Main cast: Michael Barry (Wendell), Louis Ferreira (Chet), Andrew Sabiston (Louis), Noam Zylberman (Rex), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Laura Shepherd

Wendell is a nerd that, for some reason, keeps trying to hang out with bullies Rex and his minions Chet and Louis, letting them bully him relentlessly because, I don’t know, plot. One day, Rex gets mad when Wendell saves them from being targeted by their PE coach, so he ends up causing Wendell’s beloved pet rat Dr Jekyll to go missing. Not that he’s sorry, of course, because Rex and his two minions are singularly vile creatures. This, of course, makes Wendell ten thousand shades of brain damaged to keep wanting to be cool with these assholes.

Rex and his minions also, thinking that it will be a cool joke indeed, inadvertently causes Wendell to drink a serum that causes him to transform into a monstrous rat beast that soon terrorizes the town.

Sigh. Hyde and Go Seek features genuinely malevolent bullies, and the first half of this episode is a series of them terrorizing Wendell via a series of “jokes” that could be fatal at times. However, while this show has no problems showing a nerd being tormented non-stop, it of course can’t show Rex being ripped into shreds because, you know, that would scare the kids. Hence, the pay-off for having to sit through that imbecile Wendell getting bullied silly is horrible. There is no cathartic value in doing so.

In fact, Wendell has frustratingly little agency here. If he hadn’t been lucky and somehow the thing he was lured into drinking actually killed him instead of turning him into a monster, this episode would have taken a tragic turn. In fact, he has little to do with Rex finally getting his comeuppance here—Rex does that all to himself.

Hence, I’m confused by this episode. It’s not a vicarious experience for kids that are being bullied, as Wendell is hardly anyone to root for or relate to. It’s not a satisfying revenge tale, because Wendell doesn’t really do anything to Rex here. So, what is it?

This episode feels suspiciously like a thinly veiled excuse to show a kid being bullied for cheap laughs, under the guise of… I don’t know, teaching kids not to bully one another? At any rate, this one is way too mean spirited without any humor or entertainment value to make it worth sitting through.