Our episode begins with a number of police cars driving a prisoner somewhere. The exposition of the drivers into their radio tells us that they're carrying Toad, who spits slime on them. But the cars all stop when they see... something that throws one of the cars into the air. Enter: The Blob.
The police officers see him trash another cop car, so they decide to wait a full 5 seconds as they watch him approach. And then they do nothing while he flattens the front-end of their car. No point in driving away or anything.
Blob pulls Toad out of the car, and lets him know that rescuing him is getting old. Oh goody, another X-Men series that makes Toad worthless; never seen that one before.
Avalanche announces his presence by making an earthquake to bury the police car. Quicksilver dashes over to show off his power and to tell the cops to give Senator Kelly a message: the Brotherhood is coming for him.
Cue title sequence.
Cut to Senator Kelly, showing off a newspaper about the Brotherhood's threat against him while making a speech. Kelly says that the people should be afraid of mutants, etc, the usual rhetoric.
Cut to Warren Worthington nearby, asking his son to get out of their limo. His son, Warren the Third, AKA Angel, says that it's embarrassing. His father says that Kelly is a champion, but Angel disagrees.
Cut back to Kelly for some actual plot. He suggests fighting back against the mutants who are "waging war," so he shows off their latest weapon: a Sentinel, spider tank-style. They turn the device on, and Kelly reassures the crowd that they are safe. The Sentinel detects a single unregistered mutant in the crowd, namely Rogue, and goes after her. Going through the crowd. Also, the MRD agent who turned it on can't turn it off.
It chases Rogue down. Meanwhile Angel runs off-camera, probably to go get changed. The Sentinel starts firing lasers at Rogue. It eventually corners her, but Angel shows up and drops a rock on it. This only slows it down, and as Angel flies away with Rogue, it shoots one of Angel's wings.
Beast appears as if from nowhere to catch them in mid-freefall. The Sentinel approaches them with obvious intent, and since Beast is here, that means... yep, Logan shows up to kill the thing. While Logan spends time whacking it, Angel asks Beast about the X-Men reforming, but Beast tells us that it's just the two of them. Logan and Rogue exchange looks, then Rogue walks away followed by Logan.
Meanwhile, Beast and Angel talk. Beast asks about him rejoining the team, but he says that he can't, due to his family. His father knows about his mutation, but he still hates mutants, so Angel's the family secret. But Angel uses his family's money to help mutants, which he considers more important than being away from his father. The two part on amicable terms.
Logan tries to talk to Rogue into rejoining, but she isn't having any of it. She says that she won't be abandoned by him again, and that he can't be a leader because he's not always there. But... why would she think that Logan would be the leader of the reformed X-Men? Oh right; he's the only X-Man that mattered to her. Anyway, Beast shows up and suggests that she needs time. Logan realizes that the others won't come back to the team if he's running it.
Cut to Kelly and Warren the Elder. Kelly proclaims it a disaster. Really? You brought a fully armed and operational weapons platform to your public demonstration, and you're surprised it didn't exactly go as planned? Warren the Elder suggests that he simply announce the termination of the Sentinel spider-tank program, to put the focus back on mutant registration and the Brotherhood.
Speaking of whom, cut to a dark street, where Rogue is being stalked by Toad. After playing the mugger and pulling off a glove with his tongue, Rogue steals his powers and renders him unconscious. Blob and Avalanche show up, along with the rest of the Brotherhood, surrounding her.
As Rogue gets set up for a fight, the unnamed fourth member of the group, a woman with pale blue skin and a blue mark around one eye, suggests that the other Brotherhood members let them have some time for "girl talk." And they do. Rogue calls them criminals, but unnamed-blue-skinned-lady-who-isn't-Mystique says that they are standing up for themselves and those who can't fight back.
Blue-skinned lady delivers a pretty heartfelt speech about how they're fighting for their rights, opposing mutant registration, and how worse things are coming if that passes. She says that they need to unite. Rogue is surprised that they asked her to join, and blue-skinned lady says that they don't abandon their own, pointing out Toad as an example. She offers Rogue the chance to come on a mission with them, and Rogue considers it.
Cut to a ratty apartment somewhere. There we see Scott Summers, watching a television about mutant registration. Scott blasts the television in anger; that'll show them now that you don't have a TV anymore.
Logan kicks in the door and sarcastically compliments Scott on the apartment. He asks Scott if he's finished feeling sorry for himself, and then starts saying that he's no good to anyone. Scott tells him to leave, so Logan exposites about how Scott gave up after Jean vanished. After Logan says, "when the going gets tough, the tough pack it in," Scott answers by blasting him through the wall into the wall of the building on the other side of the street.
Ah, wacky fun.
Cut to the Brotherhood + Rogue at Kelly's house. Quicksilver runs in to look around, but nobody's there. So he tells Avalanche to bury the house, over Rogue's objections. Unnamed-blue-skinned-lady-who-isn't-Mystique (UBSLWIM) reminds Rogue of the stakes: their own homes will be in danger if mutant registration passes.
After that, they decide to take Kelly's Humvee for a joy ride, after Blob tears the top off of it to make it a convertible. At a stoplight, they run into an MRD patrol vehicle. Rogue actually tells them not to do anything to catch their attention, despite the fact that the titanic lard elemental Blob is clearly visible and the roof of the car has obviously been torn off. But it's Toad spitting on the MRD officers that makes them notice the obvious mutants next to them.
A merry chase ensues, which ends when Avalanche drops a city block on the MRD vehicles. Of course, we immediately cut to a news story that assures us that these were in fact empty warehouses. We see that Warren the Elder was watching the story. The Brotherhood show up, bursting through the wall in the Humvee. They ask him where Kelly is, but he doesn't say. So Quicksilver has Rogue pry it from his mind.
Before she can, Angel shows up, but Blob renders him unconscious. Rogue is temporarily conflicted, but UBSLWIM pushes her to do it. She reaches out to him, but she hesitates. So UBSLWIM grabs her arm and makes her touch him.
Cut to Logan and Beast. Hank lets Logan know that he's found Kitty, Colossus and Iceman. Since Colossus knows how characters are treated in this series, Beast lets us know that he refuses to leave his family in Russia. Kitty ran away from home to prevent the harassment of her parents. And Bobby's parents won't let Hank talk to him.
Enter Angel. He lets them know that Rogue's joined the Brotherhood now. Logan doesn't believe it, but Angel fills him in on the details. Logan decides that they need to stop the Brotherhood, but they need to recruit Bobby first.
Cut to a quick scene where Quicksilver is shown the place where Kelly will be speaking. Quicksilver gets to deliver a bit of menacing dialog, letting us know that it goes down at noon. But we get a shot of Rogue with a look on her face.
Cut to Bobby's house. In a desperate attempt to keep this scene from being entirely abhorrent, the dialog lets us know that Bobby's eighteen and thus legally can do what he wants. His parents complain that they almost killed Bobby last year, then close the door in Hank's face. Logan decides to kick the door open and just invite Bobby to come along. And he does; the horrifying nature of this for his parents is tossed aside by Logan's pat, simplistic comment, "Your son is a mutant; deal with it."
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, Bobby is less than thrilled to learn that the X-Men consists of just three people. He asks if they talked to Kitty, since he apparently knows where she is. She's heading to Genosha.
Cut to Kitty's ship. She looks at an advertising flier for Genosha, then the helicopter carrying the X-Men show up. She sees Logan there and jumps in, through the door. Her entire dialog for this sequence consists of "It's about time."
When they get back to the mansion, they find Rogue there waiting for them. Ah, the plot thickens. Logan and she talk alone, where she confesses that she wants to come back. Logan asks why, and she says that she's not an assassin. So she tells them the Brotherhood's plan.
Cut to Kelly's press conference. Warren the Elder and Angel are there; Angel asks why Kelly's having the press conference since they know the Brotherhood know about it. Warren the Elder assures him that the MRD can protect him, but he also points out that being attacked by the Brotherhood on live television will ensure the registration act's passage. Angel realizes that Warren never told Kelly about the attack, that the Brotherhood know where the press conference is being held. Yeah, Warren the Elder is kind of a dick.
Cut to UBSLWIM with a scoped rifle of some kind, at a sniping post just outside of the building. Toad spots the X-Men's helicopter, and Quicksilver finally gives UBSLWIM a name: Domino. She drops down and fires spheres of some kind into the room. They ricochet off things and cause general havoc.
Kitty allows them to pass through the walls in their helicopter. Sure why not. I'm not sure why they went inside anyway, since the Brotherhood hasn't gone inside yet. This point is driven home as we see sequences of them fighting MRD personnel. You know, the people protecting Kelly, which is what the X-Men are supposed to be doing. We do get to see that what they're doing is being broadcast, and that Rogue escaped before the rest of the X-Men.
Eventually, they realize that the Brotherhood aren't around, so they run. They encounter Angel, who gives them a ride and lets them know that Rogue already escaped.
Cut to later, as we see that the registration act was passed and the President will sign it tomorrow. Thanks, Logan. Angel tries to cheer him up by saying that trying to save a man that hates mutants is what Xavier would have done.
Cut to the Brotherhood's place. Rogue shows up, and we get the reveal: it was all a setup. Rogue led them there as part of the plan, and thus she has proven her loyalty to the Brotherhood.
Remarks
This was a pretty good episode overall. The strength of it is in pushing forward with the mutant agenda plotline. We see the complexities around the issue, with Angel and his father's predicament. We see Kelly and the Sentinels. And we have some of the Brotherhood and their goals.
Caught within all of this is Rogue. The episode makes it look like Rogue is all conflicted. It's like she wants to do something, but her hatred of Logan makes her avoid the X-Men, but her morals won't let her join the Brotherhood proper. Well, until the reveal, where this has all been shown to be lies or something.
That's probably the biggest failing of the episode. The best drawn character in this episode is Rogue, and what we see from her is ultimately a deception. We can't trust anything we see of her. So we can't know if what we've seen is really how she feels, if she really was conflicted, or if she's just faking. So, who is Rogue in this episode?
While that's the biggest failing, the episode betrays a more general problem. Look at how many characters are introduced in 22 minutes. In this episode, we meet the two Warrens, Kelly, Rogue, the five members of the Brotherhood, Scott, Bobby, and Kitty. That's one character every two minutes on average. That's a lot of people to shove at the audience all at once, and it really shows.
Everyone in this episode except Rogue and maybe Domino is little more than a broad caricature or just muscle. Avalanche and Blob are thugs with no personality. Similarly, Bobby and Kitty exist to do things, not to have character. Scott is here to cede leadership to Logan. Angel gets to have some conflict, but it's very little and generally in the background. Kelly is one-dimensional and one note. Quicksilver is just the guy in charge, and Toad is the group's fool. Time in this episode could have been more economically spent by focusing on fewer characters.
You can really see how rushed it is by how the characters are introduced. With the exception of Toad, nobody in the Brotherhood is afforded a name until well after they are introduced. Indeed, I don't think Quicksilver's name is even mentioned in this ep. Yes, I watched X-Men Evolution and the first X-Men cartoon series, but that shouldn't be a prerequisite for this show. Plus, the Brotherhood member with the most actual character, Domino, was only afforded a name as an afterthought in a random piece of easily miss-able dialog.
What's even worse is that we don't even know what her powers are. I'm not exactly a fan of Luckily, My Powers Will Protect Me, but her powers are not obvious. Toad, Blob, Avalanche, Quicksilver, it's pretty clear what they do. With Domino, until you learn that her power is that she's lucky, nothing she does makes even the slightest sense. Indeed, you're more likely to guess that her power is being a really good shot.
Compare this to X-Men Evolution. They were very deliberate when introducing new characters. It started out with the basic five, and every episode introduced only one or two characters for the first 6 episodes or so. Each character got some spotlight and more often than not was paired up with a foil to highlight their characteristics.
Even worse, the very next episode of this series will completely ignore most of these characters. Kelly, Rogue, the Warrens, and the Brotherhood are all ditched to focus on something completely different. When X-Men Evolution introduced someone, they almost always used them in the very next episode in some way. That way, the characterization sticks with the audience.
These problems aside, what's here is pretty decent. Not great, but not terrible.
