This offer means a return to Turbine City, which is now in military lock-down and with renovations underway, leaving the two teams to play sans supporters. Dan and company's opponents are none other than a trio of men who taught Sela to play basketball in the first place while working for her father - They may be old, but what does that matter when you're sat inside a Bigfoot, leaving only your skill to do the talking? This game also means a debut for Navi in place of the still-missing Iceman Hotty, but it's teamwork that wins the day to see Team Basquash take the victory in the short but action-packed game.
From here (and rather bizarrely considering we're nineteen episodes into this series), we suddenly enter recap mode for the second half of the episode - I really have no idea why they felt such a recap was required... perhaps they felt that the change in staff and therefore the focus of the story had confused anyone? Luckily, as recaps go this ended up being a pretty zippy "best of" highlights reel to all intents and purposes, complete with narration by Coco, but that aside there are few things worse than recaps that you have to watch just to pick up on one or two important points, and so this instalment somehow manages to sprinkle just such revelations into its coverage.
Thankfully, the first half of this episode would also have been worthy of any "best bits" compilation from Basquash!, simply for allowing itself to focus on the sport itself pure and simple, with only relatively underplayed overtones regarding Sela's family history to run alongside it. It might not be quite the in-your-face Basquash! of those early episodes (how I smiled at those memories during the recap segment), but when it doesn't get too bogged down in its own over-burdening story-telling devices, it can still prove to be a pretty nifty and visually pleasing series to watch.
hmm... when I rule the world, all recaps and clipshows will be outlawed. On a more serious note, Basquash seems to have gotten bogged down in recent episodes, (even in this episode, the match was rigged anyway since the old timers only cared about property damage to Lunatic's stuff) the return to form can't come fast enough.
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