Awesome / American Dragon: Jake Long

A Battle Couple about to spring into action.

Season 1

• "The Heist" is a pretty good moment for Jake in the planning department. When it looks like the first attempt to steal the Leprechaun gold from Panderus failed, Jake reveals that when he and Fu Dog got to the kitchen, he put the gold in the instrument case Spud and Trixie had when they posed as musicians, and put some stew in the pot, faking out the "Wizard of Wall Street".
  Jake: Just like you taught me, Gramps; "Always stay three steps ahead of your opponent".
• Jonathan gets one in “The Long Weekend”, by using the survival skills he learned in the Cougar Scouts to save Jake from the Jersey Devil.
• Councilor Kulde gets a small one in "The Halloween Bash", by verbally putting Chang in her place when she objects to his and Councilor Andam's decision of giving Jake his dragon powers back.
  Chang: But his lack of discipline—
  Councilor Kulde: Is exactly what saved you from becoming someone's prey.
• The battles against the Dark Dragon in "Hong Kong Knights":
  • in the flashback, Lao Shi against the Dark Dragon one-on-one. We don't see exactly how it went, but Lao Shi not only survived against an enemy who had killed any dragon who had faced him, but won and apparently drowned him;
  • in the present, Jake, with some help from friends, both magical and Muggles (thus giving the Dark Dragon a Shut Up, Hannibal! before he could even talk), waltzed in his hideout, freed Lao Shi (who had been captured), captured Chang (courtesy of Trixie and Spud), and led him in the spot he needed for the Tooth Fairy to drop a few tons of bricks on him. And this time, they killed him (even if Chang would later bring him Back from the Dead).
  • Also, Fu Dog being willing to fight the Dark Dragon head on both times. He got knocked out by Chang from behind both times, but points for the courage.
• The magical creatures attacking the Huntsclan camp in "The Hunted", completely trashing the camp and no one getting hurt. Impressive, considering this was a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.

Season 2

• The Huntsclan and The Dark Dragon being defeated, and both of them by Rose.
• Jake slamming The Huntsman into an elevator door in "Homecoming".
  • And Huntsman? He gets back up, tears off his mask and rips out the elevator weight!
• Jake and The Huntsman's alley battle in "Breakout".
• Rotwood tricking Jake into revealing himself as a dragon at the very end of "The Rotwood Files". They really saved the best scene for last.
  • Just seconds before that, Jake called Rotwood "clueless". This was the scene that Rotwood proved to not just Jake, but to the viewers themselves, that he was not one to be underestimated.
  • And before that, the way he played his old mentor Sigmund Brock like a fiddle.
• Haley's Calling the Old Man Out scene in "Being Human".
  Haley: HEY! When's the last time either of you were the American Dragon? Well as the little troll girl currently filling the position, let me tell you it's stinkin' hard! I can't imagine doing it two more days, let alone two more years! And to think about everything Jake's gone through? He's had to save magical creatures on a daily basis, lie to his own dad about who he is, say good-bye to the girl he loved, all to protect a mystical world that nobody knows about. He may be the American Dragon, but he is also a 14-year-old kid who just wanted a couple days off. If that makes him immature, fine, but self-serving? With all due respect to both of you... STEP OFF!!
  • The fact that Haley stands up to her grandfather, who thought it was perfectly fine to just expect Jake to grit his teeth and bare all the stresses of being a dragon and a teenager without complaint and so was about to pitch a fit over Jake's actions before Haley tells him and Sun to "step off".
    • The blame especially lies with Lao Shi, because we see his time as the Hong Kong Dragon in a few flashbacks, and he was in his early 20's and irresponsibly milked his status as a Dragon for all it was worth in a society where The Masquerade didn't exist. For someone who relatively had Dragon duties at a prime age and didn't take them seriously then, it's unfair for his underage grandson to receive stricter expectations. Way to set the record straight, Haley!
  • What makes this impressive, Haley is usually a people-pleaser who uses a polite tone whenever possible. This is notably the one time she breaks out of character, just to make a point that being the American Dragon is no small feat.
  • Fridge-Awesome: Through out the series, Jake's made a point about how Haley upstages him at everything. Guess in this case, she upstages him at voicing his own complaints about being the American Dragon.
• Trixie suiting up in plate armor during "Siren Says" to face down a mind controlled Jake. Besides the fact she moves pretty fast in heavy armor (the suit alone would be about twenty kilograms (forty-four pounds), never mind the flail and round shield), she also holds her own fairly well and eventually gets the drop on Vicky.
  • A villainous one: Vicky is a personified example of taking the "Pretty girls are mean" stereotype and turning it upside-down on its head. The show single-handedly gave one big defiant lesson that a girl being attractive does not automatically make her a mean person, neither does a girl being mousy necessarily say she's nice and meek. Vicky even lampshades how people are prejudiced against pretty girls.
• Rose's Heroic Sacrifice that destroys the Huntsclan for good.
• Much like in "The Long Weekend", Jonathan once again goes Papa Wolf in "Bite Father, Bite Son". The moment he sees Jake has been hurt, he gets serious and takes on three vampires, and was actually winning for the most part. He later helps save the day in the series finale as well.
• The Big Damn Heroes entrance of Jake's family and friends in "Hong Kong Longs".
  Haley: Sorry, tall dark and ugly.
  Trixie: But if you want them...
  Susan: You're gonna have to go through us, too!
  Jonathan: All of us!
  Jake: Dad?
  • And later in that same episode, Rose gets her Big Damn Heroes moment, as well.
    Dark Dragon: Are there none who can challenge me?!
    Rose: HIIIII-YAH!
• This page has the list of the "Top 13 Threats to the Magical Community". Jake has Defeated. Them. All. At least once:
  • #13, the Pooka: sent Haley in Woman Scorned mode on him. We don't know what happened exactly, but the Pooka never reappeared;
  • #12, the Moss Monster: beat up and sent back in his swamp;
  • #11, the Shade Demons: they served as Mooks for the Dark Dragon, so they shared his defeats, with those appearing in the finale getting annihilated by Jonathan Long;
  • #10, the Avemetrus: blew it up by getting it to touch himself with its own age-sucking tentacles;
  • #09, the Gorgons: two petrified and dumped in the Hudson (courtesy of Spud and Trixie), the third and last returned but got beat up and is still at large;
  • #08, the Octo-Puss: beaten back in its own dimension;
  • #07, the Hobgoblins: won every fight, and even hired a clan to fight the Huntsclan once;
  • #06, the Chimera: caught and sealed back into Rotwood's dreamscape where it belongs;
  • #05, the Kraken: tied up the one the Huntsclan sicked on him;
  • #04, the Huntsman: fought multiple times, always won, often in ridiculous ways (fire fart, anyone?). The whole Huntsclan was eventually destroyed by Rose;
  • #03, the Krylock: Jake went in its own dimension and had it poison itself;
  • #02, the Kelpie: beat up and sent back to the mermaid's jail;
  • #01, the Dark Dragon: fought thrice. The first time Jake escaped, the second time he orchestrated his death at the hands of the friggin' Tooth Fairy, and the third time helped Rose defeating him and sealed him away for a thousand years.
• The twenty years younger version of the Huntsman in "Hero of the Hourglass" gets a few. Not only he gives Jake a desperate run for his money on his first mission, but after his voice changes he scares into submission the other Huntsclan apprentices who, until then, were treating him as a Butt-Monkey.
• Spud and Trixie outsmarting and defeating the Gorgons in "Bring It On".
• It may not be a big one, but "Fool's Gold" gives us a small one towards the end: After having been tricked out of Greed by the unwitting leprechauns into selling one of the crystal skulls to the Huntsclan (and a climatic battle for said-skull), Brocamas comes to Jake with a gift to bribe him into guarding the leprechauns again. Having grown older and wiser from the experience, Jake rightly responds in a cold tone "Sorry, but the American Dragon is not for sale." And he closes the door without a second's hesitation. Can't blame Fu Dog for his response: "You've got my respect, kid."
  • The battle between Huntsclan and magic creatures in the same episode is a brief affair, but seeing a platoon of evil humans fight magical creatures is great.
• In a mix of heartwarming, Jake finds out that Trixie's dad can't make it for Christmas because he is snowed in at his army base in Greenland. So how did her dad make it in time for Morning Eggnog? Jake flew all the way to Greenland, in the dead of winter, to melt the base out and allow her dad to make it home. In hindsight, this is an 11 hour round trip...and Jake did it in one night. What's that say about his bond with Trixie that he'd go all out like that?
• How Jake snaps Haley out of the Pooka's control in "Haley Gone Wild" is this mixed with funny. He attempts an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight at first, but when that doesn't work, he comes up with a better idea; he powers down, takes out his cell phone, calls their parents, and tattles on her, while fully knowing he's gonna be in just as much trouble with their parents as she is.
• The death of The Strigoi vampires in “Bite Father, Bite Son” completely obliterated by magical sunlight and with a little Pre-Mortem One-Liner from Jake to set the stage.
  Jake: Oh, coffee’s ready! What better way to greet the dawn?