Dragonball Z Episode 17 Review – "Pendulum Room Peril"

   Now we get to see what the earth-gang is up to, after a decidedly Gohan/Piccolo focused couple of preceding episodes. And just what is it that we learn about our heroes of the same blood, these titans of the human race, Earth’s strongest home-grown fighters? We learn they’re fucked. We learn that they can’t even hold their own 4-to-2 against a couple of weak Saiyans. We learn, if we’re returning viewers, that the humans pretty much were never relevant from the very beginning.

  That’s not to say that they don’t fight valiantly, or that they don’t have their great moments throughout the series, but as far as main fighters go, well, to paraphrase a movie called Dodgeball, “they’re about as useful as a poopy-flavored lollipop.” I think the original line is “dick-flavored lollipop,” but the poopy one is way better. I hope that’s the last time I ever have to type that phrase. Anyway, humans, they suck. You know this because you are human, and you’ve been around other humans, and you have a TV where you can watch the worst humans being just the worst.

  The humans’ experience on Planet Vegeta—which they get to have courtesy of a magic Kami circle that transports them through time and space—is one similar to a nightmare. The kind of nightmare you can still have as an adult, where you’re in a corridor and SOMETHING is coming after you, but no matter how fast you run the SOMETHING is just a little bit faster until you wake up screaming, cold and sweating in the darkness of your room. For all of the power of these humans, able to fire energy beams and fly around, their limitations become very obvious to both them and the audience within seconds of encountering the Saiyans.

  I feel I need to point out what a shitty-looking planet Vegeta is. It’s a complete scrap-heap fucking hellhole. In fact, I don’t think any depiction of Planet Vegeta has made it look like you’d want to live there, unless you’re Oscar the Grouch. The reason for the planet’s abject shittiness will be revealed to the audience, but suffice it to say, the Saiyans know way more about destroying a planet than they do about maintaining one.

  Meanwhile, we do get to see a little bit of Gohan-Piccolo training. It goes exactly the same as every other one of their training sessions until the end of the whole training arc. Gohan gets his ass whooped, Piccolo yells at him for getting his ass whooped, there may be a point where Gohan gets one hit, but then Piccolo just hits him back harder than before. Wash, rinse, repeat. I feel like Piccolo might benefit from teaching Gohan some attacks instead of un-learning him by inflicting repeated blows on his head. Maybe that stuff happens off-screen? God knows we wouldn’t want to show any of that, not when we can cut to Goku going down Snake Way and going “wow this Snake Way sure is long” as he does so. And yeah, in case you were going to ask, that’s pretty much all we see him do this episode. If you showed the last three episodes of this show to somebody who’s never seen DBZ, they’d wonder why the fuck this guy is the lead character, since all he does is run up and down a giant snake-thing and bitch.

  I struggled to think of a reason to give this a three, I really did, because this episode does have a tense battle sequence. But it’s incredibly one-sided and ultimately amounts to, “ha, look how unprepared our heroes are for the battle ahead.” Which, no shit. As for everything else, it’s nothing we haven’t seen already or aren’t going to see more of in later episodes.

(2/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--Yamcha, Tien, Chiaotzu and Krillin have a collective fighting power of 1,500. So, hey, if they could all just fuse together and go back in time, they could fight Raditz to a draw! I love power creep!

--One of the Saiyans says, “My grandmother can gather energy faster than that!” And you know what? I bet she damn well could.

--Are there grandmothers on Planet Vegeta? There must be; the guy referenced them. I’m picturing just an old-ass lady in a Saiyan uniform, giving you a toothless smirk as she prepares to throw her dentures at you like an energy blast.

--I swear there’s a mistranslation halfway through this episode, because Yamcha declares that he’s going to use an attack called the Spirit Bomb. Goku hasn’t even made it to King Kai’s planet yet, and Yamcha has already learned the master’s most secret technique? Shit, maybe we’re not giving Yamcha enough credit as a fighter.