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Heinous
A
good way to make antagonists threatening enough is to have them
come back at some point. Ms. Heinous, the former headmistress of St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward
Princesses, was seen earlier in the season sending a henchman after
Marco and Star. This episode marks her true return where she tries to get
even with the cause of the demise of her school by ratting him out to his
parents.
She first appears in a
ridiculous condition through living with her assistant in a car with a chainsaw strapped
in front, and treating the hand of her bounty hunter Rasticore as her child. Then she quickly escalates things through
aiming to kill Marco with that chainsaw.
However, when Star and Marco see what’s going on, they’re
shocked to find that Marco’s parents, Rafael and Angie, let Ms. Heinous in
despite her threatening disposition.
They seriously don’t see anything suspicious about her. If that’s not enough, they
don’t bother listening to their own son as he tries to explain who this strange
visitor is. Marco has every right to do so too since, unlike them, he knows Ms.
Heinous. They instead listen more to
what this estranged threatening-looking teacher they never met before has to
say while pushing Marco to resolve his issues with her.
Ms. Heinous proceeds to twist the story
of how her school fell apart, intending to make Marco look bad since he’s the
one who took charge of the uprising. On
an unrelated note, an interesting thing about her side of the story is that it
explains how Marco always seems to have $650 on hand. As for Marco’s parents, it’s a huge concern that they focus more on one side of the story as opposed to hearing
what both Ms. Heinous and their son have to say. It’s a solid break from the norm of them just
being happy parents at best, but they also seem very dense. Even the law is too dense during this
situation when Marco and Star arrange bring the police, and the cop does
nothing about their claims that certain things in the scene are evil. To be fair though, Marco already acts
unintelligent through failing to explain the evil well.
Thankfully, when Ms. Heinous suggests
punishments for Marco, his parents aren’t too dense to point out how extreme
her ideas are. In the end, it’s Marco
who steps in to stop the nonsense. He agrees to apologize for spreading his
revolutionary ideals to the current generation of princesses, fancy dress, sign
contradicting his individuality mantra, and all. The fact that Ms. Heinous buys into Marco’s
clearly apathetic tone when apologizing makes the scene pretty anticlimactic
though. At least it feels like nothing inspirational about the episode
where the uprising occurred will be lost.
Rafael and Angie promise to be more
active in their son’s life which is good, although it would’ve been better if
their change in approach to parenting wasn’t caused by denseness. That’s not even mentioning the last scene of
Ms. Heinous revealing that she has club marks on her cheeks. This relates to how Star has
hearts on hers and how Moon has diamonds on hers. It's an interesting reveal
giving further promise for a fresh new direction to the series.
This episode shines for having Ms. Heinous as
a stronger threat than ever before in what she does in the present and what
she’s set up to do in the future. All the same, it doesn't change the misfortune of held held back by a few
questionable character moments.
B-
All Belts
are Off
This
is another episode centering on the karate aspect of Marco’s life, and like
most of them, they don’t stand as the show’s best. With this one, while it’s not all bad, a
large dose of flaws really prevent it from being very enjoyable on the
whole.
A karate master is coming to the
Echo Creek dojo, and the Sensei is prompted to find his top student for
representation purposes. Marco has shown great dedication to karate many times and has even
befriended Sensei to some extent. Sadly, all the signs pointing to him being named the
top student mean nothing when Jeremy Birnbaum is inexplicably named top student
instead. As a result, the rest of the
episode leaves many conflicting feelings.
As was established in his very few appearances prior to this episode,
Jeremy is not a very pleasant character at all.
He does nothing but act like a heartless relentless jerk for not good
reason at all, the kind that hardly ever come off as enjoyable. The fact that this is a little kid acting
like such a psychotic bully adds to the unpleasantness. His high scratchy
voice makes his moments annoying as well as flat out mean and wrong. It also doesn’t feel right for Marco to feel
so sore for not getting what he wanted. It doesn’t make him very
mature. After all, he may be dedicated
to karate a lot, but it did take him a long time to just become a red belt. There could be a good reason Jeremy was chosen that he’s not considering, and
Marco’s supposed to be really good as a voice of reason. Because both Marco and Jeremy are seen to be
in the wrong, the subsequent scenes of Marco trying to expose Jeremy as a jerk
to spite him are not pleasing to watch. That doesn’t quell the fact that Jeremy is a
jerk thus leading to several unpleasant moments. They include berating his parents and
conning people into picking up a $100 bill under some questionable scatological
material. Coming from a small child, these moments are very disturbing.
At the very least, even if Marco isn’t very
mature on the matter, there’s plenty of proof that he does have a point in
saying that Jeremy does not deserve to represent the dojo. This makes the fact that Sensei hypes up the arrival of the karate
master with statues and flags of Jeremy kind of unsettling since he’s giving
into a brat. However, since Marco’s
grudge was petty on the whole, he forgets exposing Jeremy and lets the visit
continue as planned no matter how much he doesn’t like it.
The ultimate presentation goes on as planned
with Jeremy giving his skilled moves, but has to tell the
audience to cheer for him instead of letting them do it themselves. In fact, they hate him as much as Marco does,
showing that Marco really isn’t as dense as he was frequently letting on. Speaking of Marco, he expresses his
frustration privately to Sensei, and ends up learning that Jeremy was chosen to
represent the dojo because of his money. That's the weakest excuse for getting away
with bad behavior you can think of.
Still,
the ending is satisfying on many fronts with Sensei, as someone who genuinely
wants to be a friend to Marco, learning to be more open when explaining things
to him. Adding to the positive vibes of the ending, Jeremy’s performance getting brushed off by the grand master who
wasn’t paying attention. It makes the
episode a perfect example where the story has noticeable problems and
unpleasant moments, but make up for everything with a solid ending. It may not be the best from this show, but it
is at least passable.
C
The Ranking
- Bon Bon the Birthday Clown
- Ludo in the Wild
- Into the Wand
- The Hard Way
- Hungry Larry
- Raid the Cave
- Running with Scissors
- Game of Flags
- Baby
- On the Job
- Sleepover
- Is Mystery
- Naysaya
- Mr. Candle Cares
- Wand to Wand
- Page Turner
- Starstruck
- Girls’ Day Out
- By the Book
- Friendenemies
- Crystal Clear
- Gift of the Card
- Starsitting
- Star on Wheels
- Mathmagic
- Camping Trip
- The Bounce Lounge
- My New Wand
- Heinous
- Red Belt
- All Belts are Off
- Spider with a Top Hat
- Star vs Echo Creek
- Fetch
- Goblin Dogs
- Pizza Thing
- Trickstar
The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review finds Star struggling to reason with the school after accidentally throwing away their opossum statue, and she also continues to find it hard to accept that she and Marco are better off as "just friends."
Next time on MC Toon Reviews in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, "Let's Have a Stakeout."
If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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