Captain Planet and the Planeteers SE01 EP02 - "Rain of Terror"

Episode Name: Rain of Terror

Original Airdate: September 22, 1990

Villain: Verminous Skumm

In an abandoned factory (shut down by environmentalists because the factory was polluting too much), Verminous Skumm (who was born and raised in toxic waste, and has declared war against the environment) and his Rat Pack begin burning coal that's laced with a rain-making chemicals, in the hopes of creating acid rain. The Planeteers are alerted to this, and are sent by Gia to deal with the dirty rat.

Skumm and a few members of his Rat Pack

But not all of the Planeteers are up to the challenge - Ma-Ti failed to climb over a training course wall, and his friends didn't lessen the embarrassment as they laughed at him. Suffice it to say, Ma-Ti is dealing with self-esteem issues, his small stature being the main problem. The Planeteers don't realize how much they hurt Ma-Ti until he refuses to join them in taking down Skumm. While Kwame doesn't want to leave him on their plane, the coal is burning already, and they've limited time to stop the acid rain.

A dejected Ma-Ti

But of course, after a valiant attempt, the Planeteers are caught and locked up in a room full of dangerous toxins. This presents a (rather humourous) problem: Kwame cannot use his ground powers as it may pollute the Earth, Linka cannot use her powers as it may pollute the water table, Gi cannot use hers lest she pollutes the air, and Wheeler can't blow their way out of the room or they're liable to blow up.

The Planeteers, sans Ma-Ti, succumbing to the toxins 

With this in mind, they contact Ma-Ti, who, despite his fears of inadequacy, comes to the Planeteers' aid, climbing a huge wall to break a skylight and free them.

Which doesn't help out much, as an acid cloud is already nearing a city, and so they combine their powers and Captain Planet arrives, swiftly and confidently dealing with the cloud (diluting the acid within by using natural underground mineral deposits). Skumm gets away, but his poisonous plans of pollution are ceased for now. Back on Hope Island, with a new-found confidence, Ma-Ti is able to make the climb up the wall, and his worth is proven to himself, to both the joy of Ma-Ti and his teammates.

Wrapping up this episode, the audience is told a little about acid rain, and the dangers pollution poses to our environment. Lastly, we're encouraged to write to our congressmen about supporting pro-environmental laws. While writing to conservative congressman may be a waste of effort, remember, the power is yours.

This episode presents us a few points I'd briefly like to discuss.

Kwame, who I praised in the first episode for being seemingly intelligent disappointed me when instead of offering Ma-Ti encourage, he laughed at him for his failure. Now, don't get me wrong, everyone laughed at him, but I expected a bit more from Kwame.

But throwing that aside for a second, Kwame and Gi acted awfully flirtatiously early on in this episode - perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but there definitely seemed to be something there. Whether or not that will amount to anything (and as this is a 90's cartoon, I sort of doubt it) remains to be seem. On the other hand, Wheeler's obvious attraction of Linka isn't getting him anywhere, so on that front, Wheeler's not as lucky.

Which comes back to Ma-Ti - he's younger than all of his team members, and while they may have feelings of attraction for each other, Ma-Ti's not involved, which only furthers his detachment from the group. He has heart, no doubt, but he's rather removed from everyone else. What can close this gap? I'm not sure, but I don't think past this point it will be much an issue, as at least his self-confidence issues seemed to be resolved by this episode's conclusion.

Skumm is an over-the-top antagonist, but then again, aren't they all? He does strike me as more malicious than Greedly - whereas Greedly was, believe it or not, simply greedy for his own sake (at the expense of the environment), Skumm is intentionally causing the environmental harm. If memory of my childhood serves me correctly, this is not a one-off villain, and we'll encounter him more down the road.

I hope by that point, the Planeteers will have matured past their silly puns.

A solid episode here, and while Ma-Ti is not the most compelling character to me, this was pulled off pretty well. Hopefully down the line, we focus more on Gi and Kwame, though a Linka-centric story wouldn't do anyone any harm either.

Rating: Above Average

Previous episode

Next episode