Even though Megabyte was prominently featured in the last few episodes, it’s been a while since he was the main antagonist for an entire episode. We’re also six episodes into the series and Enzo has been used mainly as just the little kid character that idolizes Bob, with his one big appearance being “Racing the Clock”. So, what happens when we use both of these characters as the primary focus of an episode? Let’s find out with “In the Belly of the Beast”.
We open the episode at Old Man Pearson’s data dump. Mr. Pearson will play a bit of a role in other episodes, but for the most part is just a grumpy old binome. Some people may easily recognize his voice as that of the late Long John Baldry. Baldry’s most famous role is that of Dr. Robotnik in the “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” cartoon. He voices another pivotal character in the show, but that won’t be until another episode from now.
Pearson is being held captive by Hack and Slash as Megabyte appears via vid-window asking if he’s hiding anything from him. Pearson claims he hasn’t seen anything. However, it’s clear that there’s an old unformat command. Megabyte’s crew go out to search the dump for the command. Even in their incompetence, they manage to find the command, which still is fully functional. But as they’re about to leave, Hack and Slash get captured by Bob, who disposes of the rest of Megabyte’s crew with ease.
However, as Hack and Slash break out of the bind they’re in, they drop the unformat command. Before they can reclaim it, Frisket shows up and eats the command. And before they can even deal with Bob, Bob crushes the two, because as it’s been well established, Hack and Slash are idiots. Of course Megabyte is none too happy of these developments. But he realizes that they don’t need to get Frisket, but Enzo instead.
Back at Dot’s diner, Bob gloats over his recent success. Frisket shows up looking green and in bad shape. Bob tries to see what’s wrong, and has no idea of what’s wrong until he uses Glitch to see about the unformat command, and heals him up a little bit. Since the only one Frisket even cares about is Enzo, he goes off to find him, while still in rough shape. However, their meeting is cut short as Hack and Slash kidnap Enzo. Frisket tries to hold off their vehicle, but is unable. He makes it to the top of Silicon Tor, but is quickly captured before he can safe Enzo.
Megabyte has Frisket placed in a tank with plans to open Frisket up and retrieve the command. But before he can finish Frisket off, Enzo distracts Hack and Slash, and uses his Yo-Yo to free Frisket. The two escape with Megabyte’s goons in tow. And what follows is Megabyte’s ultimate flaw. Despite being intelligent, and having an impressive army of infected binomes, they continue to be quickly defeated at every turn because of how stupid most of them are. It’s understandable if Bob defeats them with ease. He’s a guardian. He’s been trained to deal with viruses. But Enzo is just some kid, and despite being powerful, and even somewhat intelligent Frisket is still just a dog.
Enzo and Frisket manage to cut the power to the tor, find their way to the armory, and manage to easily beat the oncoming army with everything from missiles to a rubber raft. Another interesting little piece of censorship on the part of the show. Since at that time, and especially nowadays, you couldn’t have characters shoot bullets out of guns, so Enzo fires a gun that for some reason shoots rubber rafts. Why Megabyte would have such a strange choice of weaponry at his disposal is beyond me, but there it is. There is a B.S.’n.P logo on the raft, which serves as another wink to those beloved buzz kills.
Enzo and Frisket steal one of Megabyte’s flying tanks as the virus chases after them. Hack and Slash try to block, but of course this fails, because Hack and Slash are, you guessed it, idiots. Though for once they’re smart enough to jump out of the way, so some points there I guess. Megabyte eventually stops the tank. Frisket sends Enzo through a vent as Megabyte again sends Hack and Slash to capture frisket…
It goes as well as you’d expect.
The two make it right out of the building, but not before Frisket poops out the command. They meet up with Bob and Dot and tell them that they managed to handle things quite easily. And the episode ends with Megabyte stepping in Frisket’s “leavings”, and deciding to just call it a day. This was just an embarrassing day all around for the boss.
“In the Belly of the Beast” was another good episode. It sets up the relationship between Enzo and Frisket quite well, and there are a few fun moments in the episode. Though one downside is that it really does show that Megabyte may have a massive army at his disposal, but in the end of things, he’s surrounded by idiots who can’t even handle a kid and his dog. Although this won’t be the last time Enzo and Megabyte will deal with one another. But by then, it won’t be this innocent a situation. Also, the poop joke at the end was kind of a major low point, but it was most likely the only logical way to wrap this up.
No game in this episode. Not even one teased. I guess this was the point of the show where the writers began to realize that while the games do add some interesting ideas to the episodes, they aren’t always needed. And for an episode like this, it certainly was not needed.Other than that, it was a well paced little piece of filler that handles itself far better than “The Tiff” does, and holds up as one of the better episodes of the first season.