BEN 10: ULTIMATE ALIEN “Basic Training” Season 2, Episode 8 – I was actually expecting a little bit more from this week’s episode of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Last week’s episode left me with a lot of unanswered questions and while I was expecting a training-type episode, I was disappointed that there seemed to be no tie into the events of the previous week at all.
There were a number of new faces in tonight’s episode. I really liked Tack as the resident Ben Tennyson fan at the Plumbers’ Academy. He was cute and awkward, but I like seeing him with the group. Tack held their instructor, Magister Hulka, in very high regard despite Hulka’s strict treatment of his students. Hulka was abrasive and gruff just like a drill sergeant during boot camp, but he was such a stickler for the rules in every respect that it was impossible to think of him as a total antagonist.
Part of me even sided with Magister Hulka while he was hollering at Ben because Ben approached everything with a somewhat disrespectful slacker attitude. It was a funny contrast to Kevin, who is normally the more irreverent character, but who approached this training experience at the academy with seriousness because his Plumbers badge is so important to him.
Senior Cadet Brannigan was another character at the academy that I thought would play a bigger role than he ended up having. He and his cronies came off as total jerks, but even they seemed to have a deep respect for Magister Hulka. Ben on the other hand has been his usual stubborn self and can’t stop using the Ultimatrix despite specific rules against it. Ben kept arguing with Magister Hulka over how to handle various scenarios and when to follow rules. In the end, it’s Ben’s creativity and natural stubborn attitude that saved Hulka and Tack’s lives though, so Hulka ended up showing Ben his appreciation by giving him a medal of honor.
In the middle of Ben and Magister Hulka’s constant head-butting, there was an alien transformation I couldn’t recall previously seeing. It wasn’t specifically named in this episode, so I’m not sure if it was one that I had forgotten or if it was something completely new. If he’s an older alien, can someone remind me when we last saw it? My mind is a total blank about this one so I’m thinking it’s possible it might be a new transformation. If so, I hope there’s a follow up to give us more background on the super speedy blue creature.
I had fun watching this episode of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, but I was constantly waiting for some development that would reference last week and make this episode feel like it was contributing to an overall storyline. I suppose that in the end, Ben, Gwen and Kevin now have fully compliant Plumbers badges so that may be one of the developments that comes into play for future episodes. It did feel a little rushed at the end when we finally had the confrontation between the villain, Koler, but it ended up being a pretty decent battle anyway. Part of me wishes that we could have seen a little bit more of what Gwen, Kevin and Ben were learning before they finished with their passing marks, but I’m hoping the reason it was all taken care of so quickly was so that we could jump back into the plot line on Earth.
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