pillars in the joint, which were apparently all weight-bearing. This causes the temple to cave in on itself, because in addition to copying off Temple of Doom this episode had to crib a little off of The Last Crusade. Everyone manages to escape except for Cortez. 

Here's Johnny!

Outside, Jubilee assuages Caliban's sense of guilt over having been a party to the events of the episode by reminding him that his better nature prevailed in the end, and convinces him to go with them back to New York. Of course, we'll never hear from or of Caliban again in the series, so a fat lot of no consequences on that front, either. 

This isn't sexual at all...

Back in the now caved-in temple, Cortez apologizes to his benefactor that he has no powerful mutant to offer up as his vessel, but Apocalypse is a glass half full guy, considering Cortez is pretty damn powerful in his own right. His essence enters Cortez (paging Dr. Freud) and instantly transforms into a fully incarnated Apocalypse. He stares directly into the "camera" and laughs menacingly as we fade to black. Oh, what portentous story arc does this presage? None. We neither see no hear from Apocalypse again for the duration of the series. Such a fucking waste. 

Worst "Oh-face" ever. 

As bad an episode as "Jubilee's Fairy Tale Theater" is, it's still amusing in it's failures. And it realizes that it's a light and fluffy palette cleanser of a diversion. "The Fifth Horseman" fails on a number of levels. It is a plot element loaf with characters from very disparate corners of the X-Men universe jury rigged together with very little rhyme or reason. It hinges upon a prior relationship that the show retcons into existence in order to propel Caliban's arc and thus the viewer has no reason to feel invested when the show comes across as making shit up on the fly. There is no investment in our antagonist either, since he is neither as nuanced as Magneto or Mystique, nor as imposing as Apocalypse himself, or as scene-chewingly delightful as Mr. Sinister. He's just some jerk. I think the greatest sin of all is that nothing that happens in this episode has any weight behind it. Jubilee's abduction, Caliban's compliance with evil, Beast's transformation, they all get resolved in under the span of 20 minutes, including opening and closing credits, without we the viewers learning anything new about our main characters and not enough about our focal character. The events just unfold and then then are never remarked upon again. Not even the the return of Apocalypse gets any follow up. 

When it comes down to brass tacks however, the quintessential failure of this episode is that if you remove the character names, it becomes apparent that this really isn't an X-Men story. It's a story out of a pulp dark fantasy/adventure story from the 1930's that had some X-Men force into it. Not that throwing these characters into something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, or HP Lovecraft can't work, but the story has nothing to do with them the mutant metaphor, or the X-Men's extended metaphor of found family and community. This isn't even their story on a narrative level. Jubilee gets damseled pretty damn quickly in this story and Beast is effectively a cave troll. This episode is about Caliban discovering his own sense of agency. But he's such a thinly characterized depiction of the Caliban from the comics that again, he could have easily been any character from the X-Men's past, let alone one who had to be retconned in because the writers forgot to include him in any of the previous Morlock episodes. 

This feels less like an episode of X-Men than it feels like proof that writers, voice actors, and animators earned a paycheck in between "Jubilee's Fairy Tale Theatre" and our next episode. And speaking of episodes that don't feel like X-Men stories, the next time I cover X-men TAS, I hope you like WWII era Captain America because Wolverine is having flashbacks in "Old Soldiers." Next week, however, we're headed back to the mean streets of Gotham as I continue covering Batman: Under the Red Hood.