The K.O. Trap
When Professor Venomous formed an official alliance with Boxmore last season, there were only a few glimpses of how things there would change. This element gets a lot more focus and development in Season 3, and this cartoon demonstrates its extent and approach towards villainous actions.
It begins with the company’s usual simplicity towards crimes with K.O., Rad, and Enid chasing Darrell to get back doors to the bodega he stole. It isn’t long before the threat gets bigger when a gas knocks the three heroes out. They wake up inside a single confined cube in the middle of a dark void with no visible way out and no way anyone can hear them. In other words, they’re trapped in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the rest of the world. That alone is enough to show how dark this setup really is, especially as everyone shows disgust over the suggestion that Lord Boxman is responsible for this.
Things get darker from here as K.O. and the others decide that the best thing they can do is stay put and wait for someone to look for them. They pretend they have good entertainment and food (which is nothing) and seemingly count of the days they’re trapped. Through it all, there’s humor in staging, and darkness from deeper meanings. It’s pretty hard to successfully portray the two tones together without anything feeling off. Eventually, it turns out they were only counting the minutes they were trapped, and are quick to understand the drawbacks of staying put. For that, they try to forge their own way out with a bit of witch magic from Enid, and a few pretty gross sacrifices.
Just when it seems like there’s hope for escape at last, the darkness grows as Enid and Rad are both struck with rays that turn them into goo. The staging doesn’t hold back in the slightest as K.O. reacts to the destruction of his friends. Even as he still manages to escape the cube by cartoonishly going down the drain, the ramifications of what he saw remain. That said, he runs into Rad and Enid during his escape who claim to have witnessed similar destructions. With it becoming clear that the setup is messing with them mentally, they approach the next best villain to pull all this off, Professor Venomous.
Through his
sleazy villainous tone, he shows no mercy in declaring that this was all done
to mess with the three heroes, especially K.O.
Trapping them in a box is enough to break them mentally, but the goo
clones of K.O.’s friends were specifically designed to act like the real ones,
personalities and all. This would make
their supposed demises even more traumatic.
If that’s not enough, Professor Venomous messes with K.O. again by
revealing this Rad and Enid as even more goo clones. The real Rad and Enid show up and they’re
shortly launched back to the Plaza after, but the effects remain. The moral K.O. has someone to actually hate
in Professor Venomous, and he’s still not sure if the Rad and Enid he’s with
now are really real. It goes to show how
far Professor Venomous is willing to go with these schemes, and how he should
be taken seriously even in an expressive cartoony world. That there is the benefit of this cartoon
where it digs deep to a psychological extent, yet still manages to feel right
at home with the usual animated approach.
A
Season 2
Rankings
1. Your World is an Illusion
2. T.K.O.’s House
3. Final Exams
4. CarolQuest
5. All in the Villainy
6. Dark Plaza
7. GarQuest
8. Dendy’s Power
9. Crossover Nexus
10. Lord Cowboy Darrell
11. Bittersweet Rivals
12. Beach Episode
13. Red Action to the Future
14. My Fair Carol
15. K.O.’s Health Week
16. Are You Ready for Some Megafootball?!
17. Boxman Crashes
18. Wisdom Strength and Charisma
19. Gar Trains Punching Judy
20. I Am Jethro
21. Mystery Sleepover
22. Super Black Friday
23. Point to the Plaza
24. Project Ray Way
25. Special Delivery
26. Seasons Change
27. The So-Bad-Ical
28. Monster Party
29. Sidekick Scouts
30. Whacky Jaxxyz
31. Rad’s Alien Sickness
32. Plaza Film Festival
33. OK A.U.! Alternate Universe
34. Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show
35. Be a Team
36. Plaza Alone
37. Soda Genie
Season 3
Ranking
1. T.K.O. Rules
2. K.O. vs Fink
3. Chip’s Damage
4. The K.O. Trap
5. We Are Heroes
6. K.O., Rad, and Enid!
In the next OK K.O. review, we finally get a present day appearance of former P.O.I.N.T. member, Rippy Roo.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Hooty's Moving Hassle" from The Owl House.
If you would like to check out other OK K.O.! reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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