#84 - Lab Rats: Elite Force (Rage4Media 7th Anniversary)

It’s our 7^th anniversary.

Yes, I’ve officially been running all incarnations of Rage4Media for 7 years, I really need to get out more. And what better thing to review to mark such an occasion than a Disney Channel Sitcom from 5 years ago. I mean it’s not the oldest thing I’ve reviewed on an anniversary.

I’ve been hinting at this for a while, covering Lab Rats and Mighty Med in some of my longest reviews (this one's longer), it’s time to cover Lab Rats: Elite Force, the spinoff show of both Labs Rats and Mighty Med. The production credits go to Chris Peterson and Bryan Moore, the creators of Lab Rats. Initial alarm bells ringing that neither of the people behind Mighty Med have production credits, though Andy Schwartz does have a writer’s credit for a couple of episodes and was a consultant throughout.

The show lasted one season of only 16 episodes, shorter than any season of either predecessor, so I’ll be covering every episode. I can’t promise I’ll be as in depth as an episode-by-episode retrospective but I will mention every plotline this show has, even if they aren’t part of a story or character arc. Yes, I’ve said in the past doing this would be spoiling the jokes but some of these plots are so asinine I won’t give them the dignity as being classified as jokes.

Mighty Med Retrospective

We know that superheroes save people, but who saves the people who save people? Well, if you’re unlucky enough to be injured in the Lab Rats Universe, your first port of call is Mighty Med. I’ll let you decide which bit of that’s the bad luck.

Mighty Med was the Brainchild of Jim Bernstein, a producer who’d worked on Phineas and Ferb and American Dad and Andy Schwartz, who’d been a writer and editor for Scrubs and had worked on Drake and Josh prior to that. The show ran for 44 episodes across 2 seasons, a relatively short run and not a well acclaimed one, with an average 6.5/10 on IMDb. This is not dissimilar to the score of Lab Rats either, so let’s not jump to conclusions there

The main stars of the show are Bradley Steven Perry, who has Disney Channel Experience playing Gabe Duncan on Good Luck Charlie, and having a role in Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure; Jake Short who’d played Fletcher on A.N.T. Farm, and making her television debut, Paris Berelc.

Other actors involved are Devan Leos, I briefly mentioned how he attempted to murder a homeless person in my Austin and Ally retrospective. Seriously, f*ck him. And he won’t be last controversial figure I’ll mention unfortunately. Carlos Lacamara is also a pretty significant cast member, he was in Independence Day.

Much like with the Austin and Ally and Lab Rats reviews, I’ll cover the opening episodes, and any important developments through the rest of the show’s run. I won’t cover every episode in-depth because this is a sitcom and that would just amount to explaining the jokes. I’ll also be covering the Lab Rats vs Mighty Med crossover.

TV Retrospective - Lab Rats season 3 and Bionic Island

Lab Rats had a stunning finale to s2, it was funny but more importantly it turned the tables. Now Davenport and the Lab Rats have their backs to the wall, can they fight against the insurmountable odds? Anyone else thinking of Joker War right now? Series 3 and 4 have more plot-necessary episodes than their predecessors, so this might be a longer review than the first. I’m going to skip over the Lab Rats vs Mighty Med Episode and talk about the full 2-parter in my Mighty Med Retrospective in a couple of months.