Plot: A few weeks before Halloween, the Extreme Dinosaurs try to thwart the raptors plans of drilling for lava in a volcano and weaponizing it. They get exposed to some weird gas that turns them all into completely gentle pacifists who have no interest in pursuing the raptors.
When the raptors realize what the gas did, they try to weaponize that instead and infect millions of pumpkins with it. Distribution of pumpkins go worldwide, and the raptors hope to have an easy time taking over the country with no one to stop them. What can cure the Extreme Dinosaurs before Halloween becomes a nightmare?
Breakdown: I gave Extreme Dinosaurs some crap when I reviewed it for Episode One-Derland, but 30 episodes in, they must’ve found better footing because this was actually a pretty entertaining episode.
Halloween is basically used as a set piece here as it’s really not important to the plot at all. The raptors could just as easily be infecting chocolate bars or some other widely distributed item and the story would remain the same.
The only justification for it is that the gas, which is really microbes, need heat in order to activate, otherwise they’re harmless. Being in jack-o-lanterns exposes them to the heat from candles. That’s why the Extreme Dinosaurs got affected in the volcano. How and why such a microbe was in the volcano to begin with is never explained.
Pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns are used to distribute the microbes, and somehow a bunch of humanoid raptors got a monopoly on pumpkin selling across the entire US in a fortnight in October.
Still, the dinosaurs being extremely wimpy was more entertaining than I ever thought it would be. There’s just something very funny about a T-rex knitting a sweater, a pterodactyl hopping in a bunny costume while singing a song to the tune of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again’ and a triceratops being preoccupied with growing flowers. Them reacting to damn near everything with a smile and a conversation was also funny.
The resolution to their behavior was a bit cheap, though. The whole issue with these microbes is that they make you insanely gentle, happy, calm and pacifistic. So what do you do to cure that? Just intentionally piss them off.
That makes zero sense. Anger should not cure anti-anger. Plus, the way they get pissed is a little too lame for me to believe.
You’re telling me they can hear that the raptors are planning to take over the country and they want to go off and have a tea party with them, but hearing that the TV is busted or seeing flowers get destroyed is enough to make their anger shine through biological manipulation?
I also noticed that they included a character that wasn’t present in the pilot, an ankylosaurus named Hard Rock. He’s a good character that adds a level of maturity and level headedness that helps even out the annoying hover-mom rule-lover that is Chedra.
All in all, this is a good and funny episode of Extreme Dinosaurs that actually makes me want to give the show another chance. However, it’s not really the best Halloween episode due to lack of Halloween atmosphere. It just seems like it’s an afterthought most of the time.
Not to mention that the title doesn’t make sense. The pumpkins never come to life.
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