Previously on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge, we continued our coverage of beloved 90’s Saturday Morning Cartoon X-Men: The Animated Series. This week Rogue confronts her past and Beast finds love as we take a look at “A Rogue’s Tale” and “Beauty and the Beast.” I should hope I don’t need to give a warning for a twenty-plus-year-old-show but, as always, beware of spoilers.
1. That’s Miz Marvel to You
“A Rogue’s Tale” has always been an odd installment of X-Men: The Animated Series for me. It’s great that the showrunners decided to reveal the origin of Rogue’s super-strength and flight and introduce its audience to Carol Danvers, as most of us were unfamiliar with the character. But even as a kid it seemed like a strange presentation, likely because once you begin to dissect it you realize how dark of an episode it really is.
Carol is portrayed as both a victim of Rogue and a villainous presence in her mind, often appearing as an actual monster and exclaiming her desire to take over Rogue’s mind and body. The climax sees her imprisoned in a box within Rogue’s personal corner of the astral plane and–while the final scene has her visiting Carol’s comatose body–it is a bit of a disturbing conclusion for a character who will never again be seen in the series.
2. The Fred Dukes Diet
One of the more humorous moments of “A Rogue’s Tale” shows The Blob finding some ice cream and excitedly yelling “oh boy! Tutti Frutti!” This may be my second favorite Fred Dukes moment, only behind his appearance in the “Pryde of the X-Men” pilot where he repeatedly yells his catchphrase of “nothing moves The Blob!” Bewilderingly when Storm shows up he tells her “no! You can’t have any!” before throwing his beloved Tutti Frutti at her anyway.
3. We Just Fixed That!
It’s long been a running gag that the mansion is constantly being destroyed but how many times is it at their own hands? When Rogue is having her series of hallucinatory attacks she flies out of the mansion, smashing through five floors of it on her way, of which there is a team member standing near every hole she makes. It’s a bit of a plot convenience to be able to show them all looking upward through the chaos she has created. This scene also contains a continuity error as Rogue picks up a couch to smash a mirror with but Jean uses her telekinesis to put it back down before she does. Later, before she takes off, we see the mirror smashed anyway.
4. Aftershave Lotion?
“Beauty and the Beast” is a mostly Hank-centric outing as we are introduced to a blind patient name Carly for whom the good doctor has developed a treatment to give her sight. Much of the plot revolves around the world’s prejudices towards mutants and the Friends of Humanity group kidnapping Carly. The most curious bit though is that Carly senses Beast’s presence by smelling his aftershave lotion. This is mentioned twice but what is never questioned is why Beast would need aftershave lotion when he clearly doesn’t shave? Maybe he just likes the smell but I suppose we’ll never really know.
5. Graydon Creed Sr?
As Jubilee points out “Beauty and the Beast” sees a role reversal as Wolverine uses his head to defeat the enemies and Beast has gone berserk. After hinting towards Creed’s parentage Logan has his teammates bring a hologram of the villain Sabretooth and an audio file that reveals his birth name. In a strange turn though, rather than being Victor it is Graydon Creed Sr. This can most likely be chalked up to the writers not expecting their young audience to make the connection otherwise but interestingly it is also not the only use of Graydon Sr being substituted for Victor. Earth-92131 is actually one of three universes where this is the case.
“A Rogue’s Tale” and “Beauty and the Beast” are fun, character-focused installments of X-Men: The Animated Series but next week in our Summer TV binge we’ll be covering something really special. Join us as we come back to review “Mojovision” in our second-to-last entry, and as always, excelsior!
