The So-Bad-Ical
It’s hard to imagine a season of this show without great moments with K.O. and his best friend Dendy. Actually, Dendy herself doesn’t have much to do in the second season, but her presence still makes for some highly interesting material. This is the case with this cartoon taking place at her most fitting environment, the public school. At the same time it offers development for a character you wouldn’t expect to learn a lot about.
After an establishing scene of a train of textbooks driven by Ernesto the Boxmore robot, something suspicious soon makes itself known for K.O. and Dendy’s class. They learn from their principal, who turns out to be Santa Claus, that their teacher, Ms. Quantum has suddenly taken a sabbatical. Coming in as a substitute is Ernesto who supplies everyone with a fresh supply of textbooks. When it comes to teaching, he seems to get all the students in a trance of saying nothing but simple math problems. Dendy is unaffected, knowing that all of these lessons were learned already, and gets herself and K.O. out of class to properly assess the situation. Through proper research, they come to the conclusion that since their substitute is an evil robot from Boxmore, he’s deliberately turning the students into zombies. Such repetition of mundane equations is apparently enough to turn their brains into pudding.
Ultimately, K.O. and Dendy decide that the only way to save everyone’s brains is to get Ms. Quantum back despite all the problems Dendy may have with her. In all her previous appearances, Ms. Quantum has been seen as a pretty bitter school teacher with low tolerance for the antics of her students. She’s also made a point to not be so easily impressed with Dendy in a previous cartoon. All of these appearances have given her the impression as just a disgruntled teacher and nothing more. However, when K.O. and Dendy find her at Gar’s Bodega to convince her to come back, Ms. Quantum proves to be more complex than that. She went on sabbatical because she’s frustrated with the school’s decision to force education onto students with a new supply of textbooks. This is hard for her to deal with because she’s very passionate about her job and wants to enforce education the right way.
While this makes her more noble than average, she goes about it the wrong way, turning to an older interest in being a villain. She goes after the textbook train planning to blow it up with exploding chille she came to the bodega for. K.O. and Dendy go after her resulting in a battle in the air and on a desert surface where Ms. Quantum is armed with a teacher’s red marks. During this battle is an even bigger reveal to Ms. Quantum’s character. All she really wants is to be taken seriously as a teacher, and it turns out that her best student Dendy is the biggest drive to going bad. She’s so smart that there’s nothing Ms. Quantum can teach. Dendy insists that she has been inspired to never give up because of her teacher as stated through a barrage of more red marks. As one last way of showing humanity, this is all Ms. Quantum needs to decide to return to being a teacher, even if she does forget about her plan to blow up the train. It’s all right though since the textbooks were actually from Boxmore which should have been obvious right from the start.
Either way, all the pieces are in place for a
good resolution as Ms. Quantum returns and seems to have changed for the
better. Considering she has no other
starring roles after this, I can assume this development sticks. In fact, the whole appeal of this cartoon is in the interesting ways character development reveals itself.
A
Season 2
Rankings
1. Your World is an Illusion
2. Lord Cowboy Darrell
3. My Fair Carol
4. Seasons Change
5. The So-Bad-Ical
6. Plaza Film Festival
7. Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show
8. Be a Team
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