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The
Apprentice
A winning formula is one of creative ways of teaching a
message, and features strong character moments that allow them to develop. This is what makes me quite fond of this
particular episode.
It’s about the
Xiaolin Warriors learning about the art of deception which is said to be key in
facing Chase Young. The problem is that
Omi is much too trusting of everyone, allowing him to easily fall for ploys
during a training exercise, sometimes to funny effect. These issues take the forefront when Jack
Spicer gets involved in the story. He’s
given an opportunity to become Chase’s apprentice against Katnappe. Their challenge is to see who will be the
first to obtain the next revealed Shen Gong Wu first. Jack takes off with another robot replica of
himself that turns against him again, while Katnappe reprograms mini-robots of
the Warriors from a while back to fight the real ones. It’s due to the latter move that Katnappe
wins the apprentice title leaving Jack depressed.
He finds his way to the Xiaolin Temple and
makes his situation known to the Warriors.
Like before, Omi is the quickest to trust Jack and actually welcomes him
a chance to become one of them. What’s
more, the others go along with the decision.
Despite a lot of time spent on Jack settling into a life on the side of
good through getting up early and doing everyone’s chores providing good
laughs, something always feels suspicious.
Then again, that would be appropriate given that Jack always revels in
being evil despite not being up to the standards of most villains.
His good worth does feel more legitimate when
Katnappe, with her mini robot army, arrive to steal more Shen Gong Wu. She puts
the Warriors in a creatively comical trance with the new Shen Gong Wu, the
Woozy Shooter, but Jack helps ensure their success. However, the sight of the fallen Shen Gong Wu
Katnappe ends up leaving behind reawaken old habits and Jack betrays the
Warriors. This could be a way of saying
they were all fools to trust their longtime enemy if not for what happens
later.
Like the last episode, Omi turns
to help from another enemy, Katnappe, seeming like he’s giving into her
compliments on his cuteness. They find
where Jack’s keeping the stolen Shen Gong Wu, but then he and Omi end up taking
a Xiaolin Showdown. It’s one of the
show’s most colorful taking place on red balloons with Chinese symbols that pop
into confetti which is a plus. Even
better, it’s actually based more on characterizations than action like usual as
the balloons pop whenever the opponents lie.
While Omi is very honest apart from admitting his ego is huge, Jack’s
lies explain a lot about himself. The biggest
reveals are that he’s only evil because he feels weak and insignificant and
that he did genuinely try to be good when that didn’t work out. It’s all a believable outcome to why Jack
acts so comical and pretentious, making him more in-depth than ever. He still loses to Omi though who fully
masters the art of deception by having the mini robots reprogrammed so Katnappe
doesn’t take back the Shen Gong Wu herself.
At the same time, an interesting layer to all this is revealed as we end
with Chase revealing that the whole apprentice challenge was to get Omi to
further experience evil. In other words,
Omi was the true apprentice all along.
Ultimately, the episode turns out to be a memorable and insightful
character-driven escapade with development and good wit and spirit.
A+
The Ranking
1. Citadel of Doom
2. The Last Temptation of Raimundo
3. The Apprentice
4. The New Order
5. The Evil Within
6. Enter the Dragon
7. The Deep Freeze
8. Days Past
9. PandaTown
10. The Emperor Scorpion Strikes Back
11. The Return of PandaBubba
12. The Sands of Time
13. The Year of the Green Monkey
14. Master Monk Guan
15. Screams of the Siren
16. The Demon Seed
17. Crystal Glasses
18. Dreamscape
19. The Shard of Lightning
20. Hear Some Evil, See Some Evil
21. Sizing Up Omi
22. The Black Vipers
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Jermaine returns with disappointing results, mostly on Omi's part.
If you would like to check out other Xiaolin Showdown reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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