[6.8/10] Oh good, the annoying kid is back in the very next episode! What joy! The good news is that, despite Bucky making a less-than-triumphant return here, Ro at least had the intelligence to just yank his magic remote control away from him this time. So hey, we’re making progress!
The problem with this episode is that it’s a combination of a really interesting idea and a really cliched idea. There’s something really corny about the existence of an even scarier-looking and more dangerous infiltration bot doing the NSA’s dirty work. It just reeks of the show not really knowing what villains to introduce and so settling on “Zeta except meaner.” The fact that after his damage in this episode, the IU-7 unit decides that Zeta is his target is even cheesier.
But I actually really like the moral ambiguity of Zeta risking himself in order to save the corrupt arms dealer that IU-7 was sent to take out, because he believes that this form of killing is wrong, regardless of who the target is. They’ve already nicely framed Zeta as someone of supreme moral principal, and it’s interesting to see that tested here, particularly when the guy he’s trying to save is blasé both about the prospect of assassination and about turning himself in.
The catch is that there’s not much to the execution (no pun intended). The action scenes involving the various local South American toughs are generic, and the showdown with IU-7 isn’t anything to write home about either. Bucky gets his day in the sun with his remote, using moving equipment to knock out the bad robot, which is pretty corny, though at least he seems willing to use his abilities for good now.
Overall, this is a weaker but watchable episode that creates an interesting moral question for Zeta, but doesn’t do much that’s interesting beyond that.
Shout by TikiWhoVIP 2BlockedParent2024-03-10T20:56:48Z
It makes sense that there would end up being more than one. Very T1000 vibes.