Summer Camp Island Review: Meet Me in Massachusetts / Witches in the City (Susie and Ramona Chapter 3 + 4)

"The sunsets are so pretty in Massachusetts."

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While I certainly enjoyed last week's offerings, I feel like there were a lot of places where they left me with some unfulfilled desires. There's an obvious novelty in their conceit, allowing us to witness the start of Susie and Ramona's friendship, but it felt like it was ultimately insistent on enabling the success of what followed, their greatest qualities being the devil in their details as opposed to the wholeness of their narratives. (One of my greatest issues was just how little it felt like we saw Ramona and Susie bonded by "Ghost Baby Jabberwock's" end.) But the special's second half, "Meet Me in Massachusetts" and "Witches in the City," sort of... make the witch arc work, indebted to their predecessors but nothing short of triumphant as the two pieces of the puzzle that complete the despairing picture.

I feel as if there's a very direct correlation between how much Susie's chapter progresses, and how much stronger it grows; it's fairly clear that the deeper that we get into it, the more we're attending to that which SCI found most exciting to showcase. Each chapter offered something different, of course, and interesting in its own way, but beginning with "Meet Me in Massachusetts," things finally start to fall into the right groove, pushing the arc patiently towards a satisfying, revealing, and emotional close that snaps us back into SCI's present with some new thoughts to process.

"Meet Me in Massachusetts" still comes across as largely set-up, but it's set-up that begins to more closely approach the island as we currently understand it to be, and that makes its offerings more enticing. Its most immediate contribution is the addition of Betsy, the final witch to join Susie and Ramona's coven enabling them to forward their plans to save magic. (Comically enough, she shows up on the island with a badminton racket, believing that she's been sent to reform school for wearing pants rather than about to be indoctrinated into witchcraft.) We also get to see the genesis of her friendship with fellow, soon-to-be-camp counselor Alice, and while it's far from as meaningfully-developed as what it's designed to mirror, it doesn't have to be; it's just pleasant silliness with the side effect of accentuating Susie and Ramona's intimate connection.

And speaking of, it's nice to be able to bask in the strong friendship between Susie and Ramona, something I feel like the last two episodes failed to amply demonstrate. It's the episode's greatest individual contribution, allowing us to get a gauge on just how tight-knit they are as they cutely wax upon their optimism for national holidays being created in their honor, and daydream about being able to retire to Massachusetts once their mission is accomplished. They're indelibly adorable besties—another win for SCI's excellent track record of normalizing displays of strong, platonic friendship—and that just makes the tragedy in their wake all the more devastating. 

As "Meet Me in Massachusetts" reveals, Susie and Ramona's ability to save magic together also means that they'll have to be torn apart, sentencing Ramona, for whom time continues, to exist in frozen time, while Susie, for whom time has frozen, must remain in the present. That also manages to poke thoughtfully at the differences that define who Susie and Ramona are as characters; Susie loves Ramona so much that she attempts to find a loophole to exist in frozen time with Ramona, while Ramona loves Susie so much that she needs to reassure her that their friendship will remain resolute, and that they have to do what's right no matter what it takes. It's the unwavering trust that Susie has in Ramona that enables her to allow her best friend to forward their prophecy... though it's also a trust that, as next episode proves, is gut-wrenching to see broken.

Lastly, before we move on, I just wanna give a quick shout-out to Jimjams. "Meet Me in Massachusetts" takes advantage of his voice as a narrator more than before, and his occasional interjections, at one point "setting up a scene" by peppering in questionable, poorly-accented dialogue about how fantastic he is, adds another fun angle to proceedings... even if he also enables the episode to occasionally segue into fart gags, one of SCI's rare, distracting vices. They ultimately don't amount to that much of a strike against proceedings, though; "Meet Me in Massachusetts" is a strong outing, powered by strong character moments and exciting plot development.

With "Witches in the City," though, the arc finally comes to a head. It can be difficult to assess a multi-parter sometimes, and perhaps it's unfair of me to divide it into four separately-assessed bits as opposed to consider its impact as a complete narrative. No matter which way you look at things, though, it's the 11 minutes that the rest of this special has been building to, harnessing the power of the previous three episodes to cathartic effect, and it owns that fact.

While I could be quick to leap to its emotional poignancy, it's important to single out "Witches in the City" for its sharp comedic chops. In spite of the pivot that it eventually takes, the bulk of the episode is spent, as its title indicates, with Susie, Alice, and Betsy patrolling New York City in search of magical creatures that they can bring to the island. Sure, it's a somewhat bland premise to set the characters in a place where they're so far out of their depth that all they can do is humiliate themselves as they fail to navigate an unfamiliar world, but characters like Susie are so strong that they will the conceit into working. More than just being helpless, she doubles down at every point that she can, traversing the city and wreaking irresponsible havoc while simultaneously achieving literally nothing. 

It's not even until Betsy presents the idea of framing the island as a summer camp to lure magical beings—nixing Susie's idea of a snot-based ski resort—that the episode is able to push forward, rendering their tribulations in the big city hilariously pointless. For us as an audience, though, suddenly recognizing that all of the campers on the island are the magical creatures that Susie and co. are failing to successfully ensnare is a tantalizing and valuable reveal, and one that, no doubt, is gearing SCI up for an exciting conclusion. 

The fact that the rest of the episode is such a comedic powerhouse just makes the shift that grounds us back into reality all the more painful, too. It's impressive that "Witches in the City" can hit as hard as it does, honestly; Ramona's claim that Susie carrying out her task will allow them to reunite is immediately suspicious, considering that we know, in the present, that she's still trapped there. But I don't think that it's the shock of her lying, even if for the greater good, that makes the episode so visceral; it's the weight of it all, and the pain that it causes.

I don't think any moment in the show has ever stung more than knowing how close Susie was to changing her outlook—to "be happy, or even kind," she sweetly sings—with a level of touching sincerity that only makes her shock at being lied to by Ramona pierce like daggers. Susie is a character that risks seeming unlikeable, and selfish, and unable to consider others' perspectives, but it's a moment that allows us to really understand how much the betrayal that she perceives wrecks her, only getting a few seconds to sob to herself before she has to run off and bitterly prep the island for the first day of camp, with no time to reconcile.

SCI is a simple show with a very simple narrative and characters, but that doesn't make its moments of emotional clarity any less startling. If anything, the realism that powers the psyche of so many of its characters allows it to be all the more human, bereft of complexity in favor of being so universally felt. And true to that sentiment, "Witches in the City" ends with what will most certainly be one of the most enduring images of the series: Susie and her best friend holding hands, overlooking a Massachusetts sunset in her dreams. No matter how hard Susie's exterior might be, and how much she might try to avert Ramona, her longing is unfettered.

There's no shortage of unanswered questions going forward—will Susie and Ramona reunite and be able to live out the dreams that they've always had? Will Oscar and Hedgehog be the ones who save magic?—but "Meet Me in Massachusetts" and "Witches in the City" round out this arc of the season with a new lens for us to look through, and one as delicate and fragile but sweet as SCI so routinely is at its best. It'll be interesting to see how the narrative continues to be facilitated across the season's remaining two arcs, but in a show as packed with thoughtful surprises, perhaps it's best to just sit back and let Summer Camp Island lay itself out and do the talking.

FINAL GRADES:

"Meet Me in Massachusetts": A-.

"Witches in the City": A+.

On Wednesday: King and Puddles go on vacation.

For my review of the last two episodes, "Susie's Ark" and "Ghost Baby Jabberwock," CLICK HERE.

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