Netflix Retrospective - ReBoot: The Guardian Code Season 1 Episodes 4-6

Let’s continue this ‘show’ shall we?

Catastrophic

Yeah, that’s definitely one word for it

Time for, and you’ll love this, another monologue by the sourpuss, his place is a mess. He starts talking to Megabyte before he starts typing. Off to a great start. Megabyte has created a virus that’s a cat and I think you can already see where this premise is going and why that title was used, Megabyte orders it released into a data stream.

So, what’s this episode’s b-plot of the day? Well, Trey didn’t do too well on a 'principles of coding' test and his father isn’t happy about it. He needs good grades to stay on the basketball team. OK, I didn’t think this school took students who weren’t at least competent in that art. I hate this trope so much because the father is a jackass who just thinks a stern talking to actually solves anything.

Tamra’s released another Vlog… yay? It starts to play an awful song which is interrupted by…. Holy sh*t that’s terrifying! Naturally Vera finds it cute. It begins wreaking havoc on her the phone and don’t phones have some level of protection to ensure this doesn’t happen. Anyway, roll credits.

It’s even effected the computers at the HQ, somehow. This show clearly doesn’t understand how viruses work but like that’s a surprise at this point. There’s a prison called Virusylum, ok, of course there is. So the Guardians’ task is to trap the cat in a unit designed by Vera and transport it to the prison. Trey of course wants to hurry things along but continuing to ask for the game plan actually slows things up.

They track the virus but it gives them the slip. Vector follows it into a data-stream using his jet-board whilst the others track it from the ship, however it seems the cat virus has already corrupted it. Meanwhile, with the distraction in place, Megabyte and his sentinels are laying siege to somewhere. The guards here have shields but there’s actually useless.

Googz, Enigma and D-Frag catch up with the cat and corner it, Vector comes in and almost ruins it, but the plan works and he wants the credit. Seriously? We’re doing this? They analyse it so they can repair the damage done, Vera soon discovers the traces of the Megabyte virus in it, and we see that Megabyte’s assault has already resulted in a firewall being breached

Cut to Pogo Security Systems, where the Sourpuss has decided to invade, with the firewall down, he easily hacks his way in. His target is a cube called the Nova X3J, which he describes as beautiful. Vera soon detects the attack and D-Frag is reluctant, eventually confessing his test to his team. With that knowledge at hand, Vera decides to help speed things along with individual vehicles, not sure if they’re faster than the main ship but f*ck it, more toys for kids to buy.

With the enemy’s air superiority neutralised, the Guardians are quickly taking out the sentinels, the problem is Megabyte manages to take down the second firewall, which gets the room hiding the Nova X3J abandoned. Also, the room itself isn’t really an office, it looks like a f*cking classroom, and probably is. The Sourpuss grabs the Nova X3J and drives off with it in his van.

Googz and Engima are tasked with re-establishing the firewalls, whilst Vector and D-frag spew generic dialogue at Megabyte, and he does so in return. With the mission accomplished, Megabyte and his sentinels retreat. The cat virus pukes up a code ball, WHAT?! As Vera analyses it, they send off D-Frag because of the test, the whilst the others take the cat to jail. So… was Trey not doing well because he was late all the time, that’s not well established but if that wasn’t the case, how does this help?

Meanwhile, there’s a report about the sourpuss’ activities, since I last watched it, they’ve corrected the subtitle to say sorcerer. I’m still calling him sourpuss though. OK, there’s a lot of technobabble about this thing but the gist is it can somehow connect to the internet from anywhere, even when there’s no router or landline socket, saving the Sourpuss a bundle in broadband fees and meaning he can launch an attack from anywhere and it wouldn’t be traceable.

Trey aced his test… so that was a thing. Vera has been unable to open the sphere, and there’s a brief joke about her finding a cat outside the school, it ultimately goes nowhere.

Episode 4 felt weirdly rushed. The lesson of the day stuff feels tacked on at best as the meat of the story was very much elsewhere, that said, the reveal of the sorcerer and him actually being successful is interesting, as is the code-ball.

Rating 5.5/10

Discoveries

Megabyte is working on a replicator to expand his sentinel army. Neither he nor the Sourpuss are happy about the progress. Sourpus needs a massive show of force for his next attack. Vera isn’t having much luck decrypting the sphere and is reduced to instead making a fart joke and giving Parker a breath mint, which he puts on his Pizza

OK, so finally the file is decrypted, it’s a video file, showing the old garage where Austin’s father used to work. He’s testing something on a mouse… OK, how did this end up being on the cat virus? The test was about sending a mouse into cyber-space, and bringing it out again, calling him the ‘next generation guardian.’ Yup, Austin’s father created the guardian code. He also likes a messy as hell lab… you’d never guess what that’s leading to.

Apparently, there was an explosion in the garage that ‘killed’ Austin’s father. He deduces that there are other spheres and Vera uploads a tracker to the Codex ship, Austin and Parker are free to work whilst the others have class so it’s a scouting mission for them. Trey mocks Austin as the leader, because they’re both jackasses.

The tracking system doesn’t find anything, so they begin a patrol route. Megabyte finds his duplicator is missing a component and sends his alpha sentinel to find it. More of Vera interacting with the class… this is not funny, Vera gets detention along with Tamra

Dopple Labs Duplication terminal…. OK, who are Dopple labs, why do they want to duplicate sh*t? Anyway, the alpha sentinel attacks the place and the guardians soon detect a sphere and go tracking it. They find a sphere in the data stream but it proves itself tricky and Vector is knocked out of the stream. They have the sphere but soon get the news of the hacking, Vector decides they should head out and investigate.

They decide to stow away, rather than directly engage as the code duplication device is stolen and Megabyte uses it to increase his sentinels. Vector sees this and decides they can’t wait and have to shut the device down. Googz hacks the device and blows it up, but in doing so alerts Megabyte to their presence. The stupidity of the sentinels means it’s up to him to find them.

Vera’s quickly bored by detention, and upon detecting high stress levels from Vector and Googz, Vera sets off the fire alarm to get them out, now any good school would do head counts after a fire alarm but this school will be lazy. In the fight against more sentinels, Vector loses the code-ball and has trouble retrieving it, eventually deciding it’s too risky and they leave without it.

Moral of the day conclusion, bla bla bla… this episode got boring, we already saw Megabyte’s fortress, surfing the data stream isn’t new and Megabyte is back to square one, which means either they’ll forget about the new army or he’ll have built another one. Either way, he now has his hands on a code ball, woo!

Rating 5/10

Emotional Rescue

That awful as hell music is still here and Vera is having trouble with it. Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s just sh*t. Vera heads off to do more research as we’re introduced to their version of Alexa, ALYX! Megabyte’s sentinels attack a transaction terminal, which means, oh no, Tamra can’t buy a bag of Kale chips, the horror!

Vera installs the a plugin of teenage emotions, you know the overbearing and overemotional type, according to Zordon, as Megabyte’s attack intensifies, Vera is alerted to it and has to call the guardians. The Sourpuss warns Megabyte that anti-virus will kick in soon, rather than immediately as most anti-virus software does.

Meanwhile, we’re introduced formally to the Department of Internet Security. The Bank is called the Global Village Bank, which is like calling it the Ocean Desert bank, these words don’t belong together. Also, HSBC did it first. Anyway, they’ve been alerted to the attack. Vera’s emotions change every 5 seconds and as such she’s kinda rude to the guardians until she isn’t and then is again, and then isn’t again.

We get a throwaway line that Megabyte must’ve fixed the replicator, *sigh* and they begin the attack. Meanwhile Vera is listening to music to help her emotions, but is influenced differently by every song. Also, the sourpuss is monologuing again, they soon find a dark code rift created by him and a cyber-worm comes through and begins its attack.

It’s seems relatively immune to a code disruptor, and begins digging into the bank, according to Vera if it’s successful, all the banks customers will lose all their money for good. The guardians show up on a computer as a vertical code string that repairs any code made green by the sentinels. I know, I’m just done complaining about it at this point.

Vector manages to follow the cyber worm, stealing the alpha sentinel’s fun while he’s at it. The worm heads through a laser grid, almost entirely unphased by it. Vector follows, showing gymnast level agility he doesn’t normally have. The others appear to be running low on power, and it becomes that power is a plot device to add tension because the fights themselves rarely present any sort of challenge.

Vera arms the codec and begins providing air support, but Vera’s high on rock music and begins attacking the others as well. Vector manages to slice the worm in half but then both halves grow into full worms. Vector gets one to eat the other, bringing us back to one worm but it’s still one worm, Vector tricks it into eating its own tail and that’s the threat over.

Vera is told off for what she did and thank god, Tamra can buy her kale chips. Vera decides to uninstall the emotional plugin and we see her crying as she does so. So hugs and lessons learned bla bla bla, end of episode, please? No, we have to listen to that awful music.

Back at the DIS, they’ve found the guardian code, but think it’s related to the sourpuss. Megabyte is replenishing his army but the Sourpuss isn’t happy, he thinks perhaps the solution is more Megabytes.

I get the concepts here and see what they were going for, but the show’s problems; character, dialogue and animation related all work against it, also the music is f*cking awful.

Rating 5.5/10