Shorts Review: Red vs. Blue Season 12 Episode 5

They got the plan. But how does the team train for their rescue mission? Well, episode 5 has all of the answers!

Spoilers Below

In a moment of infinite wisdom, Jensen and Simmons had capture software loaded into everyone’s helmet to make everyone a better fighter. Palomo is freaking, because he doesn’t want to get caught doing anything embarrassing. Tucker likens it to a girl who wants to make a sex tape, but Smith uses the more workplace appropriate “football coach to training video” analogy. Simmons, Grif, and Caboose get the training weapons, but what the recruits find out next is that their objective it to disarm and apprehend Felix. Good luck with that, kids.

They get the review of their training, and it is a clusterfuck from the word go. After the first failure, Tucker brings the team back out for more training. It doesn’t get any better. Tucker goes face first into Felix’s shield, Smith takes a shot to the head, where the two editors are laughing their asses off because of the idiocy the team shows. It doesn’t get any better, with the training grenades. The CG shines here, as well, when Tucker takes a grenade and throws it at Felix, who then throws it back at Tucker. Grif and Simmons are trying to infiltrate Felix’s position, but he walks out, and punches them both in the face.

After that latest mess, Tucker confronts Felix, who is going extra hard on the team. He questions them all, saying that they are all just a bunch of idiots. While that’s true, they do have something to fight for, and Tucker has been busting his ass trying to get the team in shape. Kimball stops Felix from tearing into Tucker even more. The lead in to the next episode is that Kimball needs to talk to Tucker. It won’t be a nice talk either.

I thought I was impressed by the CG in past seasons, but holy shit, this looks great. The motion capture is really fluid with both scenes, and you can barely tell that it isn’t CG. Rooster Teeth has gotten almost flawless with the CG. However, the story gets some time to shine, as well. This season has been a departure to seasons past. Where it doesn’t take 15 episodes to get to the meat of the story. We got dropped right into it, and we are working towards a conclusion throughout the whole season. I loved the earlier seasons where it was 75% dicking around for the characters, then 5 episode of plot. But the writer, Miles Luna,  pulled it through here. Episode Six can’t come soon enough, my friends.

Watch the latest episode here.