My Review of Transformers: Animated season 2 episode 11–Sari, No one’s Home · 11:29pm Jul 25th, 2021
Grading Scale:
A (fantastic episode)
A- (an excellent episode with at least one flaw)
B+ (a great episode with a couple of flaws)
B (a good episode which still could have been better)
B- (a good episode with numerous flaws but still rewatchable)
C+ (a decent episode)
C (eh... it’s not terrible but not good either)
C- (it’s not worth rewatching although it does have good elements)
D+ (a bad episode with a few good things in it)
D (a really bad episode with wasted potential)
D- (a terrible episode with badly written characters and butchered moral)
F (horrible and unwatchable)
Greetings to you all! This is yours truly back with another episode review of Transformers: Animated! This time, I will be talking about episode 11 entitled, “Sari, No One’s Home”. Here we have Sari Sumdac having the Autobots’ Headquarters all to herself as Optimus and his crew go out to find the returning Constructicons before the Decepticons could. However, unbeknownst to the Autobots, the said Constructicons sneak into their base since they followed a trail of oil left on the road.
We have Bumblebee to thank for that. Speaking of which, that part always bothered me the first time I’ve watched this episode back in 2008. How and why is Bumblebee’s arm leaking oil? Did I miss an episode or something? Because I don’t recall seeing Bumblebee getting his arm scratched by Blackarachnia or by the Dinobots from the last episode. So what exactly happened here?
Also, there is some inconsistency in regards to his mechanical fluids. Back in season 1, his energon was purple and here, it’s leaking oil instead of energon. What is up with that? Why didn’t anybody (I’m looking at you, Ratchet) attempt to fix his oil issue later? They spent half the episode making Bulkhead make a big deal out of it since it greatly annoyed him, but they never address it again at the end. It just felt like a complete waste of time.
As for the comedy aspect of the episode, I really enjoyed it all the way through. Mixmaster and Scrapper were again the best characters in this episode as well as seeing Sari just absolutely screwing them over. That just gives me Home Alone vibes.
The animation and the voice acting were equally top-notch, but I feel like the episode could have been a lot better if it didn’t spend half its running time on a gimmick that was neither funny nor sensical (Bumblebee spilling oil).
Oh... and one more thing. The Constructicons love to drink oil, but Bumblebee’s been leaking oil this whole time. The way it kept leaking is analogous to blood being spilled. So... they were drinking his... blood in a way. THAT DEFINITELY ISN’T WRONG OR DARK!
So yeah, I’ll give this episode a B-. It did convey a lesson of trust and learning how to defend yourself against invaders... except Mixmaster and Scrapper did nothing to cause harm to Sari. They just lost their memories after their previous encounter not too long ago, and Sari literally took it out of proportion because she thought they joined the Decepticons... which is half-true.
I just felt that they were treated unfairly in this episode because they did nothing wrong until Blitzwing enticed them to join him at the end. Poor guys...
Peace.
Those two just need better role-models.
I’m just gonna say it. I just recently rewatched this episode, and now I just wanna see someone edit Mixmaster and Scrapper’s heads onto the burglars from home alone. I think that would make for an interesting YouTube video.
Now onto trivia.
1. Blitzwing's jet mode seems to have VTOL capabilities.
2. Blitzwing just stands around while the Autobots attempt to plot his downfall using a football huddle. Is he arrogant or just plain crazy? Yes.
3. According to the Cartoon Network panel at BotCon 2008, Mixmaster's line "What the front-end-loader was that?" was originally scripted "What the forklift was that?". However, BS&P caught the very intentional verbal similarity to a dirty dirty word, so the line was changed. I fairly certain that you can see why.
And finally something I forgot to include with the Rise of the Constructicons trivia.
4. Assuming oil prices didn't somehow decrease by the twenty-second century, the "snack" the Constructicons took was worth several hundred dollars or more. Shouldn't the world be out of oil by then, anyway? Then again, Mixmaster mentions "synthetic junk", which implies a way of creating artificial oil may have been invented. My bet is on $4,000