“Accidents Will Happen” started promisingly enough with the Guardians of the Galaxy reluctantly putting on their new uniforms as part of their induction into the Spartax empire. Aside from Star-Lord a.k.a. Peter Quill (Will Friedle), none of the Guardians were particularly happy about this development. While they did appreciate the access to Spartax’s intelligence network, the team was reduced to working for Quill instead of working with him. Meanwhile, he got to go off and assume his role as a prince alongside his father, J’Son (Jonathan Frakes), in a council meeting of the other intergalactic empires.

It didn’t take long for Quill to screw that up, as he had the Kree and the Rigellians on the brink of war with a few carelessly uttered words. Look, we know that Quill is a huge idiot on this show, even more so than in the live-action movie. Presumably J’Son isn’t a fool…and yet he allowed his son to have this moment without considering the consequences? Can’t we count on anyone to act like an adult on this show?

The problem is that Guardians of the Galaxy plays like it is written down to its target audience and it seems to assume that everyone watching it can’t handle even a hint of nuance. J’Son immediately sprung Quill’s sister on him as a potential replacement heir. Captain Victoria (as voiced by Cree Summer) is a fairly recent addition to Quill’s extended family in Marvel’s comic book universe, and it was a good idea to bring in a character who would take Quill’s arrival as a personal threat to her place in the royal family.

However, this episode really dropped the ball with Captain Victoria by making her almost as shrill as Rocket’s mom and more one-dimensional than Quill himself. Even when Captain Victoria came around on her feelings towards Quill, it was beyond stupid when she and Quill asked the Guardians to “don’t get mad” in unison at the end of the episode. Why did she adopt Quill’s vernacular when he was being incredibly condescending to her for most of the episode? The only thing that showed a hint of promise was the way that Quill and Captain Victoria came to regard each other as family.

As for Quill’s other family, the Guardians felt somewhat rejected by him when he remained behind while they attempted to catch Ronan (Jonathan Adams) off guard. But it was just a trap, as Ronan and Nebula (Cree Summer, again) quickly captured Quill’s team. Back on Spartax, Quill’s punishment was to accompany a refinery asteroid on its way to the Kree as reparations for Quill’s actions at the council meeting. Along the way, Quill inadvertently started a revolution in his name when he repeated the Star-Lord prophecy that Mantis mentioned in last week’s episode.

Nebula and Ronan used the Guardians to get inside of the refinery to set up an assassination attempt on the Kree Supreme Intelligence and start a war with Spartax as a way to seize control of the Kree empire. As evil plans go, it wasn’t bad. Plus, it was an excuse for another Nebula (Vanessa Marshall) vs. Gamora fight, which tends to be fun.

It was the Drax (David Sobolov) vs. Ronan fight that turned out to be a letdown. The animation was unusually choppy in that sequence. That was unfortunate, as Drax had some of his best moments by demonstrating that he could use his brain in a fight. Drax actually outsmarted Ronan simply by not trying to trade punches with him as he had in the past. I love the idea of Drax becoming a smarter fighter, and hopefully it wasn’t a one-time thing.

Rocket (Trevor Devall) also had some very good moments when his expertise in explosives proved to be the deciding factor in saving the asteroid and everyone on it while destroying Ronan’s ship. If this show had any guts, then either Ronan or Nebula should have been killed off in that explosion. But it’s far too likely that we’ll see both of them again.

Strangely, this episode introduced Thor (Travis Willingham) and then did nothing with him after the initial council scene. Loki’s appearance on this series a few weeks ago seemed to indicate that he would trick Thor into declaring war on the Guardians, but that wasn’t followed up on here. Instead, Thor seemed to actually like Quill’s bro comments until J’Son left the room.

Unfortunately, most of this episode felt like it squandered the progress the series had made in the last few episodes. While there are occasional animation problems on this show, it’s greatest weakness is still the terrible writing. I know this is a show for children, but that’s no excuse for this series to be so sloppy. This week’s episode was particularly hard to watch.

What did you think about this week’s Guardians of the Galaxy? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Image Credits: Marvel TV/Disney XD