Amphibia Review: The Shut-In!

"Nightmares are real!"

--

Well, it's that spooky-ass time of year again. Admittedly, spookiness has sort of persisted across the entirety of this year, and perhaps most ironically, October isn't really shaking up to be any more scary than any other month this time around, but escapism! While Halloween in the traditional sense might be cancelled, there's nothing like a good Halloween episode to stir us into that fun, autumn mood, and "The Shut-In!" is pretty much exactly that.

Continuing television's long-held tradition of fictitious-but-eerily-comparable holidays, this isn't technically a Halloween episode. It's all about Amphibia's warped version, the Blue Moon Shut-In, the night where the moon turns blue and everyone locks themselves inside of their homes and tells stories until the sun rises again out of fear that staring at the moon could transform them into horrifying beasts. (There's also jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating for practical supplies, but... it's not a holiday.)

I was initially a little hesitant about how this episode falls into the narrative of the show, to be honest. It feels a little odd considering how elegantly last episode wrapped up this leg of the season, with Anne setting off to Wartwood once more and Marcy being approached with an ominous proposition from the King, for us to suddenly be back home without any indication of time passing. I honestly feel like that plays to the show's benefit, though, in retrospect. A good holiday special should have a relatively timeless quality to it, and there's something of an appreciable coziness to being back home, bereft of narrative complications, for some fun, scary stories.

The Shut-In!" reminds me a lot of some of my favorite episodes of another of my favorite shows: the "Terror Tales of the Park" series from Regular Show, dishing out some fun, extra spooky tales from the perspectives of its cast alongside a small but equally Halloween-y overarching plot. Amphibia doesn't miss a beat in being able to capitalize on those tentpoles, either; Anne and the Plantars all get their shot at a scary story imbued with their respective personalities, and Amphibia gets to cut loose, get darker, and experiment with the supernatural.

I'll go about this by making mini-reviews of every segment, starting with Anne's "Phone Mo," a fairly conventional horror story to kick the episode off with but not at the expense of charm. Although I found its plot a bit predictable, it's easy to appreciate how everything is stylistically constructed, with Anne hastily crafting an alternate universe populated by knock-offs of our Amphibia cast: Twig, Molly, Broadie, and Haddie, converting their frog inspirations into lovable human designs. (Anne, herself, has been converted to "Anna," donning a ponytail.) It's a simple novelty, but there's a reason novelties are so appealing; although the visual similarities and voice actor connections don't become massively integral to the story as it progresses and fixates more on Anna, it keeps "Phone Mo" fresh.

While atypical by Amphibia standards, the story itself isn't as impressive, though there's nothing particularly wrong with it. Having something seemingly innocuous and cute turn out to be a horrifying, powerful monster isn't too inspired, but twisting the creature in a cute animal video into a Ring-like captor is. It's also a bit interesting to amalgamate that spookiness with some light skewering of Internet culture too, in how Anna defeats the beast through dislikes and negative comments. Although both paths are fairly well-tread, pushing the two ideas together allows some edge to emerge from the potential roteness. The end result, then, is a solidly-executed story punctuated by great moments (Anna's sandwich and stuffed animal weirdness, the creature exploding into Boba spawn), if conceptually tame.

(Minor quibble: how is Anna able to dislike the video several times as opposed to merely once in rapid succession? I suppose you could chalk that down to being a story-telling convenience for Anne, who's sort of improvising the tale on the spot, but considering Hop Pop prefaces everything by saying that every story has to be 100% real, why is Anne even telling a fictional story? Weird notes, but they stood out to me as somewhat questionable aspects. I digress.)

Hop Pop's story, "Dead End," is an improvement, and ultimately the highlight of the episode for me. Like "Phone Mo," it's immediately refreshing to see a unique atmosphere residing over Hop Pop's story, set when he was a younger man with beautifully-coifed hair, working his first job as a wagoner. Unlike that story, though, there's a lot more going on with "Dead End" conceptually, allowing it to be more ominous, dark, and effective, at times rejecting comedy entirely.

The basic gist of the story is that Hop Pop's tasked with driving an ominous stranger, Mr. Littlepot, who increasingly seems to be death incarnate. It risks being cliche, but the slow burn that etches his character out keeps things feeling exciting (as well as just, like, audible character deaths). As the story progresses, it becomes more and more clear that Mr. Littlepot isn't some cold executioner; he merely comes for his clientele when their time is up as a conduit to their afterlives without any control over the cause. There's not a ton of involvement from Hop Pop throughout all of this, but that just helps feed into the dark helplessness of the situation: all he can really do is fulfill his duty to Mr. Littlepot, driving him from destination to destination... until discovering that the Plantar Farm is Littlepot's final stop. And even then, he must resign to his untimely fate: Littlepot not, in fact, exiling him, but slicing off his gorgeous locks and reframing the entire story as a swan song to Hop Pop's luscious 'do. Perhaps it's a little predictable, but backed up by the extent that "Dead End's" overall conceit is realized, it's a delightfully cruel little capper.

The final tale of the night is Sprig's "Skin Deep," our only story set in present time ("a few days ago," per Sprig's account). Perhaps it's because of the fact that it's also our only story told without the assistance of narration—not that the story demands it—but it honestly feels like the show in its usual form, with maybe a little more darkness. It's perfectly fine material, but the fact that it lacks in the sort of stylistic flair of "Phone Mo" and "Dead End" makes it feel a little safe. 

"Skin Deep" is still fairly effective, though. Sprig is, as usual, in fine form as a protagonist, and it's especially nice to see him paired up with Ivy (!) after so long, forced to retrieve a stray bugball together from a murderer's house. Their rapport creates a very specific, mischievous charm that no other characters bring to the show routinely while taking more steps to develop the relationship between the two. Sprig even manages to score a kiss on the cheek (even if the ending reveals that "Skin Deep" was merely set-up for a scare prank he planned with Ivy)! I do think that, as with the other stories in "The Shut-In!," there's a sense that the characters are merely being led along the premise rather than strongly defining it, but at least that enables cool and creepy things to happen, and the Seamstress stands as probably the greatest concoction to come out of the whole episode, a glass frog who hides underneath a grotesque shell made of sewn frog skin. 

I think that "Skin Deep" could afford a punchier ending, but admittedly, the abruptness with which Sprig concludes his story—happily running back home after narrowly saving Ivy from being devoured by the Seamstress and setting her cabin alight with a lantern—allows their prank on everyone else to be snappy and effective. That moment of silliness also makes for a solid transition into the underlying narrative of "The Shut-In!" Between every story, Polly attempts to tell her own spooky tale, only to end up being comedically cut off from recounting adventures that Anne and the Plantars had been on together ("A Night at the Inn," "Children of the Spore," etc.). In her frustration, she ends up reaching the point of confronting the Blue Moon herself in hopes of getting a scary story of her own, and sufficed to say... she succeeds on a couple of levels. 

I feel like I have a reputation for being tough on Polly, and she remains the one main character in Amphibia's cast who tries at my patience on the occasion, but the show's smart in how it's managed to start keying more and more into the fact that, for all of Polly's self-aware and snarky dialogue, she's just a tadpole. There's a certain degree of insecurity buried beneath the personality that she exudes, and "The Shut-In!" is smart to use its conceit as a means of prodding at it. Polly ends up transforming into a werewolf and wreaking havoc on the Plantar household, sure, but in some strangely sweet way, she's redeemed, allowing everything to end on a nice note.

So, how can I assess this episode? While I feel like I was a little critical of some of the individual stories that make up "The Shut-In!," it manages to more equate to the sum of its parts. Whether or not this is a particularly daring episode, it's as quietly ambitious as it is fun. More than anything else, I'd like to think that it presents an exciting formula for the show that could blossom into a series of really cool, yearly Halloween specials, but even if that never comes to pass, "The Shut-In's" parade of spooky tales is more than welcome. And at least personally, just for me, fending off against a world on fire and frigid Chicago winds... it's nice to feel a little slice of autumn again.

FINAL GRADE: A-.

For my review of the last two episodes, "The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers" and "A Day at the Aquarium," CLICK HERE.

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