Tow-Line Goes Haywire
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Tow-Line has one rule:
No Parking Means No Parking
Even for his friends.
Detailed synopsis
Sideburn, up to his usual antics, tries to seduce a red sports car, but his attempts to woo are arrested by Tow-Line, who punishes the Autobot for parking in a No Parking Zone. The tow-truck drags Sideburn to Prowl, who introduces the truck as the newest Autobot soldier. Inside the Autobot base, Prowl inducts Tow-Line into the police's traffic patrol.
Tow-Line start working immediately, and takes his job with extreme dedication. Eventually, Tow-Line's mania goes out of control and he begins to impound misplaced tricycled and wedding vehicles. After Prowl explains the limits of Tow-Line's jurisdiction, Sky-Byte and Gas Skunk notice the new Autobot and begin a sinister plot.
The Predacon trio wait inside of a mis-parked truck, and when Tow Line inevitably comes to tow the truck away, the three Predacons ambush the rookie. They bring Tow-Line to Sky-Byte, and begin the process of brainwashing the truck into a loyal Predacon. Slapper tries to hypnotize Tow-Line using a dangling pendant (to no success). Gas Skunk tries using a metonome (again, failure). Eventually, Darkscream loads a brainwashing program into the captive via disc drive. Tow-Line, unbalanced, is released to enforce his own rules on the Autobots.
A misguided Tow-Line first steals a confused X-Brawn away from Kelly. On the road, X-Brawn uses his own grappling apparatus to try to stop Tow-Line's deluded quest, but merely harms Tow-Line's memory banks. More confused than before, Tow-Line brings X-Brawn to a power plant and deposits the Autobot into a holding box.
Tow-Line's next victim is Sideburn, who is deposited into the same box. Next, Tow-Line captures Rapid Run and carries the large train through the city to the deposit box. Prowl and Koji see the capture, and give chase, but lose their target in rush hour traffic. But at least now the other Autobots know that something is afoot.
Once they meet up, Prowl and Prime confront Tow-Line in part of a staged intervention to help him deal with his towing addiction. Tow-Line makes it clear that he's gone a bit wonko when he accuses Prime of being the Autobot's "evil mastermind." Sky-Byte and the Predacons arrive to help their "friend" but Prime quickly blasts away the goons. Taking Tow-Line home for diagnostics, Prime notices the disc placed inside of Tow-Line by Darkscream. With his mind restored, Tow-Line brings the two Autobots to rescue the others he stored at the power plant.
The Autobots find their allies and Tow-Line apologizes for the kidnapping. Megatron and all the Predacons show up again, but are very defeated almost as quickly as they were earlier. Tow-Line goes back to apologizes, and Optimus explains that compassion and understanding are important values to uphold, (even if it means arresting Prowl during the epilogue).
Stats
Writer: Matthew V. Lewis
American air date: September 20th, 2001
Japanese air date: June 14, 2000
Japanese episode title: Parking Violation! Wrecker Hook
Featured Characters
in order
Sideburn Tow-Line Koji Prowl Optimus Prime T-AI X-Brawn
Sky-Byte Gas Skunk Slapper Darkscream Kelly Megatron
Notable quotes
No parking means no parking!
Other notes
Continuity errors
- Although the Predacon plots that Tow-Line accuses the Autobots of doing are typical of the plots the Predacons usually go through, they don't specifically match foiled schemes that have happened in the series thus far. But it's entirely possible there have been off-screen adventures that just have happened to be too mundane to be made into episodes.
