#black strategy

We open with a normal day at the Plaza and Enid’s alone, with K.O. offscreen and Rad not in this episode so he’s not around and Gar clearly gone or else he’d be yelling at enid probably.  Enid’s checking around on her phone and after checking to see if anyone’s there, once again decides to look at Red’s social because that’s not creepy. But Enid browses it wondering why Red came here in the first place, figuring there’s probably better food, better this , better that and trips up on a picture of Red with her old girlfriend, Yellow Technique.. and yeah i’m not beating around the bush, while they never come right out and SAY IT, the episode contextualizes things as such. I Mean granted given my shipping habits on this blog, you can see i’m willing to ship plenty of kids together, and even then only in a “Awww” holding hands, maybe an awkard kiss way, and am a shipping monster who has plenty, but here i have no horse in this race, it’s just really obvious subtext. 

Anyways enough Cul De Sacs, Enid sees a new picture... Red taking a selfie with an unaware Enid.. and who probably just heard Enid’s last few sentences and at the very least dosen’t care. After a flirty “Hey Ya” and enid awkardly hiding her phone, Red buys some gum for cover then invites Enid to hang out for the afternoon then leaves.  Then KO pops up out of nowhere hilariously, and for his only scene this episode to gush about Enid’s sorta date, though Enid is paranoid it’s just a setup for some sorta joke or prank.. which given that red was willing to set a child on fire while her friend spanked him because that’s not weird at all, yeah kinda a good point, even if she’s ignoring the obvious signals that, for once, Red seems to be genuine. She WAS a bit awkward at times during asking her out, pausing or stammering, she just quickly recovered. But it also shows the downside, if breifly to red’s kind of life: If your an ass to everybody, even people who genuinely like you may worry your just messing with them. 

But when Enid goes to return the gum, she finds Red not only waiting but ninja snatching the gum.. and doing that to a NINJA takes skill. Top notch. Enid realizing this isn’t a prank holy fuck her crush really did ask her out out of nowhere, suggests a few things before Red shoots them down gently and revealz their going crusing. She also has enid turn her back and cover her ears while she summons her submarine.. using a sentai/power rangers set of poses and summon chant, as you do.  With their ride here and enid buckeled into Red’s Submarine, and Red dodging any questions Enid has about her past , you know, the oppsitie of normal first date behavior. Everyone knows your supposed to talk a lot, get them coffee, look deep in her eyes and tell her about your family, hold hands then shoot cocaine into your eyes and rock a buglarly. 

But no instead of any of that Red has something just as romantic and dangerous planned their going high into the...

Which, befiting this wonderful show, is an actual place that’s full of explosions, maurading gangs and dinosaurs.. I mean every place is full of dinosaurs but this place has extra dinosaurs. It’s like the savage land if it didn’t annoy me as a setting. So the two cruise on exotica style, though in a great bit Red keeps enid from unbuckling, and when asked about her past again Red dodges and instead takes them down thunder road, where the lightining strikes.... I.. I can’t stop waxing lyircal this review. Help.  On thunder road the two share a moment when both go up top and see how damn pretty the place is, what with all the glowing orbs, Red gets electrocuted and both look at each other lovingly at diffrent points with that faded light effect, you know the one. I”d name it jeremy but it definitely has a name. The two really bond and it’s telling that it’s those moments where things go well: Enid’s not nervously trying to ask first date questions, if not wrongfully and Red isn’t running from them. Their just two teenagers attracted to one another getting to know you getting to know all about you.. getting to know if you like me.  Anyways, enough of my nonsense that’s now clearly a medical condition, Red’s old friends show up to spoil the mood, with Red brushing them off as performance artists, and a chase insues.. and it’s really well done. I’ll get into this more in a minute. The two max max race, Enid gets into the cockpit and makes good use of it as it’s just like shooting womp rats back home. With help from red, they manage to get two of the hue troop cars to collide and the two hide behind a sign despite it telling them not to back to the future style. It’s here we get into the heart of the episode and what makes it really work for me: For most of the season, before and though not as often after this, Enid’s been standofish even to people she cares about, blunt and hard to get to open up. But the two incidents I mentoined last time that caused her to harden her heart and swallow her tears... got some closure in thos enidcentric eps. IN short Elodie returned and Enid tried to act like it didn’t bother her and Elodie throwing their relationship away like hot garbage for her own admitssion into point and then came back smug as ever, but KO once again got through to her and convinced her that she needed to face her and in a stunning action sequence, i’ll gush about it more when I review the episode eventually she whalloped her and got closure, even if Elodie was ssitll super popular. She then patched things up with rad after Cupid showed up to force her and rad on a date to deal with their sexual tension since Rad went on one with her in middle school that went terribly because rad listend to his friends and his friends are obnoxious piles of toxic masculinty who sucked and were not unsuprisngly phased out of most of season 2 aside from the one episode they were needed and only showed up in season 3 for rad to tell them off. It went poorly, Enid nearly died and Rad saved her and apologized for being a dick, taking the two from would be exes who are understandibly bitter to best friends at long last. 

So Enid’s healed some of her wounds.. sure she’s still standoffish.. but she’s finally opening up and letting the right ones in. And now it’s Red’s turn. Red has the same problem: She dosen’t hide but she does run or scream at issues, and as someone who tends to be quick to anger I totally understand that, a tendency to lash out due to some other thing bothering you even when the person did nothing wrong. But her crush, and now possible relationship with, Enid gets Red to finally stop dodging Enid’s questions and open up and we get Red, and her friends Backstory Red and Friends are The Hue Troop, a group of warriors founded by a woman who long ago found a powerful prisim that linked to the mysterious Zordon-like alien Ren-Bow, a precog who could sense oncoming disasters and thus empowered the woman and her 4 friends with attitude to  stop them. Like Minority Report meets Power Rangers but the Minioirty Report part actually works. And like civil war 2 if the leaders of both factions weren’t douchebags especially you Carol. But given the fight is eternal they pased their powers on generation after generation , and it was Red and co’s turn. But Red chafed at being part of a team, wearing uniforms, following orders from a rock, doing sily poses, which came to a boil when she accidently, truly accidently broke the Prisim and rather than face up to what she’d done, ran for it and thus ended up here, hiding from her past in the past.  It’s also revealed Enid’s one way crush on her is not one way. Red had also been stalking HER social media, like Enid too intimidated to make a move before now, though we DO have an explination for what changed things coming. She liked how unlike Red enid had her own style, moves and a disregard for authority. it also frankly explains a lot about Red.  spent her whole life probably, given we see what could be a kid version of red or red’s mom in the finale, preparing to be a hue trooper, given the whole generational thing i’m theorizing the Hue Troop we see are the kids of either the first gen hue troop or the second, the flashback also supporting this. Her whole life being what other people told her to be, following orders doing poses.. not being her own woman. So when being forced to turn fugitive meant she had to hide, it also meant she was free to do what she want, and went about it in the worst way: being rude to people and lashing out at them because she could, only spearing the girl she found cute and her two friends, who went along with the beahavior likely due to both liking red and being deeply insecure themselves as we saw last time, from her obnoxiousness. Even if it wasn’t a generational thing, I still supset the pressure of having to be part of a regimented group drained her and rather than talk about it she likely just avoided it like she tends to do.. and like ENID tends to do.. So it’s says something for Enid’s own development when she encourages Red, who also asked her out since Red figured shed idn’t have much time left, to STOP RUNNING and face her problems.. and punch them in the face.

Yellow shows up right as Red agrees, and a fight breaks out.. and a damn good one. I put a pin in this earlier, but the shows battle scenes, vechicalr and man to mand, are utterly gorgeous, well coregraphed and part of why I belive the animation style is so simplified. Besides allowing for the necessarily unique background cast, it also means that when it’s time for an action scene they can go balls out and give it everything without the episodes taking as long as say steven universe or a disney show.And it shows as even this brief fight is tense, well done and full of emotion as Red’s ex and her former friends fight Red and her new girlfriend with both sides having every reason to go at it. It’s crimnally cut short when a metor hits.. the same metor delivers the crystal. While the rest of the Hue Troop instantly realize this and run, Red dosen’t because it was in the distant past.. and in a great move Enid has to tell her dumbass girlfriend that they ARE in HER past. They run, Red is hit and we get the cover image for the shippers and to make it CRYSTAL CLEAR that yes this was a date. They didn’t steal a few picassos while on a sexy date heist but still. 

Also  Red stole the crystal, and her friends assume it was her plan all along. Red almost takes credit for it.. but a glare from Enid shoots that plan down and Red, once again genuinely opens up, apologizing for running from them and her problems,and implicitly hurting Yellow, as while they clearly aren’t together anymore, either due to this or other shenanigans, it still had to hurt what red did. She also thanks Enid for being the one to show her the error of her ways. that being said with a fresh prisim, it’s just as likely that the Hue Troop can now clone it and get a copy back to the past for Red to be her own grandma, as I theroize given the finale again and all and red still being around.. more on that nexttime, the troop have a working prisim till then. They part as friends with the rest of the troop encoourging enid to visit sometime and Yellow giving her approval and getting her own closure as the troop leaves.  And so we end as Red and Enid decide to resume their everything but saying it’s a date date and go Lava Surfing as they drive out into the sunset. THE END.