- Title: Carmen Sandiego – The Sticky Rice Caper
- IMDb: link
Following the two-part opener explaining Carmen‘s (Gina Rodriguez) origins, the show sets in on a more straightforward episode with “The Sticky Rice Caper” which sends our thief to Indonesia. The episode introduces two new characters as part of Carmen’s team in a brother and sister (Michael Hawley and Abby Trott) who first help Carmen allude some mysterious agents in Paris and later help her prevent V.I.L.E. Academy‘s sinister plot to wipe out the rice crops on the island of Java for the sole purpose of profit. Both Crackle (Michael Goldsmith), who gets a harsh lesson about failure from V.I.L.E., and the pair of Chase Devineaux (Rafael Petardi) and Julia Argent (Charlet Chung), and their continued pursuit of Carmen, return in limited roles in subplots not connected to the main storyline.
“The Sticky Rice Caper” also sees the return of Carmen’s old rival Tigress (Kari Wahlgren) who plans to launch rockets full of rice-destroying spores as part of the celebration immediately following a shadow puppet performance. Although the episode lacks an exciting heist sequence, there’s plenty of action that still allows for plenty of local flavor. While the show gets a bit heavy-handed in Player‘s (Finn Wolfhard) rather awkward data dump of Indonesia (offering far more information than Carmen needs to complete her mission… or pass a citizenship test for that matter), the episode offers more insight to the local surroundings built more naturally into the plot that works much better as events continue to unfold.
