Bekkah:

Captain Planet is definitely the hero we need but not the one we deserve (Green New Deal NOW), but these Planeteers, sheesh, they are really not great at problem solving. I get that they are the TEENS, but they really just make bad choices and don’t know how to actually do anything. How did they become Planeteers? We skipped S01E01, so I will never know. I didn’t like this two-part episode as much as I liked the ones last week. I was expecting better with a full 44 minutes to develop the plot! But meh. Too many villains and not enough Jeff time, for sure. He barely spoke! I liked him better when we got to see his true ratty villain self come out. Apparently Jeff was replaced as Verminous Skumm in later seasons, probably because they couldn’t afford him after his Jurassic Park success, but I really think this was great casting!

Danya:

There’s a lot here to unpack, Captain Planet is really getting into the inherent duality of the universe with a weird ginger Captain Pollution who somehow talks like a California surfer? Is there some stereotype I don’t know about valley-types who secretly hate the planet? I don’t know. There’s not enough Jeff and the weird ecopropaganda after the first episode is about “physical fitness” which is suspect. Mostly what I’m doing with this is trying to recast it for now. Bekkah thinks The Rock should play captain planet, but I think Levar Burton should have a go, because that man is just good at everything. But this is not Levar Burton Movie Club, it is JGMC, so I will just say I think Jeff really leaned in to his three lines. Very believable as a mutant rat psychopath.

7/10 Goldtoxins

“Mission to Save Earth” on IMDB

Looten Plunder, Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, Duke Nukem, and Sly Sludge team up to defeat the Planeteers by getting powers similar to the ones they have from their rings. Sludge and Skumm send a fake distress-call from an island, then shoot sleeping-gas over the Geocruiser so it crash-lands and they can steal the Planeteers' rings. Before they can take the Planeteers prisoner as well, though, they find the "deserted" island actually has a soldier's radar-station on it, and he orders them to leave. Blight contacts Commander Clash, posing as a soldier claiming that the Planeteers are his enemy's spies. Without their rings and without his listening to their pleas to help them get off the island they're stranded on, the Planeteers have to figure out a way to outwit Clash. What they don't know is that Blight uses her machine to create evil versions of the rings - Super-Radiation, Deforestation, Smog, Toxins, and Hate - and merge them to create Captain Pollution, who they plan to send out before Plunder's army to attack the Planeteers...

—brainybrailler@comcast.net