Talk about a stressful episode. Adam scares the shit out of me. He is such a creep with the way he does things, like Reki, I was terrified for Langa. I know Langa said he wouldn’t quit skateboarding if he had gotten hurt, but dude, you can’t skateboard if you get injuries that will prevent you from skateboarding, or worse– dead! (Frankly I’m surprised that Reki got away without a concussion or broken bones, especially since it hasn’t been that long since he gotten injured during while competing against Shadow. But this is fiction, so let’s just roll with it anyways.)
Thanks to Cherry and Joe, we were able to learn a bit about the secret behind the “Love Hug” attack. It requires maximizing the acceleration in the direction of travel, and using a spin, do a 180 with minimal turning radius. Right after the 180, you forcefully bring down the nose you lifted up and by doing so, you still have propulsion even going uphill.
But they did get one thing wrong. They thought that it could only be done in straightaways, however Adam defied their expectations and used it in a corner and traced him. Fortunately thanks to Langa’s quick-thinking, he was able to successfully dodged it by flipping over him.
In fact there were a number of wise (albeit risky) decisions he made in attempt to keep himself safe. First he correctly guessed that Adam was going to pull that stunt again at the start. But apart from that and the flip to dodge the “Love Hug” that came later, Adam was the one who was in complete control of the race. As expected he pulled another freakish stunt that I am going to to refer to as ‘the dance with the devil’, because boy was that uncomfortable and terrifying to watch. Seriously. But one of the things that might have saved him some grief was the decision to get closer to Adam rather than away. He figured it would be safer to do that to ride out the corner, which was probably the best decision since Adam wasn’t gonna let go him anyways.
In the end, there was no winner to this race because it was called off due the police crashing the party. They really had me worried for a second when Adam’s car pulled up that he was gonna pull him inside with him. Luckily that wasn’t the case, but he still left him stranded to almost be apprehended. Thank god for Reki showed up on the nick of time to flee the scene.
But even though Langa didn’t get hurt, it worries me how Adam seemed to have successfully enticed Langa into his world. It didn’t matter that he stopped after being stupefied by Langa’s genius way of dodging his “Love Hug”, because he still caught up again anyways. The way he freaking saw Langa as an angel, good grief, I snorted at that one. But it was an important moment because it gave us some insight about Adam’s character. He said he finally found his “Eve” (Adam and Eve), which leaves me with the impression that Adam has been longing to find someone who shares the same caliber as him, making it more fun to skate with. Thus he declares them his “true love”. That pretty much explains the showy entrance, such as rolling out the red-carpet, and handing him a giant bouquet of roses, and the terrifying intimacy he engages in during the race. Adam is not an opponent to be trifled with. Those who failed to meet his expectations were horrifically cast aside, some broken to the point they couldn’t skate again even if they wanted to.
Now the problem here is that despite the clear danger, Langa can’t keep himself away. He is a pretty simple guy, so when he is super into something, he latches onto it and he becomes hungry to learn more and more to become even better. We saw that a number of times, such as last week with how he became intrigued by the technique of the Love Hug and had tried to do it himself. Then this week, with the help of Mika and Shadow, he was able to learn how to do the Casper Slide. Adam is an extremely skilled, so (apart from his deranged character) he offers a lot of interesting things that Langa would want to learn about and experience. And now that he got a taste of his world, despite the promise he made with Reki to stay away from Adam, he is going to want to go back for more.
This brings about another concern that has been lingering in the back of my mind since the beginning of the show. With how quickly Langa is picking up the game, it seems almost inevitable that Reki may find himself left in the dust. This development is certainly going to test their friendship, as Langa is being drawn to the devil. As such, a rift may form between them. The two conflicts together is a recipe for the perfect storm, so we’ll have to see how this will pan out.
But first, it looks like we might be in for a breather episode with the whole crew hanging out together next week! I certainly wouldn’t mind a light-hearted goodness before shit hits the fan again.
