X-MEN Episode Seventy-Four - September 6, 1997

Hidden Agendas

Written by Steven Melching & David McDermott

Summary:  Sam Guthrie becomes a local celebrity after using his mutant powers to save his father during a mine collapse.  A government agent named Kirkland attempts to recruit Sam to join a “mutant Peace Corps” but Sam refuses to leave home.  Rogue visits Sam after the X-Men discover his powers, attempting to recruit him for Xavier’s school.  Meanwhile, Gambit investigates the government agency that’s pursuing Sam and is captured.  Rogue soon rescues Gambit, as the rest of X-Men arrive in Sam’s hometown.  Kirkland sends an army of robots and the brainwashed mutant Unit-1 to attack the X-Men, but the team prevails.  The Guthrie family leaves town, and Sam decides to decline Rogue’s offer and stay with his family.

Continuity Notes:  

• Sam Guthrie, Cannonball, makes his first full appearance on the show.  He previously appeared in a brief cameo during a Cerebro montage, already wearing his X-Force uniform.  Paige Guthrie also debuts, much younger than she appears in Generation X as Husk.
• All of the X-Men appear this episode, but the only ones with speaking parts are Rogue, Gambit, Beast, and Professor Xavier.  Jean Grey’s hair now matches her look in the comics.

“Um, Actually…”:  Cannonball, and the rest of the Guthrie family, are incorrectly given brown hair.  Also, in the comics, Sam’s father died of Black Lung Disease before Sam’s powers emerged.

Approved By Broadcast Standards:  The censor notes for this episode are online.  Surprisingly, as strict as the censors have become during this era of the show, the United States military is allowed to be portrayed as the villain.

I Love the '90s:  Kirkland has a gigantic cellphone with a very elaborate design.

Review:  Unless you were desperate to see Cannonball on the show, this episode can easily be thrown into the “Forgettable” pile and dismissed.  The censors have removed most of the teeth from the show by now, so the episode barely has any action (even Gambit’s capture by Kirkland’s robots is kept off-screen) and the character work is just mechanical and dull.  Those horrendous “Southern” accents, most of them performed by Canadians, don’t do the episode any favors either.  Even Lenore Zann sounds rusty as Rogue this episode, delivering perhaps her worst performance as the character.  The villains are also painfully dull, as the series finally gets around to introducing the generic Evil G-Man who wants to exploit mutants.  This is particularly egregious in the cartoon’s continuity, since as even Cannonball points out, the President in this reality is a mutant supporter.  We’re to believe that the government is running nasty anti-mutant conspiracies even when everyone’s boss is publically pro-mutant?  Lame villain, lame execution, and unfortunately, even more lame animation.

Credit to http://marvel.toonzone.net/xmen/ for the screencaps.