Hey, Halloween is coming up, and it’s on a Friday. Is there anything spooky you guys wanna see me review that week? Someone suggested Goosebumps, I don’t know, does anyone care? Anyway, this episode exists.

Previously on Animorphs: Marco and Jake got shot iinto space and Visser One is Marco’s mom. Cassie and Rachel jumped across a big hole. Ax and Tobias were drafted and killed in Vietnam.

We pick back up with Marco freaking the fuck out. He is simultaneously horrified that his mom is under alien control and psyched that she isn’t dead. Jake says, “Just don’t do anything stupid,” and Marco immediately tries to vault over the boxes they’re hiding behind and charge the stage. Jake stops him.

Mama Marco (who is a shitty actress) demands the Andalite Bandits, but some Yeerk asshole shows up to tell her they’ve gone and escaped.

Visser Trent shakes his jowels around and disperses his goon squad to look for them.

Jake realizes that this situation sucks and tries to come up with a plan, but Marco has completely lost it and just keeps staring into space. He’s gone totally dead inside and Boris is way better at playing “in shock” then “emotional crying.”

Mama Marco tears Visser Trent apart for being a useless shithead. Her lips are out of control, dude. She storms off and Trent hates himself before doing the same thing.

Back on Earth, Cassie and Rachel crawl through some more vents at the EGS Tower.

They’re searching for the new Kandrona so they can beat it to death. They bemoan not being able to morph due to the sensors from last episode. I would not be surprised if they use this excuse to completely elimnate morphing from the rest of the show. Look forward to next week’s review of Ani.

Turns out that in space, no one can hear you morph. Jake and Marco hang out on the ceiling as lizards and Marco has seemingly gotten over his emotional shock so that was fun while it lasted.

They eavesdrop as the two Vissers chat about alien business. Also they are in some kind of plant room where Mama Marco tends to her plants.

I guess before being possessed by aliens, Mama Marco dug plants. The idea here is that Mama Marco is a difficult host to control because she’s so strong-willed or whatever. Do you think after he acquired his bald businessman morph, Visser Three murdered the real Victor Trent?

Jake and Marco end up in a space elevator that takes them to a space hallway. Marco walks straight into a hanging wire and I’m convinced it was a blooper they just ran with. Well, the guys find a smaller ship docked inside the larger one, start fucking with the controls, and Jake decides they will just fly the lil’ fighter home.

Marco isn’t down with this, first because it’s a fucking bonkers idea, and second because he doesn’t wanna leave without his mom. He storms off and Jake follows him.

Jake is like “Nope we gotta go now, this place is bogus.” Marco isn’t budging. He tells Jake that he (Jake) should go back to Earth, but that he isn’t gonna leave without his mom no matter what. This scene is really good, guys! Is this show becoming watchable?

Rachel and Cassie continue fucking around.

Marco is on his own in the space hallways. He hears footsteps and hides, but it’s just Jake, who has come to help him.

Cassie and Rachel beat the Kandrona to death with wrenches. An alarm goes off. They run away.

The boys sneak around. Marco is convinced that if his mom sees him, she’ll be able to break free of the Yeerk’s control due to the power of love. They’re spotted by the Goon Patrol, who give chase and shoot at them until Jake expertly knocks some barrels over and then they spray them with a hose full of steam or whatever.

They end up being chased back into the smaller ship, where Jake urges Marco to help him start the ship up. Marco is like “Fuck, Jake, we JUST talked about this.”

Jake convinces Marco that if they don’t fly off now, they’re gonna get shot to death by flashlights and he is gonna be real fucking useless re: saving anyone. They rocket off into space .

There is a pretty funny bit where Marco closes off all the viewscreens, and Jake complains “Now we can’t see anything.” Marco’s response: “It’s space.” “Oh, yeah.” Pretty funny.

There’s some stuff where Marco makes the ship descend too quickly and they rush to stabilize it while arguing and you get the point.

In the rush to fix it, they end up flying back toward the larger ship they came from. Doofuses.

In the Plant Room, Visser Trent reports that there are two life forms aboard the ship coming toward them. He wants to just shoot them out of the sky but Visser One is like no, that would fuck up the plot. She wants to use them to unlock the secrets of…the Andalite disk! Wowzer.

Then the show cuts to Ax standing in a barn and what the fuck.

So apparently Ax has used his magic psychic powers to locate Jake and Marco in space. He relays to Cassie and Rachel that the boys have stolen a ship. This magic is justified as Ax being able to hear Visser Three’s thought-speak but that is pretty retarded. Cassie is like yo, Ax, can you send out a telepathic bullshit message to the boys like when you crashed your dumb ship into that dumb warehouse and gave me headaches all day? Ax says that sounds pretty insipid but he will try anyway.

And hey, like bullshit usually does on this show, Ax’s message reaches them crystal clear. There’s a good gag where he describes a button to them, Marco proudly finds and presses it, and Ax says, “Do not press that button. It will only turn off the lights.” Fucking gold, dude. So he walks them through turning on the autopilot. In a ridiculous turn of events, there are two unlabeled autopilot buttons: one will send the ship to Earth, one will send them to the Yeerk planet. Spooky!

Marco tells Jake to pick a button. Jake goes, “No! You do it,” and I’m like, what a dick. Then he adds, “I trust you,” so I guess this is supposed to be a nice gesture. Marco surprisingly doesn’t bitch any further. He picks a button and the ship immediately loops away from the mothership, leaving Visser Trent to stare out the window in frustration.

Mama Marco strokes her plants until her hands begin to twitch outside of her control. I don’t really know why.

Hours later, the girls and Ax are still waiting for the boys. Then they come strolling in all wet, having landed in a swamp offscreen. They look fresh from a facefucking by Shrek. They thank Ax for saving their lives and Cassie gets a boner. She gives them some dry clothes to wear that are covered in horse shit.

When the others leave, Marco tells Jake he doesn’t want the others to know about his mom. Jake is like “K.” He assures Marco they will get his mother back and Marco feebly says, “I know” and tells Jake he smells like shit/Shrek.

Back at the Sad Dad Apartment, Marco’s dad has a surprise for him. Not only did he paint the entire apartment without him, but he put a frame around the hand-turkey drawing on the wall to save it. He tells Marco that he’s sure his mom is real proud of him.

A really half-assed Marco voiceover tells that Marco won’t stop until he gets his mom back. Then all of his friends come over to smile and laugh at him.

Final Thoughts:

Okay, so this is probably the best episode of Animorphs.

Combined, it easily makes for the best two-parter. There is some silly shit, and the whole Rachel/Cassie subplot was clearly there to just fill time, but hey, for Animorphs, it was mad entertaining. Like The Capture, Part 2, this is one of the few times the show really takes itself seriously (but still has some of the most genuinely funny jokes the series has offered). Boris’s performance as Marco in this episode was easily the best acting so far aside from Paulo as Ax, who is always great.

Maybe I’m just having a good day, but whatever, I liked it.

Adaptation Rating: I don’t care!

Special Effects: Nothing really, but I just wanted to remind you how great that spaceship shot was last week.

’90s Bullshit: Being comfortably numb.

Character Development: Marco goes through a whole thing.

Next Week: An episode that I vaguely remember being not bad.

Seeya, kids! Thanks for reading .