| ReBoot Episode | |
| |
| Bob and Dot at half speed | |
| Enzo the Smart | |
|---|---|
| Episode no. | 1.08 |
| Written by | Mark Hoffmeier, Lane Raichert |
| Story by | Mark Edens, Brendan McCarthy, Ian Pearson |
| Original Airdate | 26 October 1994 |
| Prev.: The Crimson Binome | Next: Wizards, Warriors, and a Word From Our Sponsor | |
| View Episode List. | |
Summary[]
When Enzo feels he is far behind others in intelect, he makes a drastic change to get smarter that threatens the lives of everyone in Mainframe.
Plot[]
Bob, Dot, Enzo, and some binomes are in a Rampart strategy Game. Each controls a tower from which they must bring down the User's tower. The User takes out Dot's tower, but not before Dot can grab everyone on the tower and leap to safety. Enzo then devises a plan through which he would use a huge canon and a huge cannonball to destroy the User's tower. The cannonball proves to be too big to be shot, and it is up to Bob to save the Game.
Bob is using Glitch to determine a proper firing angle. He aims a tiny cannon straight at the User's supply of gunpowder, and wins the Game. This makes Enzo feel BASIC because he couldn't figure out how to beat the User. Bob tells him to calm down and not be so hard on himself, but to no avail. Enzo becomes determined to become smarter so he can beat the User the next time.
Enzo decides to turn to Phong, because Phong always seems to have the answers to everything. As is customary, Phong challenges Enzo to a game of Pong. Enzo loses, and Phong says he cannot bestow any wisdom upon him. He does, however, take Enzo to Mainframe's Read-Only Room, where Enzo can access any and all information in Mainframe. This is Phong's favorite way to get smarter. When Phong leaves Enzo to his studying, the boy tells the computer to access every file in the system. Before long, though, Enzo realizes that information is not so easily had. He asks the computer how he can become smarter right away. The computer leads him to the Clock Speed Room.
The computer in the Clock Speed Room asks Enzo what he wants, and Enzo elects to be twice as smart as everybody in Mainframe. The computer grants him the wish. When Enzo leaves the Principal Office, he finds that everything has gone 8-bit. The colors are all wrong. He asks Phong what is going on, but Phong acts strangely and doesn't reply, running into walls.
Enzo goes to Dot's Diner, only to find everyone has become BASIC. He then realizes that he only made everyone twice as dumb as himself. In his rush to get back to the Principal Office to change it back, a Game Cube lands.
The Game is an Olympics marathon, where there are two teams, the User's team, and Enzo's team. Enzo reboots as coach, to his frustration, and watches helplessly from the sidelines as the User's team creams his team in event after event. Finally, in an act of desperation, Enzo decides to do the final event, The Eliminator, himself. The User gets a head-start because Enzo is forever being slowed down by his teammates. He eventually decides to transfer all of them to the User's team so that he can have a chance at winning. Enzo's former teammates succeed in "helping" the User so much that Enzo manages to win the Eliminator, and win the Game.
When the Game Cube leaves, Enzo hot-tails it to the Principal Office where he puts everything straight. Phong asks him rather cryptically if he has learned anything from his experience. Enzo is curious how Phong knows what happened. Enzo says that he did, and promises to never try to get smart all at once ever again. He goes back to the Diner, and everything is back to normal.
Gallery[]
References[]
- Phong and Enzo pass a black marble statue of a desk lamp. The plaque reads "JL Senior". This is homage to John Lasseter, who created the award-winning computer animated short 'Luxo, Junior'. He was a founding member of Pixar and currently oversees all films/projects as Executive Producer.
- In the Olympics Game, a User character is wearing the yellow-and-black tracksuit that Bruce Lee wore in the unfinished 'Game of Death' and makes a similar hand sign from his 1973 film 'Enter the Dragon'.
- Algorithm Theatre says: "Twice nightly: Susan Alexander". A reference Kane's second wife from the 1941 classic movie 'Citizen Kane'. Another Citizen Kane reference appears in the information room that Phong leads Enzo into as it resembles the private archive of Walter Parks Thatcher, Kane's caretaker, where the reporter Jerry Thompson reads Thatcher's unpublished memoirs.
- Phong's personal password has changed from Medusa Bug's "Greek action" to "Yadda, yadda, yadda!".
- There is a real video game titled Rampart with a similar concept to the one in this episode.
- Being outscored by User, Enzo says: "What we have here is a failure to network", which is a reference to the phrase "What we've got here is failure to communicate" from 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.
- A theme similar to the theme from ‘Chariots of Fire’ plays during the basketball game.