In the sense it's a comedy, the art designs for the Pokemon works for me. I mean, if you're putting Mr. Mime in there, making him look creepy as fuck is hilarious.
Massively Multiplayer: Gaming In The New Millennium
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Winter 2009 (Part 7) - New Trends In Kids' TV
The late 2000s were a time of transition and difficulty for many of the kids' networks on cable television. A combination of the financial recession and the numerous scandals plaguing a number of hit live action kids' shows of the day made it difficult for networks to find shows to air. To make matters worse, animated productions were expensive. If a show wasn't already a hit, it was quite risky to pour time and money into a new show knowing that advertisers weren't willing to take as many chances as they used to. For Cartoon Network, it made things extremely difficult. With Avatar: The Last Airbender having been over for almost a year, and Thrillseekers ending in the spring, the network found itself relying on reruns of old hits to sustain itself. Their biggest currently running show after the end of Thrillseekers was probably The Exchange, which still managed to pull in between 1 and 2 million viewers per episode. However, it would be expensive for the network to produce new shows on its own. Thus, Cartoon Network did what a lot of kids' networks were doing at the time: they looked to the north. Canada was flush with new animated kids' shows, and was looking for networks in other countries willing to license them on the cheap. There were already a few Canadian-made cartoons on television at the time, most notably the high school comedy 6teen, which had been airing on The N digital cable network for quite some time. It was a seller's market for Canadian cartoons, and the animation studios of Canada found their biggest customer in Cartoon Network, which would acquire the licenses to nearly a dozen Canadian cartoons from the period between 2009 and 2011. The first wave of Canadian toons would arrive in 2009, and the three most notable were as follows:
Dungeon Dorks: This comedy/adventure cartoon was created by Sean Jara, based on his experiences playing Dungeons And Dragons as a teenager. Its main protagonists are two high school kids, Lex (voiced by Terry McGurrin) and Kara (voiced by Nicki Burke), who are obsessed with The Dungeonmaster's Labyrinth (basically an expy of Dungeons And Dragons). Their ongoing campaign, which they play with several other kids from their school, is the most exciting yet. But when events from that campaign begin to spill over into the real world, with knights, wizards, and yes, even scary dragons popping up all over their town, they realize that they're roleplaying for higher stakes than they ever thought possible. This show blends coming of age comedy with high adventure, both a funny satire of and loving tribute to tabletop role-playing games. It does have a lot of humor, but not as much “grossout” humor as other Canadian cartoons of the time (such as the aforementioned 6teen). Its humor is mostly down to earth, and can often be classified as “slice of life”, mixed with occasional moments of adventure and drama. Lex and Kara are frequently shipped together, but don't have too many romantic moments, at least at first, with both of them having their own independent love interests over the course of the series (including a somewhat ambiguous, if all too brief, female relationship for Kara, making this one of the more progressive shows of its day). The show would become somewhat more dramatic over the course of its run, similar to Spy School, but never completely loses its humorous edge. It would get three seasons of 26 episodes each, and though the show would end its run in Canada in late 2011, American fans would unfortunately wait a long, long time to see the third season in its entirety (at least through official legal channels, as the show would be posted online soon after its original Canadian airing). Poor ratings for the second half of the second season would lead to Cartoon Network sporadically airing third season episodes in poor timeslots, with the last 10 or so episodes burned off in early 2014.
Secret Sister: This is another action/comedy cartoon that centers on two siblings, Zeke (voiced by Andrew Sabiston) and his older sister Claire (voiced by Michelle St. John, who is most notable for voicing Nakoma in Pocahontas and ITTL plays a drama teacher on Degrassi for a number of seasons). Claire is a teenage superspy, though she's somewhat laconic and dark (think Kim Possible if she was a goth), while her 10 year old brother Zeke is a hyperenergetic sports loving extrovert. Claire works for a secret organization of teenage spies, and she's one of the best at her job. One day, Zeke secretly follows Claire, and threatens to rat her out to their parents if she doesn't take him on as a partner. The show is essentially a “villain of the day” type show where Claire does her thing as an extremely competent (if somewhat socially stunted) superspy and Zeke mostly causes trouble for her but occasionally bails her out of a jam. Though the two frequently argue and their personalities clash, they grow much closer as siblings during the course of their work. The show launched on Teletoon in 2007 and its second season aired in 2008. Cartoon Network would acquire the show in late 2008 and would air its first season to decent ratings success, while its second season would be burned off in the summer of 2009.
Pearlie: This is the only show of the three that also exists IOTL: it's a light-hearted animated show about a park fairy named Pearlie (voiced by Marieve Herington, same as IOTL) who lives with her friends in a park in the middle of a big city. The cartoon is based on a series of children's books by Wendy Harmer. IOTL, the show would begin airing in American syndication in 2010 after debuting in Canada in 2009. ITTL, Cartoon Network picks it up, believing they have a major hit on their hands, something that can appeal to girls after Thrillseekers ends its run. Unfortunately, Pearlie skews a few years younger than Thrillseekers did (and also lacks crossover appeal among boys), so it doesn't quite appeal to the same audiences. Still, it does well in its first season, and would receive two more seasons (IOTL, Pearlie ended after a 26 half-hour run, here it gets 78 half-hours, or 156 total episodes). Cartoon Network does find success airing Pearlie episodes in the mornings, where it can be enjoyed by younger viewers. It would also air on weekday afternoons in reruns, with its first season aired on Thursday night in prime time.
Cartoon Network isn't the only network that would find success with Canadian cartoons, which help numerous kids' networks get through a lean financial period (even moreso than they did IOTL). Canadian cartoons aren't the only foreign cartoons that would be picked up by the networks either: the French-made animated series Valerian And Laureline would be a big success for Cartoon Network during this time, and of course, numerous anime shows would be brought over and localized as well. The success of Canadian cartoons would lead to increased recognition for Toronto and Vancouver-based voice actors as well, a number of whom would relocate to Los Angeles during the 2010s.
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After the Dan Schneider scandal and the tragedy on the set of The Smart Squad, it was thought to be almost impossible to launch a new live-action kidcom. Nickelodeon and Disney Channel both shelved plans for new live action kids' shows in the fall of 2008, but Fox Family pushed full steam ahead with Welcome To Riverdale, which debuted on October 4, 2008. The show, headed up by showrunners Michael Jacobs and April Kelly (best known for Boy Meets World), would be based on the Archie Comics universe, and would feature all the familiar characters from that beloved comic world, including Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica. The show would see Archie entering high school for his freshman year at the same time as his long-time childhood friend Jughead and his long-time crush Betty. Meanwhile, rich girl Veronica Lodge would be entering public school for the first time after a lifetime of being in exclusive private academies, as her dad hoped that sending her to a public high school would give her more experience dealing with “ordinary people”. The show would mostly be a slice of life comedy, in a lot of ways similar to Boy Meets World, but with the fantastical and adventurous happenings of Riverdale occasionally slipping in. It would take a slightly more serious tone than the classic comics would, but with a rating of TV-Y10, wouldn't get too raunchy or violent (so don't expect anything like OTL's Riverdale). Instead, the Y10 rating would allow the show to occasionally deal with serious, real-life issues, but in a subtle way, not in an over the top after school special kind of way. Archie, played by Josh Hutcherson, is the show's everyman, trying to navigate the complex world of high school while staying loyal to his friends, even as he rises slowly up the social ladder. Betty, played by Meghan Jette Martin, is somewhat of a plain girl, but with lots of hidden depths: she's athletic and adventurous, and while she isn't always crushing on Archie, she has been his friend for a long time and harbors secret feelings toward him. Veronica, played by Elizabeth Gillies (who is essentially playing a more kid-friendly version of her Fallon Carrington character from the OTL Dynasty revival), is the typical “rich girl” type character, though she's more snarky than stuck-up, and has a hidden dark side, but also a hidden heart of gold (VERY hidden at the start of the show). She starts off hating Archie, only to soon realize she's crushing on him. She starts off hating Betty, but the two very gradually become best friends. The love triangle between the three of them is played very subtly, and all three characters are given plenty of chances to shine outside of it. Jughead (played by an actor unknown IOTL) is the show's comedy relief, but his friendship with Archie has some echoes of Corey and Shawn's from Boy Meets World, with Jughead not being quite so much of a bad boy and more of just an idiot. Despite an excellent performance from Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Gillies ultimately becomes the breakout star of the show, giving Veronica incredible depth and making her a fan favorite. Of course, the show would eventually bring in characters like Sabrina Spellman (in the season 2 debut) and Josie and the Pussycats (briefly toward the end of season 2 and then as more major characters in season 3), among many, many others from Archie Comics lore. It would easily become the most popular show in the history of Fox Family, scoring high ratings in season 1 that would only grow throughout the show's multiple seasons. It would catapult Archie Comics back into the public consciousness and would even inspire a notable Supreme Court case during the 2010s relating to fanworks and copyright. During an era when children's live action shows were believed to be dead, Welcome To Riverdale (and to an equally notable extent, Patroka Epstein's brave insistence that “the show must go on” as it pertained to The Smart Squad) would help them to rise back up like a phoenix from the ashes. Nickelodeon and Disney would greenlight their own live action kids' shows in the fall of 2009, and kidcoms would remain a force on cable television into the 2010s and beyond.
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The current state of the major kids' cable networks as of spring 2009:
Cartoon Network: After ditching afternoon Toonami and after numerous long-running hits such as Thrillseekers and Avatar: The Last Airbender ended, Cartoon Network is left looking for a major new hit. The Exchange remains popular, though Lauren Faust's show about toys, Playthings, has dipped somewhat in the ratings since 2007. Though afternoon Toonami has been shelved, Saturday night Toonami is still going strong. In fact, it's arguably been boosted by the current acquisition boom, with numerous shows achieving success. The most notable of these new shows is the shoujo anime Hanakotoba, which began airing on Toonami in late 2008 and has been a significant ratings hit. While not quite on the level of Sailor Moon or Thrillseekers, it's probably the third most popular female-driven show on Cartoon Network in the last decade, and is starting to rise up to Naruto's level in terms of overall popularity. Other anime shows airing on Toonami at this time include Dinosaur King, based on a Sega produced toy line, and Celestial, which centers around a group of astronauts who lose their spaceship in a disaster but gain superpowers enabling them to fly across the galaxy and fight aliens. These new anime shows join old standbys like Naruto, which is about to launch its successor series in the summer, and Dragonball Z, whose reruns continue to be popular, on a four hour Saturday night block that continues to pull in strong ratings. Meanwhile, Cartoon Network has settled into an afternoon groove, airing a mix of action and comedy in a block aimed at preteen boys with shows like Dungeon Dorks and Pokemon. Cartoon Network is seen as being a bit too over-reliant on acquisitions, but that may change in the new decade as the network eyes a rising generation of young animators to create the shows of the future.
Nickelodeon: Nickelodeon is still trying to crawl out of the hole that Dan Schneider put it in. With few live action hits left on the network, Nickelodeon has gone overseas for its live action fare, acquiring a couple of Australian shows and hoping they'll be hits. Meanwhile, the network's animated situation is a bit better, thanks to the continued success of shows such as Class Clowns and the immortal Rocket Power, which as of May 2009 will have outlasted Thrillseekers. The network has also launched a new animated hit: in the fall of 2008, it launched the action cartoon Sarah, Witch Of Westfalls. The show's protagonist is a girl who, on her 13th birthday (on Friday the 13th) is given (somewhat against her will) magic powers by her dead grandmother. Sarah also learns that her school is a secret training ground for witch hunters, whose job it is to keep witches out of the town of Westfalls to prevent the tragedy they caused 100 years ago. One of the more serious cartoons to appear on Nickelodeon, it immediately becomes a hit (though not an Avatar level hit), and along with Welcome To Riverdale and Hanakotoba, is one of three majorly popular and influential children's shows to launch in the fall of 2008. Nickelodeon's animated fare keeps it afloat while it searches for a way to produce live action shows again after the Schneider scandal.
The Disney Channel: Despite Patroka Epstein's fall, The Smart Squad stays on the air (and has a strong third season in 2009), while Rock Out remains a mega hit driven by the charisma of Elle Schneider (who by this point has dropped the name Tanner, similarly to IOTL). Public School Princess has dipped in the ratings but is still a marginal success, leaving Disney Channel clearly the king of live action kidcoms. Though Welcome To Riverdale on Fox Family is a hit, it's still not pulling in the ratings that Rock Out and The Smart Squad are. Still, it's beating Public School Princess, and Rock Out and The Smart Squad will be gone by the middle of 2010, leaving Disney in search of a show that can pick up the torch. It doesn't look like Public School Princess can do it, so the network launches a search for its next big star. Meanwhile, the Animagic block has been going strong for more than a decade now, and doesn't show too many signs of slowing down, even after Greg Weisman leaves W.I.T.C.H. as showrunner following season four (the show will be helmed by Amy Wolfram for its final two seasons, her next gig after Thrillseekers' run ends). The block has picked up a couple of strong new anime shows, and despite losing out barely on Hanakotoba, continues to pull in strong ratings during the late 2000s.
Fox Family: Fox Family, of course, had a massive hit in the aforementioned Welcome To Riverdale, but that's not the only show that the network has performed strongly with. Spider-Man Evolved has been an anchor of the network's Saturday morning block, with more Marvel superhero shows on the way (including a possible show based on the Guardians Of The Galaxy coming in 2010). Skyward Animation launched their first of three new animated action shows in early 2009: Photo Finish, about a female high school track star and a dorky male yearbook photographer who become an unlikely heroic team, launches to decent, if not overwhelming, success. The network plans another animated show in early 2010: Mutations United, about a superhero team of physically mutated creatures, will be launching with a toy line and potentially a video game, and the company plans another animated show for either 2011 or 2012. Fox Family also has a number of live action drama shows that will air on primetime on weeknights, aimed at teenage audiences. While other networks are retreating in the face of scandal and economic hardship, Fox Family is pushing forward, fearlessly launching new shows and taking major financial risks. The network's ratings have steadily increased over the last two years and now it's knocking at the door of the Big Three. Like the FOX flagship network, which took advantage of weaknesses in the three major networks and an unfilled viewership niche in the late 1980s to launch itself as a major network in its own right, Fox Family 20 years later is doing the same thing to make itself a key player in the cable children's network landscape. It's come a long way from the era of cheaply made TV movies and The 700 Club, and it shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Here are the ten most popular currently running kids' shows as of April 2009. This isn't in terms of absolute ratings, but a combination of ratings, reviews, and cultural relevance:
1. Rock Out
2. The Smart Squad
3. Class Clowns
4. Welcome To Riverdale
5. Naruto
6. Rocket Power
7. The Exchange
8. Hanakotoba
9. Public School Princess
10. Sarah, Witch Of Westfalls
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March 27, 2009
Inez Delgado had just finished up another voice coaching session, one of her most productive to date. Over the past few months of voice coaching, she'd learned an incredible amount about her craft, and had also learned something very important: this was something she wanted to keep doing for a very long time. Even though she was just nine years old, she knew that she had a passion for acting and that she had the potential to be extremely good at it if she kept working as hard as she could. She'd even gotten a few small gigs apart from Quixsters, very small roles in some animated shows, only a few lines each but still really fun and an opportunity to work with real voice actors and directors in a professional setting. Her parents supported her every step of the way, and she had the patience to wait a very long time for her “big break”, which her parents told her might never come but if she kept working hard and keeping her expectations realistic, might come sooner than she thought.
After the session, her voice coach complimented her, as he always did, and after saying his goodbyes to Inez and her mother, left the room to check on someone who had just arrived in the building.
“Mom, that was a lot of fun today,” said Inez, picking up the folder with her most recent lessons and handing it to her mother to be put away. “Sam said that I have a real instinct for vocal direction.”
“Well, you're coming along really nicely,” replied Sonora, “just remember not to strain your voice too much when you're acting hard for a scene.”
Inez had a tendency to be overenergetic for certain scenes in a way that made her voice creak, which her coach warned her could damage her vocal cords if she did it too often. She tried to pull back, but that tended to make her voice sound too quiet, and when she got discouraged, her coach reminded her that it's tough for even seasoned professionals to find their proper vocal level for certain scenes.
“Just don't focus too much on the tricky parts,” said Sonora, placing a hand on her daughter's shoulder after she saw that Inez was starting to look a bit troubled remembering that part of the lesson. “Practice, but don't beat yourself up. You're already 100 times better of an actor than I was when I was nine.”
“You didn't even want to be an actor until you were like seventeen!” said Inez with a giggle.
“Yes, that's true, you're getting an early start,” Sonora replied.
The two began to leave when Inez's vocal coach came back into the room.
“I know you two were just leaving,” he said, “but I wonder if you'd like to meet someone special in the next room over? I have someone just starting out today and I thought you might like to meet her.”
“Oh?” said Inez, her interest looking piqued. Inez and her mother went into the next room, and there they saw a beautiful blonde-haired girl in a wheelchair, who Inez recognized immediately. “Oh....!”
Patroka Epstein had arrived for her first vocal lessons with her new coach. She was being pushed around in her wheelchair by her older sister, who saw Inez and gave a friendly wave.
“You must be Inez,” said Patroka with a smile. “I've heard a lot about you...”
“Oh... my god...” whispered Inez, placing a hand up to her mouth. She didn't know whether to be thrilled, or sad, or both. She was a huge fan of The Smart Squad, and had wept upon hearing of Patroka's injury, and though Inez probably could have met Patroka earlier on, she had been somewhat nervous of doing so, not wanting to say or do anything that might cause any more pain to the girl she idolized than she'd already suffered. She stood there, her legs shaking nervously.
“It's okay,” Patroka replied warmly, and nodded to her sister, who slowly pushed her over. “Inez... it's okay.”
“I.... I know, but...” Inez reached up to Patroka with a trembling hand. Patroka nodded, and Inez placed her hand on top of Patroka's. “Can you feel it?”
“I have feeling in my fingertips sometimes,” Patroka replied, nodding. “I can kind of feel it, I just can't move them.”
“You're amazing,” said Inez, a tear streaking down her face. “I mean, I love you so much on your show...! And in Kingdom Hearts, as Kairi... you're... you're so awesome!”
“I'm actually here getting voice coaching so I can start voicing Kairi again,” said Patroka. “I've only got about half my original lung capacity... Lana, is it half?”
“The doctors said about 40 percent,” said Patroka's older sister.
“Oh, you're just a glass half full kind of person aren't you?” snarked Patroka. Inez giggled, and pulled her hand back, taking a much more natural posture around Patroka now that she realized her idol's sense of humor was completely intact.
“I loved the scene in last week's episode where you chased after Suleka when she took the last copy of The Heart Equation at the school book fair,” said Inez. “And when you caught up to her and she threw the book so hard that it broke the ceiling!”
“Yeah, that little shriek Seychelle let out wasn't acting, they didn't tell her I was gonna be right in front of her!”
“And she squeaked like a mouse!”
“Do you have any older sisters?” Patroka asked Inez, looking her over. Inez shook her head.
“Nope, I'm an only child.”
“Are you sure? Because you and Seychelle could totally be sisters.”
“I like her too, she's funny.”
“You should see the kind of stuff she pulls off the set. She's hilarious, we play video games together too. Well, we used to anyway. Hopefully once I can move my hands again I can start playing them.”
“You play video games too?”
“Well, I wasn't much of a gamer before I met Seychelle, she plays all the time and she forced me and Bridgit to sit down and play them, so now we all play them.”
“I LOVE video games!”
“I hear your dad makes video games, I used to play a lot of Quixsters before my accident.”
“Oh man...” said Inez, looking a bit disappointed as she looked up at the clock. “Your lesson's starting soon, isn't it? I wanna keep talking to you but-”
“It's okay,” said Inez's voice coach, smiling at both of them. “I've got plenty of time.”
“Me too, it's not like I've got anywhere to be,” said Patroka, looking up at Lana.
“What if I've got somewhere to be?” Lana asked, smiling down at her sister.
“Too bad,” Patroka replied jokingly, craning her head up toward Lana as best she could. Lana smirked.
“You're lucky you're in that chair,” Lana joked back.
“I'm lucky to have such an awesome big sister,” said Patroka. Lana leaned down and kissed Patroka on the forehead and then went to have a nice conversation with Sonora on the other side of the room while Patroka looked back over to Inez. “So, you were talking about games, right?”
“What was it like to voice Kairi?” asked Inez.
The conversation between the two lasted almost an hour. They talked about games, about Patroka's show, about their lives... and though it was still rough for Patroka after more than a year since her injury, she was slowly making her way toward the best recovery she possibly could. She was still acting, and she was getting the best possible therapy in the world, both physical and emotional. Her doctors said that she might be able to regain some movement in her fingers, and from there, who knew what might happen? As Patroka and Inez finally parted ways, and Inez and her mom began getting ready to go back home, the two girls shared one final bit of conversation.
“Inez... my doctors say there's less than a five percent chance I ever walk again,” said Patroka. “And I'll be honest, that sucks. But... there is a 100 percent chance that if I wake up tomorrow, I'll have people who care about me and who support me, and that means everything. And you know what? You have people who care about you and support you too. And I'm one of them.”
“Patroka...” said Inez quietly, sniffling a bit.
Patroka leaned her head forward as much as she could.
“Arms... extending outward... reaching for a hug...” said Patroka with a smile, as if she was giving an acting direction. Inez took the hint, stepping forward and leaning in and gently hugging Patroka. “See you again soon, okay?”
“Mmmhmm,” said Inez with a smile and a nod. “Thank you for everything.”
Dungeon Dorks: This comedy/adventure cartoon was created by Sean Jara, based on his experiences playing Dungeons And Dragons as a teenager. Its main protagonists are two high school kids, Lex (voiced by Terry McGurrin) and Kara (voiced by Nicki Burke), who are obsessed with The Dungeonmaster's Labyrinth (basically an expy of Dungeons And Dragons). Their ongoing campaign, which they play with several other kids from their school, is the most exciting yet. But when events from that campaign begin to spill over into the real world, with knights, wizards, and yes, even scary dragons popping up all over their town, they realize that they're roleplaying for higher stakes than they ever thought possible. This show blends coming of age comedy with high adventure, both a funny satire of and loving tribute to tabletop role-playing games. It does have a lot of humor, but not as much “grossout” humor as other Canadian cartoons of the time (such as the aforementioned 6teen). Its humor is mostly down to earth, and can often be classified as “slice of life”, mixed with occasional moments of adventure and drama. Lex and Kara are frequently shipped together, but don't have too many romantic moments, at least at first, with both of them having their own independent love interests over the course of the series (including a somewhat ambiguous, if all too brief, female relationship for Kara, making this one of the more progressive shows of its day). The show would become somewhat more dramatic over the course of its run, similar to Spy School, but never completely loses its humorous edge. It would get three seasons of 26 episodes each, and though the show would end its run in Canada in late 2011, American fans would unfortunately wait a long, long time to see the third season in its entirety (at least through official legal channels, as the show would be posted online soon after its original Canadian airing). Poor ratings for the second half of the second season would lead to Cartoon Network sporadically airing third season episodes in poor timeslots, with the last 10 or so episodes burned off in early 2014.
Secret Sister: This is another action/comedy cartoon that centers on two siblings, Zeke (voiced by Andrew Sabiston) and his older sister Claire (voiced by Michelle St. John, who is most notable for voicing Nakoma in Pocahontas and ITTL plays a drama teacher on Degrassi for a number of seasons). Claire is a teenage superspy, though she's somewhat laconic and dark (think Kim Possible if she was a goth), while her 10 year old brother Zeke is a hyperenergetic sports loving extrovert. Claire works for a secret organization of teenage spies, and she's one of the best at her job. One day, Zeke secretly follows Claire, and threatens to rat her out to their parents if she doesn't take him on as a partner. The show is essentially a “villain of the day” type show where Claire does her thing as an extremely competent (if somewhat socially stunted) superspy and Zeke mostly causes trouble for her but occasionally bails her out of a jam. Though the two frequently argue and their personalities clash, they grow much closer as siblings during the course of their work. The show launched on Teletoon in 2007 and its second season aired in 2008. Cartoon Network would acquire the show in late 2008 and would air its first season to decent ratings success, while its second season would be burned off in the summer of 2009.
Pearlie: This is the only show of the three that also exists IOTL: it's a light-hearted animated show about a park fairy named Pearlie (voiced by Marieve Herington, same as IOTL) who lives with her friends in a park in the middle of a big city. The cartoon is based on a series of children's books by Wendy Harmer. IOTL, the show would begin airing in American syndication in 2010 after debuting in Canada in 2009. ITTL, Cartoon Network picks it up, believing they have a major hit on their hands, something that can appeal to girls after Thrillseekers ends its run. Unfortunately, Pearlie skews a few years younger than Thrillseekers did (and also lacks crossover appeal among boys), so it doesn't quite appeal to the same audiences. Still, it does well in its first season, and would receive two more seasons (IOTL, Pearlie ended after a 26 half-hour run, here it gets 78 half-hours, or 156 total episodes). Cartoon Network does find success airing Pearlie episodes in the mornings, where it can be enjoyed by younger viewers. It would also air on weekday afternoons in reruns, with its first season aired on Thursday night in prime time.
Cartoon Network isn't the only network that would find success with Canadian cartoons, which help numerous kids' networks get through a lean financial period (even moreso than they did IOTL). Canadian cartoons aren't the only foreign cartoons that would be picked up by the networks either: the French-made animated series Valerian And Laureline would be a big success for Cartoon Network during this time, and of course, numerous anime shows would be brought over and localized as well. The success of Canadian cartoons would lead to increased recognition for Toronto and Vancouver-based voice actors as well, a number of whom would relocate to Los Angeles during the 2010s.
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After the Dan Schneider scandal and the tragedy on the set of The Smart Squad, it was thought to be almost impossible to launch a new live-action kidcom. Nickelodeon and Disney Channel both shelved plans for new live action kids' shows in the fall of 2008, but Fox Family pushed full steam ahead with Welcome To Riverdale, which debuted on October 4, 2008. The show, headed up by showrunners Michael Jacobs and April Kelly (best known for Boy Meets World), would be based on the Archie Comics universe, and would feature all the familiar characters from that beloved comic world, including Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica. The show would see Archie entering high school for his freshman year at the same time as his long-time childhood friend Jughead and his long-time crush Betty. Meanwhile, rich girl Veronica Lodge would be entering public school for the first time after a lifetime of being in exclusive private academies, as her dad hoped that sending her to a public high school would give her more experience dealing with “ordinary people”. The show would mostly be a slice of life comedy, in a lot of ways similar to Boy Meets World, but with the fantastical and adventurous happenings of Riverdale occasionally slipping in. It would take a slightly more serious tone than the classic comics would, but with a rating of TV-Y10, wouldn't get too raunchy or violent (so don't expect anything like OTL's Riverdale). Instead, the Y10 rating would allow the show to occasionally deal with serious, real-life issues, but in a subtle way, not in an over the top after school special kind of way. Archie, played by Josh Hutcherson, is the show's everyman, trying to navigate the complex world of high school while staying loyal to his friends, even as he rises slowly up the social ladder. Betty, played by Meghan Jette Martin, is somewhat of a plain girl, but with lots of hidden depths: she's athletic and adventurous, and while she isn't always crushing on Archie, she has been his friend for a long time and harbors secret feelings toward him. Veronica, played by Elizabeth Gillies (who is essentially playing a more kid-friendly version of her Fallon Carrington character from the OTL Dynasty revival), is the typical “rich girl” type character, though she's more snarky than stuck-up, and has a hidden dark side, but also a hidden heart of gold (VERY hidden at the start of the show). She starts off hating Archie, only to soon realize she's crushing on him. She starts off hating Betty, but the two very gradually become best friends. The love triangle between the three of them is played very subtly, and all three characters are given plenty of chances to shine outside of it. Jughead (played by an actor unknown IOTL) is the show's comedy relief, but his friendship with Archie has some echoes of Corey and Shawn's from Boy Meets World, with Jughead not being quite so much of a bad boy and more of just an idiot. Despite an excellent performance from Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Gillies ultimately becomes the breakout star of the show, giving Veronica incredible depth and making her a fan favorite. Of course, the show would eventually bring in characters like Sabrina Spellman (in the season 2 debut) and Josie and the Pussycats (briefly toward the end of season 2 and then as more major characters in season 3), among many, many others from Archie Comics lore. It would easily become the most popular show in the history of Fox Family, scoring high ratings in season 1 that would only grow throughout the show's multiple seasons. It would catapult Archie Comics back into the public consciousness and would even inspire a notable Supreme Court case during the 2010s relating to fanworks and copyright. During an era when children's live action shows were believed to be dead, Welcome To Riverdale (and to an equally notable extent, Patroka Epstein's brave insistence that “the show must go on” as it pertained to The Smart Squad) would help them to rise back up like a phoenix from the ashes. Nickelodeon and Disney would greenlight their own live action kids' shows in the fall of 2009, and kidcoms would remain a force on cable television into the 2010s and beyond.
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The current state of the major kids' cable networks as of spring 2009:
Cartoon Network: After ditching afternoon Toonami and after numerous long-running hits such as Thrillseekers and Avatar: The Last Airbender ended, Cartoon Network is left looking for a major new hit. The Exchange remains popular, though Lauren Faust's show about toys, Playthings, has dipped somewhat in the ratings since 2007. Though afternoon Toonami has been shelved, Saturday night Toonami is still going strong. In fact, it's arguably been boosted by the current acquisition boom, with numerous shows achieving success. The most notable of these new shows is the shoujo anime Hanakotoba, which began airing on Toonami in late 2008 and has been a significant ratings hit. While not quite on the level of Sailor Moon or Thrillseekers, it's probably the third most popular female-driven show on Cartoon Network in the last decade, and is starting to rise up to Naruto's level in terms of overall popularity. Other anime shows airing on Toonami at this time include Dinosaur King, based on a Sega produced toy line, and Celestial, which centers around a group of astronauts who lose their spaceship in a disaster but gain superpowers enabling them to fly across the galaxy and fight aliens. These new anime shows join old standbys like Naruto, which is about to launch its successor series in the summer, and Dragonball Z, whose reruns continue to be popular, on a four hour Saturday night block that continues to pull in strong ratings. Meanwhile, Cartoon Network has settled into an afternoon groove, airing a mix of action and comedy in a block aimed at preteen boys with shows like Dungeon Dorks and Pokemon. Cartoon Network is seen as being a bit too over-reliant on acquisitions, but that may change in the new decade as the network eyes a rising generation of young animators to create the shows of the future.
Nickelodeon: Nickelodeon is still trying to crawl out of the hole that Dan Schneider put it in. With few live action hits left on the network, Nickelodeon has gone overseas for its live action fare, acquiring a couple of Australian shows and hoping they'll be hits. Meanwhile, the network's animated situation is a bit better, thanks to the continued success of shows such as Class Clowns and the immortal Rocket Power, which as of May 2009 will have outlasted Thrillseekers. The network has also launched a new animated hit: in the fall of 2008, it launched the action cartoon Sarah, Witch Of Westfalls. The show's protagonist is a girl who, on her 13th birthday (on Friday the 13th) is given (somewhat against her will) magic powers by her dead grandmother. Sarah also learns that her school is a secret training ground for witch hunters, whose job it is to keep witches out of the town of Westfalls to prevent the tragedy they caused 100 years ago. One of the more serious cartoons to appear on Nickelodeon, it immediately becomes a hit (though not an Avatar level hit), and along with Welcome To Riverdale and Hanakotoba, is one of three majorly popular and influential children's shows to launch in the fall of 2008. Nickelodeon's animated fare keeps it afloat while it searches for a way to produce live action shows again after the Schneider scandal.
The Disney Channel: Despite Patroka Epstein's fall, The Smart Squad stays on the air (and has a strong third season in 2009), while Rock Out remains a mega hit driven by the charisma of Elle Schneider (who by this point has dropped the name Tanner, similarly to IOTL). Public School Princess has dipped in the ratings but is still a marginal success, leaving Disney Channel clearly the king of live action kidcoms. Though Welcome To Riverdale on Fox Family is a hit, it's still not pulling in the ratings that Rock Out and The Smart Squad are. Still, it's beating Public School Princess, and Rock Out and The Smart Squad will be gone by the middle of 2010, leaving Disney in search of a show that can pick up the torch. It doesn't look like Public School Princess can do it, so the network launches a search for its next big star. Meanwhile, the Animagic block has been going strong for more than a decade now, and doesn't show too many signs of slowing down, even after Greg Weisman leaves W.I.T.C.H. as showrunner following season four (the show will be helmed by Amy Wolfram for its final two seasons, her next gig after Thrillseekers' run ends). The block has picked up a couple of strong new anime shows, and despite losing out barely on Hanakotoba, continues to pull in strong ratings during the late 2000s.
Fox Family: Fox Family, of course, had a massive hit in the aforementioned Welcome To Riverdale, but that's not the only show that the network has performed strongly with. Spider-Man Evolved has been an anchor of the network's Saturday morning block, with more Marvel superhero shows on the way (including a possible show based on the Guardians Of The Galaxy coming in 2010). Skyward Animation launched their first of three new animated action shows in early 2009: Photo Finish, about a female high school track star and a dorky male yearbook photographer who become an unlikely heroic team, launches to decent, if not overwhelming, success. The network plans another animated show in early 2010: Mutations United, about a superhero team of physically mutated creatures, will be launching with a toy line and potentially a video game, and the company plans another animated show for either 2011 or 2012. Fox Family also has a number of live action drama shows that will air on primetime on weeknights, aimed at teenage audiences. While other networks are retreating in the face of scandal and economic hardship, Fox Family is pushing forward, fearlessly launching new shows and taking major financial risks. The network's ratings have steadily increased over the last two years and now it's knocking at the door of the Big Three. Like the FOX flagship network, which took advantage of weaknesses in the three major networks and an unfilled viewership niche in the late 1980s to launch itself as a major network in its own right, Fox Family 20 years later is doing the same thing to make itself a key player in the cable children's network landscape. It's come a long way from the era of cheaply made TV movies and The 700 Club, and it shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Here are the ten most popular currently running kids' shows as of April 2009. This isn't in terms of absolute ratings, but a combination of ratings, reviews, and cultural relevance:
1. Rock Out
2. The Smart Squad
3. Class Clowns
4. Welcome To Riverdale
5. Naruto
6. Rocket Power
7. The Exchange
8. Hanakotoba
9. Public School Princess
10. Sarah, Witch Of Westfalls
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March 27, 2009
Inez Delgado had just finished up another voice coaching session, one of her most productive to date. Over the past few months of voice coaching, she'd learned an incredible amount about her craft, and had also learned something very important: this was something she wanted to keep doing for a very long time. Even though she was just nine years old, she knew that she had a passion for acting and that she had the potential to be extremely good at it if she kept working as hard as she could. She'd even gotten a few small gigs apart from Quixsters, very small roles in some animated shows, only a few lines each but still really fun and an opportunity to work with real voice actors and directors in a professional setting. Her parents supported her every step of the way, and she had the patience to wait a very long time for her “big break”, which her parents told her might never come but if she kept working hard and keeping her expectations realistic, might come sooner than she thought.
After the session, her voice coach complimented her, as he always did, and after saying his goodbyes to Inez and her mother, left the room to check on someone who had just arrived in the building.
“Mom, that was a lot of fun today,” said Inez, picking up the folder with her most recent lessons and handing it to her mother to be put away. “Sam said that I have a real instinct for vocal direction.”
“Well, you're coming along really nicely,” replied Sonora, “just remember not to strain your voice too much when you're acting hard for a scene.”
Inez had a tendency to be overenergetic for certain scenes in a way that made her voice creak, which her coach warned her could damage her vocal cords if she did it too often. She tried to pull back, but that tended to make her voice sound too quiet, and when she got discouraged, her coach reminded her that it's tough for even seasoned professionals to find their proper vocal level for certain scenes.
“Just don't focus too much on the tricky parts,” said Sonora, placing a hand on her daughter's shoulder after she saw that Inez was starting to look a bit troubled remembering that part of the lesson. “Practice, but don't beat yourself up. You're already 100 times better of an actor than I was when I was nine.”
“You didn't even want to be an actor until you were like seventeen!” said Inez with a giggle.
“Yes, that's true, you're getting an early start,” Sonora replied.
The two began to leave when Inez's vocal coach came back into the room.
“I know you two were just leaving,” he said, “but I wonder if you'd like to meet someone special in the next room over? I have someone just starting out today and I thought you might like to meet her.”
“Oh?” said Inez, her interest looking piqued. Inez and her mother went into the next room, and there they saw a beautiful blonde-haired girl in a wheelchair, who Inez recognized immediately. “Oh....!”
Patroka Epstein had arrived for her first vocal lessons with her new coach. She was being pushed around in her wheelchair by her older sister, who saw Inez and gave a friendly wave.
“You must be Inez,” said Patroka with a smile. “I've heard a lot about you...”
“Oh... my god...” whispered Inez, placing a hand up to her mouth. She didn't know whether to be thrilled, or sad, or both. She was a huge fan of The Smart Squad, and had wept upon hearing of Patroka's injury, and though Inez probably could have met Patroka earlier on, she had been somewhat nervous of doing so, not wanting to say or do anything that might cause any more pain to the girl she idolized than she'd already suffered. She stood there, her legs shaking nervously.
“It's okay,” Patroka replied warmly, and nodded to her sister, who slowly pushed her over. “Inez... it's okay.”
“I.... I know, but...” Inez reached up to Patroka with a trembling hand. Patroka nodded, and Inez placed her hand on top of Patroka's. “Can you feel it?”
“I have feeling in my fingertips sometimes,” Patroka replied, nodding. “I can kind of feel it, I just can't move them.”
“You're amazing,” said Inez, a tear streaking down her face. “I mean, I love you so much on your show...! And in Kingdom Hearts, as Kairi... you're... you're so awesome!”
“I'm actually here getting voice coaching so I can start voicing Kairi again,” said Patroka. “I've only got about half my original lung capacity... Lana, is it half?”
“The doctors said about 40 percent,” said Patroka's older sister.
“Oh, you're just a glass half full kind of person aren't you?” snarked Patroka. Inez giggled, and pulled her hand back, taking a much more natural posture around Patroka now that she realized her idol's sense of humor was completely intact.
“I loved the scene in last week's episode where you chased after Suleka when she took the last copy of The Heart Equation at the school book fair,” said Inez. “And when you caught up to her and she threw the book so hard that it broke the ceiling!”
“Yeah, that little shriek Seychelle let out wasn't acting, they didn't tell her I was gonna be right in front of her!”
“And she squeaked like a mouse!”
“Do you have any older sisters?” Patroka asked Inez, looking her over. Inez shook her head.
“Nope, I'm an only child.”
“Are you sure? Because you and Seychelle could totally be sisters.”
“I like her too, she's funny.”
“You should see the kind of stuff she pulls off the set. She's hilarious, we play video games together too. Well, we used to anyway. Hopefully once I can move my hands again I can start playing them.”
“You play video games too?”
“Well, I wasn't much of a gamer before I met Seychelle, she plays all the time and she forced me and Bridgit to sit down and play them, so now we all play them.”
“I LOVE video games!”
“I hear your dad makes video games, I used to play a lot of Quixsters before my accident.”
“Oh man...” said Inez, looking a bit disappointed as she looked up at the clock. “Your lesson's starting soon, isn't it? I wanna keep talking to you but-”
“It's okay,” said Inez's voice coach, smiling at both of them. “I've got plenty of time.”
“Me too, it's not like I've got anywhere to be,” said Patroka, looking up at Lana.
“What if I've got somewhere to be?” Lana asked, smiling down at her sister.
“Too bad,” Patroka replied jokingly, craning her head up toward Lana as best she could. Lana smirked.
“You're lucky you're in that chair,” Lana joked back.
“I'm lucky to have such an awesome big sister,” said Patroka. Lana leaned down and kissed Patroka on the forehead and then went to have a nice conversation with Sonora on the other side of the room while Patroka looked back over to Inez. “So, you were talking about games, right?”
“What was it like to voice Kairi?” asked Inez.
The conversation between the two lasted almost an hour. They talked about games, about Patroka's show, about their lives... and though it was still rough for Patroka after more than a year since her injury, she was slowly making her way toward the best recovery she possibly could. She was still acting, and she was getting the best possible therapy in the world, both physical and emotional. Her doctors said that she might be able to regain some movement in her fingers, and from there, who knew what might happen? As Patroka and Inez finally parted ways, and Inez and her mom began getting ready to go back home, the two girls shared one final bit of conversation.
“Inez... my doctors say there's less than a five percent chance I ever walk again,” said Patroka. “And I'll be honest, that sucks. But... there is a 100 percent chance that if I wake up tomorrow, I'll have people who care about me and who support me, and that means everything. And you know what? You have people who care about you and support you too. And I'm one of them.”
“Patroka...” said Inez quietly, sniffling a bit.
Patroka leaned her head forward as much as she could.
“Arms... extending outward... reaching for a hug...” said Patroka with a smile, as if she was giving an acting direction. Inez took the hint, stepping forward and leaning in and gently hugging Patroka. “See you again soon, okay?”
“Mmmhmm,” said Inez with a smile and a nod. “Thank you for everything.”
I'm gonna assume flowers?..."Hanakotoba (花言葉) is the Japanese form of the language of flowers." ...
The elimination of Total Drama as the tip of the spear, so to speak, in the late-2000s Canadian cartoon boom does wonders to improve the image of Canadian animation amongst a lot of American fans. Honestly, the Canadian animation coming to the States isn't all that much better than IOTL, but there's more of it (more niches for animation due to the Schneider scandal and Epstein tragedy), and the ones that get picked to come over are slightly better. I can see Dungeon Dorks occupying the same niche as IOTL Total Drama in a lot of ways. IOTL, Sean Jara didn't get to do his own show until Mysticons very recently. Here, he gets his own show almost a decade earlier, and it catches on a lot better than IOTL Mysticons did.
Naruto is fairly close to what it is IOTL. Butterflies change a few things but nothing hugely significant. Maybe a few characters who died IOTL survive, a few characters who survived ITTL die, a few original characters to TTL become prominent, that sort of thing. One Piece is somewhat influenced by the Tales Of The Seven Seas series thematically but has a similar tone.
The BBC is virtually identical.
And Hanakotoba was actually posted about a bit earlier in the topic:
So basically it's the typical shoujo series but every girl is flower-themed. Expect transformation sequences, awesome magical powers, shipping, and the like. I might describe the show in a bit more detail sometime later.
Interested to see if there will be a TTL equivalent to Adventure Time next year. Have a suspicion that and My Little Pony being the big animated hits of 2010 is too weird a thing to happen in multiple timelines.
By sheer butterfly those two are out but again OTL is weird and leak to other TL and viceversa
Considering the Hanakotoba was called out as having a significant male fanbase, I'm guessing that takes MLP's place ITTL.
The Amazing Race, Season 14
The Amazing Race: Season 14: More drama.
This season of the race brought about some changes to the show. First, the show severely cut down on the amount of footage from the airport. Before this season, about a third of the show was from transportation hubs like airports. Reducing it brought more footage of the teams actually racing. Whether that's good thing or not I'll leave up to you. Another was cutting out the traditional "Eat, sleep mingle" that happens at each Pit Stop.
This was done part way through the season and done to create more drama between the teams. It would be kept for a few more season, at least until season 22, but here it was used to somewhat good effect. Again that depends on you. This season was cast in May 2008 and filmed that November (teams voted early in that year's election).
The Cast
Kisha and Jen: African-American sisters. They might fight at times but they are able to get a lot done.
Preston and Jennifer: Dating. They have a few odd things about them but they're not bad.
Margie and Luke: Mother and son. Luke is the first deaf contestant on the American version of the show. They manage to do good, thought they aren't as popular as they once were.
Tammy and Victor: Siblings. They bicker, and Victor can be hard headed at times, but they are still a good team.
Christie and Jodi: Flight attendants and friends. They are doing this show for their kids.
Jaime and Cara: Former NFL Cheerleaders and friends. Though they are slightly mean-spirited, they are good competitors.
Mark and Michael: Stuntmen/brothers. They are dwarfs (I don't know whether they worked on the Lord of the Rings movies or not). They also did some really stupid things on the show.
Amanda and Kris: Dating. They are like Kris and Jon from season six though I don't like them (Amanda and Kris) as much.
Mel and Mike: Father and son. Mike works in the movies and Mel is a speechwriter. They're fun in their own way.
Brad and Victoria: Married. They are an okay team.
Steve and Linda: Married. I think they are meant to be like Dave and Mary from season 11 but I can't prove that for certain.
The Race
Leg #1: "Don't let a cheese hit me!"
Original Air Date: February 15, 2009.
Starting at Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base, in California, teams get $281 and instructions to go to Zurich, Switzerland. Once there, teams have to go, by train, to the Church of Sant'Angelo in Locarno and sign up for one of three departure times the next morning. The next morning teams get a picture of a dam from the priest and have to figure out that it's Verzasca Dam. Here teams find the Roadblock.
In this Roadblock, one team member has to bungee jump down the face of the dam 70 stories (by the way if you recognize the dam, it's because it was used in the opening sequence of the James Bond movie Goldeneye). Once they get pulled up, teams have to go to Interlaken by train, then head to Kleine Rugen Wiese. There may have been a Detour here but there's no indication of why they cut it out. Anyway, teams now have to carry two 50 pound wheels of cheese each down a hill, using only flimsy wooden backpacks to carry them. And when I say flimsy, I mean they fall apart at the first sign of trouble. Once they are stacked, teams are told to go to the Hotel Stechelburg, where they have to listen for a group of yodelers singing at the Pit Stop.
1. Margie and Luke 10:13 A.M. Won a trip for two to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (yes, I do appreciate the irony of the team with the deaf team member winning on the leg that requires you being able to hear where the Pit Stop is).
2. Mark and Michael 10:16 A.M.
3. Tammy and Victor 10:17 A.M.
4. Kisha and Jen 10:43 A.M.
5. Amanda and Kris 11:02 A.M.
6. Brad and Victoria 11:07 A.M.
7. Mel and Mike 11:15 A.M.
8. Christie and Jodi 11:29 A.M.
9. Jamie and Cara 11:33 A.M.
10. Preston and Jennifer 11:40 A.M.
11. Linda and Steve 11:50 A.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #2: "Present your face honey."
Original Air Date: February 22, 2009.
Getting $300, teams are sent to Munich, Germany. Once there, teams have to go to the village of Ruhpolding and take a cable car to Rauschberg where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to paraglide, with an instructor, 6,000 feet to a target where their partner is waiting. However, if there are unfavorable wind conditions they can either wait until the wind is right or take a 60 minute hike down to the mountain. Teams then have to go to Schonau am Konigsee, where they find the Detour: Balancing Dolly or Austrian Folly.
In Balancing Dolly, teams have to ride Segways over a two mile obstacle course. In Austrian Folly, teams enter a party tent and throw pies at each other's faces until they find one with a cherry filling. Teams are then directed to a woodcutter's shed where they have to wait until the woodcutter saw the end off a log. The clue on their log section points them to the Pit Stop: Schloss Hellbrunn in Salzburg, Austria.
1. Kisha and Jen 1:13 P.M. Won a hybrid go-kart for both team members.
2. Tammy and Victor 1:36 P.M.
3. Margie and Luke 1:40 P.M.
4. Jamie and Cara 1:41 P.M.
5. Christie and Jodi 2:07 P.M.
6. Mark and Michael 2:10 P.M.
7. Brad and Victoria 2:28 P.M.
8. Amanda and Kris 2:46 P.M.
9. Preston and Jennifer 2:59 P.M.
10. Mel and Mike 3:19 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #3: "You look good in that leotard."
Original Air Date: March 1, 2009.
Getting $310, teams are told to fly to Bucharest, Romania, by first traveling by train to Munich and getting to that airport. Once there, teams have to the Lia Manoliu National Sports Complex where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to complete a series of moves on: the Balance Beam, the Parallel Bars and some floor exercises. Teams are then sent to Brasov, in historical Transylvania.
After making their way to Biserica Neagra, teams find the Detour: Gypsy Moves or Vampire Remains. In Gypsy Moves, teams have to go to a gypsy encampment and help a gypsy family move from one location to another by loading and then unloading their stuff. In Vampire Moves, teams have to drag a chained coffin to a field of stakes outside of Bran Castle. Then they have unlock the coffin and smash several frames inside it onto the stakes until they find the race flag. Then teams go to the Pit Stop: Vila Panoramic in Bran.
1. Amanda and Kris 10:07 A.M. Won a trip for two to Costa Rica.
2. Kisha and Jen 10:15 A.M.
3. Margie and Luke 10:33 A.M.
4. Mark and Michael 11:02 A.M.
5. Preston and Jennifer 11:17 A.M.
6. Christie and Jodi 11:45 A.M.
7. Jamie and Cara 12:10 P.M.
8. Brad and Victoria 12:12 P.M.
9. Tammy and Victor 12:38 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #4: "I've never seen anything like that!"
Original Air Date: March 8, 2009.
Getting $180, teams are told to fly to Krasnoyarsk, Russia. On arrival, teams are given a 10 Ruble note and have to figure out that their next destination is the Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Dam. Teams are then told to go to the Church of Saint Innokenty. Here teams find the Detour: Stack or Construct. In Stack, teams have to stack wood into a large wall formation in front of an existing stack. If their wall collapsed into the existing one, they will have to rebuild both. In Construct, teams have to a workshop and make a local style window frame. Then they have to look for a house with a sign that says Repairs Needed and install the window frame properly.
After that teams have to go to the Museum of the Last Bow where they find a Blind U-Turn. The Blind U-Turn is like a regular U-Turn except that no one knows who did it. Margie and Luke U-Turn Kisha and Jen (though it has no effect as Kisha and Jen were already ahead of them when it happened). Teams then go to Bobrovy Log Park where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to ride a bobsled rollercoaster track in under four minutes while looking for seven letters. Once off the track, they must arrange the letters into the word Chekhov. Then teams head to the Pit Stop: Krasnoyarsk Theatre of Musical Comedy.
1. Amanda and Kris 11:15 A.M. Won a motorcycle for each team member.
2. Kisha and Jen 11:25 A.M.
3. Jamie and Cara 11:45 A.M.
4. Margie and Luke 12:02 P.M.
5. Mark and Michael 12:15 P.M.
6. Christie and Jodi 12:48 P.M.
7. Preston and Jennifer 12:50 P.M.
8. Brad and Victoria 1:01 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #5: "You Jane, me Fro-Zan."
Original Air Date: March 15, 2009.
Getting $150, teams travel to the city of Novosibirsk, in Siberia, via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Once there teams have to go to Punkt Tekhicheskogo Osmorta where they find the Detour: Russian Bride or Russian Snowplow. In Russian Bride, teams, using a Lada car, drive to a Soviet-Era apartment pick up a bride then deliver her to the Voznesensky Cathedral, where the groom is waiting. Once they take a picture with the happy couple, they get the next clue. In Russian Snowplow, teams, using a Lada car to get there, go to Stadium Spartak where they have to take turns driving a snowplow through a marked course while being directed by their partner.
Teams then have to head to Gosudarstvennaya Publichnaya Nauchnaya Tekhnicheskaya Biblioteka, where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to pick two Russian marathon runners, strip down to their underwear, then run a 1.4 mile course to the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, where their partner is waiting for them. Then teams walk inside the theatre for the Pit Stop.
1. Margie and Luke 10:59 A.M. Won a trip for two to St. Lucia
2. Kisha and Jen 11:04 A.M.
3. Christie and Jodi 11:15 A.M.
4. Mark and Michael 11:27 A.M.
5. Amanda and Kris 11:35 A.M.
6. Jamie and Cara 11:45 A.M.
7. Preston and Jennifer 12:01 P.M. NOT ELIMINATED/SPEEDBUMPED.
Leg #6: "I don't think so."
Original Air Date: March 22, 2009.
Receiving $230, teams are told to fly to Jaipur, India. Once there, they have to go to the Sacred Tree in Dhula Village. Teams then have to figure out that their next clue will come from picking up one of two phones and calling one of four numbers. Then they can go to the Amber Fort. Here teams find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to pick a heard of camels and, using traditional tools, put enough hay on a platform so it reaches a specific line and overflow a trough with water.
Teams then go to Johari Bazaar Road, where Preston and Jennifer get their Speedbump. For this Speedbump, they have to go to the Kala Hanuman Temple and paint an elephant's face. Then they can join the other teams for the Detour: Movers or Shakers. In Movers, teams have to Sanganeri Gate, load two rickshaws with barrels of hay, and then take them one and a half miles to the city walls. Then they have to search the hay for an elephant figurine that they have to hand in. In Shakers, teams go to a junction of four bazaars, put on traditional costumes, and joined a local dance troupe. They have to collect 100 Rupees (about $2 US at the time) for their next clue. Then teams head for the Pit Stop: Jaigarh Fort.
1. Kisha and Jen 1:22 P.M. Won an Ocean kayak for each team member.
2. Jaime and Cara 1:45 P.M.
3. Jodi and Christie 1:50 P.M.
4. Margie and Luke 2:15 P.M.
5. Amanda and Kris 2:30 P.M.
6. Mark and Michael 2:42 P.M.
7. Preston and Jennifer 3:01 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #7: "Don't panic? The handler only has one arm!"
Original Air Date: March 29, 2009.
Getting $300, teams fly to Phuket, Thailand. Once there, have to locate a statue of gorilla from a picture in their clue at the Phuket Zoo. Teams had to take a picture with the zoo's mascot, Esso the Tiger and participate in an elephant show, which involves being lightly stepped on and squatted on by an elephant. The next clue contains the Fast Forward, which involves using the teams own money to buy items for a local orphanage from a local market, which no one takes. Teams then go to Nguan Choon Tong Herbs Shop.
I don't know whether this next task was originally a Roadblock, but regardless both team members have to smell 99 different herbs and pick one that might contain a clue. Yeah I don't get this one either. It's the Detour:100 Barrels or 2 Miles. In 100 Barrels, teams have to prepare a ship for a 10 day journey out to sea. They have to choose a boat, fill 47 barrels with water, then load 53 onto the upper deck. In 2 Miles, teams have to pump up the tires and transport a rickshaw (with one team member sitting in it) 2 miles from Wat Phutta Mongkhon Nimit to King Rama IX Park. Teams then go to the Pit Stop: Wat Thep Nimit Temple.
1. Amanda and Kris 11:15 A.M. Won a trip for two to Oahu, Hawaii.
2. Kisha and Jen 11:28 A.M.
3. Jamie and Cara 11:43 A.M.
4. Mark and Michael 11:58 A.M. PENALIZED for sabotaging the bike pumps at the 2 Miles Detour option and for taking a taxi to guide them through the task which was prohibited.
5. Christie and Jodi 12:05 P.M.
6. Margie and Luke 12:15 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #8: "They really shouldn't be doing that."
Original Air Date: April 12, 2009.
Receiving $400, teams fly to Bangkok, Thailand. On arrival, teams go to the Chareonyont 007 docks where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to put a propeller on a traditional Thai long-tail boat properly. Using the boat, teams, using a map, now have to go to the Peninsula Pier. Here teams find the Detour: Broken Teeth or Broken Record.
In Broken Teeth, teams have to go to the "Street of Happy Smiles" and match five patients with their dentures (Really? Also ew). In Broken Record, teams have to travel to Bangkok's Chinatown and pick a party van and some transgendered people known locally as kathoeys and sing karaoke to them for five miles. Then teams head to the Pit Stop: Phaya Thai Palace.
1. Jamie and Cara 2:11 P.M. Won a trip for two to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2. Kisha and Jen 2:36 P.M.
3. Christie and Jodi 2:57 P.M.
4. Amanda and Kris 3:46 P.M.
5. Mark and Michael 3:47 P.M. PENALIZED/NONELIMINATED/SPEEDBUMPED. (They were given two 2-hour penalties for selling personal items to pay for their taxi which isn't allowed. However, since Amanda and Kris came in with just over three hours left in the penalty, Mark and Michael were allowed to check in with the rest of the penalty applied to the start of the next leg.)
Leg #9: "I feel like I'm in a comedy sketch!"
Original Air Date: April 19, 2009.
Receiving $120, teams are told to fly to Guilin, China. Once there, teams have to get to the Folded Brocade Mountains. Here, in an unaired segment, teams have to climb to the Peak of the Luminous Moon and strike the drum of life. I think it was cut for time reasons. Teams then go to the Qing Xiu Lu Hair Salon, where Mark and Michael face their Speedbump: washing and drying two women's hair. Then they can join the other teams at bridge #24 on the Li River for the Roadblock.
In this Roadblock, one team member has to get a cormorant to retrieve 10 fish they had thrown into the river. Then teams have to go to the Ancient South Gate for the Detour: Choreography or Calligraphy. In Choreography, teams have to learn and perform a traditional dance routine. In Calligraphy, teams have to copy a Chinese character at four stations and get stamps saying that they did them correctly. Then teams go on foot to the Pit Stop: The Sun and Moon Pagodas at Banyan Lake.
1. Christie and Jodi 4:14 P.M. Won a trip for two to Barbados
2. Amanda and Kris 4:22 P.M.
3. Jamie and Cara 4:25 P.M.
4. Kisha and Jen 5:00 P.M.
5. Mark and Michael 5:29 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #10a: "Having a baby has to be easier than this!"
Original Air Date: April 26, 2009.
Getting $150, teams get sent to Beijing, China by plane. On arrival, teams have to go to the Liangzi Foot Massage Palace where they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to drink a really foul tasting herbal tea, then endure a 10 minute foot massage, then drink another cup of tea. If they tap the chair and say uncle the massage will stop, but that means having to start the massage all over again. Teams then head to Guangcai Natatorium where they find the Detour: Sync or Swim.
In both cases, teams have to where Speedo swimsuits. In Sync, teams have to jump from the three meter springboards and land in the water in unison. In Swim, teams have to swim eight lengths (400 meters) alternating every two lengths (100 meters). Teams then meet Phil at the North Drum Tower, where they are told to keep racing.
Leg #10b: "Tammy and Victor would have breezed through this."
Original Air Date: May 3, 2009.
Receiving an additional $100, teams head to Beihai Street Market. Here teams have to locate a Travelocity Roaming Gnome, which has the next clue written on the bottom. Teams are told to go to Gugong Xibei Jiao, pick up an electric bike each and bike past the Forbidden City and across Tiananmen Square to Dongdan where they find the Detour: Beijing Opera or Chinese Waiter.
In Beijing Opera, teams travel to Huguang Huiguan Opera House and put on makeup that looks exactly like the models next to them. Once that is done correctly, they have to get on stage and bow to the master to get their next clue. In Chinese Waiter, teams have to travel to Huguang Huiguan Restaurant where they have to pick a table and take four orders in Mandarin Chinese, pronounce them to the chef correctly, then take the meals to the customers. After this, teams have to Wenchang Pavilion where the U-Turn is. No one U-Turns anybody. Teams then go to the Donghuamen Night Market where they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to eat: a grasshopper, beetle larvae, a scorpion and a starfish. Then teams head to the Pit Stop: Beijing National Stadium.
1. Amanda and Kris 3:11 P.M. Won a trip for two to the Galapagos Islands
2. Kisha and Jen 3:15 P.M.
3. Jaime and Cara 3:43 P.M.
4. Christie and Jodi 4:15 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #11: "Not what I had in mind."
Original Air Date: May 10, 2009.
Getting $290, teams fly to their final destination: Maui, Hawaii. On arrival, teams have to go to Beach Access 118. Here there is a partially aired Detour, where we, the audience, only see one side of it. It requires teams to season a pig then carry it suspended on a bamboo pole 200 yards to a luau. Then they have to cover the pig properly to get the next clue. Teams then head to McGregor Point where they have to get on a personal watercraft and ride one mile to a field of 100 buoys. There they search for their next clue.
This sent them to Kaohu Farms where the final Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to search a pile of 300 surfboards with 11 with pictures of things the racers saw on the race. Then they have to make a fence by putting the surfboards in the ground in chronological order. Teams then go to King Kamehameha Golf Club, where (in an unaired task) they search for a statue before they reach the finish line.
1. Kisha and Jen WIN
2. Jamie and Cara PLACE
3. Amanda and Kris SHOW
The Review
This was certainly better than season 13, though not by much. Skipping Africa, South America and Oceania entirely, while not unprecedented, was a bit of a letdown. The tasks were decent, the cast, while not great were also not bad either. It's my number 12 race.
Still this season did ok in the ratings. Enough to warrant two more seasons. We'll see how well the first of those seasons goes next week.
This season of the race brought about some changes to the show. First, the show severely cut down on the amount of footage from the airport. Before this season, about a third of the show was from transportation hubs like airports. Reducing it brought more footage of the teams actually racing. Whether that's good thing or not I'll leave up to you. Another was cutting out the traditional "Eat, sleep mingle" that happens at each Pit Stop.
This was done part way through the season and done to create more drama between the teams. It would be kept for a few more season, at least until season 22, but here it was used to somewhat good effect. Again that depends on you. This season was cast in May 2008 and filmed that November (teams voted early in that year's election).
The Cast
Kisha and Jen: African-American sisters. They might fight at times but they are able to get a lot done.
Preston and Jennifer: Dating. They have a few odd things about them but they're not bad.
Margie and Luke: Mother and son. Luke is the first deaf contestant on the American version of the show. They manage to do good, thought they aren't as popular as they once were.
Tammy and Victor: Siblings. They bicker, and Victor can be hard headed at times, but they are still a good team.
Christie and Jodi: Flight attendants and friends. They are doing this show for their kids.
Jaime and Cara: Former NFL Cheerleaders and friends. Though they are slightly mean-spirited, they are good competitors.
Mark and Michael: Stuntmen/brothers. They are dwarfs (I don't know whether they worked on the Lord of the Rings movies or not). They also did some really stupid things on the show.
Amanda and Kris: Dating. They are like Kris and Jon from season six though I don't like them (Amanda and Kris) as much.
Mel and Mike: Father and son. Mike works in the movies and Mel is a speechwriter. They're fun in their own way.
Brad and Victoria: Married. They are an okay team.
Steve and Linda: Married. I think they are meant to be like Dave and Mary from season 11 but I can't prove that for certain.
The Race
Leg #1: "Don't let a cheese hit me!"
Original Air Date: February 15, 2009.
Starting at Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base, in California, teams get $281 and instructions to go to Zurich, Switzerland. Once there, teams have to go, by train, to the Church of Sant'Angelo in Locarno and sign up for one of three departure times the next morning. The next morning teams get a picture of a dam from the priest and have to figure out that it's Verzasca Dam. Here teams find the Roadblock.
In this Roadblock, one team member has to bungee jump down the face of the dam 70 stories (by the way if you recognize the dam, it's because it was used in the opening sequence of the James Bond movie Goldeneye). Once they get pulled up, teams have to go to Interlaken by train, then head to Kleine Rugen Wiese. There may have been a Detour here but there's no indication of why they cut it out. Anyway, teams now have to carry two 50 pound wheels of cheese each down a hill, using only flimsy wooden backpacks to carry them. And when I say flimsy, I mean they fall apart at the first sign of trouble. Once they are stacked, teams are told to go to the Hotel Stechelburg, where they have to listen for a group of yodelers singing at the Pit Stop.
1. Margie and Luke 10:13 A.M. Won a trip for two to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (yes, I do appreciate the irony of the team with the deaf team member winning on the leg that requires you being able to hear where the Pit Stop is).
2. Mark and Michael 10:16 A.M.
3. Tammy and Victor 10:17 A.M.
4. Kisha and Jen 10:43 A.M.
5. Amanda and Kris 11:02 A.M.
6. Brad and Victoria 11:07 A.M.
7. Mel and Mike 11:15 A.M.
8. Christie and Jodi 11:29 A.M.
9. Jamie and Cara 11:33 A.M.
10. Preston and Jennifer 11:40 A.M.
11. Linda and Steve 11:50 A.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #2: "Present your face honey."
Original Air Date: February 22, 2009.
Getting $300, teams are sent to Munich, Germany. Once there, teams have to go to the village of Ruhpolding and take a cable car to Rauschberg where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to paraglide, with an instructor, 6,000 feet to a target where their partner is waiting. However, if there are unfavorable wind conditions they can either wait until the wind is right or take a 60 minute hike down to the mountain. Teams then have to go to Schonau am Konigsee, where they find the Detour: Balancing Dolly or Austrian Folly.
In Balancing Dolly, teams have to ride Segways over a two mile obstacle course. In Austrian Folly, teams enter a party tent and throw pies at each other's faces until they find one with a cherry filling. Teams are then directed to a woodcutter's shed where they have to wait until the woodcutter saw the end off a log. The clue on their log section points them to the Pit Stop: Schloss Hellbrunn in Salzburg, Austria.
1. Kisha and Jen 1:13 P.M. Won a hybrid go-kart for both team members.
2. Tammy and Victor 1:36 P.M.
3. Margie and Luke 1:40 P.M.
4. Jamie and Cara 1:41 P.M.
5. Christie and Jodi 2:07 P.M.
6. Mark and Michael 2:10 P.M.
7. Brad and Victoria 2:28 P.M.
8. Amanda and Kris 2:46 P.M.
9. Preston and Jennifer 2:59 P.M.
10. Mel and Mike 3:19 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #3: "You look good in that leotard."
Original Air Date: March 1, 2009.
Getting $310, teams are told to fly to Bucharest, Romania, by first traveling by train to Munich and getting to that airport. Once there, teams have to the Lia Manoliu National Sports Complex where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to complete a series of moves on: the Balance Beam, the Parallel Bars and some floor exercises. Teams are then sent to Brasov, in historical Transylvania.
After making their way to Biserica Neagra, teams find the Detour: Gypsy Moves or Vampire Remains. In Gypsy Moves, teams have to go to a gypsy encampment and help a gypsy family move from one location to another by loading and then unloading their stuff. In Vampire Moves, teams have to drag a chained coffin to a field of stakes outside of Bran Castle. Then they have unlock the coffin and smash several frames inside it onto the stakes until they find the race flag. Then teams go to the Pit Stop: Vila Panoramic in Bran.
1. Amanda and Kris 10:07 A.M. Won a trip for two to Costa Rica.
2. Kisha and Jen 10:15 A.M.
3. Margie and Luke 10:33 A.M.
4. Mark and Michael 11:02 A.M.
5. Preston and Jennifer 11:17 A.M.
6. Christie and Jodi 11:45 A.M.
7. Jamie and Cara 12:10 P.M.
8. Brad and Victoria 12:12 P.M.
9. Tammy and Victor 12:38 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #4: "I've never seen anything like that!"
Original Air Date: March 8, 2009.
Getting $180, teams are told to fly to Krasnoyarsk, Russia. On arrival, teams are given a 10 Ruble note and have to figure out that their next destination is the Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Dam. Teams are then told to go to the Church of Saint Innokenty. Here teams find the Detour: Stack or Construct. In Stack, teams have to stack wood into a large wall formation in front of an existing stack. If their wall collapsed into the existing one, they will have to rebuild both. In Construct, teams have to a workshop and make a local style window frame. Then they have to look for a house with a sign that says Repairs Needed and install the window frame properly.
After that teams have to go to the Museum of the Last Bow where they find a Blind U-Turn. The Blind U-Turn is like a regular U-Turn except that no one knows who did it. Margie and Luke U-Turn Kisha and Jen (though it has no effect as Kisha and Jen were already ahead of them when it happened). Teams then go to Bobrovy Log Park where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to ride a bobsled rollercoaster track in under four minutes while looking for seven letters. Once off the track, they must arrange the letters into the word Chekhov. Then teams head to the Pit Stop: Krasnoyarsk Theatre of Musical Comedy.
1. Amanda and Kris 11:15 A.M. Won a motorcycle for each team member.
2. Kisha and Jen 11:25 A.M.
3. Jamie and Cara 11:45 A.M.
4. Margie and Luke 12:02 P.M.
5. Mark and Michael 12:15 P.M.
6. Christie and Jodi 12:48 P.M.
7. Preston and Jennifer 12:50 P.M.
8. Brad and Victoria 1:01 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #5: "You Jane, me Fro-Zan."
Original Air Date: March 15, 2009.
Getting $150, teams travel to the city of Novosibirsk, in Siberia, via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Once there teams have to go to Punkt Tekhicheskogo Osmorta where they find the Detour: Russian Bride or Russian Snowplow. In Russian Bride, teams, using a Lada car, drive to a Soviet-Era apartment pick up a bride then deliver her to the Voznesensky Cathedral, where the groom is waiting. Once they take a picture with the happy couple, they get the next clue. In Russian Snowplow, teams, using a Lada car to get there, go to Stadium Spartak where they have to take turns driving a snowplow through a marked course while being directed by their partner.
Teams then have to head to Gosudarstvennaya Publichnaya Nauchnaya Tekhnicheskaya Biblioteka, where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to pick two Russian marathon runners, strip down to their underwear, then run a 1.4 mile course to the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, where their partner is waiting for them. Then teams walk inside the theatre for the Pit Stop.
1. Margie and Luke 10:59 A.M. Won a trip for two to St. Lucia
2. Kisha and Jen 11:04 A.M.
3. Christie and Jodi 11:15 A.M.
4. Mark and Michael 11:27 A.M.
5. Amanda and Kris 11:35 A.M.
6. Jamie and Cara 11:45 A.M.
7. Preston and Jennifer 12:01 P.M. NOT ELIMINATED/SPEEDBUMPED.
Leg #6: "I don't think so."
Original Air Date: March 22, 2009.
Receiving $230, teams are told to fly to Jaipur, India. Once there, they have to go to the Sacred Tree in Dhula Village. Teams then have to figure out that their next clue will come from picking up one of two phones and calling one of four numbers. Then they can go to the Amber Fort. Here teams find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to pick a heard of camels and, using traditional tools, put enough hay on a platform so it reaches a specific line and overflow a trough with water.
Teams then go to Johari Bazaar Road, where Preston and Jennifer get their Speedbump. For this Speedbump, they have to go to the Kala Hanuman Temple and paint an elephant's face. Then they can join the other teams for the Detour: Movers or Shakers. In Movers, teams have to Sanganeri Gate, load two rickshaws with barrels of hay, and then take them one and a half miles to the city walls. Then they have to search the hay for an elephant figurine that they have to hand in. In Shakers, teams go to a junction of four bazaars, put on traditional costumes, and joined a local dance troupe. They have to collect 100 Rupees (about $2 US at the time) for their next clue. Then teams head for the Pit Stop: Jaigarh Fort.
1. Kisha and Jen 1:22 P.M. Won an Ocean kayak for each team member.
2. Jaime and Cara 1:45 P.M.
3. Jodi and Christie 1:50 P.M.
4. Margie and Luke 2:15 P.M.
5. Amanda and Kris 2:30 P.M.
6. Mark and Michael 2:42 P.M.
7. Preston and Jennifer 3:01 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #7: "Don't panic? The handler only has one arm!"
Original Air Date: March 29, 2009.
Getting $300, teams fly to Phuket, Thailand. Once there, have to locate a statue of gorilla from a picture in their clue at the Phuket Zoo. Teams had to take a picture with the zoo's mascot, Esso the Tiger and participate in an elephant show, which involves being lightly stepped on and squatted on by an elephant. The next clue contains the Fast Forward, which involves using the teams own money to buy items for a local orphanage from a local market, which no one takes. Teams then go to Nguan Choon Tong Herbs Shop.
I don't know whether this next task was originally a Roadblock, but regardless both team members have to smell 99 different herbs and pick one that might contain a clue. Yeah I don't get this one either. It's the Detour:100 Barrels or 2 Miles. In 100 Barrels, teams have to prepare a ship for a 10 day journey out to sea. They have to choose a boat, fill 47 barrels with water, then load 53 onto the upper deck. In 2 Miles, teams have to pump up the tires and transport a rickshaw (with one team member sitting in it) 2 miles from Wat Phutta Mongkhon Nimit to King Rama IX Park. Teams then go to the Pit Stop: Wat Thep Nimit Temple.
1. Amanda and Kris 11:15 A.M. Won a trip for two to Oahu, Hawaii.
2. Kisha and Jen 11:28 A.M.
3. Jamie and Cara 11:43 A.M.
4. Mark and Michael 11:58 A.M. PENALIZED for sabotaging the bike pumps at the 2 Miles Detour option and for taking a taxi to guide them through the task which was prohibited.
5. Christie and Jodi 12:05 P.M.
6. Margie and Luke 12:15 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #8: "They really shouldn't be doing that."
Original Air Date: April 12, 2009.
Receiving $400, teams fly to Bangkok, Thailand. On arrival, teams go to the Chareonyont 007 docks where the Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to put a propeller on a traditional Thai long-tail boat properly. Using the boat, teams, using a map, now have to go to the Peninsula Pier. Here teams find the Detour: Broken Teeth or Broken Record.
In Broken Teeth, teams have to go to the "Street of Happy Smiles" and match five patients with their dentures (Really? Also ew). In Broken Record, teams have to travel to Bangkok's Chinatown and pick a party van and some transgendered people known locally as kathoeys and sing karaoke to them for five miles. Then teams head to the Pit Stop: Phaya Thai Palace.
1. Jamie and Cara 2:11 P.M. Won a trip for two to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2. Kisha and Jen 2:36 P.M.
3. Christie and Jodi 2:57 P.M.
4. Amanda and Kris 3:46 P.M.
5. Mark and Michael 3:47 P.M. PENALIZED/NONELIMINATED/SPEEDBUMPED. (They were given two 2-hour penalties for selling personal items to pay for their taxi which isn't allowed. However, since Amanda and Kris came in with just over three hours left in the penalty, Mark and Michael were allowed to check in with the rest of the penalty applied to the start of the next leg.)
Leg #9: "I feel like I'm in a comedy sketch!"
Original Air Date: April 19, 2009.
Receiving $120, teams are told to fly to Guilin, China. Once there, teams have to get to the Folded Brocade Mountains. Here, in an unaired segment, teams have to climb to the Peak of the Luminous Moon and strike the drum of life. I think it was cut for time reasons. Teams then go to the Qing Xiu Lu Hair Salon, where Mark and Michael face their Speedbump: washing and drying two women's hair. Then they can join the other teams at bridge #24 on the Li River for the Roadblock.
In this Roadblock, one team member has to get a cormorant to retrieve 10 fish they had thrown into the river. Then teams have to go to the Ancient South Gate for the Detour: Choreography or Calligraphy. In Choreography, teams have to learn and perform a traditional dance routine. In Calligraphy, teams have to copy a Chinese character at four stations and get stamps saying that they did them correctly. Then teams go on foot to the Pit Stop: The Sun and Moon Pagodas at Banyan Lake.
1. Christie and Jodi 4:14 P.M. Won a trip for two to Barbados
2. Amanda and Kris 4:22 P.M.
3. Jamie and Cara 4:25 P.M.
4. Kisha and Jen 5:00 P.M.
5. Mark and Michael 5:29 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #10a: "Having a baby has to be easier than this!"
Original Air Date: April 26, 2009.
Getting $150, teams get sent to Beijing, China by plane. On arrival, teams have to go to the Liangzi Foot Massage Palace where they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to drink a really foul tasting herbal tea, then endure a 10 minute foot massage, then drink another cup of tea. If they tap the chair and say uncle the massage will stop, but that means having to start the massage all over again. Teams then head to Guangcai Natatorium where they find the Detour: Sync or Swim.
In both cases, teams have to where Speedo swimsuits. In Sync, teams have to jump from the three meter springboards and land in the water in unison. In Swim, teams have to swim eight lengths (400 meters) alternating every two lengths (100 meters). Teams then meet Phil at the North Drum Tower, where they are told to keep racing.
Leg #10b: "Tammy and Victor would have breezed through this."
Original Air Date: May 3, 2009.
Receiving an additional $100, teams head to Beihai Street Market. Here teams have to locate a Travelocity Roaming Gnome, which has the next clue written on the bottom. Teams are told to go to Gugong Xibei Jiao, pick up an electric bike each and bike past the Forbidden City and across Tiananmen Square to Dongdan where they find the Detour: Beijing Opera or Chinese Waiter.
In Beijing Opera, teams travel to Huguang Huiguan Opera House and put on makeup that looks exactly like the models next to them. Once that is done correctly, they have to get on stage and bow to the master to get their next clue. In Chinese Waiter, teams have to travel to Huguang Huiguan Restaurant where they have to pick a table and take four orders in Mandarin Chinese, pronounce them to the chef correctly, then take the meals to the customers. After this, teams have to Wenchang Pavilion where the U-Turn is. No one U-Turns anybody. Teams then go to the Donghuamen Night Market where they find the Roadblock. In this Roadblock, one team member has to eat: a grasshopper, beetle larvae, a scorpion and a starfish. Then teams head to the Pit Stop: Beijing National Stadium.
1. Amanda and Kris 3:11 P.M. Won a trip for two to the Galapagos Islands
2. Kisha and Jen 3:15 P.M.
3. Jaime and Cara 3:43 P.M.
4. Christie and Jodi 4:15 P.M. ELIMINATED.
Leg #11: "Not what I had in mind."
Original Air Date: May 10, 2009.
Getting $290, teams fly to their final destination: Maui, Hawaii. On arrival, teams have to go to Beach Access 118. Here there is a partially aired Detour, where we, the audience, only see one side of it. It requires teams to season a pig then carry it suspended on a bamboo pole 200 yards to a luau. Then they have to cover the pig properly to get the next clue. Teams then head to McGregor Point where they have to get on a personal watercraft and ride one mile to a field of 100 buoys. There they search for their next clue.
This sent them to Kaohu Farms where the final Roadblock is. In this Roadblock, one team member has to search a pile of 300 surfboards with 11 with pictures of things the racers saw on the race. Then they have to make a fence by putting the surfboards in the ground in chronological order. Teams then go to King Kamehameha Golf Club, where (in an unaired task) they search for a statue before they reach the finish line.
1. Kisha and Jen WIN
2. Jamie and Cara PLACE
3. Amanda and Kris SHOW
The Review
This was certainly better than season 13, though not by much. Skipping Africa, South America and Oceania entirely, while not unprecedented, was a bit of a letdown. The tasks were decent, the cast, while not great were also not bad either. It's my number 12 race.
Still this season did ok in the ratings. Enough to warrant two more seasons. We'll see how well the first of those seasons goes next week.
Winter 2009 (Part 8) - For Microsoft, Hope Springs Eternal
For God And Country: Confessed
For God And Country: Confessed is the sequel to the 2005 Xbox FPS hit For God And Country, about an emotionally tortured MI-5 agent named John Hagen who must kill to clear his name while dealing with his own personal demons. In this sequel, Hagen returns, and despite the acts he committed in the first game, has returned to MI-5, having been retained by the organization because they know he's their best trained killer, while Hagen remains because he knows people will die if he doesn't kill to protect his country (his motivations and characterization are somewhat reminiscent of Jack Bauer from OTL's 24, minus the family connections). With the leap to the Xbox 2 comes enhanced HD graphics and a slew of new gameplay innovations. The open world format of the original game returns, but battles are even more cinematic, with crucial moments called "flashpoints" in which time slows down and Hagen must choose what action to take next in a few second window. As in the previous game, the player must not only watch Hagen's physical health, but his emotional health as well, and now a third factor comes into play: Hagen's spiritual health. Tortured by his own bloodstained hands and the sins he has committed, Hagen is regularly seeing a priest, and the player must make frequent visits to this priest so that Hagen may confess his sins. These confessions cannot be skipped, and Hagen lists the numerous kills and other sins he has committed, for which the priest admonishes him and prescribes penance. Every kill, every act that the player performs in the game must be accounted for, and if Hagen's spiritual health suffers, it's just as crippling as if his emotional health suffers. Hagen doesn't have a partner in this game, in fact, he refuses every opportunity for one, believing that his burdens are his to bear alone. The game takes on a far more melancholy tone than other FPS titles: killing is discouraged, and yet to progress in the game, the player must kill, making them feel the emotional weight of every action Hagen commits, even moreso than in the previous game. However, the game does provide frequent alternatives to killing in certain circumstances. Hagen can spare a number of characters over the course of the game. Sometimes, sparing these characters has no effect on the game at all. Sometimes, the spared characters (or their allies) can come back to help Hagen. Other times, sparing characters will lead to negative consequences. Despite all of these emotional strings that the game uses to tug at the character, the developers took pains not to make any one aspect of the game annoying or "un-fun" for the player. You don't have to confess all that often, and the confessions will frequently reveal deep character and story details, making it worth it to give them a listen. The game also subtly hints at which characters should be spared, only occasionally throwing the player for a loop. While Confessed sets out to be one of the most emotionally heavy games of all time, it knows its audience and still wants to be an amazingly fun game. The game itself involves Hagen being assigned to a remote English town to hunt down a wanted criminal. The stakes in Confessed are arguably lower than they are in the original game, with no major terrorist attacks or threats being made, but Hagen instead mostly working to clean up loose ends, conceal MI-5's dirty work, and protect a fellow agent whose identity we don't even learn until two thirds of the way through the game. In the process of hunting down the criminal, Hagen is accosted by another agent who disagrees with his methods, and while Hagen kills the criminal as he was told to do, he is also forced to kill this fellow agent. Because of this action, Hagen is then told to hunt down another agent, that first agent's partner, who has a massive data file that he plans to leak onto the internet as revenge for his partner's death. This data file has information implicating yet another agent in a murder of a terrorist warlord who also happened to be a major political player on the world stage. Hagen goes to hunt down the rogue agent while also covertly researching the agent he's protecting. Eventually, he learns that this agent he's covering for is a woman named Andrea Lysander, a decorated MI-5 agent who operates in the shadows and who has arguably committed as many crimes as Hagen. Hagen hunts down the agent threatening to leak the information implicating Lysander, only for Lysander herself to appear and kill the man when Hagen hesitates. The remainder of the game sees Hagen pursuing Lysander. The final mission of the game sees Hagen shooting his way through a small army of MI-5 agents before entering the church where he's been confessing his sins the entire game. He finds Lysander in the booth, confessing her own sins as Hagen holds a gun on her. She finishes her confession and then grabs Hagen's arm before he can shoot her, starting the game's final battle, essentially a one-on-one firefight in the church. After the player lands the killing shot, a cutscene plays of Hagen shooting Lysander in the chest, just as she fires a bullet meant for Hagen that ends up in the priest instead. Lysander collapses into the booth and confesses her final sin, just as the priest dies. Then, she passes out, and the game ends with Hagen carrying Lysander out of the church, leaving it ambiguous whether she's alive or dead and whether or not Hagen will try to save her or turn her in if she lives.
For God And Country: Confessed is released exclusively for the Xbox 2 on February 17, 2009. Early reviews are excellent, praising the game for its graphics and its integration of story and gameplay. It's not quite as glowingly reviewed as the first game, but averages scores in the high 8s, with most of the criticism going toward the campaign's slightly shorter length compared to the original's. The improved multiplayer mode gets some praised but is still seen as a bit spartan compared to games like Cyberwar 3 and Modern Warfare 2. Sales are excellent, as the game is one of the most hyped Xbox 2 titles of the first half of 2009, and it's generally seen as a successful follow-up to the excellent original, and a big exclusive that the console sorely needs.
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Predator
An FPS title based on the classic series of films and an offshoot of the current Alien game series (developed by the same studio), Predator is a game that features three components: a human campaign, a Predator campaign, and a multiplayer mode. In the human campaign, you play as the mercenary soldier Chuck Renton, the leader of a squad of soldiers stranded in a foreign country and being hunted down by the Predator, the perfect hunter. As Renton, you must survive the elements, including wild animals and enemy soldiers, while also avoiding the Predator and making a plan to hunt it down. This campaign is structured much like a horror film, and takes some beats from 2008's Halloween game, also an Xbox exclusive, with the Predator being an ever-present threat. In the Predator campaign, you play as a Predator and follow the life of one of the creatures, from initial training exercises as a Predator youth to a mission in which you must hunt down a human said to be a legendary warrior and leader amongst his people. As the Predator, you can lay traps, gather clues, and murder the human's friends to lure him out. There are numerous flashbacks to your Predator training, covering increasingly difficult exercises and serving as timely tutorials, while going deep into Predator lore. Perhaps the most expansive part of the game is the multiplayer mode, which features asymmetric combat exercises between humans and Predators, along with a Predator deathmatch mode in which up to 16 Predators can hunt each other down until none remains. The developers' goal in creating this game was to create the definitive Predator experience, much in the same way that the Alien games were crafted to capture the feel and spirit of that series. Predator, which was announced at E3 2008, was slated to be one of the biggest Xbox 2 games of the year, with a massive positive reaction at the show and hype leading up to the game's release for several months in which more and more teasers and footage were shown. Ultimately, reviews mostly live up to the hype, with the game averaging in the mid 8s, not quite the glowing response that Alien: Xenowar got but still considered an excellent game. The biggest criticisms were directed at the Predator campaign, which was said to be a bit boring and lacking the action and tension of the Human campaign and the multiplayer mode. The multiplayer mode itself also was said to have some flaws, with the 16 Predator battle royale mode marred somewhat by bullet-spongey Predators that could take a bit too much damage, forgiving poor play far too much. However, for the most part, the developers succeeded in creating a strong adaptation of one of the most iconic film franchises in recent memory, and the game is a major sales success when it's released in early March 2009.
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Techno Angel: Immortal
Techno Angel: Immortal is a mech-combat based shooter game and the fourth game in the Techno Angel series, as well as the first game in the series for the Xbox 2. It picks up where Finality left off in 2006, ten years after the events of that game and featuring a brand new protagonist, an eleven year old girl named Sabine Avilo. Sabine rebuilds the Omniscient military exoskeleton and finds herself embroiled in a war for control of a ravaged planet Earth. Whereas the previous Techno Angel games were strictly first person shooters, Immortal blends first and third person gameplay, allowing the player to switch back and forth between the two styles at will. The advanced heads-up display that the series is known for makes its triumphant return, with a neater presentation and more information than ever, information that the player is able to toggle to their liking. The HUD provides combat information for Sabine and her opponents, allowing the player to view health status, weak points, and targeting reticles with incredible ease, while taking advantage of the Xbox 2's graphics to make the information presented stand out in a realistic and non-intrusive way. Techno Angel: Immortal, more than any other game in the series thus far, highlights the suit's ability to make its wearer superhuman. Sabine's abilities are enhanced to an incredible extent, even moreso than Adriana's from the original games. She can leap high into the air, fly short distances, grapple around like Spider-Man, pick up very large objects, and target hundreds of enemies at a time. Meanwhile, Sabine's enthusiastic commentary makes every action incredibly fun. While she's incredibly smart, she's still a young girl at heart and gets a lot more excited for everything than Adriana ever did. However, she's also been through quite a lot, so there's a hard and at times profane edge to her words. She's defiant and disrespectful, taunting and insulting her enemies, though she doesn't take any pleasure in killing. She's fiercely protective of the innocent and of people she cares about and is a more eager fighter than Adriana was. She also doesn't scare easily, even in the face of overwhelming danger. She's a complete badass and is hardened even further by the battles she experiences but never completely loses her spark of youth (indeed, though she always stays brave and defiant, the game's events are shown to increasingly weigh on her over the course of the campaign, until she finally has somewhat of an emotional breakdown toward the end). At times, the player must explore areas as Sabine alone without her mech suit, and these are somewhat stealth missions since she can't fight effectively. However, they're not PURE stealth. Sabine can still punch and kick and while she's not strong enough to fairly beat an adult soldier one on one, she can still resort to things like low blows and can even pick up weapons like crowbars and wrenches to use. These segments are few and far between and all but one are fairly short, and meant to highlight certain story moments when they occur. Immortal's mission structure is somewhat more flexible than that of Finality's, since there aren't objectives or Exosoldiers in the game. The game features a mix of open combat missions, which can be fairly long or fairly brief, closed combat missions in which Sabine must navigate a fairly enclosed area, or exploration missions which take place either in an open or enclosed space and don't involve much combat. The game features 18 total missions and the missions tend to be longer than those of Finality, making it seem like a much more epic, cinematic game. Most of the series' classic voice actors return, including Jennie Kwan as Adriana, and Sabine is voiced by relative newcomer Chrissie Fit, who is perhaps best known at the time for finishing 4th on the fourth season of American Idol ITTL and for having a few brief roles on TV shows.
Techno Angel: Immortal takes place in a world ravaged by war. After the events of Finality, the peace following the end of the Second American Civil War collapsed as wars erupted all over the planet, including nuclear wars. America tries to be a force for good in the world, but numerous insurgent factions threaten even America's unstable peace, while other countries have simply been bombed into oblivion. Adriana and the Omniscient have been gone for nine years after disappearing on a mission, and her ally and ex-lover Samuel serves as a high ranking American general, doing his best to keep the world from completely falling apart while never losing hope that Adriana is still alive. Meanwhile, Sabine Avilo lives in what was once the American Southwest but is now a contested border region between America and Mexico, with splinter factions from both countries fighting over water while the main American authorities have retreated from the area. Sabine likes to explore old battlefields, and she finds the broken pieces of the Omniscient on one of her adventures. She uses her technical skills and other scrap parts she's gathered to rebuild the suit, and uses it to take out some raiders who had been robbing a campsite where some old people have taken refuge. She returns home with the suit, but her parents try to make her give it up. Instead, she stashes it underground. Soon, a group of well-armed mercenaries with their own exoskeletons lay siege to Sabine's village in retaliation for her attack on their raiding party. The mercenaries begin beating Sabine's father before she emerges with the suit and attacks them. They nearly defeat her, but she overwhelms them with the suit's sheer power and saves her village and her family. She thinks her family will be happy with her for saving them, but her father, nursing a broken leg, yells at Sabine and demands she give up the suit. She refuses to do so, saying that she could help people, and that they can't make her do anything anymore before running away, using the suit to take flight. Sabine takes on a few more missions, drawing the attention of the United States military. It's Samuel who hunts her down, capturing her after luring her in with a fake rescue mission. Sabine is jailed and the suit impounded, but Samuel is impressed with the girl's courage and skill. He's torn between wanting to let her keep the suit (defying his superiors) and wanting to protect her and return her to her family. Sabine escapes her jail cell and goes looking for the suit, leaving some chaos in her wake. Finally, she finds the suit, but she also finds Samuel. After an emotional scene, Samuel lets Sabine "escape" with the suit. He knows that if the Omniscient survived, that maybe Adriana survived too. Meanwhile, the game's villain is introduced around the same time. The villain is a scientist named Dr. Elias Lasker, a brilliant theoretical physicist obsessed with creating the next generation of exoskeleton suits. He works for the American government in their weapons division and seems to be a normal man, but Samuel doesn't trust him. Soon after the scene where Samuel lets Sabine go, we see something extremely disturbing: a scene in which Adriana has been captured and is being tortured by Lasker, implying that at some point after she disappeared, she was found and taken prisoner. We see a few more of these scenes as the game progresses, presenting Adriana as being in serious danger and needing to be rescued, and that Sabine will be the person to do it. Sabine eventually decides to return to her family, but only because she learns that a raiding party is going to attack them. As it turns out, Sabine's family has been on the move because they are looking for her. Even her father, who is being pushed around in a wheelchair, is determined to find her. Just before she is about to go and reunite with them, they're attacked by a group of soldiers who appear to be part of Samuel's army. Sabine, thinking she's been betrayed, fights back against them only to be repelled by superior technology. However, out of nowhere, Samuel arrives and attacks the soldiers himself, revealing that the soldiers weren't taking orders from him, but instead were taking orders from Lasker, who has been able to create exoskeletons greatly resembling the Omniscient. Samuel realizes that only Adriana would have been able to give Lasker information about that technology, and wonders if she may be working for him for some reason. Sabine finally reunites with her family, and with Samuel's help, is able to explain to them that someone is using exoskeleton technology to launch attacks on civilians and military installations, and that only Sabine has enough firepower to stop them. Sabine's father still refuses to let her fight, but her mother relents, and insists that Sabine be allowed to go, as much as it pains her. Sabine, with the help of Samuel and some other allies she's acquired throughout the game, follows numerous leads to a place where Adriana was said to have been spotted. There, Sabine and Samuel find footage filmed by Lasker, irrefutable proof that he's been acting against the government. They also find something far more disturbing: interrogation footage of Adriana, footage revealing her interrogation at Lasker's hands... dated five years earlier. The last video shows Adriana's death. Samuel collapses, realizing that Adriana is dead and that there was nothing he could do to help her. Sabine flies into a rage and takes off on her own to hunt and kill Lasker. She destroys his escorts, only to be stopped by Lasker himself, piloting the second generation Omniscient. He easily defeats Sabine, but she manages to escape, having sustained her first serious combat injury. She treats her own injury and is found by Samuel, who scolds her for going off on her own and tells her to let the government hunt down Lasker. Sabine tells Samuel it's useless, he's unstoppable, and that she's going to get stronger and stop him for good this time. After a big blowup fight between Sabine and Samuel, Sabine learns of another attack on her family. She goes to save them, but even though she is able to protect almost everyone from harm, her mother is killed. Sabine collapses in despair and buries her suit, vowing never to use it again. Soon afterward, she is captured by Lasker's men, leading to an extended escape sequence... but Sabine is stopped by one of Lasker's top lieutenants, the same man who fired the fatal blast that killed her mother. She tries to fight back but she is easily beaten without her suit since she's just a little girl. Terrified but defiant, she spits in the face of her mother's murderer as he points a gun at her head.
Suddenly, the murderer is knocked out from behind by a masked figure, who orders Sabine to follow. Sabine does so, and the masked figure takes her to a grave... the grave of Adriana. The masked figure begs Sabine not to follow in their footsteps, but Sabine tells them that she won't stop until everyone who died at Lasker's hands is avenged, not just her mother but Adriana too. The masked figure removes their disguise... it's Adriana, scarred but still essentially the same person she was ten years ago, except even more courageous and now with some real physical definition due to being without her exoskeleton for so long. Sabine asks Adriana how she survived. Adriana reveals that she never broke and that she eventually faked her own death so she could escape. She planned on finding and killing Lasker, but wasn't able to. She tells Sabine that she never revealed herself as alive because without the Omniscient, she believed that people would expect too much of her and that she would never be able to live up to it without the ability to fight like she once did. She chose to remain in the shadows, doing what she could to help. Sabine then asks Adriana why she didn't expose Lasker. Adriana says that she thought of doing it, but came to realize that his mobile suit technology was the only thing keeping the military ahead of its increasingly dangerous enemies. Without that technology, the peace she fought so hard to achieve would collapse and Samuel would die. She confesses that it was a selfish and stupid decision to make, and begs Sabine's forgiveness for indirectly causing her mother's death. Sabine doesn't know what to say... she looks like she's going to hit Adriana, but then collapses sobbing into her arms, screaming "mommy" over and over again, her hard veneer utterly collapsing in the face of everything she's been through. Adriana embraces Sabine, telling her that she'll be her mother if that's what she wants and that she'll spend the rest of her life trying to be the best mother she can to Sabine. Scenes of Samuel leading an army of loyal soldiers into battle are then interspersed with scenes of Sabine in an abandoned house with Adriana actually pretending to be mother and daughter, as Sabine tries to cope with all she's experienced. Lasker and an entire squad of soldiers in their Omniscient 2.0 exoskeletons easily defeat Samuel's forces and take him prisoner, while Adriana reads Sabine a bedtime story and sings her a lullaby. A scene is then shown of Lasker in his exoskeleton, using a new superweapon built into the suit to destroy an entire shantytown full of people as a demonstration of the weapon's power, as a mushroom cloud is seen from many miles away. Lasker smiles malevolently against the glow, while Sabine is shown asleep in Adriana's arms. After all of this, Sabine wakes up, looks back at the still sleeping Adriana, leaves her a note, and then walks away and finds her buried suit, getting back inside with a determined look on her face. The last few missions of the game consist of Sabine's fight to stop Lasker and rescue Samuel while also saving the world from conquest. Meanwhile, Adriana realizes she's going to have to fight once again, and commandeers an Omniscient 2.0 by knocking out one of Lasker's elite soldiers and stealing it from him. Adriana reunites with Sabine and the two rescue Samuel, rallying an army consisting of exoskeleton-piloting soldiers from all over the world to stop Lasker. Sabine leads the charge while Adriana fights alongside her, but after a fight in which Sabine defeats Lasker, Lasker goes berserk and overclocks his suit, threatening to detonate his power source and create a massive explosion powerful enough to blow up a huge chunk of North America and send a tsunami wave crashing into Europe and Africa. Adriana flies into Lasker and grabs him, covering him up with the suit to buffer the explosion and limit its size. Lasker smiles: even though he's going to die, Adriana will go with him. Sabine and Samuel scream out, and Lasker laughs, but then realizes that Adriana's voice isn't actually her... it's a recording, the same mechanism she used to fake her own death and escape from him five years before. Lasker screams in horror as he detonates, the explosion massive but thanks to Adriana, barely enough to blow up a small city... and with not a single other person in the blast radius. Sabine and Samuel collapse with grief, only for Adriana to come up behind them, telling them that she never thought she'd have to fake her own death twice. They both embrace her, and the victorious allied army celebrates a madman's defeat, their hero's return, and the birth of a new hero. The ending cutscenes, which go on for about 30 minutes, show the aftermath: Lasker's madness united the world, allowing a unified army to crush the remaining malevolent forces and pool what resources remain to ensure peace. Sabine returns to her family, reconciles with her healed father, and lays flowers at her mother's grave as Adriana and Samuel, their love finally realized, look on. Sabine remains with her family, but still sees Adriana as a mother figure, and Adriana "adopts" her while also helping Sabine to keep up her combat training. The ending is extremely happy and hopeful, and it's implied that this, finally, is the end of the Techno Angel series... but of course, smart fans know that the franchise will someday return.
Techno Angel: Immortal is released on March 17, 2009, to extremely positive reviews. Sabine as a character is highly praised, with her vulnerability and ferocity contrasting to make an extremely relatable character who the player can't help but root for. The game's combat, which is significantly faster paced than that of the previous game, is seen as fresh and fun, bringing the series into the seventh generation with a much welcome enhancement in both gameplay and presentation. Review scores average in the low to mid 9s, making the game a bonafide hit for the Xbox 2. Sales would be excellent, significantly better than those of both For God And Country: Confessed and Predator, and easily making it the Xbox 2's biggest hit of the first quarter of 2009. Sales don't quite match up to Gran Turismo 4, but they meet expectations, and even give the Xbox 2's hardware sales their first significant spike since the release of Cyberwar 3. For the first time in quite a while, the Xbox 2's future is starting to look slightly bright again, and despite a somewhat lackluster slate of games for the remainder of the year, the success of the trio of hit exclusives that the console launched during the months of February and March 2009 show that there's still plenty of reason to get an Xbox 2. Now, some pressure is put on the Nintendo Sapphire, with game journalists focusing their attention on how Nintendo would respond to the Xbox 2's recent success. Curiously, few such questions were raised of the Apple iTwin, indicating that the Xbox 2's success was coming at the expense of Nintendo moreso than it was at the expense of Apple. The hardware sales charts for March 2009 would show a significant increase in month to month sales for the Xbox 2, showing that it was starting to catch up to the second place Sapphire... while iTwin sales remained completely level.
For God And Country: Confessed is the sequel to the 2005 Xbox FPS hit For God And Country, about an emotionally tortured MI-5 agent named John Hagen who must kill to clear his name while dealing with his own personal demons. In this sequel, Hagen returns, and despite the acts he committed in the first game, has returned to MI-5, having been retained by the organization because they know he's their best trained killer, while Hagen remains because he knows people will die if he doesn't kill to protect his country (his motivations and characterization are somewhat reminiscent of Jack Bauer from OTL's 24, minus the family connections). With the leap to the Xbox 2 comes enhanced HD graphics and a slew of new gameplay innovations. The open world format of the original game returns, but battles are even more cinematic, with crucial moments called "flashpoints" in which time slows down and Hagen must choose what action to take next in a few second window. As in the previous game, the player must not only watch Hagen's physical health, but his emotional health as well, and now a third factor comes into play: Hagen's spiritual health. Tortured by his own bloodstained hands and the sins he has committed, Hagen is regularly seeing a priest, and the player must make frequent visits to this priest so that Hagen may confess his sins. These confessions cannot be skipped, and Hagen lists the numerous kills and other sins he has committed, for which the priest admonishes him and prescribes penance. Every kill, every act that the player performs in the game must be accounted for, and if Hagen's spiritual health suffers, it's just as crippling as if his emotional health suffers. Hagen doesn't have a partner in this game, in fact, he refuses every opportunity for one, believing that his burdens are his to bear alone. The game takes on a far more melancholy tone than other FPS titles: killing is discouraged, and yet to progress in the game, the player must kill, making them feel the emotional weight of every action Hagen commits, even moreso than in the previous game. However, the game does provide frequent alternatives to killing in certain circumstances. Hagen can spare a number of characters over the course of the game. Sometimes, sparing these characters has no effect on the game at all. Sometimes, the spared characters (or their allies) can come back to help Hagen. Other times, sparing characters will lead to negative consequences. Despite all of these emotional strings that the game uses to tug at the character, the developers took pains not to make any one aspect of the game annoying or "un-fun" for the player. You don't have to confess all that often, and the confessions will frequently reveal deep character and story details, making it worth it to give them a listen. The game also subtly hints at which characters should be spared, only occasionally throwing the player for a loop. While Confessed sets out to be one of the most emotionally heavy games of all time, it knows its audience and still wants to be an amazingly fun game. The game itself involves Hagen being assigned to a remote English town to hunt down a wanted criminal. The stakes in Confessed are arguably lower than they are in the original game, with no major terrorist attacks or threats being made, but Hagen instead mostly working to clean up loose ends, conceal MI-5's dirty work, and protect a fellow agent whose identity we don't even learn until two thirds of the way through the game. In the process of hunting down the criminal, Hagen is accosted by another agent who disagrees with his methods, and while Hagen kills the criminal as he was told to do, he is also forced to kill this fellow agent. Because of this action, Hagen is then told to hunt down another agent, that first agent's partner, who has a massive data file that he plans to leak onto the internet as revenge for his partner's death. This data file has information implicating yet another agent in a murder of a terrorist warlord who also happened to be a major political player on the world stage. Hagen goes to hunt down the rogue agent while also covertly researching the agent he's protecting. Eventually, he learns that this agent he's covering for is a woman named Andrea Lysander, a decorated MI-5 agent who operates in the shadows and who has arguably committed as many crimes as Hagen. Hagen hunts down the agent threatening to leak the information implicating Lysander, only for Lysander herself to appear and kill the man when Hagen hesitates. The remainder of the game sees Hagen pursuing Lysander. The final mission of the game sees Hagen shooting his way through a small army of MI-5 agents before entering the church where he's been confessing his sins the entire game. He finds Lysander in the booth, confessing her own sins as Hagen holds a gun on her. She finishes her confession and then grabs Hagen's arm before he can shoot her, starting the game's final battle, essentially a one-on-one firefight in the church. After the player lands the killing shot, a cutscene plays of Hagen shooting Lysander in the chest, just as she fires a bullet meant for Hagen that ends up in the priest instead. Lysander collapses into the booth and confesses her final sin, just as the priest dies. Then, she passes out, and the game ends with Hagen carrying Lysander out of the church, leaving it ambiguous whether she's alive or dead and whether or not Hagen will try to save her or turn her in if she lives.
For God And Country: Confessed is released exclusively for the Xbox 2 on February 17, 2009. Early reviews are excellent, praising the game for its graphics and its integration of story and gameplay. It's not quite as glowingly reviewed as the first game, but averages scores in the high 8s, with most of the criticism going toward the campaign's slightly shorter length compared to the original's. The improved multiplayer mode gets some praised but is still seen as a bit spartan compared to games like Cyberwar 3 and Modern Warfare 2. Sales are excellent, as the game is one of the most hyped Xbox 2 titles of the first half of 2009, and it's generally seen as a successful follow-up to the excellent original, and a big exclusive that the console sorely needs.
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Predator
An FPS title based on the classic series of films and an offshoot of the current Alien game series (developed by the same studio), Predator is a game that features three components: a human campaign, a Predator campaign, and a multiplayer mode. In the human campaign, you play as the mercenary soldier Chuck Renton, the leader of a squad of soldiers stranded in a foreign country and being hunted down by the Predator, the perfect hunter. As Renton, you must survive the elements, including wild animals and enemy soldiers, while also avoiding the Predator and making a plan to hunt it down. This campaign is structured much like a horror film, and takes some beats from 2008's Halloween game, also an Xbox exclusive, with the Predator being an ever-present threat. In the Predator campaign, you play as a Predator and follow the life of one of the creatures, from initial training exercises as a Predator youth to a mission in which you must hunt down a human said to be a legendary warrior and leader amongst his people. As the Predator, you can lay traps, gather clues, and murder the human's friends to lure him out. There are numerous flashbacks to your Predator training, covering increasingly difficult exercises and serving as timely tutorials, while going deep into Predator lore. Perhaps the most expansive part of the game is the multiplayer mode, which features asymmetric combat exercises between humans and Predators, along with a Predator deathmatch mode in which up to 16 Predators can hunt each other down until none remains. The developers' goal in creating this game was to create the definitive Predator experience, much in the same way that the Alien games were crafted to capture the feel and spirit of that series. Predator, which was announced at E3 2008, was slated to be one of the biggest Xbox 2 games of the year, with a massive positive reaction at the show and hype leading up to the game's release for several months in which more and more teasers and footage were shown. Ultimately, reviews mostly live up to the hype, with the game averaging in the mid 8s, not quite the glowing response that Alien: Xenowar got but still considered an excellent game. The biggest criticisms were directed at the Predator campaign, which was said to be a bit boring and lacking the action and tension of the Human campaign and the multiplayer mode. The multiplayer mode itself also was said to have some flaws, with the 16 Predator battle royale mode marred somewhat by bullet-spongey Predators that could take a bit too much damage, forgiving poor play far too much. However, for the most part, the developers succeeded in creating a strong adaptation of one of the most iconic film franchises in recent memory, and the game is a major sales success when it's released in early March 2009.
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Techno Angel: Immortal
Techno Angel: Immortal is a mech-combat based shooter game and the fourth game in the Techno Angel series, as well as the first game in the series for the Xbox 2. It picks up where Finality left off in 2006, ten years after the events of that game and featuring a brand new protagonist, an eleven year old girl named Sabine Avilo. Sabine rebuilds the Omniscient military exoskeleton and finds herself embroiled in a war for control of a ravaged planet Earth. Whereas the previous Techno Angel games were strictly first person shooters, Immortal blends first and third person gameplay, allowing the player to switch back and forth between the two styles at will. The advanced heads-up display that the series is known for makes its triumphant return, with a neater presentation and more information than ever, information that the player is able to toggle to their liking. The HUD provides combat information for Sabine and her opponents, allowing the player to view health status, weak points, and targeting reticles with incredible ease, while taking advantage of the Xbox 2's graphics to make the information presented stand out in a realistic and non-intrusive way. Techno Angel: Immortal, more than any other game in the series thus far, highlights the suit's ability to make its wearer superhuman. Sabine's abilities are enhanced to an incredible extent, even moreso than Adriana's from the original games. She can leap high into the air, fly short distances, grapple around like Spider-Man, pick up very large objects, and target hundreds of enemies at a time. Meanwhile, Sabine's enthusiastic commentary makes every action incredibly fun. While she's incredibly smart, she's still a young girl at heart and gets a lot more excited for everything than Adriana ever did. However, she's also been through quite a lot, so there's a hard and at times profane edge to her words. She's defiant and disrespectful, taunting and insulting her enemies, though she doesn't take any pleasure in killing. She's fiercely protective of the innocent and of people she cares about and is a more eager fighter than Adriana was. She also doesn't scare easily, even in the face of overwhelming danger. She's a complete badass and is hardened even further by the battles she experiences but never completely loses her spark of youth (indeed, though she always stays brave and defiant, the game's events are shown to increasingly weigh on her over the course of the campaign, until she finally has somewhat of an emotional breakdown toward the end). At times, the player must explore areas as Sabine alone without her mech suit, and these are somewhat stealth missions since she can't fight effectively. However, they're not PURE stealth. Sabine can still punch and kick and while she's not strong enough to fairly beat an adult soldier one on one, she can still resort to things like low blows and can even pick up weapons like crowbars and wrenches to use. These segments are few and far between and all but one are fairly short, and meant to highlight certain story moments when they occur. Immortal's mission structure is somewhat more flexible than that of Finality's, since there aren't objectives or Exosoldiers in the game. The game features a mix of open combat missions, which can be fairly long or fairly brief, closed combat missions in which Sabine must navigate a fairly enclosed area, or exploration missions which take place either in an open or enclosed space and don't involve much combat. The game features 18 total missions and the missions tend to be longer than those of Finality, making it seem like a much more epic, cinematic game. Most of the series' classic voice actors return, including Jennie Kwan as Adriana, and Sabine is voiced by relative newcomer Chrissie Fit, who is perhaps best known at the time for finishing 4th on the fourth season of American Idol ITTL and for having a few brief roles on TV shows.
Techno Angel: Immortal takes place in a world ravaged by war. After the events of Finality, the peace following the end of the Second American Civil War collapsed as wars erupted all over the planet, including nuclear wars. America tries to be a force for good in the world, but numerous insurgent factions threaten even America's unstable peace, while other countries have simply been bombed into oblivion. Adriana and the Omniscient have been gone for nine years after disappearing on a mission, and her ally and ex-lover Samuel serves as a high ranking American general, doing his best to keep the world from completely falling apart while never losing hope that Adriana is still alive. Meanwhile, Sabine Avilo lives in what was once the American Southwest but is now a contested border region between America and Mexico, with splinter factions from both countries fighting over water while the main American authorities have retreated from the area. Sabine likes to explore old battlefields, and she finds the broken pieces of the Omniscient on one of her adventures. She uses her technical skills and other scrap parts she's gathered to rebuild the suit, and uses it to take out some raiders who had been robbing a campsite where some old people have taken refuge. She returns home with the suit, but her parents try to make her give it up. Instead, she stashes it underground. Soon, a group of well-armed mercenaries with their own exoskeletons lay siege to Sabine's village in retaliation for her attack on their raiding party. The mercenaries begin beating Sabine's father before she emerges with the suit and attacks them. They nearly defeat her, but she overwhelms them with the suit's sheer power and saves her village and her family. She thinks her family will be happy with her for saving them, but her father, nursing a broken leg, yells at Sabine and demands she give up the suit. She refuses to do so, saying that she could help people, and that they can't make her do anything anymore before running away, using the suit to take flight. Sabine takes on a few more missions, drawing the attention of the United States military. It's Samuel who hunts her down, capturing her after luring her in with a fake rescue mission. Sabine is jailed and the suit impounded, but Samuel is impressed with the girl's courage and skill. He's torn between wanting to let her keep the suit (defying his superiors) and wanting to protect her and return her to her family. Sabine escapes her jail cell and goes looking for the suit, leaving some chaos in her wake. Finally, she finds the suit, but she also finds Samuel. After an emotional scene, Samuel lets Sabine "escape" with the suit. He knows that if the Omniscient survived, that maybe Adriana survived too. Meanwhile, the game's villain is introduced around the same time. The villain is a scientist named Dr. Elias Lasker, a brilliant theoretical physicist obsessed with creating the next generation of exoskeleton suits. He works for the American government in their weapons division and seems to be a normal man, but Samuel doesn't trust him. Soon after the scene where Samuel lets Sabine go, we see something extremely disturbing: a scene in which Adriana has been captured and is being tortured by Lasker, implying that at some point after she disappeared, she was found and taken prisoner. We see a few more of these scenes as the game progresses, presenting Adriana as being in serious danger and needing to be rescued, and that Sabine will be the person to do it. Sabine eventually decides to return to her family, but only because she learns that a raiding party is going to attack them. As it turns out, Sabine's family has been on the move because they are looking for her. Even her father, who is being pushed around in a wheelchair, is determined to find her. Just before she is about to go and reunite with them, they're attacked by a group of soldiers who appear to be part of Samuel's army. Sabine, thinking she's been betrayed, fights back against them only to be repelled by superior technology. However, out of nowhere, Samuel arrives and attacks the soldiers himself, revealing that the soldiers weren't taking orders from him, but instead were taking orders from Lasker, who has been able to create exoskeletons greatly resembling the Omniscient. Samuel realizes that only Adriana would have been able to give Lasker information about that technology, and wonders if she may be working for him for some reason. Sabine finally reunites with her family, and with Samuel's help, is able to explain to them that someone is using exoskeleton technology to launch attacks on civilians and military installations, and that only Sabine has enough firepower to stop them. Sabine's father still refuses to let her fight, but her mother relents, and insists that Sabine be allowed to go, as much as it pains her. Sabine, with the help of Samuel and some other allies she's acquired throughout the game, follows numerous leads to a place where Adriana was said to have been spotted. There, Sabine and Samuel find footage filmed by Lasker, irrefutable proof that he's been acting against the government. They also find something far more disturbing: interrogation footage of Adriana, footage revealing her interrogation at Lasker's hands... dated five years earlier. The last video shows Adriana's death. Samuel collapses, realizing that Adriana is dead and that there was nothing he could do to help her. Sabine flies into a rage and takes off on her own to hunt and kill Lasker. She destroys his escorts, only to be stopped by Lasker himself, piloting the second generation Omniscient. He easily defeats Sabine, but she manages to escape, having sustained her first serious combat injury. She treats her own injury and is found by Samuel, who scolds her for going off on her own and tells her to let the government hunt down Lasker. Sabine tells Samuel it's useless, he's unstoppable, and that she's going to get stronger and stop him for good this time. After a big blowup fight between Sabine and Samuel, Sabine learns of another attack on her family. She goes to save them, but even though she is able to protect almost everyone from harm, her mother is killed. Sabine collapses in despair and buries her suit, vowing never to use it again. Soon afterward, she is captured by Lasker's men, leading to an extended escape sequence... but Sabine is stopped by one of Lasker's top lieutenants, the same man who fired the fatal blast that killed her mother. She tries to fight back but she is easily beaten without her suit since she's just a little girl. Terrified but defiant, she spits in the face of her mother's murderer as he points a gun at her head.
Suddenly, the murderer is knocked out from behind by a masked figure, who orders Sabine to follow. Sabine does so, and the masked figure takes her to a grave... the grave of Adriana. The masked figure begs Sabine not to follow in their footsteps, but Sabine tells them that she won't stop until everyone who died at Lasker's hands is avenged, not just her mother but Adriana too. The masked figure removes their disguise... it's Adriana, scarred but still essentially the same person she was ten years ago, except even more courageous and now with some real physical definition due to being without her exoskeleton for so long. Sabine asks Adriana how she survived. Adriana reveals that she never broke and that she eventually faked her own death so she could escape. She planned on finding and killing Lasker, but wasn't able to. She tells Sabine that she never revealed herself as alive because without the Omniscient, she believed that people would expect too much of her and that she would never be able to live up to it without the ability to fight like she once did. She chose to remain in the shadows, doing what she could to help. Sabine then asks Adriana why she didn't expose Lasker. Adriana says that she thought of doing it, but came to realize that his mobile suit technology was the only thing keeping the military ahead of its increasingly dangerous enemies. Without that technology, the peace she fought so hard to achieve would collapse and Samuel would die. She confesses that it was a selfish and stupid decision to make, and begs Sabine's forgiveness for indirectly causing her mother's death. Sabine doesn't know what to say... she looks like she's going to hit Adriana, but then collapses sobbing into her arms, screaming "mommy" over and over again, her hard veneer utterly collapsing in the face of everything she's been through. Adriana embraces Sabine, telling her that she'll be her mother if that's what she wants and that she'll spend the rest of her life trying to be the best mother she can to Sabine. Scenes of Samuel leading an army of loyal soldiers into battle are then interspersed with scenes of Sabine in an abandoned house with Adriana actually pretending to be mother and daughter, as Sabine tries to cope with all she's experienced. Lasker and an entire squad of soldiers in their Omniscient 2.0 exoskeletons easily defeat Samuel's forces and take him prisoner, while Adriana reads Sabine a bedtime story and sings her a lullaby. A scene is then shown of Lasker in his exoskeleton, using a new superweapon built into the suit to destroy an entire shantytown full of people as a demonstration of the weapon's power, as a mushroom cloud is seen from many miles away. Lasker smiles malevolently against the glow, while Sabine is shown asleep in Adriana's arms. After all of this, Sabine wakes up, looks back at the still sleeping Adriana, leaves her a note, and then walks away and finds her buried suit, getting back inside with a determined look on her face. The last few missions of the game consist of Sabine's fight to stop Lasker and rescue Samuel while also saving the world from conquest. Meanwhile, Adriana realizes she's going to have to fight once again, and commandeers an Omniscient 2.0 by knocking out one of Lasker's elite soldiers and stealing it from him. Adriana reunites with Sabine and the two rescue Samuel, rallying an army consisting of exoskeleton-piloting soldiers from all over the world to stop Lasker. Sabine leads the charge while Adriana fights alongside her, but after a fight in which Sabine defeats Lasker, Lasker goes berserk and overclocks his suit, threatening to detonate his power source and create a massive explosion powerful enough to blow up a huge chunk of North America and send a tsunami wave crashing into Europe and Africa. Adriana flies into Lasker and grabs him, covering him up with the suit to buffer the explosion and limit its size. Lasker smiles: even though he's going to die, Adriana will go with him. Sabine and Samuel scream out, and Lasker laughs, but then realizes that Adriana's voice isn't actually her... it's a recording, the same mechanism she used to fake her own death and escape from him five years before. Lasker screams in horror as he detonates, the explosion massive but thanks to Adriana, barely enough to blow up a small city... and with not a single other person in the blast radius. Sabine and Samuel collapse with grief, only for Adriana to come up behind them, telling them that she never thought she'd have to fake her own death twice. They both embrace her, and the victorious allied army celebrates a madman's defeat, their hero's return, and the birth of a new hero. The ending cutscenes, which go on for about 30 minutes, show the aftermath: Lasker's madness united the world, allowing a unified army to crush the remaining malevolent forces and pool what resources remain to ensure peace. Sabine returns to her family, reconciles with her healed father, and lays flowers at her mother's grave as Adriana and Samuel, their love finally realized, look on. Sabine remains with her family, but still sees Adriana as a mother figure, and Adriana "adopts" her while also helping Sabine to keep up her combat training. The ending is extremely happy and hopeful, and it's implied that this, finally, is the end of the Techno Angel series... but of course, smart fans know that the franchise will someday return.
Techno Angel: Immortal is released on March 17, 2009, to extremely positive reviews. Sabine as a character is highly praised, with her vulnerability and ferocity contrasting to make an extremely relatable character who the player can't help but root for. The game's combat, which is significantly faster paced than that of the previous game, is seen as fresh and fun, bringing the series into the seventh generation with a much welcome enhancement in both gameplay and presentation. Review scores average in the low to mid 9s, making the game a bonafide hit for the Xbox 2. Sales would be excellent, significantly better than those of both For God And Country: Confessed and Predator, and easily making it the Xbox 2's biggest hit of the first quarter of 2009. Sales don't quite match up to Gran Turismo 4, but they meet expectations, and even give the Xbox 2's hardware sales their first significant spike since the release of Cyberwar 3. For the first time in quite a while, the Xbox 2's future is starting to look slightly bright again, and despite a somewhat lackluster slate of games for the remainder of the year, the success of the trio of hit exclusives that the console launched during the months of February and March 2009 show that there's still plenty of reason to get an Xbox 2. Now, some pressure is put on the Nintendo Sapphire, with game journalists focusing their attention on how Nintendo would respond to the Xbox 2's recent success. Curiously, few such questions were raised of the Apple iTwin, indicating that the Xbox 2's success was coming at the expense of Nintendo moreso than it was at the expense of Apple. The hardware sales charts for March 2009 would show a significant increase in month to month sales for the Xbox 2, showing that it was starting to catch up to the second place Sapphire... while iTwin sales remained completely level.
I love how Microsoft is getting a lot of success off exclusives based off 70's/80's movie franchises. Halloween, Alien, Predator
Yeah. I thought that was a terrible way to go.Yay to Kisha and Jen not being felled by the infamous "pee break"!
That depends on how well Nintendo shows off at E3. The one game I feel that could measure up to Techno Angel that has a chance of measuring up and might be coming out this year is Metroid: Starfall. Aside from that, I would have to say Velvet Dark: Inmanity (That's what I'm calling it until an official title comes out.)
With how long Ry's been foreshadowing the new direction Metroid: Starfall will take the series, I'm unsure if it'll be good, let alone measure up to Techno Angel.
Your not wrong about that, but at the very least I can see Starfall being better than OTL's Other M but at the same time being ttl's Other M in terms of critics if they change the gameplay style.
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