Double Trouble

 Ah, yes, the evil doppleganger. A classic trope in cartoons. Let's see how Ninjago handles it, shall we?

 So, Darkey's Boarding School for Bad Boys has rebranded into being a school for good kids, and they want to invite Lloyd for a special award. When the ninja get there, however, it turns out that the students have overthrown the staff and imprisoned them, as well as the ninja, as they want to make Lloyd evil again. 

To make matters worse, Garmadon created duplicates of the ninja with the power of the Mega Weapon in order to defeat the originals. Luckily, Lloyd is able to convince the students that they all have good inside of them, and together they help the ninja defeat the duplicates.

Various Observations:

-Oh, Lloyd is trying to control the power of lightning now? Last episode he used earth, so maybe each episode actually has him learning to harness a different elemental power? I'll have to pay attention to that in the next two episodes.

-Why is Nya dressed up in her fancy dress for her part time job? She's going to be fixing cars, not having a fancy dinner!

-Ah, so this is where Cole's love for cake came from.

-Garmadon is a surprisingly democratic evil overlord. Pythor sure didn't gather the other Serpentine for brainstorming. Of course, he's tossing the ones with bad ideas overboard, but still.

-I love how Garmadon tries to figure out how in the world a ham sandwich would help him defeat the ninja. He sounds so confused!

-Two of the bad ideas came from Chokun, or at least a version of him. Guess the Constrictai were slotted into the comic relief role, this season.

-Wait, why does Garmadon need the ninjas' clothes to summon their evil duplicates? He didn't need the pirates' clothes when he summoned them, last episode!

-Also, he wishes for the ninja to "meet [their] match"? That's so vague! What if the Mega Weapon just conjured up some guy who could beat them at tennis? Or, heck, someone who's better at making ham sandwiches than they are?

-You know, if I had to defeat my enemies and had the power of Creation at my disposal, I'd at least make sure to specify that the duplicates were stronger than the originals.

-Oh my, it looks like Darkey's has ceased to be a boarding school after it's rebranding. Are boarding schools just inherently evil?

 

-Wait, what? Gene, Lyod's classmate that keeps showing up, has what kind of voice? Oh my god, that's atrocious! He's voiced by the same person as his far better sounding classmate? How does he sound so horrible, then? Dear goodness, I'm suddenly very grateful to have been spared this experience thanks to the German dub. Sheesh, and I thought Garmadon could sound bad at times. What, did they just go with the first take, or something? I refuse to believe someone actually wanted Kathleen Barr to give this performance. Surely there must have been a mistake somewhere, right?

-I love the term "evil intervention". Is this where you tell someone you're concerned because they stopped drinking heavily?

-Wait, hold on, the woman whose cat is stuck in a tree is one of the teachers that's imprisoned at Darkley's right at that very moment! Did they seriously only have one model they could use for an old woman?

-Sooo, why, exactly, are the ninja clones just causing general mayhem? Garmadon sure didn't tell them to.

-Did Wu seriously have to give the ninja a trick question to determine they're fakes? They literally have evil distorted voices and creepy pale skin! Not to mention the weirdness of anyone but Jay wearing sunglasses indoors!

-And Wu is, of course, not satisfied with letting the fake ninja follow a false lead, and instead reveals his trick and fights them ... leading him to lose. Man, did he learn nothing from what happened when he fought Pythor or Samukai?

-Fake Jay forcing a kiss on Nya seems ... iffy to say the least. Not only is he not telling her his true identity, he's also forcing himself on her. That's a double no-no. Informed consent is important, y'all.

-Also, how is Nya not noticing the creepy voice or oddly pale skin?

-The old teachers were "highly comitted to evil"? Why in the world did Misako drop Lloyd off there, then? And how has the place never been shut down?

-Since when can Zane just light up? This seems very goofy, kind of like his battering ram mode, but that one at least made physical sense. We know what the inside of Zane's head looks like, and it's not a light bulb!

-Oh dear. Bad day to be an arachnophobe, huh?

-I love how Lloyd (inadvertadly?) traps the other students in a logical paradox. If he's good, he's telling the truth, which is that he's evil. But if he's evil, he could be lying, meaning that he is actually not evil. But if he's not evil, he's good, meaning he wouldn't lie, and so on and so forth.

-Why do both Gene and Brad have identical duplicates behind each other? What, did Garmadon clone them too?

-So the fake ninja fighting the "bad boys" leads Gene to consider them pure evil? Wonder what he'd say if he saw them dropping Serpentine into an active Volcano, or throwing pirates to their death. Throwing dodgeballs back at attackers is surprisingly tame for their standards, actually.

-Sadly I wasn't ablt to get a better pic, but what happened to everyone's shoulder pads? They just disappeared between two shots!

-What kind of science is Gene doing? Positive and negative enrgy colliding means one type of energy disappears? No! They'd just cancel each other out! And he's supposed to be "like, an evil genius"? Well, Enoshima Junko, he's not, that's for freaking sure.

-I'll admit, I like Lloyd's speech about everyone having a good side, but not showing it because they're afraid they're the only one.

-Gene's dad is going to be ... mad that he admits to having a good side? Who in the world is his dad?  The Overlord?

-You know, we see the fake ninja landing multiple blows, and yet none of the good ones disappear. I guess Gene was mistaken, hm? 

-The evil ones do, however, disappear upon being hit. Good on Zane for being the first to defeat his doppleganger!

-Er, Jay, you're not yet in a relationship with Nya. Maybe try being a little less possessive?

-I see the Ultra Sonic Raider is still "the tank".

-Lloyd suddenly being able to control lightning kind of comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? I mean, yeah, he got the light bulb to blow up when he wanted it to, but learning how not to make something blow up is a different thing altogether.