Carly, Spike and Hoist end up rescuing people after a film stunt gone wrong, and the director is so impressed that he hires them on the spot. Meanwhile, the Decepticons are attempting to figure out what a device they stole from Wheeljack does, and are ordered by Megatron to destroy the film due to accidentally appearing on it. The bots however, quickly get tired of acting, as they are ignored to give more screen time for the human actors, pyrotechnics and other sci-fi elements. Wait...
Tropes
- Accidental Misnaming: As a Running Gag, the director often gets Hoist's name wrong, calling him "Moist" among other things. Later in the episode, Track's name is spelled "Trucks" on his chair.
- Advertised Extra: In-Universe; Even after the film's name changes to mention the Transformers, the human characters are still the director's main focus. Still Harold fears they'll become a Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
- All for Nothing: Megatron steals a device that Wheeljack built and goes through great effort trying to cover up his plan of using it. However, at the end of the episode, Wheeljack reveals that the device never worked in the first place!
- Bad Boss: Megatron just randomly chews out Starscream because Dirge crash landed. Later he pounds Starscream after one too many insults, and then rips some wires from him after he fails to steal the original film negatives, instead taking the copies.
- The Cameo: Wheeljack appears in the final scene wherein he reveals that his invention the Decepticons were after never worked!
- Enforced Method Acting: In-Universe; Rumble switches the film crew's fake explosives with real ones.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The other Decepticons look a little creeped out by Starscream's beatdown at the hands of Megatron.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Megatron presumes Wheeljacks' invention is some sort of extremely dangerous weapon.
- Like You Would Really Do It: In-Universe; Hoist threatens to drop Carly, Spike and the film into lava, and Megatron doesn't believe him. Hoist then drops them, but the "lava" is fake.
- Magic Brakes: Hoist ends up part of the movie when he rescues a stunt driver whose brakes give out, nearly sending him off a cliff.
- Mid-Development Genre Shift: In-universe; The film is a generic action flick, until the director decides to turn it into a sci-fi movie titled Attack of the Alien Robots.
- News Travels Fast: Tracks, Warpath, Sunstreaker and Powerglide arrive at the movie set to join in despite having no way of knowing what's going on. This does get lampshaded when Spike and Carly go "Tracks!?" when he shows up and Hoist asks "What's he doing here?"
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The two human actors, Harold Edsel and Karen Fishhook are based on Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. Harold's character is an Indiana Jones parody, and Karen's character is based on Leia.
- Not Me This Time: After Dirge fails to deliver the device and crash lands, Megatron, seemingly by reflex, berates Starscream for ruining everything, despite the latter watching the incident in the same room as him.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: In-universe; the Autobots are actual alien robots, yet the director has them wear goofy-looking alien masks for their parts to fit his vision of what alien robots would look like.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: In the final scene, Wheeljack states that his invention the Decepticons were after never worked in the first place.
- The Unreveal: We never find out what Wheeljack's device actually does (or more accurately, what it was supposed to do).
- You Just Ruined the Shot: The episode begins with Spike, Carly, and Hoist following two seemingly out-of-control cars only to find out it's a stunt being performed for a movie. Fortunately, Hoist is there to save the stuntmen when they get into real danger and is rewarded with a stunt car gig by the director when he sees the Autobot in action.
