Wednesday, September 19, 2018

'Toon Reviews 20: Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 2 Episode 19: Heinous/All Belts are Off


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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
  1. Bon Bon the Birthday Clown
  2. Ludo in the Wild
  3. Into the Wand
  4. The Hard Way
  5. Hungry Larry
  6. Raid the Cave
  7. Running with Scissors
  8. Game of Flags
  9. Baby
  10. On the Job
  11. Sleepover
  12. Is Mystery
  13. Naysaya
  14. Mr. Candle Cares
  15. Wand to Wand
  16. Page Turner
  17. Starstruck
  18. Girls’ Day Out
  19. By the Book
  20. Friendenemies
  21. Crystal Clear
  22. Gift of the Card
  23. Starsitting
  24. Star on Wheels
  25. Mathmagic
  26. Camping Trip
  27. The Bounce Lounge
  28. My New Wand
  29. Heinous
  30. Red Belt
  31. All Belts are Off
  32. Spider with a Top Hat
  33. Star vs Echo Creek
  34. Fetch
  35. Goblin Dogs
  36. Pizza Thing
  37. 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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