It's a rare incident for Tucker to grace the spotlight. In a fit of irony; it's an episode that focuses on his ignored background. It's much as truth as it is in fiction; if you're a geek, you're gonna get the boot. It's practically standard law for writing High School setting and the writer doesn't break it. Tucker understands; unlike Danny, he's never used popularity to get what he wanted. He refuses to throw a campaign if he cannot express the manners and life choices he has established himself as. It's an admirable quality, even if on a social upgrade scale, he chose the wrong horse to bet.
Like Danny, Tucker has his own set of stories; out of the trio, Tucker might be the most under appreciated in both school and the DP fandom. While canon made Danny out to be Dash's favorite victim, it's only established that way because he holds main character status. Outside of hanging around an unpopular grouping, Danny really doesn't have anything within him to set him apart as the biggest loser. Sam is too vocal of a figure to let it get to her, giving her a confidence the audience sips in, but Tucker suffers a double whammy of being both an acknowledged geek and sporting an inferior-complexity. "What You Want" already revealed the amount of insecurity he has within himself. His often self-boost in confidence may be a way for him to keep a stiff upper lip, but deep down, he's miserable. He doesn't have Sam's courage and range of motivation and he doesn't possess ultra-cool superpowers as Danny; the latter a bigger insult—the two are best friends. Equal friends. Yet he feels they have qualities that make them superior. This is what caused him to endure a darker core and abuse his ghost powers until Danny forcibly drove it out of him. The story left the conclusion unfinished; Tucker himself did not rid of his demons, he had to let his best friend beat the ghost (and his resentment) out of him. In doing so, the writers created continuity, but took this long to squeeze it in another episode. It makes sense for Tucker to easily grow corruptible here as he did in "WYW". I can imagine his bitterness has been built over time since, finally culminating when the one chance to feel important is ripped out of him by the student council, the teachers, and insultingly, his friends. His reactions were appropriate.
The execution not as much. Despite an uninspired resolve, "What You Want" successfully prayed on the heartstrings of Tucker's mind by pacing his awe and respect for Danny's power to malice when he has nothing to combat the ghosts and everyday life of abuse he constantly suffers from. He gains a slow, but meaningful knowledge of the kind of person he can be (which essentially leads up to "King Tuck") and reunites with his good buddy without heavy-handling it, something this episode does in spades. If it's not Tucker constantly reminding everyone how oblivious he is, then it's Danny and Sam's radical behavior. It's hard to accept the two as negligent when prior episodes never established any sense of disregard for the bespectacled one. Tucker may have felt smaller, but Danny and Sam never treated him as such. The writer just repeats the same formula the past two episodes uttered. Danny himself was the one who tirelessly pursued a way to fix Tucker to normalcy in "WYW", worried over his growing darkness. He knows this too well, but unlike him, Tucker is easily lead by growing corruption and manipulates it with little clause as oppose to the morals that constantly blindside Danny. The scepter overtakes his mind until Danny removes it from his hand. Yet, it feels as though Tucker himself can't control his demons whatsoever; that he has to continuously rely on Danny to do it for him. Why does the scepter even need to mind-control him? He was already motivated by Hotep-Ra to dispense some justice; the scepter could have pushed him further instead. It seemed it was built to bring out the Duulaman in him, but even if the past King looked like him, it doesn't hold as much chemistry as a simple explanation that Tucker might be distantly related to him could. That would have given this plot some form of flavor.
The story is a coherent, contradicting mess. Nobody learned anything in the end. Danny swipes the scepter from him with intentions to return it to the museum. Tucker doesn't argue back and instead lets him boss him around as he and Sam did before. Why does he passively let Danny handle the bigger issues when he wants some responsibilities of his own? It's his story, why can't he return the scepter? For that matter, why does he quickly denounce his potential rise to school presidency? It's not just Danny and Sam who gained an Aesop, Tucker understood the difference between corruption and obligation of leadership. Shouldn't he take what he received and produce a grand breaking speech that would cause him to rule with a fair hand? This would have given him some triumph over his darkness and further justify his rule as goddamn mayor of goddamn Amity Park. For that matter, neither Danny nor Sam stays long enough to witness Tucker's blathering, swiftly forgetting their principle. Seconds later, he is tragically gunned down by Paulina and Star in an unnecessary repeat of last episode's finale despite the struggle he encountered for respect.
"King Tuck" doesn't remind engaging either. Everything is predictable from start to finish with nary a plot twist or interesting quirk. Hotep-Ra is as dull and expected as this episode, his personality and eventual betrayal as exciting as tax filing. Aside from some pretty visual choices (aqua beam spread over a violet sky), the animation remains tepid. Goodchild is usually good with his action sequences and with several opponents under Danny's belt, it should have created a sense of excitement, but too many long pauses and slow spots didn't grip me.
With what little he does get in the series, this is not how Tucker should be treated. Why should he return to what he was before this episode despite what the lesson was trying to teach us? This isn't subversive or some strange form of cynical deconstruction, this is disorganized. With no Tucker-centric episode past this, "King Tuck" brutally ends his character arc with no fanfare. And in another fit of irony, this episode comes back to bite him in the ass when the writers stop caring about him later on.
2/10
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Article written in: Dec. 28, 2008
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