Review: Dreamworks Dragons “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”

We have a new dragon, but what does it want with all of that metal?

Spoilers!

Johann’s back! And this time, he is challenged by Gobber to find something spectacular. Gobber is wowed, but by scrap metal. Tuff, however, is wowed by a shiny new mace. Toothless seems rather disturbed by something. I smell that plot hook coming. The next morning, Hiccup wakes up to all of the metal in the village, including Tuff’s Macey. Hiccup and Astrid figure to start investigating where things went missing. In the background, you see Tuff mourning the loss of his mace. Astrid and Hiccup start at Gobber’s, where he trips his own trap, and then go to the twins’s house. Tuff is laying it on thick that it was Ruff that stole it in a fit of rage. They leave, and decide to start it up in morning. While Hiccup is asleep, a rumbling smoke cloud takes Hiccup by his fake leg, and yanks him up. It turns out to be two Smothering Smokebreaths.

They get uncovered, and fly off. The next morning, everyone wakes up to the rest of the metal missing. Tuff makes a sketch of himself, thinking it was the thief. Hiccup realizes that they came in on the pile of metal that Johann brought into shore. After a little strong-arming from Stoic, Johann confirms it, saying he bought it from a berserker from Breakneck Bog. In a comical scene, Berk is pretty much falling apart with no metal fasteners. Hiccup rallies the group, and they go to lure out the hatchlings with the rest of the metal in Berk, except for Hiccup’s leg. Hiccup, Snotlout, and Fishlegs are waiting for the moment to strike, when the twins rush in and end up attacking each other. The other 4 chase after the rogue dragons. The group splits, and the Smothering Smokebreaths go right after Hiccup because of his metal leg, and the artificial tail fin of Toothless. After tailing the Smokebreaths, Astrid finds Hiccup just in time to tell them that Dagger and his armada are on their way to Berk.

Astrid and Hiccup piece the plan together, and realize that Dagger planted them on Berk. Hiccup plans to lure the Smokebreaths on Dagger, by luring them onto Dagger’s ship. They gather even more metal, and get the Smokebreaths off their nest, and onto Dagger’s armada. They break up the nest, get the villages metal back, and send Johann back to Breakneck Bog with the Smothbreaths in tow.

What’s this? Was this something that advanced the plot of the season? Well, I think it was a little bit of both. Yeah, we saw Dagger, but not much, except for his ships getting stripped of all metal. The smoke effects were wild, definitely movie quality. But the question remains: how is this going to look compared to the movie sequel coming in a few weeks time.  Stoic strong-arming Johann was funny, but following Tuff mourn the loss of his mace put everything over the top for me. The episode was worth it for that alone. One thing that bugged me, and I have forgotten to mention in the last few reviews, how did Ruff get her hair back so quick? This just furthers the detachment from episode to episode. And personally, I think she looked better. But hey, that’s just me. The season finale is at the end of the month, and it’s setting up to be a wild ride.