After declaring Bray and Lex dead, the Chosen march back to the mall, stopping only to let everyone redo their facial markings and hair color. Trudy freaks out at the news of Bray’s death and Tyson goes cross-eyed at mention of Lex’s. Fortunately, the Chosen aren’t any good at deducing the difference between life and death, and Ebony shows up seconds later to rescue them.
This rouse fools the Chosen for about thirty seconds. The Chosen get rid of all the tribe leaders, which is why Katy Perry will not be appearing in this season.
When Bray wakes up, Lex has slipped off, and Ebony wants the two of them to run away together. But with Bray’s ankle hurt, he’s not going to do much running, which makes it a good thing that the new character who I am going to call Edward Scissorhands, (even though he looks more like The Crow, but that’s awkward to keep saying), doesn’t seem interested in attacking them.
The hungry Mallrats start a protest because they want food, so the Guardian orders all of them executed on the spot. Just kidding. The Chosen seem totally confused by the idea of anyone rebelling. The Guardian shows up and declares them all slaves, and promises to feed them and let them join the Chosen once they’ve proved worthy, once YOU WILL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME SON OF JOR-EL. Which everyone does, because they’re hungry. Except Tyson, who is more morally flakey. But Jaffa (The Guardian), who Leah has decided probably was totally gay for Zoot in life, decides to be a dick, and won’t feed any of the Mallrats until they all KNEEL BEFORE ZOD ZOOT. This starts the rats down the path of in-fighting, since it’s been something like two hours since their last meal.
The Chosen manage to track Lex because he’s molting, and Bray either gets captured or lets himself get captured. At any rate, he points out immediately that they’ve pretty much instantly redecorated the mall with the Zoot posters that were conveniently mass-produced during the fall of civilization.
While Trudy tries to persuade Bray to join the Chosen with the same success Bray has in trying to persuade Trudy to reject the Chosen, Lex and Ebony meet up with Edward Scissorhands, who promptly traps them with a net.
Jack is captured trying to escape, and the Guardian executes him. Nah, just kidding; Ellie pleads for his safety by explaining how Jack is a brilliant scientist. This is because Ellie missed the memo about the Chosen being anti-science luddites. So I guess instead of executing him, they take him off for something worse than being executed. Or something.
Selene claims that she didn’t tell Ryan about the baby because she wanted him to marry her for her, not out of duty. Ryan finds this convincing, because, as I have mentioned, Ryan is incredibly stupid.
Edward Scissorhands reveals that he’s a member of an eco-tribe lead by a chyk named “Eagle”, who he is cryptic about, except that he goes on at great length about how awesome she is. Though when Lex mentions that “Eagle” sounds a lot like Amber, Ebony inexplicably freaks out.
The next morning, Bray’s ankle is entirely healed, because the writers do not comprehend the passage of time. When Bray refuses to submit, they lock him in a room and show him a three-screen multimedia presentation made by their AV department.
Thirty seconds later, Bray is all but brainwashed, until he boldly looks up and shouts “THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!” We also get to see that Trudy can still have her baby yoinked away for disobedience, so when she creepily tells the Mallrats that Zoot is real and his spirit dwells within his followers, we can maybe just about get that the point here is that she’s gone completely ’round the garden path.
Lex wants to rope Edward Scissorhands and his tribe into helping out in the fight against the Chosen, but Ebony is still freaking out at the idea of Lex meeting Eagle. Fortunately for her, Edward Scissorhands isn’t a big one for confrontation.
Ellie and Alice grill Patsy to work out what the weakness of The Chosen is (Turns out, it’s bullets. Unfortunately, a working gun is harder to find than kryptonite in New Zealand).
Bray agrees to join The Chosen in order to save the Mallrats, and apparently is savvy enough to know not to lie to the Guardian, so he outright tells him that he’s going to go along with them in order to save the Mallrats. Jaffa, however, finds this close enough, and lets Bray talk to the Mallrats
Bray does exactly what we expected, and gets two-thirds of the way through telling the tribe to submit, then has a crisis of conscience and tells them to fight back, so he’s next for the chop.
Later, when Lex meets up with Ryan on a chain gang, Ryan reports that all the Mallrats are okay, except for Bray,. who faces execution, and Jack, who has been taken off to Dick Cheney’s Undisclosed Location. Ryan has gotten the memo that Katy Perry is no longer part of the cast, so she doesn’t count.
They take Bray out to the beach, which close as I can tell is the only actually scenic place reachable by bus from the studio, since all the climactic outdoor scenes are set here, and prepare to burn him at the stake. With thousands of Chosen surrounding him, armed to the teeth, they have absolutely no trouble executing Bray. Just kidding, it’s totally going to come crashing down.
Ryan returns to the mall and tells everyone about Lex and Ebony, because, so close as Leah and I can tell, the Chosen can only hear you if you address them by name, like NPCs in an Infocom game. May continues to make herself unlikable.
Trudy is ordered to kill Bray, as proof of her loyalty to Zoot, and Bray begs for his life like a little girl. Trudy just about turns, but it turns out that she’s just crazy enough to do it anyway. With the surprise help of Edward Scissorhands and a cassette of “Listen to the Scary Sounds of Jungle Animals”, enough of a distraction happens that Bray and Dal escape. Though The Guardian just tells everyone that they’re both dead anyway.
Bray freaks out when he finds Edward Scissorhands wearing the ring he’d left on Amber’s grave. Which leads to the entirely unsurprising and frankly not well done revelation that — yes — “Eagle”, the leader of Edward Scissorhands’s tribe — is really — (wait for it) — Zandra!
Nah, just kidding. The show’s gotten kind of tedious at this point, frankly, though I’ll say this: I totally expected them to string us along until they actually showed Amber, instead of just having Edward Scissorhands blurt it out.
May and Selene are edging toward joining the Chosen, May because she’s a little bitch, and Selene because she’s with child, and thinks that starvation might be bad for that.
Dal reveals that he’s had prophetic dreams about Amber still being alive. Lex reveals that he’s had that dream too, as has Bray. So, despite Ebony’s protests, they set out for Eagle Mountain, in order to check that she’s still in her grave. Well, until Ebony actually does talk Bray out of it. So Dal has to set off on his own.
Leah points out that when Bray was given the ring, he was doing Amber, and we may draw what conclusions we like from the fact that Edward Scissorhands has it now. They notice that Dal’s gone like eight hours later, but fortunately, Dal for some reason climbed not Eagle Mountain, but the next mountain over, so I imagine they have time to overtake him.
We also get a name for The Blue Haired Number Two Chosen Guy, which is Luke, so I shall call him “Sideshow Luke Perry”. He seems like a True Believer, but he’s not devoid of compassion and love and goodness and so forth. Which I suspect means that he’s going to make a last-second noble sacrifice.
Dal finds the grave empty, causing them to notice that no one actually remembers who buried her. So they follow Edward Scissorhands back to the Ewok Villiage, where they finally meet Amber, who looks angry, possibly because of her ridiculous Eagle costume.
Intermission: The wacky adventures of Mentos the Freshmaker
Leah has discovered that the Dance Remix CD of the Tribe Soundtrack CD contains music videos for Abe Messiah and two of the songs that aren’t as good. You can find them on YouTube, but I kinda suggest that you don’t. They’re a weird mix of Kids Incorporated, Riverdance, and that David Hasslehoff music video where he’s dancing around the world, with the selfsame Video Toaster effects. The Abe Messiah video includes most of the scenes from the end credits that we were never able to make sense of, including the Mystery Blonde Guy with whom Trudy is dancing in the rave bit from the credits. We only get a clear look at him in the Bye Bye Bye This Is The Place, and if the YouTube comments are to be believed, this is “Good Zoot”, some sort of hypothetical Zoot who had decided to reform and stay with the Mall Rats, to which there has never been any indication in the show.
I like to think that somewhere out there is an entire alternative second season, complete with a radically different continuity. Maybe this hypothetical one makes more sense.
There exists a second version of the Abe Messiah video, which just features Bray, Ebony, Tyson, and Lex Luthor dancing in weird symbolic poses as if they’re about to shout their names and totem animals, then turn into Power Rangers. Which is utterly ludicrous, since we all know that only one of them is going to turn into a Power Ranger.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
Amber wants the others gone, because she’s pissed for reasons she isn’t yet willing to go into in detail. Bray has a feverish night of flashbacks, brough on by the stress of finding Amber still alive, or possibly the fact that he’s been wearing the same knitted wifebeater since last season.
Dal is the first to notice that Ebony was conspicuously unsurprised when Amber turned up not dead. Lex discovers that Edward Scissorhands’s tribe is called the “Gaians”, and they all take their names from animals, except for Pride (Edward), who didn’t understand the rules.
Amber gives Dal a flashback, in which she wakes up after having been buried, gets found by Edward Scissorhands, and gets adopted by the Gaians. He teaches her how to hunt and fish, and she teaches him about this earth thing they call “Kissing”, and she is shocked, shocked, when Dal tells her that Bray and Ebony haven’t gotten together.
Ebony tries to talk Bray into doing a runner, but this is unconvincing since he’s actually in a location shot, while she’s in front of a greenscreen. Well, actually, I wanted to say that, but Ebony totally convinces him… Until Bray goes ballistic and fights his way to her, demanding an explanation.
Amber does her usual “You know what you did so I will not tell you!” bit, and manages to tell him her entire life story about six times without hitting on it.
After repeating the flashback from Dal, she adds that Ebony saved her, then told her that she’d had Bray’s baby. And, because this is Ebony, when she’s lying, everyone believes her, and when she’s telling the truth, no one does. So Amber faked her own death, believing the lie.
Bray should just kill Ebony. He should just break her neck. Like Tirol did to Tory. But instead, he just yells at her a little and believes her when she swears that that Amber hallucinated the whole thing.
Alice and Ellie plot mutiny, loudly enough that even the Chosen who’s guarding them has a hard time not hearing them.
Lex, who knows of only one way to resolve conflict, calls Edward Scissorhands a pussy, so they have a big steel cage match.
- Leah: Pride cometh before the fall
- Ross: Pride also cometh before Amber two times out of three, which is why she’s going to kick his ass to the curb in favor of Bray.
But seriously, Lex gets his ass handed to him, because, as we have previously established, Lex gets always gets his ass kicked. But that means that he and Edward Scissorhands get to be friends now. Of course, Lex was practically gay for nature-boy before.
Episode 7 ends on the startling revelation that Bray and Ebony didn’t have a baby! Wait. We knew that. And Bray’s “proof” is that he found the picture Ebony showed Amber, and he’s got… A good explanation! Wait. Does Bray have some kind of plan here? Seriously? If his word was going to work, oughtn’t it have worked by now?
Actually, his “proof” is that he rips up the photo, which Amber accepts as proof, since Bray would never tear up a photo of his own son. Ebony has another ace up her sleeve, of course, with the metnion of Katy Perry, which basically moves amber from “Jealous and Self-Righteous Anger” to “Ambivalent”
Meanwhile, Selene and May are going to join the Chosen, which makes them look like total bitches, because Selene is determined that no one find out that she’s pregnant and in pretty serious danger of miscarrying if she doesn’t start getting regular meals. May, on the other hand, is just a bitch, at least until the writers decide they like her.
The Guardian and Tyson have the sexiest discussion on theology since the confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo, and Edward Scissorhands shames Amber over the fact that she’s clearly letting her personal feelings get in the way of the fact that helping the city tribes is totally the right thing to do.
Selene, May, and Patsy all agree to join the Chosen, Patsy under duress, May happily, and Selene with reluctance. But Ryan backs out and tells them to get stuffed when they get to the whole “Renounce your former tribe” bit.
The Gaians hole up in a church to plot the retaking of the mall, where Bray and Edward Scissorhands whip them out and compare sizes:
Amber: (To Bray) Pride’s got skills you don’t.
Brainwashing 101 starts out with the Guardian asking the novices to remember how their parents died, share their pain with him, and draw strength from it. Selene ends up brainwashed almost instantly.
Ebony and Lex, who have returned to the city on their own ahead of the Gaians, buy some poison from a young Peter Lorre, as part of their complex plan to kill the Guardian and seize control of the Chosen.
Immediately before invading the mall, Bray asks Edward Scissorhands just how close he is with Amber, and finds out, though he would almost certainly prefer otherwise once Edward Scissorhands explains that they’re New Agey Gaian-Married.
Lex and Ebony corner the Guardian, and are just about to execute him — well, Ebony is, then the Guardian overpowers her, then Lex overpowers him, but he just sort of hmms and haws over the actual murder — when Bray shows up, and Selene decides it would be a good time to scream, thus ruining the whole “surprise” thing.
The battle doesn’t really go anywhere; the Guardian stabs Ebony, the Gaians fight, they see Tyson, then they leave. It’s not clear what they were trying to accomplish, nor whether they actually did it. The Guardian decids to enjoy his favorite pasttimes: reveling in being hated, and threatening Trudy. Afterward, Lex sneaks up for a bit of a cuddle with his wife. Tyson, by the way, has a smallpox innoculation scar. Just thought I’d mention.
Back at the church, Edward Scissorhands explains that both Bray’s plan and Ebony’s were good, but they ought not to have executed them simultaneously. He also is cutely uncomprending of why Ebony is such a bitch.
May is a little too enthusiastic about wanting to catch the traitor the Guardian has imagined is among them, which causes him to suspect her, and accuse her baselessly. I suspect that we’re being shown that Jaffa’s just as crazy as the rest of them, and not just an evil manipulative bastard. Later, May tries to come up with a way to throw suspicion off herself. I suspect that she’s planning to sell out Selene for a pack of smokes, which makes me notice that no one in New Zealand smokes. Funny that. I thought unruly teenagers loved to smoke.