Episode List

Season One

More Than Meets the Eye
Transport to Oblivion
Roll For It
Divide and Conquer
Fire in the Sky
S.O.S. Dinobots
Fire on the Mountain
War of the Dinobots
The Ultimate Doom
Countdown to Extinction
A Plague of Insecticons
Heavy Metal War

Season Two

Autobot Spike
Changing Gears
City of Steel
Attack of the Autobots
Traitor
The Immobilizer
The Autobot Run
Atlantis, Arise!
Day of the Machines
Enter the Nightbird
A Prime Problem
The Core
The Insecticon Syndrome
Dinobot Island
The Master Builders
Auto Berserk
Microbots
Megatron's Master Plan
Desertion of the Dinobots
Blaster Blues
A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court
The Golden Lagoon
The God Gambit
Make Tracks
Child's Play
Quest for Survival
The Secret of Omega Supreme
The Gambler
Kremzeek!
Sea Change
Triple Takeover
Prime Target
Auto-Bop
The Search for Alpha Trion
The Girl Who Loved Powerglide
Hoist Goes Hollywood
The Key to Vector Sigma
Aerial Assault
War Dawn
Trans-Europe Express
Cosmic Rust
Starscream's Brigade
The Revenge of Bruticus
Masquerade
B.O.T

Season Three

Five Faces of Darkness
The Killing Jar
Chaos
Dark Awakening
Forever is a Long Time Coming
Starscream's Ghost
Thief in the Night
Surprise Party
Madman's Paradise
Nightmare Planet
Ghost in the Machine
Webworld
Carnage in C-Minor
The Big Broadcast of 2006
The Quintesson Journal
The Ultimate Weapon
Fight or Flee
The Dweller in the Depths
Only Human
Grimlock's New Brain
Call of the Primitives
Face of the Nijika
The Burden Hardest to Bear
The Return of Optimus Prime

Season Four

The Rebirth

City of Steel in a Nutshell...
The Autobots pick up Optimus Prime's pieces while New York City gets a makeover, Decepticon style!

More Than...You Want to Know!

Warning! Warning! Major spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk!

Don't want to read everything that happened in this episode? Well, fine! Be that way! You can just darn well click here and go on to the next part, ya spoilsport!

"City of Steel"..."City of Steel." Even the title is ominous...Oh, lord help me...

Ah, the Big Apple, in all of its...er, glory... (No offense to any NYC TransFans out there, but let my just say that NYC isn't my kind of town. :) I like populations under 5,000, thanks. :) Yes, country bumpkin I am. :) ) We've got the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the World Trade Center Towers (Which, in the aftermath of 9/11, is now creepy as hell, I must say...), and the Statue of Liberty...I'll leave it to those who know better to discern if the buildings are in the right places.

Speaking of Lady Liberty, though, Laserbeak's doing a flyby of that statue, and then he circles around downtown NYC, shoots eye lasers at a manhole cover, and flies down into the sewers (YUM! Hope Decepticons don't have a delicate sense of smell... :) ) He threads his way through the tunnels and eventually comes to a purple metal door. Gee, a purple metal door...Whose door do you think this is? Yup, it'd be the Decepticons latest "Secret Hidey-Hole." Laserbeak transforms into cassette mode and snuggles into Daddy Soundwave's chest. Meanwhile, the Constructicons are doing...something (Why is it that it's never clear what the Constructicons are doing? They're always just kind of flitting around, building things for no apparent reason...until the reason becomes apparent, at any rate.) Apparently, they're building a new HQ, according to Scrapper (What, they're tired of living--Literally!--in the Pacific Basin?). They're bickering a bit (Of course they're bickering! They're Decepticons! ) about who's done the most work when Megs stomps onto the scene and tells them to shut up and work, essentially. (Well, actually he says something about them being "hyper-driven chatteroids," whatever they are...) Meanwhile, Soundwave reports that a little bird has told him that there are no Autobots in the vicinity (Maybe they don't like big cities, too? :) ), which makes Megs a very happy boy indeed. So, plans proceed apace. Megs tells Scavenger to get on with it.

Scavenger proceeds to pound on the ceiling with the back of his backhoe scooper thingy. Rocks fall from the ceiling. Bonecrusher picks some up in his bulldozer scooper thingy and dumps them into Longhaul's bed, telling him to remove the debris. Longhaul complains about that. (He's quite the whiner, I've realized. I'd like to see him and Starscream duke it out in a whining battle to the death... :) ) He claims that he didn't "join this outfit to be a dump truck." (Eh? Uh, Longhaul? You are a dump truck, you idiot! ) Meanwhile, Mixmaster drops--I mean, spews some acid or something at the area that Scavenger was banging on and, lo and behold, the Empire State Building begins to sink into the ground, though only after Megatron does some Evil Laughing™ about taking over the world, of course. (Now...Let me think about this...The Empire State Building is how tall? I have no clue... But it's darn tall, that's all I know. And the Decepticons were where? In the sewers below NYC. That couldn't be what? More than 50 feet below ground, I'd say, maybe less since the water table in NYC has to be pretty high. So...Exactly where did they stuff the entire Empire State Building? The mind boggles... )

Meanwhile, back at Autobot HQ, Optimus Prime, Bluestreak, Ratchet, Ironhide, Bumblebee, and Spike and Sparkplug are watching the news, which is reporting on the "disappearance" of the Empire State Building (Which, technically, didn't really disappear. It just sank into a hole in the ground. It's not like David Copperfield came in and made it disappear or something... ) "Megatron's work," Optimus Prime instantly surmises. (What makes you say that, Oppers? It could have been some really large metal-eating termites, you know... :) ) "If we don't get to New York City fast," he says heroically, "there won't be a city left to get to!" (Ouch! Stop dangling your prepositions, Optimus! Geez, if you're gonna live in America, learn to speak the language correctly! :) ) So the Autobots transform and take off on a cross-country road trip. Bumblebee transforms and takes off like a bat out of hell, but Spike yells after him to wait up. (One can almost hear BB muttering, "Damn, not fast enough!" :) ) As they leave, Optimus radios Sparkplug back at HQ to have "Wheeljack and the others" meet them in Central Park.

So, "Wheeljack and the others," specifically Wheeljack (Duh!), Mirage, Hound, Sideswipe, and Sunstreaker approach the city from the water, riding on hydrofoils, while Laserbeak watches from above. Sideswipe notices him and indignantly notes that he'll "blab our plans to Megatron!" No help for it, Mirage notes. Meanwhile, the other guys have arrived (That was a fast cross-country road trip... :) ) and head to Central Park.

Meanwhile, down below, Laserbeak, sitting on Daddy Soundwave's shoulder, makes random squawks that Megatron can apparently interpret just fine because Megs suddenly knows that "Prime and the rest are heading for Central Park." (So, uh....What's the use of having the tape mode?? Oh, nevermind... :) ) Megs tells Scavenger and Longhaul that their special talents will give the Autobots a terminal welcome and then he gives us the old Evil Laugh™. (And the cylindrical thing mounted on Soundwave's shoulder is a freakin' bright red in this scene... )

As the Autobots arrive in Central Park, Rumble, Frenzy, and Soundwave "greet" them. Soundwave literally shoots Bumblebee in the Beetle-butt and a fight, of course, ensues. Meanwhile, down below, Scavenger is digging right under where Optimus Prime is standing. (Gee, good thing he's standing still during this fight...) As Optimus Prime gives Soundwave the old toss, the ground beneath him collapses and he falls into Longhaul's bed. (Woo hoo! ...Ohhhh, I mean "the bed of Longhaul's dump truck mode," not into his bed bed, you perverts!) While Optimus is lying in bed, Megs uses a red-tipped, faintly...er, phallic-looking thing on Optimus that, in one second, just by touching the thing to Optimus' belly, severs all of Optimus' motor relays. (Gee, that was easy...) and then he flies up the hole through which Optimus fell and tells the gathered Autobots that if they ever want to see Optimus again, they'll leave immediately because Optimus and the city now belong to him. (Me, I'd've said "Eh, keep 'em both! :) )

A moment later, Soundwave's reporting that "Scrapper is ready." For what? To reveal Megs' new Headquarters, of course. Rising phallically from the ground, a remodeled Empire State Building is revealed, the centerpiece of Megs' reborn city of "New Cybertron" (Well, at least he didn't call it "Megatronia" this time...). Megs tells the Autobots that if they interfere, he's gonna "melt Optimus Prime down for paper clips." And, as Megs does an Evil Laugh™, Longhaul is shown carting off Optimus Prime. (To bed...? :) )

Meanwhile, everyone is splitting, Autobots and humans alike. Up on a bridge, "Wheeljack and the others" are stuck in traffic. "If only we'd been able to join the others in time!" Wheeljack laments. But Spike has a plan (Oh noooooooo!). He tells the Autobots to hang a left and the head down the off-ramp of the bridge. (Suddenly, I guess, Spike's an expert on NYC and knows just where to go? Geez, where's he been when I've tried to get around that big, confusing city. Yikes!)

Meanwhile, Megatron is still gloating at Optimus, telling him he's a failure. As Optimus' punishment for failure, he gets to be disassembled. Hook fairly salivates at the opportunity. He brandishes a big, long, light-saberish thing at Optimus, but, sadly, we don't get to the see the blood and guts of the operation. (Dang!) But we do get to see the results! Longhaul dumps big chunks of Optimus Prime out of his bed (Must've been a wild night ;) ), and Megs is one happy little boy. He praises Hook's artistic ability and then picks up Optimus' head and asks if he agrees. After fiddling with the wires dangling from Optimus Prime's severed head (Ewwww...), Optimus says, "As long as power flows through any of my circuits...Megatron...I'll fight you!" (Why is the Black Knight scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" suddenly flashing through my mind? I can see Optimus screeching after Megs even though he's got no arms or legs left... :) ) And then he apparently telepathically command his arms to grab Megatron and knock him over. (Oooookaaaaay...) Picking himself up, Megs orders the Constructicons to do as they please with the rest of Optimus, but he wants the head.

Meanwhile, at a pier, the Autobots are walking around under the water, apparently. Spike, sitting on someone's shoulders so that his head is out of the water, spots a sewer outlet. The Autobots--Ratchet, Mirage, Hound, and Bumblebee with Spike Attachment--head off into the sewers (Ewwwww...Hope they don't have delicate senses of smell. :) ), in search of Optimus. Ratchet notes that if Megs spots them they're in trouble, so Mirage does his disappearing voodoo and heads off to scout ahead. Hound notes that it's a "good thing my scanners can track old Mr. Invisible, or he'd be a tough act to follow."

Meanwhile, Hook, Scrapper, and Longhaul are in another part of the sewer. Scrapper notes that he thinks they've used Optimus Prime's parts "most creatively," and he's just figured out what to do with the last remaining part, which he's carrying--Optimus Prime's arm, with gun in hand. They transform, Scrapper tosses Optimus' arm into Longhaul's bed, and they're off to join the others on the surface.

Back with the sewer-trolling Autobots, Hound senses that Optimus Prime is suddenly behind them, not ahead of them. Mirage reappears and announces that "it looks good ahead, but it looks miserable back there!" And, coming up behind them is a suspiciously red, white, and blue mechanical alligator that even has an Autobot symbol on its shoulder. (Gee, wonder where it got that???) Mirage lays some cover fire as the others flee. As they flee, Hound announces that he can't figure out why he's sensing Prime behind them. (Um, hello??? Anyone home in Hound's brain today??) Eventually, as the Autobots flee from the "alligaticon," they come upon an old subway car. Using Bumblebee and Spike as bait, they trap the alligator in the car and send it on its way.

Meanwhile, the Decepticons are working on giving more of New York City a facelift, using cars, apparently, as sources of metal. Even Starscream has to hand it to Megatron; he notes that the city, with Decepticon modifications, is "finally starting to feel like home."

Meanwhile, the Autobots have finally found Optimus' head (The one that normally resides on his shoulders, don'tchaknow. ;) ). Optimus reports that Hook disassembled him, but he "wasn't very neat." (Hey, I wouldn't complain, Op! You're still alive, aren't you???) But he can "sense the presence of my legs...They're nearby." (BWAHAHAHAH! I don't know what it is, but that line makes me crack up every time I hear it. The idea that Optimus would know where his parts are even when he's in pieces is just absurd to me. It cracks me up. What's even worse is that, like with his arms earlier, he can telepathically make his legs come to him, like a Jedi with his lost light saber. It's ridiculous enough in Star Wars, but this is beyond ridiculous!) And then Hound finally figures out why his sensors detected Prime behind them! (Duuuuuuh!). Time to do some gator wrasslin'!

Next thing we know, Spike, Bumblebee, and Optimus's head and lower legs are watching while Mirage, Hound, and Ratchet grapple with the gator. It sure isn't easy, but eventually, with a little telepathic help from Optimus, they drag it up out of the water and, presumably, disassemble it since, in a few moments, Ratchet is welding Optimus back together again...all except for his right arm, of course, the one that Scrapper had been carrying around earlier. He senses it above ground. He orders Mirage to radio "the others" (Who, I suppose, have just been hanging around sightseeing or something?). "Megatron" Optimus asserts, "is in for a very large shock!"

Apparently, the others have been sightseeing. They're all wandering around as if they're taking a walking tour of the city and Wheeljack notes that "this sure isn't little old New York anymore." (And how would Wheeljack know? Despite his just faintly New York accent :), do you think Wheeljack's ever been there before? Doubt it.:) He's too busy babysitting the Dinobots in his closet. ;) ) Meanwhile, though, Bluestreak's just noticed Prime's arm stuck on the top of the erstwhile Empire State Building.

Meanwhile, Megs, snug inside his Empire State Building HQ, has noticed that the Autobots have managed to find all the Optimus bits and put him back together. Never fear, though, because he has the group of them in his sights. He orders Soundwave to fire and obediently (of course! :) ), Soundwave shoots at the Autobots, Optimus included, with Prime's arm. (Man, it must really suck to get shot at by your own severed arm with your own weapon...) Megs continues screeching at Soundwave, ordering him to keep firing until all of the Autobots are "TOTALLY DESTROYED!!!!" (Geez, Megs, Sounder's right there; you don't have to yell... :) ) Meanwhile, the Autobots run in terror from the ravages of Optimus gun... (Why, I don't know. I mean, it's usually conveniently ineffective against the Decepticons when the plot calls for it, after all... :) ) Since there's only one gun on the top of the erstwhile Empire State Building, Optimus orders everyone to scatter and transform. (Which is actually a good plan from Optimus. For once...) Unfortunately, the Autobots don't obey him. They don't "scatter," they just stay in the two groups they were in and run. (Didn't they learn to follow instructions in kindergarten?) Megs, watching on the monitors gloats with an Evil Laugh™ that there's nowhere for the Autobots to run...

And apparently he's right. Bluestreak and Hound fall prey to a big hole in the street (Duh! Like they couldn't see/scan a big gaping hole in the street? Sheesh!) and almost get run down by Frenzy in a subway car. Luckily, they're able to blow it up just before it flattens them, allowing Bluestreak to utter the immortal line, "Whew! That train blew just in time. One more volt and I'd've been too pooped to zap."

Meanwhile, Bumblebee with Attached Spike and the Lamborghini Brothers (Sounds like a circus act, doesn't it? :) ) are cruising down a narrow alley when they're assaulted by some taxis with attitude problems. Optimus sees that they're having problems and joins the party while the "Decepticabs," as Sunstreaker calls them, herd the three Autobots onto a street where some of the Constructicons lie in wait, hiding in alcoves equipped with Really Big Guns™. The 'Bots sort of end up caught in the crossfire. But never fear! Optimus does his cavalry bit and charges to the rescue, plowing the taxis and then the Constructicons in the alcoves.

After that, Prime decides it's time to "lend himself a hand...and an arm as well." (Oh, very funny!). He, Ironhide, and Ratchet decide to do a little building-climbing. Spike and Bumblebee see them and decide they might need some help, so they finally strike upon the idea of actually infiltrating the Empire State Building. (What a revolutionary idea! And to think, it's only taken them three-quarters of the episode to think of it!) Meanwhile, Soundwave notes that, with the climbing Autobots stuck to the side of the building, they are out of cannon range. So Megs orders, Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp to attack. And they do really well, too! They fire about three shots at the Autobots...and then fly right through the building. (Smooth move, guys... :) ) "Starscream, we're damaged!" Thundercracker yells. "We've gotta land!" Skywarp whines. "Y'all are a bunch of big babies," Starscream responds (Well, not really...Actually he says, "Cowardly weaklings! I'll crush them like tin foil.") as they bank for another pass. Watching from the ground, Sideswipe taunts, "Wanna bet?" (Hey, isn't that Starscream's line...?) He leaps into the air (Without his jet pack, I might add) and lands on Starscream's back with his legs wrapped around him. (Oh, what would the WWFF guys make of that...? Geez, I'm being really perverted in this summary, aren't I? My apologies...) "Say uncle or I'll shove your nose in your afterburner," Sideswipe says. Starscream, giving up much too easily, says uncle and goes for a swim. "Gee," Sideswipe comments as he flies away (Still without his jet pack), "I didn't know Decepticons had uncles." (They don't...but Maximals have great-aunts... :) )

Meanwhile, the Great Climb continues. So Megatron quits playing around and orders the Constructicons to "release the ultimate weapon." That, of course, would be Devastator. Devastator begins to climb after the Autobots, declaring that "Devastator wants Optimus Prime." (Ummmmm....No. Not gonna do it. I'm not gonna touch that one. I'm not!)

Inside the HQ, Bumblebee and Spike emerge from an elevator into the control room. They run around and Megatron fires after them. Of course, he accidentally shoots the console that controls Optimus' arm. No matter, Megs says and orders Soundwave to send Buzzsaw and Laserbeak after the "Earth pests." (Um, Megs? Last time I checked, Bumblebee wasn't from Earth...) He declares that Devastator will destroy Optimus Prime and that he, Megatron, will be "master OF ALL!" (Is it me, or is Megatron doing a lot of shouting in this episode. Did he listen to some Vogon poetry? Did he forget to replace the battery in his hearing aid again?)

Meanwhile, Devastator grabs the One-Armed Optimus in one hand, like King Kong with Fay Wray, and bats Ironhide and Ratchet away, through the outside wall of the building. After announcing that Optimus' end is near, he heads to the top of the building. To extend the King Kong allusion, Wheeljack sends a fleet of remote-controlled helicopters after Devastator, sort of like he saw when he watched "King Kong." When Devastator knocks them out of the sky just like King Kong did to airplanes trying to rescue Fay Wray, Hound consoles Wheeljack by offering, "Maybe Devastator saw the same picture!"

Meanwhile, inside the Empire State Building, Ironhide and Ratchet hear Megatron yelling above them. They exchange an evil look and then shoot at the ceiling in concert, creating a hole through which both Megatron and Soundwave fall. They then fall through the floor down to the floor below. Afterwards, Ironhide and Ratchet exchange a victorious handshake. (Cute, cute, CUTE!)

Meanwhile, Devastator's still climbing up the building, still with Optimus Prime in hand. Spike and Bumblebee emerge onto the roof and Spike yells to Optimus that they've "wrecked Soundwave's control of your arm!" That's the news Op's been waiting for because it means that he can now telepathically control it (Nightwind rolls her eyes here...) Which he does. The end result is that his little ol' gun makes Devastator fall down, go BOOM! He lets go of Optimus as he falls, but luckily for Optimus, Ratchet has Ironhide dangling out the window, holding him by his feet, and he catches Optimus as he falls. (Do I want to comment on the physical impossibility of all of this? Naaaaah!) As Optimus dangles in Ironhide's grasp, some of the Autobots gather at the edge of the big hole that Devastator made when he fell...and out fly some very battered Constructicons. An equally battered Megatron and Soundwave also fly of, Megatron vowing that he shall "RETUUUUUURN!"

Two seconds later, in classic G1 form, everything is back to normal. Optimus, New York, the Empire State Building, everything. And, as the Autobots transform and roll out, we see that Bumblebee is sporting one of those "I love NY" bumper stickers, with the word "love" replaced with a heart. In fact, we get an extreme closeup of it as the Autobots ride off into the sunset...

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Nightwind's Unsolicited Opinions

I hate this episode. I do! And, to tell you the truth, I've never been really sure why I hate it, so I'm going to try and work it out while I write this...

Thinking about it from an objective standpoint, I think the main reason why I hate this episode is because it's sort of an amalgam of all the stuff that rubs me the wrong way in the G1 series, except-oddly-for the characterization of Optimus Prime. (Maybe he's better in pieces... :) ) Anyway, I'll take it point by point...

• Now, granted, this isn't the only G1 episode that has a shaky, even laughable, premise. But it is, I think, the only episode that combines a shaky premise with a nonsensical, goes-nowhere plot. Which leads me to...

• The plot, such as it is, is: Megatron takes over New York City. Megatron kidnaps Optimus Prime. The Constructicons disassemble Optimus Prime and scatter his pieces around the city. The Autobots--an awful lot of them!--run around looking for Prime Parts, as if they were participating in some kind of macabre Easter egg hunt. The Prime Parts are found, they're put back together. The Autobots trounce the Decepticons, who then leave. New York City is suddenly back to normal.

  Pardon me, but am I the only who thinks that absolutely nothing happened in this episode, at least in terms of changing anything?? I mean, events did happen, but did any of them have any effect on any of the characters? No. Did any of them have any lasting effect on anything? No. The net gain of this episode is a big fat goose egg. Optimus Prime is returned to normal with the turn of a screwdriver on Ratchet's part, none the worse for the wear. (Which is almost as bad as Ultra Magnus' resurrection in TF:TM) NYC is back to normal about two seconds after the Decepticons leave. If this isn't a glaring case of the Giant Reset Button™, I don't know what is...

• I can't stand Megatron in this episode. I mean, I normally have a very low Megatron Tolerance Level, anyway, but this episode is particularly grating. For one thing, he does nothing in this episode except immobilize Optimus Prime. For another, just about every one of his lines is overblown and delivered at about 10,000 decibels. Makes me want to slam him up against the wall and yell in his face, "SHUT UP, ALREADY!!! They can hear you in China!"

• And then there's this telepathy bit with Optimus Prime and his errant parts. Geezie peezie, talk about being in touch with yourself! In all seriousness, I find it hard to believe that he would have some kind of connection with his severed and scattered parts. Forgive the gruesome imagery, but if you cut off the legs and arms of a human and scattered them around the house, I highly doubt that the appendage-less human--assuming that they lived and didn't bleed to death, of course--would be able to summon them. Sure, you could say that the TFs are robots and that somehow makes them able to do this.

  But in response to that, I would probably argue that there probably isn't much difference in the physiological process when it comes to how a human commands a limb to do something and how a TF commands a limb to do something. Really! Whether limb movement occurs as a result of an electrical impulse propagated by biochemical neurotransmitters running along consecutive nerve cells or as a result of an electrical impulse being propagated electrochemically along a circuit pathway, it's still the same darn thing! Really! For all that the TFs are different in appearance from a human, you might be surprised at the similarities between the way their bodies would probably work and the way our bodies do work. In some ways, the human body is very machine-like. Especially when it comes to nerve impulse conduction. If nothing else, in "Microbots" we saw nervous impulse conduction (albeit a bit "anthropomorphized") inside Megatron's body. It worked just about the same way ours does, basically. And when a human loses a limb, he loses his connection with it and thus loses any control over it. I seriously doubt that it would be any different for a Transformer, given that in this, at least, TFs and humans would seem to have much in common.

  Anyway, my point here is that the whole telepathic bit with Optimus and his parts is, in my mind, completely ludicrous. Sure, it made the "Search for Parts" much easier--which is probably the reason that it was put into the story--but the way it was delivered was decidedly...er, silly. I laugh out loud every time it's used and not in a good way. That probably wasn't the effect the writer wanted... :)

• And finally, everyone generally acts really dumb in this episode:

  Hound can't figure out why he's sensing Optimus Prime behind him when there's a red, white, and blue mechanical alligator bearing Autobot symbols attacking them from behind. Dumb!

  The Seekers fly right through a building after firing a grand total of about three shots each at the Autobots. Dumb!

  Megatron relies on one weapon to defend his new HQ. And it's a personal weapon at that! That's like arming an aircraft carrier with a guy standing in the bow shooting a BB gun, for pity's sake. Dumb!

  Hound and Bluestreak fall through a hole in the ground. Dumb!

  Dumbness abounds! And it's all character dumbness. Dumbness on the part of characters that normally are reasonably intelligent. That rubs me the wrong way. About the only character that isn't acting like an idiot in this episode is...Optimus Prime! Well, that's a shock! :)

So there, I think, are the main things that rub me the wrong way with the episode. Pile them all together and you have an episode that completely turns me off. It's not that any one thing is awful. (Except maybe the premise; that is pretty awful) It's that, for me, the cumulative effect of all the bad/annoying stuff overpowers anything good or amusing in the episode.

And there are good things! For one thing, there are a lot of characters used in the episode, same as it is with "The Autobot Run." And, like that other episode, there isn't really a true focus on any one character. We don't really learn anything about any of the characters except that Optimus Prime can survive for extended periods of time as a pile of random parts. (Maybe he's BW Inferno's ancestor... ;) ) But some characters that are often ignored get some stuff to do. And, in most cases they get a cute line to say or a cute little scene. (Which I'll save for the "Great Moments" :) )

But, far and away, the bad outweighs the good here. A terrible premise combined with a weak, goes-nowhere plot and zero characterization is a classic recipe for story disaster. While there are probably worse episodes, technically, there is not a pre-movie G1 episode that I hate more than this one. It was very difficult, even, to watch this one all the way through. I haven't done so in years...I'm still not sure I've entirely figured out yet why this episode rubs me so wrong, but I do know this: Whoever it was at Rhino who picked this episode to be one of the first that they released (On Volume One, no less!) needs to be flogged with a wet noodle. Baaaaaaad choice, whoever you are...

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Great Moments

Despite the fact that I hate this episode with a deep, abiding passion, there are some really cute lines/moments in it. Here are my picks:

(After Mirage disappears to scout the sewers ahead) Hound: "Good thing my sensors can track ol' Mr. Invisible or he'd be a tough act to follow.

(While dragging the "alligaticon" out of the water) Hound, Ratchet, and Mirage say in unison, to tease Optimus Prime: "This alligator is big and heavy!"

(After blasting an oncoming subway car driven by Frenzy) Bluestreak: "Whew! That train blew just in time. One more volt and I'da been too pooped to zap!"

Sideswipe, while holding for dear life onto Starscream in midair: "Say uncle or I'll shove your nose in your afterburner!" (Gee, I wonder what word is being replaced by the word "afterburner"...?)

The sequence with Ironhide and Soundwave exchanging that evil look and then blasting a hole in the floor underneath Megatron and Soundwave and then shaking hands after Megs ad Soundwave fall through to the floor below them is priceless. The only thing that would have made it better is if Ironhide would've yelled down through the hole the Megs and Sounder made something like, "Paybacks are a bitch, ain't they fellas?!"

And lastly, after Wheeljack's "King Kong" solution fails, Hound comforts him with "Maybe Devastator saw the same picture!"

For an episode I hate, there are lots of little moments I like. They're little "camaraderie amongst the 'Bots moments," and they're rather cute, and, in general, I tend to like that kind of stuff. I just wish that the Decepticons had had some of these things... But noooooo! :)

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Totally Arbitrary Overall Rating, Just For the Heck of It

Oh, ACK! That about sums up my opinion of this episode.

Still, for the cute moments, it gets a 0.3. Without any cute moments, it'd get a -5. Now, if "City of Steel" didn't have one or more of the inanities that I pointed out in the opinions section, it might get more than this. It might have beaten out "The Autobot Run." If nothing else, it is animated better than "The Autobot Run" is. (Then again, being poorly animated can be a help to an episode from my POV. I'm too busy laughing at animation errors to notice anything else.) But the combination of all that stuff I mentioned drags this one down into the cellar and maybe even deeper than the cellar. Besides, "The Autobot Run" has Chip, and I like Chip, so "TAR" gets Chip Points. "CoS" doesn't. Therefore, "The Autobot Run" wins this dubious race.