The Final Episode #18: X-Men (1992 - 1997)

 

Yes, It's the return of what I think might be my favorite column of mine on my silly little blog. The Final Episode hasn't seen a post about it since the middle of February. Talking about Friends took way too much out of me so I had to take a few weeks off, and I'm only half joking there. I was wondering what stuff to talk about  but I couldn't find something appropriate. However, I've finally found a few to discuss so we will see how the end of several tv shows worked out in the next few days! Excitement!

As you can see that I have no gotten bored about talking about the X-Men, seeing as the Final Episode of the cartoon series that ran on Fox Kids from October 31st, 1992 to September 20th, 1997 for 5 seasons and 76 episodes. Like a lot of shows it feels like this one had way more episodes because all kinds of crazy shit happened in this show. Anyway, This show was a Canadian/American co-production and a lot of the voice actors are from Canada... Jubliee was voiced by Alyson Court who also voiced  Lydia in the Beetlejuice cartoon and played Loonette the Clown in the Big Comfy Couch, a show for pre-Kindergarten kids that was so entertaining you'd see me watching it at the age of 13. I ain't ashamed. Fuck you.

This show was a big part of what got me into comic books. I don't know if I got to see it on Fox Kids becuase I don't think we had that channel in 1992, BUT YTV showed the hell out of this show and the Spider-Man cartoon, both of which were so fucking cool. I just had to buy the comics after seeing this. PJ Phresh Phil told me this would be cool and he was right! (He was a host of several YTV blocks where they would talk about the tv show or something else before it started! He is still one of the coolest guys alive! I wish I knew Snit!)

So, like a lot of cartoon series that I've discussed on this little column here, it changed the theme of the cartoon. So far it's been this, Garfield and Captain Planet. I don't know why the hell you'd change from a great thing to an absolutely terrible horse shit thing but they did. Here's a link to the season 5 remix. It is clearly not as good as the original and it's shorter! The theme song is what got you pumped the fuck up to watch Wolverine wreck shit! Another problem is that they had a smaller budget and the animation looks cheap. Like this is coming from someone who still enjoys Hanna Barbera and Filmation and this shit was just hard to watch. They also changed some of the character designs around and they suck too. Don't mess with shit that already works people. It's pretty dingle dang simple you know!

Anyway this episode is uh pretty lopsided and kinda weak. I like the main concept of it, with Professor X being hurt and almost dying because of HENRY PETER GYRICH (I do not remember if he appeared on this show or not, but he is one of my favorite comic book characters EVER. He's just this grumpy asshole government employee who in this episode is shown to be bigoted against mutants. I don't remember if he has any bigotry towards them in the comics but it wouldn't surprise me. This episode gets winning points just for having him in it, despite him not having his red hair) Professor X being hurt on live tv with a crazy man who wants congress to make it harder for mutants to live well pisses the fuck outta lot of mutants who think that humanity would never accept them so they go to Magneto and well all hell breaks loose. It was neat seeing Sunfire of all characters in this episode. I like asshole characters like him a lot.

It's up to the X-Men to find Magneto because he's the only one who can help Professor X's brain connect with Lillandria of the Shi'ar. I didn't know I'd be talking about those bird people rascals in TWO posts within the SAME day. I like the Shi'ar. I like the romance between Lilliandra and Professor X. Magneto goes with them to help Professor X in a heroic moment as he believes that Professor X is his greatest enemy and maybe only friend. It's a weirdly great little moment in a less than amazing episode.  This episode ends without even fixing the problem with Magneto's mutants wanting war. It doesn't even feel like a cliffhanger thing just "oh shit we gotta get this out the door right now" kinda thing. Apparently they didn't think this was the last season and I guess they were told it was too late to fix anything.

FINAL VERDICT:  A sad way for one of the best cartoons of the 1990s to end with a weird maybe cliffhanger thing. Still the majority of this show was really good stuff, with that said I don't think I ever saw any of these episodes first run because I guess YTV didn't show them.