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Post by cloudmonet on Mar 7, 2007 19:23:32 GMT -5
Mad Dogs and Aliens
Maybe I'm just getting used to the season 4 Shego, or maybe I was in too lecherous a mood the first time I saw "Mad Dogs," but my reaction this time was a bit different than before, and I am puzzled about this. I'm not necessarily completely disavowing the interpretation of this episode I offered before, but I have become sceptical of it.
Symbolism is messy. It can be hard to be sure whether it's intentional or not, and even if it is intentional, does it mean what it seems to mean, or are Bob, Mark, and Steve doing a plausibly deniable parody to tease, uh, some of us?
Kim's a cheerleader who until now apparently couldn't care less about either Middleton's games, or the players on the team. A bizarre position, perhaps, but that's the way she's been presented to us in the past. Apparently Kim's cheerleading was an athletic exercise and performance, nothing more. Her boyfriend, excuse me, best friend, was the Mad Dog mascot.
So we open with a cheer rehearsal rather like the opening of "A Sitch in Time," including disco techno pop (or whatever you'd want to call the style), interrupted by Ron wanting to do a retirement ceremony for the Mad Dog, Kim reluctantly trying to find something positive to say about his performances, Bonnie predictably having no trouble saying negative things, and, well, this is interesting, Bonnie being very supportive of Jim and Tim taking Ron's place as the Pep Puppies. Cue the opening theme.
So, uh, Bonnie, have you really made friends with the Tweebs? Did you do it just to irritate Kim? Do you ever do anything that doesn't irritate Kim? Have you noticed Kim and the Tweebs are getting along much better now? If you can't irritate Kim, is irritating Ron a good substitute?
Bonnie: As if I'm telling you what's in my heart of darkness! I'm having fun, and that's what matters.
And a green ray breaks Drakken out of prison in the middle of a checker game with Frugal Lucre. His first reaction: who's breaking Shego out this time? Ahem. Shego's in Greece, staying at an expensive spa. Doesn't Drakken even know she's not in prison? Very interesting, if it's not just a continuity oversight. One would think that rumors would drift his way. Last time Drakken saw Shego, Junior was busting her out. Maybe he just assumed she was back again by this time. It looks like any bond of affection or loyalty which may have existed between Drakken and Shego is currently nonoperational.
We don't know for sure how the estrangement got started. I can offer some theories, mutually inconsistent, depending on exactly what you believe their relationship previously was. "Wait a minute, Cloud," you say. This thread is supposed to be about Kim and Ron. Yeah, but this episode also (at least at first) seemed to have enough Kigo hints that even people like me and Dracko wondered about this. If Shego is a potential rival to Ron, in anybody's eyes, taking a careful look at Shego's relationships isn't a bad idea. Besides, I'm curious.
Shego's possible reasons for being estranged to Drakken
1. He blamed her for the "So the Drama" fiasco, which made her mad at him. Possible, but we just don't know what was said in the arrest van, or later.
2. She got tired of failure after failure. Also possible, but events in this episode suggest that she perversely enjoyed these failures.
3. She thought she had romantic possibilities with him, and he refused her. His behavior in "Emotion Sickness" and later this episode with Warmonga, suggests that this is possible.
4. She actually had a relationship with him, but got estranged because of reasons 1 or 2, or a variation of 3 in which she would feel neglected or something of the sort. This isn't impossible, but what little light present events shine on the past tends not to support the idea that they were actually a couple. But it doesn't absolutely rule it out, or explain why she stuck with him for so long.
Drakken's possible reasons for being estranged to Shego
1. He blamed her for the "So the Drama" fiasco. He got tired of failure after failure. "You have failed me for the last time, Shego," supports this, as does the remarks he makes to her about Warmonga's apparently greater competence.
2. She got busted out of prison and didn't come back for him. He obsesses about this.
3. There's no sign here that he ever had any romantic feelings about her, unlike the case with her feelings for him, which are left more ambiguous.
End of endless digression
The last time we saw Shego, she was up to her waist in truly humongous alligators, on Senior's secret island. Well, she's still in Europe, maxing out her credit cards at a Greek spa.
When Kim and Ron first arrive, Shego has Midas (?!) attack them by throwing the hot rocks he's been putting on her bare back. Since masseurs aren't usually villainous, I hypothesize that he may have developed some feelings for his beautiful raven-haired client. Midas quickly disappears once Shego realizes Kim is serious, and a pretty standard Kim/Shego fight ensues. Okay, they get mostly covered in mud, so technically they are "mud-wrestling." Subtext? Mark, Bob, and Steve seem to be teasing the Kigo shippers, if anything.
Shego, as usual, just wants to get away, and in this case feels like she deserves to be left alone. Can villains take vacations? Not as far as real-world law enforcement goes? Would Kim have let her go? Maybe, if convinced Shego was telling the truth. But Shego slipped away in a cloud of steam, rendering the question moot for now.
Ron is way too distracted by the Pep Puppies issue to be of any real use at all in this fight. Okay, Shego somehow knocked him into the men's steam room, but then he randomly undressed, put on a towel, and told a bunch of old, probably rich guys his troubles. Just as randomly, they argue Shego's case after she vanishes.
Could Ron's uselessness to the mission this time have contributed to their decision to leave Ron in the football game next time? He's not so useless against Drakken.
So after building him up through several episodes with menacing music, how does the Great Blue manage this time? With Warmonga's armament and adoration, can he conquer the world? Can he eliminate Kim Possible? We know the answer to this, of course. The only question is how he's gonna fail.
Meanwhile, Ron's doing an imitation of Barkin, trying to teach Jim and Tim how to be proper Mad Dogs, a teaching they reward by locking him in a containment field. "Ron was bugging," one of them explains to an annoyed Kim.
"Were you bugging?" Kim asks Ron, sitting beside him. Look at how she rather gently urges her boyfriend to leave her little brothers alone. Anyone wanna give Kim a perfect girlfriend award, cause, she pretty much deserves this. Wow.
I guess Kim aroused Shego's curiosity, because the next we see of her, she's knocking on Drakken's improved lair, in full uniform. Drakken's not glad to see her. Warmonga doesn't sound as stupid as she did in the animatics, due largely to the highly intellectual language she now uses, but even so, "May I direct your vision over there to our main exit," is a pretty silly response to "Show her the door." A Shego/Warmonga fight ensues, with a lot of broken monitors, and after Shego's captured, Drakken places a video call to Kim.
Kim's busy cheerleading at a football game, blowing a kiss to Ron as he takes the field. Did you notice how Kim runs toward the other girls to spring on top of the pyramid? The determination on her face as she runs is something I've only seen before when she's on mission mode. This means something to her. She's cheerleading for Ron now. And here's where we possibly run afoul of symbolism. That's quite a stunt, doing the splits on top of a pyramid. Is Kim spreading her legs for Ron? That's quite a stretch! And the puns keep right on coming, whether I want them to or not.
"It won't be the same without you cheering for me." Having Kim cheer for him really means something special to him, perhaps as much as him cheering her through all those fights with Shego (and others) over the years seems to mean for her.
Kim designs a lot of the cheers. We know that from the past. And now that she's cheering her own man, she designs this? Look at me, Ron! Hmm.
So here she is, talking to Drakken on the kimmunicator, while continuing to do the splits on top of the cheer pyramid. And what's happening on Drakken's side?
Shego's wearing glowy purple handcuffs and ankle irons, sounding all giggly and flirtaceous, urging Warmonga to mock the Great Blue because it's irresistable fun. "You missed your mock window!" But Shego is mocking anyway, indirectly. Is she actually flirting, and if so, with whom? Drakken, I guess, because his reactions are spurring her on. But wait, that's not usually her attitude when she mocks Drakken. Is she really trying to make Warmonga over in her own image? Is she just cracking up watching two buffoons trying to work together? I'm not sure, but we seldom see Shego enjoying herself to this extent, especially imprisoned, so it must mean something significant. Maybe if Shego can't fight, she'll make jokes.
So Kim hops off her pyramid and says goodbye to Ron, with a big, well it would have been a big kiss, but we'll get to that in a paragraph or two. But first,
The Values of Kim and Ron
What's going on here? Ron's not leaving the football game to help Kim go after Drakken? When Drakken sets a trap like this, bad things tend to happen. Can the cheerleader save the world without her wide receiver? (Okay, I know Ron's called a running back, but cartoon football is an inexact game, and tell me the plays he makes aren't what a wide receiver usually does, catching long passes and running to the goal.)
The Middleton Team wants to win the game, and Ron has a good chance to actually be the hero in this case. Kim's actually letting her sidekick be a hero in his own right, in a smaller but more public arena, while she tackles (what'd I say about puns?) a problem of real evil by herself. She's doing this for Ron. Awwww.
And she's about to give him a big kiss—
Wait, what's this, a grimace from Wade? He breaks in by comically singing the kimmunicator ringtone. Hey, look at this, fixed the supersuit, and oooh, stealth mode! About time Wade applied that technology to something besides those wadebots.
Seems like some of the technology of the battle suit is familiar to Warmonga of Lorwardia. She's able to neutralize the force field, for example. But the stealth mode surprises her, not to mention Drakken, and Kim uses it brilliantly.
Kim pretty much wins the fight with Warmonga by herself, and disables the oxygen sucking machine with Warmonga's staff.
But meanwhile, Shego, no longer amused but enraged when Drakken says Warmonga is better than she was, manages to break the purple cuffs, and contributes a few blows before the fight before— disappearing with the kimmunicator and placing a call to Wade?!
Because after the disabling of the oxygen machine and collapse of the new lair, and before Warmonga and Kim can resume fighting, a blue Pep Puppy appears on screen, claiming to be the Great Blue, and ordering Warmonga to report to planet "Bluto."
Warmonga heaves Drakken into the Caribbean and leaves in a hurry, leaving Shego behind to explain herself to Kim.
The Values of Shego
The big question here is why Shego did what she did, and how much of her own explanation should we take as any sort of truth. Shego has practically never beaten Kim in any kind of fight— "Sick Day" I believe being the most recent time, and Kim was, well, pretty sick at the time. The notion that Shego is just dying for a fight with Kim just doesn't seem that credible. Her fights with Kim end with either defeat or at most escape, and I think Shego realizes this on some level, though she's too proud to admit it.
Kim's gotten better. She wins pretty consistently now even without Ron's help or distraction. And it's not just the suit. Her insecurities are pretty much gone. She doesn't need to be reminded that she can do anything anymore. Why not?
I'm gonna guess it's because she's in love, and in a relationship that makes her feel totally confident and comfortable. How a guy like Ron can make her feel this way might be a major puzzle to anyone who hasn't watched the slow meandering forging of this relationship, though "So the Drama" is enough to show how and why this works.
Well, what about this? If Shego can't take Kim down, she doesn't want anyone else to do it either. Sounds a bit more plausible. But how about this? Shego hates Warmonga more than she hates Kim. That's simple, direct, plausible, and explains Shego's behavior pretty well.
But Shego's still got her "Team Go" heroic past to live down, and desn't want Kim to think she's going soft. Shego did, after all, just save the world. And so, for the first time since being kicked into the tower, Shego dares to call Kim Kimmie, princess, and cupcake. I challenge you! —uh, not right now, some other time.
But lay this on top of the smouldering sexuality we've already seen, from mud wrestling to cheerleading unders to the "Midas touch," and Shego's taunts start sounding like flirts.
It's a bit like asking Bugs Bunny, after he ties Elmer Fudd's shotgun barrels into a bow and plants a wet one on his lips, whether he really has the hots for the luckless wabbit hunter. In Bugs's case, uh, probably not, even though I can think of at least two wedding scenes— Ah, Bugs and Elmer, patron saints of gay marriage! But I digress.
There's something in the air, between Kim's splits and all those strapless gowns she wears on dates with Ron, that suggest she's become a more experienced girl, and no matter how many times Ron acts like a petulant five year old over one thing or another, it's getting harder to believe those large hands of his haven't been doing some markedly post-pubescent things with his beloved in moments of privacy.
And Shego seems to sense this. Unlike Bonnie, she doesn't dare taunt Kim about Ron. Like I said, this seems to be the first time she's dared to taunt Kim at all. I saved the world, Kimmie Cupcake Princess, but that doesn't mean I'm not still bad. I can take you. You're mine.
Uh, yeah, it seems filled with double entendres here when I think back about it, but while actually watching it, it felt more like taunting.
Taunting, flirting, taunting, flirting. Which is it? I blame the mud wrestling! Bad Shego! Bad! You're very naughty, you know that?
See ya later, princess. Right now I want to feel Midas' hands all over my smouldering green body—
Plausible deniability, you know what I mean? There's nothing actually said or done that's not perfectly G-rated, and yet, ambiguity after ambiguity piles up.
"You're mine"— ?!! After "There's still fireworks!" and "You got me!" both acknowledged as loaded comments, how do they expect us to interpret a remark like "You're mine?" Not that they'll ever cop to this one. Not now, not ever. Well, at least not while there's a ghost of a chance any more Kim Possible episodes will ever be made. Ha, ha, Disney!
So is Shego bisexual? Does she really want any such connection with Kim? Taunt or flirt, or some blend of both? Did Kim perceive anything like flirting? What about Kim's expression? Did Kim tell Ron anything about this?
Again, it doesn't look so sexy while it's happening, but it's hard to look back on these scenes without getting ideas. There I was, thinking I was wrong the first time, and after rooting through everything all over again, I reach the same conclusion, that it's possible the Kigo shippers aren't as stark raving deluded as I previously thought.
No, I don't think Kim's ever going to dump Ron, turn to the dark side, and have a hot girl-to-girl affair in the steambath with her green nemesis. But their relationship has always been a bit complicated.
Kim's final, "You know what I hate?" "That your date melted?" "No, you!" KIIICKKK! CRRASSH! interaction with Shego in "So the Drama" seems to have earned Kim some respect. Shego is treading cautiously. She doesn't want to get Kim really mad. But she's getting a bit bolder. Does she think flirting with Kim might throw her off her game? Taunting never worked.
For now, I'm just going to interpret this as the creators gently teasing the Kigo folks. We'll see if there's any more stuff like this.
And we end with Kim telling Ron he owes her a date. I saved the world. I want my cute boyfriend. Naco and a movie? And holding hands, they walk off the field. I bet the movie isn't Bricks of Fury IV, either.
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Post by slicknickshady on Mar 7, 2007 21:22:23 GMT -5
that it's possible the Kigo shippers aren't as stark raving deluded as I previously thought. I would not go that far. Shego a Rival to Ron for Kims Love? I dont see it. Taunts as Flirts? I guess more girls flirt with me then i thought! ;D Subtext? Where. I dont like that this is being brought up in a Kim/Ron thread because honestly i believe TPTB never have slash in mind not even to tease and it has nothing to do with kim/ron. I see nothing anyway, shape, or form as kigo in this episode. I see nothing in "You're Mine" thats anyway sexual at all. I dont know how you could put that on the same level as "There's still fireworks!" and "You got me!". In Emotion sickness Kim pointed to Fireworks. In Gorillia Fist Kim was telling Ron that he still had her. I doubt TPTB are teasing anybody, It seemed like normal shego to me. To me this being discussed in a Kim/Ron Feelings thread is Blasphamy. Seems a little far fetched but hey people can say im biased for Kim/Ron and dismiss eveything else. Did i dismiss Erik? Did i dismiss Josh? No to both of these. I dismiss Kigo because well? Theres nothing, No Subtext, They Hate each other. Look at the So The Drama quote. I don't put blinders on. If there was Legit kigo moments i would admit it. None. Nil. Zero. Off course there will be more stuff like this, Shego is in a lot of episodes and i bet they will have more fights as well. Anyway you are right on the mark in you're kim/ron comments. Good stuff Cloud. I just see No Subtext what so ever in Kim and Shego. Kim has never shown any bisexual tendencies and i did not see any in this episode. As if what movie they actually bought tickets for really mattered ;D Oh yeah, 2 Hour Make-Out Session.
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Post by cloudmonet on Mar 7, 2007 22:48:24 GMT -5
Shego a Rival to Ron for Kims Love? I dont see it. I don't either. But what exactly is Shego trying to do? Prove her essential badness? Maybe. If someone calls a girl "Princess" or "Cupcake," this could be either a taunt or a flirt. Many taunts are less ambiguous. That is the more obvious meaning. The more obvious meaning of "There's still fireworks" from Emotion Sickness was the Middleton Days fireworks display, and the more obvious meaning of "You got me," from Gorilla Fist is "I don't know." But the alternative, K/R shippy meanings have been confirmed by Steve. After those, it's hard for me to consider "You're mine" without wondering. You didn't see how weary they were with Allaine's line of questioning. I wouldn't rule this out completely. I agree. The behavior, if there was any, was entirely Shego's. Kim did give her a funny look, though. Like WTF, green girl? Come on, mud wrestling?! You don't think there were any snickers about that in the office? Look, I'm certainly not in favor of Kigo. You should know me well enough to know that. But just what is going on? I'm not the only non-Kigo shipper to be curious about this. Let's keep an eye on the green girl. She is bad. Kim certainly hated Shego at the end of "So the Drama." But outright hatred unmixed with anything else is not what we usually see, any more than between Kim and Bonnie. If I said, "well, looks like Kim's gonna have an affair with Shego," that would be blasphemy. I specifically said I don't think anything of the sort will happen. But I do have to wonder what's going through Shego's mind. Other than the creators possibly teasing the Kigo fans (and yes, they've met some), there is the possibility that Shego's doing it to try to confuse and unnerve Kim— that is, if she is in fact doing anything. It's all ambiguous at most. As if what movie they actually bought tickets for really mattered ;D Oh yeah, 2 Hour Make-Out Session. Hmm. Why would a couple who can easily contrive to be alone anywhere in the world bother with making out in a theater? But I'll admit, they didn't express any desire to see any movie in particular.
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Post by slicknickshady on Mar 7, 2007 23:03:43 GMT -5
Thanks for the replys Cloud. They gave me a better insite into why you thought certain things. Here are more questions and comments i have though.
1.) Who's Allaine and what questioning are you talking about?
2.) Steve Confirmed those Shippy moments yes, but i dont see him Confirming "You're mine" saying it was a sexual thing and meant that kim wanted to jump shego anytime soon.
3.) I 100% agree with you that Kim shows nothing and is like WTF when looking at shego.
4.) TPTB have said they dont read Fan-Ficiton which is most of the places kigo happens at. I would have loved to see the look on TPTB faces when somebody said they thought kigo should be Canon.
5.) Well i dont see Kim & Ron as the type to do a lot of PDA but they are not against it thats for sure. I mean they kiss in front of everybody in So The Drama, The Kiss and Hug in the hallway During Ill Suited, They were going to kiss in public in front of the whole stadium in Mad Dogs & Aliens, They were going to kiss in Bueno Nacho in The Cupid Effect, The sat on the same side of the booth in Mad Dogs And Aliens. I see you're point though of the movie theatre maybe being a bit too much PDA. It's to tough to make a guess though and as you can tell Subtext is not something I put a lot of Trust in.
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