Summer Camp Island Review: The Later Pile / Honeydew Hatch

"Easy as pie. (Eating it, not baking it.)"

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Summer Camp Island rarely struggles in regards to the potential of its premises. It's almost always able to find interesting and engaging spins on whatever it has at-hand, regardless of how exciting those may initially seem, but as I sat back trying to figure out what to say about either of today's episodes, "The Later Pile" and "Honeydew Hatch," I was struck by a frustrating ambivalence. It's a feeling I've seldom felt from the show, and especially considering how much the latter episode tries to accomplish, it feels... unusual, to say the least. Allow me to explain.

"The Later Pile," first and foremost, is perhaps one of the most straightforward episodes of Summer Camp Island in a while, neither marked by pronounced highs or frustrating lows. That's a weird shortcoming, but I feel like there's almost nothing worse than an episode that lacks any sort of lofty aspirations, especially from a show as routinely inspired as SCI. "The Later Pile" is effectively the documentation of a chore, albeit a strenuous one: Oscar's need to return a late DVD to the library, and subsequently a distant video store run by vampires.

There's a nice hint of freshness with how "The Later Pile" conducts itself. Oscar is the perfect protagonist to fall victim to such a premise, and Hedgehog is the perfect foil to his lovable immaturity; likewise, the plot theoretically sets up a fun adventure across some of the weirder unexplored corners of the island. The issue is just that so little of that plays out to its fullest potential. Oscar, shockingly, becomes buried in a premise built for him, barring a snafu in the video store that causes every shelf in the store to topple over... twice. Perhaps having more dimensions would've helped him out here, but "The Later Pile" being driven by both a mix of his nonchalance at his bad personal habits and his anxieties make for a strange combination, with neither being fruitfully tapped.

Perhaps Hedgehog suffers the most here, though. She adds a nice bite to the episode in general despite being relegated to playing the straight man (as well as scoring a brief but fun little song), and her personally-devastating revelation that all of the work she and Oscar had to fight through was for naught is a potentially-interesting place to explore that threatens to cause her character to rethink how she lives her life. The issue is that "The Later Pile" also has no idea where it wants to land with what the episode is trying to communicate, rewarding Oscar's laziness and ultimately concluding with Hedgehog shrugging off the devastation of the past two days. There's nothing wrong with making a point out of the overly-complicated pointlessness of an adventure, but when that fails to even resonate within the characters who were dragged along, what's the point?

Outside of that, "The Later Pile" is just... lackluster. As I've written about before, I watch every episode twice: once for a clean, open-minded viewing and then once to take notes and pull things apart. Sometimes, in that process, I discover things about episodes that I didn't notice before that bolster my appreciation, but rewatching this episode just proved how much it was lacking in the subtler, engaging moments that SCI is usually so adept at. It just read as the show going through the motions, and while I can't fault them for pursuing a more low-key affair powered solely by Oscar and Hedgehog's always-wonderful chemistry, it just doesn't leave you with much to think about.

"Honeydew Hatch" has significantly more ambitions than "The Later Pile," but it's equally as iffy. Ramona's been generally out of the picture for quite a bit, despite her strong showings in "Meeting of the Minds" and "Acorn Graduation," so I got the hint that this episode was aiming for some pretty serious character development by Summer Camp Island's standards. To "Honeydew Hatch's" credit, too, it looks at Ramona in a legitimately interesting way, in her relation to Susie and how that ties into the Fuzzy Pink Time Babies; this is as significant as SCI gets, really. Even so, it just... doesn't work.

I really appreciate everything on paper. Susie sends Oscar and Hedgehog off to Ramona's to assist in her honeydew patch, where the Time Babies are grown, and we find out for what purpose: we feel happy and content in the present when we're surrounded by them, but bad when we're not. It's a nice helping of lore-building, but also a deeply-intimate bit of character portraiture for Ramona: her and Susie's relationship has run cold by Susie's own volition, and it's interfered with both her emotional state and her ability to successfully harvest the Time Babies, who instead hatch as "Slimy Loogie Splatter Babies" that threaten to reinforce her emotional turmoil on a greater scale.

Unfortunately, whereas that moment feels fully-realized, the rest of the episode falters and loses coherency. Everything plot-wise becomes a lot less centralized from that point onwards, and less rewarding as a conclusion because of how off-base it gets from where it started. There's something nice to be said about how the episode reinforces the strength of Oscar and Hedgehog's friendship through song, but that moment also removes Ramona from being able to further address her personal issues in pushing them further from the realm of her control. It also segues awkwardly into some truly baffling characterizations for Oscar and especially Hedgehog, who calls Ramona out on her "old lady sadness" and telling her to hide in an attic; especially in contrast to the sweeter first half of the episode, the characters' sudden harshness in such a fragile situation feels frustratingly uncharacteristic both of them and the show at large.

Everything wraps up, too, with an inkling of something meaningful: Hedgehog decides to deliver some pictures of Ramona and Susie's earlier years to Susie in the hopes that' it'll rekindle their friendship. The issue is just that the episode leaves us at that particular moment, and while I understand that the goal was to be open-ended to encourage further development in the future, it just comes across as awkward in the moment and slightly limp. For everything "Honeydew Hatch" exposes, it seems to create more questions than answers in its ambiguity.

In general, I think that Summer Camp Island is heading in the right directions. If there's anything to be taken away from "The Later Pile," it's that SCI is very comfortable with itself and its identity, and if there's anything to be taken away from "Honeydew Hatch," it's that the show is placing a lot of consideration on expanding its narrative and reaching breakthroughs. I don't take either episode as a sign that the show, as a whole, is stumbling; sometimes an iffy episode is just an iffy episode. All we can do is wait for the rest of the show to verify those claims, and hopefully not contest them.

FINAL GRADES:
"The Later Pile": B-.
"Honeydew Hatch": C+.

Next Tuesday: Hedgehog attends a witch sleepover, and Oscar and Hedgehog help Barb settle on a suitor.

For my review of the last two episodes, "Catacombs" and "Wild Hearts Can't Be Caboodled," CLICK HERE.

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