Summer Camp Island Review: Sea Bunnies / Mushrumours

 

"A tendency towards self-pity. I get that."

--

Considering the different sorts of routes Summer Camp Island has taken to spice itself up across its various seasons, it'll be interesting to see how the show, now in its fourth season, is set to hone in on itself. It's not like it has to, really—SCI is effusively charming and knows exactly what it wants to be, all while excelling at its singular visions—but the show's always been intent to expand upon itself, whether through extending its focus to more members of its cast or, as with last season, constructing more pointed arcs surrounding them. Season 4 seems to have reverted back to a strictly episodic feel, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of gains it made from past experimentation and how much SCI will continue to push itself.

To their credit, the first two episodes of the young season, "Sea Bunnies" and "Mushrumours," point towards some changes in approach. While Oscar takes leading positions in both of them, Susie appears mildly in the former and Hedgehog doesn't make any appearances at all. There's something perhaps disquieting about the show's central figures being so absent, but it also makes room for SCI to try at new things, even without a guarantee of complete success. It's a bit of a bumpy start, but an intriguing one all the same.

It should go without saying that the flame of my love for Summer Camp Island burns eternal, but it was met with a bit of confusion by our season premiere, "Sea Bunnies," an episode which enthusiastically rearranges the show's fundamental DNA. It's an incredibly unique episode by design; taking a note from shows like Adventure Time, Julia Pott out-sourced an episode to one of her contemporaries, the aesthetic wunderkind Julian Glander. The end result is a general merging of both of their sensibilities, with Julian asserting his creative vision over Julia's universe, and it's a creative partnership that plays to curious effect: sometimes good, sometimes eh, really.

I think the biggest point of contention for me, personally, is that it feels like Julian doesn't quite key into the qualities SCI has that makes it so alluring. That's not to say his vision is worse, but it's different; it comes across like Julian using SCI as general wallpaper to concoct his own personal project apropos of what the show's deal is. It's a potent, intoxicating voice for sure, crafting a geometric, gradient-colored undersea universe with abstract and atmospheric musical scoring. SCI is equally as potent, though, and it feels like its voice, one dominated by a certain subtlety and coziness, comes in direct conflict with Julian's gleeful outlandishness. The episode threatens to lose SCI's voice completely.

It's worth talking about the episode's plotting. Oscar accidentally gets teleported underwater by a magical Portal-Potty, only to be put on assignment to get a Sea Bunny for Susie—"the latest must-have cute pet accessory according to 'Small Animals Monthly'"—rather than be properly assisted with his current dilemma. It's a decent set-up to send us into the Glander-verse, where the established reality of the Island becomes irrelevant. There's that core theme that SCI has deployed before to strong effect of placing the inexperienced, young Oscar in an unfamiliar environment, though this episode is less about exploring his character than taking him on a journey through unfamiliar, aquatic locales.

It's kind of all over the place, though I think that works well enough with its abstract aesthetic. The plot never really builds so much as it pulls Oscar from one situation to the next, each with their points of intrigue but never building off of each other. Perhaps one of its most interesting suggestions, for instance, is the idea that the culture of the bottom of the ocean is parallel to the world above per the presence of sea bunnies and a Sea Susie, but that unique revelation is treated with too much ambiguity for "Sea Bunnies" to make any interesting points out of it. The episode is truly at its best when it can take pause and slide into a comedic game with its characters, like Oscar's ethics conversation with the monsters.

Ultimately, "Sea Bunnies" isn't a clear-cut winner, but it's a respectable gamble on something different. There's a joy to it that permeates across the screen, and that's its greatest quality—you can tell it was as much a dream for Julian as it was for Julia to create. Even if it's flawed and disconnected from the show it's dedicated to at times, it's a bombastic debut for Glander, and I look forward to his ingenuity in future projects.

"Mushrumours" is more of a return to form, though not without a nice amount of freshness. A lot of that is due to pairing Alice together with Oscar—an (animal) family reunion of sorts, Oscar quickly points out to Alice's dismay. But even beyond that, there's something to be said about pairing two characters who are both sweet and naive in their own latitudes; Oscar is a child who's actively discovering a world outside of his sheltered upbringing, whereas Alice lives with blissful ignorance of any speck of the world that exists beyond her circle of influence. We've seen that side of Alice before, most notably in the second episode of the series ("Monster Babies"), but this episode is the first time that she's been legitimately challenged to step up, an idea which is as welcome as it is overdue.

The premise itself, mind you, is gooey SCI perfection: Alice masks her distaste for Oscar's mushroom-themed picnic under rationale that eating them turns your hair into spaghetti, a lie that spreads across the island courtesy of some gossipy dandelions. Less cute is the fact that Alice's badmouthing has reached an ominous figure known as the Death Cap, sending Alice a series of dark premonitions and beginning a steadfast pursuit to right Alice's wrongs in whatever sinister ways she knows how to. It's the sort of unnerving situation that Alice is unable to really counteract on her own, and which becomes a fun chance for Oscar to step it up and try to guide her along. 

That's all well and good, but the more iffy thing about "Mushrumours" is how much it feels like it struggles to rest upon a coherent moral. It seems to be setting itself as a basic lesson in accountability: Alice is terrified of being held to her words and spends most of the episode trying to find roundabout ways of solving her issue without the bravery to really tackle it head-on. Instead of trying to confront the Death Cap, she apologizes to a fairy ring of mushrooms who accept her apology but without the ability to alter her fate, and Oscar later suggests that she conduct damage control over her original lie with a more flattering one to balance out her karma to a "neutral zero." I can't fault Oscar for being as adorably childlike as he is—his vest story is, quite frankly, one of the most adorable things he's ever done—and we shouldn't expect him to be a bastion of good advice, but his contribution just continues Alice's attempts to game the situation rather than accept her error.

There's a sense that things just keep getting worse, and that Alice will be forced to face the music, and I think that's great; SCI doesn't often play with tension to this degree, and it's an exciting tone to contrast the breeziness the show usually maintains. The main issue is that the climax, where Alice is captured by the Death Cap and... fed mushrooms because the real issue was that she said she didn't like how they tasted... feels too disconnected from the path that the episode was headed down. 

Misdirection can be a fun comedic tool, but I don't know if the silliness of how "Mushrumours" closes itself out equates to whatever meaning it suggested an interest in putting across. The end result, then, is Alice getting off with her irresponsibility in smearing the name of mushrooms everywhere scot-free; the punishment doesn't match with the crime. Ultimately, though, I feel like the goodwill that drives the rest of the episode helps it land and keeps it engaging in the other areas where that really counts, and I'll happily allow my issues with the climax to be superseded by the sweetness of Alice deciding that she and Oscar can be cousins after all.

I feel bad that at the start of the every season of Summer Camp Island I've covered, I've submitted very lukewarm responses that seemingly underpin the fact that I deeply adore the show, so let me say it again: Summer Camp Island is amazing. I write so extensively about it for no other reason than that I love it, and that I consider it a valuable enough show within my personal comedic education that it's worth deconstructing as aggressively as I can. At the end of the day, too, even if I aired my grievances over both "Sea Bunnies" and "Mushrumours" aplenty, they hit my brain in that distinct SCI way that no other show can, and that's something special. Here's hoping that as the season continues to unravel itself, I'll be able to demonstrate that enchantment even more.

FINAL GRADES:
"Sea Bunnies": B-.
"Mushrumours": B.

Next review: Oscar makes his dream breakfast, and Mallory and Emma trap a ghost.

For my review of the last Summer Camp Island review of "Where's the Confetti," CLICK HERE.

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