Summer Camp Island Review: Where's the Confetti (Yeti Confetti Chapter 5)

"Uh-oh! Y'all ready for snow?"

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Season 3, up to this point, has been an interesting beast, and despite my enjoyment, a little bit hard to peg down. Whereas the show's second season was a vibrant effort to take everything about the show and recalibrate it to perfection, Summer Camp Island's third season buries those leads in favor of more pointed explorations of its characters and lore. That's difficult to complain about, really—SCI is no less of a workhorse, determined to challenge itself whenever it can—but it's also turned SCI into a moderately different show with about as many things to like as things to take quiet umbrage with, having been able to take a step back and assess its accomplishments over the past half-season.

"Where's the Confetti," curiously enough, does a nice job of epitomizing those overall trends, a strong and compelling episode on its own that feels a bit perplexing under the weight of the season's ambitions. There are certain expectations that come with an episode like this that the conflicts of the past chapter get resolved, and while "Where's the Confetti" succeeds at that, it feels equally motivated to exist in its own space while paying limited dues to what came before.

Summer Camp Island Review: The Sherbet Scoop / Lucy's Instrument (Yeti Confetti Chapters 3 + 4)

"This is so avant-garde."

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Whereas the first two episodes of the Yeti Confetti arc were more about establishing the circumstances, we've finally reached the point in the arc where Summer Camp Island is in a nice spot to both experiment and dig into some more meaningful stories. There's an interesting vibe to "The Sherbert Scoop" and "Lucy's Instrument": while they're no more narratively significant than the arc has been, and no closer to a certain goal, there's something nice about seeing the show work at its own rate, pursuing the stories that it wants to tell in the moment. Sometimes it's the smaller moments that help paint the biggest picture, after all, and it's a thesis that SCI seems intent to explore.

"The Sherbet Scoop," especially, is the most detached episode of the arc thus far, but I feel like that also makes it the most compelling. Season 3 is generally its best when episodes both feed into the unique atmosphere of their respective arcs and exist in a capsule all their own, and "The Sherbet Scoop" is pretty much exactly that, trading in plot specifics for meticulous, rousing character portraiture. Admittedly, it's an episode that spends the bulk of its runtime with Lucy in the back-seat, but I don't think that's a knock against it; the Yeti Confetti arc is as dedicated to her as it is to the yetis at large, and considering how much of a work-out she's gotten already, it's nice to see her slotted into a narrative where she has less control.