Dragonball Z Episode 18 Review -- "The End of Snake Way"

   Honestly, I’m tempted to give this episode a 5 just for the title. I’ll always remember the constant running of Goku down Snake Way to be the most tedious filler imaginable. You know Goku’s the motherfucking guy, because you, like most kids who grew up with Toonami, did not watch the series from the very beginning because you just happened to catch it one day after school and now you watch it religiously. You know Goku gets stronger, his friends go to Namek for some reason, the details are vague and hard to put into words, but this Snake Way bullshit just keeps on going when you already know Goku wins!

  So when, near the episode’s end, Goku gets to the end of the path and discovers King Kai’s small planet, we are thrilled collectively. No more pointless fucking running sequences! No more falling off Snake Way and having to start over! No more weird Smurf-snake-princess-monsters to distract Goku from his journey to outclass the Saiyans! Now there is only… a gorilla. A tiny gorilla on the planet that Goku immediately assumes must be King Kai because nobody else is around at the moment. Goku asks it for help in getting some of the blue fruit growing on the nearby tree, struggles with some difficult gravity, and finally, at the very end of the episode, King Kai actually shows up and questions just who the fuck this idiot is who just showed up on his planet.

  Folks, we still have a ways to go.

  Back on Earth, we get another instance of Gohan going ape. This time, it’s courtesy of Goku’s space pod projecting a moon into the sky, a thing that has conspicuously never been a fucking problem before until this moment. I’m sorry, but with some of this filler nonsense, I have to suspend my suspension of disbelief. Does this damn show really expect me to believe that Goku’s space pod just sat there, undetected, for around twenty years until it randomly just decided to shoot a moon into the air because Gohan just happened to be nearby?

  Anyway, Piccolo has to destroy the ship, then he once again has to give Gohan some new duds. At least Gohan seemed to give Piccolo a challenge for the first time since they started to train together. Other than that, we have Bulma and Roshi’s gang hanging out and drinking beer because they gathered up the dragon balls, and quick, too! It’s a miracle they didn’t randomly have to fight some kind of horrible monster or a group of ruthless martial arts masters hell-bent on keeping the magic balls for themselves, but I guess by now the world has run out of those that aren’t firmly in the Z Fighters camp.

  So, all of this is to say, the only remotely advancing thing that occurs in this episode is that, whoopee, Goku’s finally done riding the snake. And all he has to show for it at this point is a monkey and then a blue guy laughing at him. Oh, and some fruit, but hell, he could have stayed in Hell and gotten some fruit. In fact, I wonder how this saga would have gone if, instead of making it to King Kai’s place, Goku had simply trained by himself in Hell until he was resurrected by the dragon balls. I can imagine he would not have had as much luck against the Saiyans.

  In spite of getting off Snake Way, I don’t really care much for this episode either, and it’s starting to depress me to have to give out all of these twos. I was hoping at least a few of the filler episodes would warrant a three or a four, but I can’t do it. I try to convince myself that some of these need to be a three and I just can’t. I promise, once we get to the episodes where there’s some actual fighting, we’re going to start handing out some fucking good scores. I can’t promise they’ll all be fives, but Jesus Christ, they won’t all be twos either. If you averaged out the scores of the last five episodes, you’d swear to God I hate this show, and nothing could be further from the truth.

(2/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--Piccolo telling his clone, “Be sure to make a note of that, wouldja?” That’s some good comedy.

--Was the Special Beam Cannon really necessary to blow up the half-destroyed space pod? At least we know now he doesn’t need nearly as long as he once did to charge that attack.

--Okay, how the fuck does Goku know who Isaac Newton is?

--Goku really commits to believing that Bubbles is, in fact, King Kai. When Bubbles starts hooting and walking around, waving his hands in the air like he just doesn’t care, Goku thinks it’s part of the training and proceeds to do the exact same thing. Even with the hooting noises. Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen.