Reasons Why I Hate Reboot Season 4
By Boingo

After an excellent third season, I, like most Reboot fans, was anxious to see just what the world of Mainframe had in store next.  After more than three years of waiting for season four to come out, all I can say is, it just wasn't worth the wait.

Here is a list of reasons why I didn't like season 4 (in no particular order):
 
 

1.

The new and "improved" Bob with deep set eyes that make him look like a pervert.


"Good evening Madam.  My name is Bob, and I will be your rapist for the evening."
 
 

2.

This is supposed to be Dot?!?


"Whoa!  Like gag me with a spoon!"
 
 

3.

In The Episode With No Name, Turbo tells Matrix about an evil new virus called Daemon, and shows him the painful infection Daemon has given him.  Three other infected guardians are shown in the episode, apparently driven by the pain of their own infections.

After all this build up for a really nasty villainess for our heroes to fight against in season 4, what do we get?


"Bon jour Monsieur.  May I please pick some pretty flowers for you?"

I'm sorry, but I personally prefer a villain I can take seriously, and a sweet French schoolgirl, who talks like Madeline, just doesn't cut it.

I know she is supposed to be a powerful virus, and I know she is supposed to look like Joan of Arc, and consider herself a messianic figure, but she just does not come off as a credible villain, and adds no dramatic tension to the story.  From the moment I first laid eyes on her, my opinion, and enjoyment, of the story dropped into a steep nose drive, from which it never recovered.

If the Mainframers had squared off against a more credible threat, like ... say ... the Care Bears, maybe I could have enjoyed this story line a little bit more, but against Daemon?  Not a chance!
 
 

4.

After being turned in to cookies by Hexadecimal at the end of season 3, Herr Doktor and Bunnyfoot mysteriously return unharmed and with no explanation in season 4.  What's more, they are both still viral, in spite of the fact that all the viral binomes were cured at the end of season 3.  This is one of many major continuity errors in season 4.


The fate of Herr Doktor and Bunnyfoot at the end of season 3.


Herr Doktor and Bunnyfoot mysteriously brought back to life, and still viral, in season 4.
 
 

5.

Okay.  Let's see if this one makes any sense.  A bunch of binomes want to become virals again, and the reason they give for this?  ...  They want to be able to pick up chicks!

I am not making this up.  They actually say this in the story!

Let me get this straight ...  You want to become slaves to an evil virus and risk getting killed fighting in a war against your own people, just so you can get laid?!?

I think perhaps you've had a few too many proton shakes there boys!

On top of this, the "neovirals" actually go on a protest to the principal office to insist that they should be turned back in to virals.

Let me get this straight ...  You are protesting to the state to have them allow you to be become enemy soldiers against the state?

I've got to test this one out.  Just give me a second while I run up to the Prime Minister's office and ask if it is okay for me to join Al Qaeda, and see if it works.


The second most retarded protest in history.
 
 

6.

Question:  What do you get when you cross a hooker, a flapper, and the statue of liberty?
 

Answer:


 
 

7.

Now, I've been trained in animation, and appreciate the use of stretch and squash, anticipation, and other such distortions as being important to creating fluid animation.  In season 4 however, Mike the TV is so liberally stretched and squashed so often that I dare say that there is not a single frame in the entire season where Mike is not being distorted in some way.  So wildly distorted is he, that, if his name did not specifically say so, one would never be able to guess that he is supposed to be a TV.  In fact, most of the time he looks less like a TV than he does like some short guy wearing a really big helmet.  Stretch and squash may be an important principle in animation, but so is keeping characters on model, and Mike is rarely, if ever, on model in season 4.


"On model?  What's that?"
 
 

8.

Ugh!  The whole Mike the TV as Elvis routine!  If my opinion of season 4 took a nose dive with the first appearance of Daemon, I would have to say that it really hit the rocks and burst into flames when I saw this awful piece of kitsch.  If there is one scene that sums up just how bad season 4 is, this would probably be it!


If your respect for Reboot hasn't gone out the window already, it most certainly will once you've seen this scene!

Not only do we have Mike the TV in a really embarrassing Elvis costume doing a really bad gospel routine, and have Daemon gleefully bouncing and clapping along, but to make matters worse, Daemon's henchmen are the ones making up the choir!  These are the guys who are supposed to be scary, but here they are clapping and swaying, and waving their arms in the air!  Gospel choirs are supposed to be made up of really really really fat black women in satin muumuus, not evil henchmen you idiots!  I already couldn't take Daemon seriously, but after seeing this scene I couldn't take any of her troops seriously either.  Maybe, instead of fighting, Bob and the others should have just slipped on an old gospel album, and picked off Daemon's troops while they were clapping and dancing around like idiots.


Evil henchmen making fools of themselves.
 
 
 
 

9.

Poor story with weak drama and very little character development.

That's it.
 
 

10.

You know you are really scraping the bottom of the story telling barrel when the primary conflict spread across three entire episodes is "Which Bob should Dot decide to marry?".  Come on Dot!  Which one makes more sense, the one you've been smooching and lovey dovey with since the end of season 3, or the perverted looking one that just happened to show up out of nowhere with no explanation at the end of the last episode?  If you are having trouble, just say, "Queen to queen's level three.", and shoot the one that doesn't know the counter sign.  It worked for Spock when he was trying to figure out which one was the real Captain Kirk!

To be completely honest, the second Bob looks so creepy, it is hard to believe Dot would even consider him in the first place.


"Heh heh heh!  Pick me Dot!  Nice boobies!  Slurp-slobber-drool!"
 
 

11.

Bringing back Megabyte as a new super virus is possibly the worst anticlimax one can possibly think of.

Let's think about it for a second.

More than three years may have passed in the real world between seasons 3 and 4, but in story time, only the equivalent of a few weeks has passed.  After spending the equivalent of years fighting against Megabyte, and all the hardship that entailed, the Mainframers finally defeat him, and watch him apparently die with a web creature's tentacle wrapped around his neck, only to have him pop up the equivalent of a few weeks later as a super virus?


Megabyte being killed by a web creature.

The closest parallel I can think of would be something like this ...
 

May 8, 1945:  After the allies have fought NAZI forces for almost six years, and the Americans have fought them for over three, Germany is finally defeated.  Hitler is dead.  Everybody celebrates.

May 22, 1945:  Hitler reappears out of nowhere, alive and healthy, with an unstoppable army at his command, and starts bombing the living Hell out of Europe all over again.  The allies rally, but they are screwed.  Hitler's new base is on an orbiting space platform where no one can touch him.


The emotional impact of Matrix's battle played a major role in the success of season 3.  Matrix spent all his life in anticipation of this battle, and his final victory over Megabyte was not only satisfying for him, but for us, the audience, as well.

Then, after only the equivalent of a few weeks, Megabyte is back, and is so powerful that Matrix can't stand up to him at all.

Well Matrix ...  PFLFLFLFLFLFT!!!  There goes your reason for living.  You may as well shoot yourself now.


It is amazing what a few weeks' vacation will do for you.
 
 

12.

Now here comes a major continuity error:

Supposedly, Megabyte was able to mimic Bob's appearance, because he had stolen part of Bob's code.  This begs the following questions,  "Where did he get it?", "How did he get it?", and "When did he get it?".

The last time Megabyte made any physical contact with Bob was way back in the episode World Web Wars, when he crushed glitch, and pushed Bob into a launch chamber.  After that, Megabyte had no contact with Bob at all, until after he had already reappeared in Mainframe disguised as Bob.

One could argue that Megabyte somehow stole part of Bob's code during the betrayal at the end of World Web Wars, but there is absolutely no way he could have done it.  All Megabyte did was push Bob.  There is no indication that he could have done anything more than that.  Neither is there any indication that Megabyte ever had any other opportunities to steal Bob's code in any previous episodes from the first two seasons.

If Megabyte did manage to steal Bob's code in World Web Wars, one has to ask the question, "Why didn't Megabyte use it in season 3?".  Using Bob's code in some capacity, either as a way of disguising himself, or in some form of blackmail, would have been ideal during his propaganda war against Enzo, so why didn't he use it, and why didn't he use it during the period in which Matrix and AndrAIa were exiled from Mainframe?

Also, if part of Bob's code was missing, how did Bob continue to function?

In season 3, when part of AndrAIa's code was stolen by a web creature, AndrAIa was reduced to a near death like state, flickering in and out of existence, a state, which, incidentally, was remedied by Bob.  If Bob had part of his code stolen, as AndrAIa did, why was he not reduced to a similar state, and furthermore, how would he have been able to fix AndrAIa's code if his own code was incomplete?

As nifty as the idea of Megabyte using code Stolen from Bob to imitate him is, it just simply does not make sense, and does not fit within the continuity of the show.
 
 

13.

Continuing with continuity errors, the episode What's Love Got to Do With It? has got some doosies!  If you are looking for continuity error gold, then you've struck the mother lode with this episode baby!

In the earliest episodes of Reboot, it was apparent that Bob was new to Mainframe, but that Megabyte had already been in Mainframe for some time.  What's Love Got to Do With It? however, depicts Bob entering Mainframe almost immediately after Gigabyte entered, and split into Hex and Megabyte.

In the early episodes Bob has to ask Phong for information about Megabyte.  If Bob arrived in Mainframe at about the same time as Megabyte, then this would not make sense, since Phong would not have known any more about Megabyte than Bob did.

Phong tells Bob that the user has tried to delete Megabyte with every upgrade, again indicating that Megabyte has been in Mainframe a lot longer than Bob has.

According to Phong, Megabyte entered Mainframe hidden inside a word processing document, not in a great big explosion that literally destroyed half the system.

The original opening monologue from seasons 1 and 2 says, "I come from the net, through systems, cities, and peoples to this place—Mainframe." implying that Bob spent time wandering the net before coming to Mainframe.  In What's Love Got to Do With It? Bob goes straight from the academy to Mainframe, and never spends time on the net.

In The Quick and The Fed, Bob is surprised that Dot is such a keen business woman and owns so much of Mainframe.  If Bob had come to Mainframe while Dot was still a punkette teen, as in What's Love Got to Do With It?, he would have been around for Dot's transition from punkette to business woman, and probably would have already known the extent of her ownership of Mainframe long before The Quick and The Fed.

In What's Love Got to Do With It? Bob knows about Gigabyte.  In fact, Bob travels to Mainframe in order to find Gigabyte.  This is a direct contradiction to the episode Gigabyte, where Bob does not recognize Gigabyte when he first meets him.  If Bob had come to Mainframe searching for Gigabyte, chances are he would have recognized Gigabyte in the episode of the same name.

Also, in Gigabyte Bob is surprised when Hex reveals that Megabyte is her brother.  Had the events of What's Love Got to Do With It? been true, it would be really doubtful that Bob would have been surprised by this revelation.

It's not that hard to figure out.  If What's Love Got to Do With It? is to believed, then Bob is either really really stupid, or has a really really bad memory, presumably from repeatedly trying to warm up the metal plate in his head using the microwave.  Repeated cranial microwaving would probably explain why his eyes went so weird in season 4 as well.

Retcons are a fine way to fill in missing parts of a story, but only if they fit well with the already known facts.  The backstory in What's Love Got to Do With It? does not fit in to the existing Reboot continuity at all, and instead of enhancing the story, it just creates the single most concentrated mass of continuity errors in the entire series.
 
 

14.

Oh yes.  I almost forgot this one.

In The Episode With No Name, Turbo tells Matrix how important he is, because he and Bob are the only two guardians who are not infected by Daemon.

What's the first thing Matrix does when Daemon shows up?


"Me's a he-ro!"

He runs off and gets himself infected.

It's nice to see that we were all investing our hopes in the right man now, isn't it?


 

To sum everything up, the more I look at season 4, the worse it is.  It is a poorly written story with lack luster characters, little dramatic tension, and enough continuity errors to make one wonder if any of the writers ever saw the original three seasons before making up their scripts.

Yeah.  I can hear you grumbling, and saying, "If you hate it so much, let's see if you can do something better."

Well, it just so happens that I am planning on doing exactly that ...