"I'm gonna need you to go back to your corner real quick."
--
Today's Summer Camp Island episodes are "Jeremiah" and "Tomorrow's
Bananas." Let's dive on in!
By nature of the creative process, not every episode to emerge from a TV show
is a winner, and I think it's unreasonable to expect anything less from even
the best of shows. It's not like "Jeremiah" is a particularly bad
episode, either; it just feels a bit undetailed for a show that excels with
its eye for nuance, and while it presents interesting character work for both
Oscar and Hedgehog, the narrative ensures that they've realistically
accomplished very little by the episode's end.
That's also not to say that I'm not a fan of seeing Oscar's parental instincts
crystallize in another episode—I'm always unabashedly down for that. If it isn't
teeming with inspiration, there's guaranteed cuteness to come from Oscar's
sudden bout of fatherhood over a young tree being he finds outside of Susie's
house named Jeremiah. Oscar, as always, is the beating heart of the show, and
it's fun to see how his sense of care combines with his naivete as he tirelessly
plugs away at his new son to the detriment of his own health. The issue is that
the joy of seeing Oscar inhibit a fatherly role for Jeremiah can't really carry
the episode, and
SCI's only way to expand upon its premise is to take it
into another direction entirely, and a direction that ends up feeling
particularly labored.
As Oscar devotes his life to Jeremiah's growth, Hedgehog is forced to
tend to the other campers, all of whom have suddenly come down with some
strange illness. It's obvious, watching an episode of television with two
seemingly-unrelated things happening at the same time, that they're gonna
wound up interconnected, and indeed, as "Jeremiah" slowly unravels itself,
Hedgehog discovers that Jeremiah is infecting the entire camp with his grubby
fingers, instilling him with strength and causing him to grow bigger and
bigger. Up to this point, the episode is treating Oscar and Hedgehog as
strangely passive entities; Oscar is stuck as Jeremiah's parent, only
developing in the sense of growing fainter and fainter from a lack of sleep,
while Hedgehog is left to put the pieces together through strict observation.
When we get to the climax, then, there's a hope that things will finally be
taken into the two protagonist's hands, and that Hedgehog and Oscar will
finally team up, knowing the full extent of their current circumstances, to
solve the issue in a satisfying way. There's even a nice beat, in the heat of
a moment, where Oscar goes from a doormat to Jeremiah to a strict
disciplinarian, which momentarily defuses the situation.
So it's strange, then, that their efforts fail, and Susie conveniently appears
to fix the issue for them. I can get the use of Susie in an episode that
spirals out of control and begs for a reset, even if I don't think it's very
smooth; at least in an episode like "
Tortilla Towels," there's enough fun going on in how the narrative gets more in more
helpless that the show would rather explore that downward trajectory than find
an inspired way to dig itself out. The issue is that "Jeremiah" isn't even
doing that, really; it's a very slow and methodical narrative that suggests
the climax to be a pivotal moment where everything ties itself together, but
Susie appearing and taking care of it herself ultimately deprives anything
from really being said. Oscar and Hedgehog are charming throughout, but they
always are, and this episode doesn't allow them to inflect their personality
into enough of an outcome.
"Tomrrow's Bananas," though similarly ending with Hedgehog getting
bailed out of her dilemma by Susie, is the far better of these two episodes.
Co-penned by newbie Lucyola Langi and Alabaster Pizzo, the resident
time-bending wizard behind Season 1's wonderful "Time Traveling Quick
Pants," it's yet another entry into
SCI's winning catalogue of
time-centric experiments. It also happens to be a particularly fantastic
Hedgehog showcase, something that this season has been criminally lacking;
it feels rare to see her character flaws explored, and even rarer for them
to be explored in such a thoughtful way.
While cleaning the witch school, Hedgheog discovers a bag of magical farro
seeds tucked into an armchair which, after a visit to the underground info
booth located conveniently nearby, she learns can grant you the power to read
your future. Despite warnings not to play with them, Hedgehog twiddles with
the seeds anyway, seeing that she'll end up as valedictorian in high school...
and that Oscar has end up as a detention-dwelling ne'er-do-well. What follows
is blind panic and experimentation, with Hedgehog becoming intensely
over-protective of her precious, corner-bound boo boo and instructing him
through a series of inane, banana-related tasks. As the visions from the seeds
become more and more arbitrary and alter more conflicting variables, though,
her anxiety becomes far too immense to bear.
It's a messy situation, and one that speaks to the deepness of Oscar and
Hedgehog's friendship. While "Tomorrow's Bananas" uses this to fine comic
effect, dragging Oscar blindly through Hedgehog's experiments with nothing
but faith that his bestie knows what she's doing, there's a turn where Oscar
gets rightfully fed up with his weird treatment and finally, frustratedly
asks Hedgehog what he's even doing. The moment he turns around, though, and
notices Hedgehog bent over, sobbing on the ground, his frustration softens;
he still has no idea what's happening, but he recognizes her desperation and
anxiety and asks her, empathetically, what's going on. It's such a small
moment, but to me, it feels especially touching. It's not often that we see
Hedgehog as the half of their friendship in need of guidance, and that's
what makes "Tomorrow's Bananas" feel like such a gratifying exploration of
both her as an individual and her dynamic with Oscar. Naturally, she comes
clean to him about the farro seeds, and from there, the narrative can
progress with them fully in-sync.
"Tomorrow's Bananas" is also, it's important to note, brilliantly funny. For
as much as its conflicting timelines feed into Hedgehog's meltdown, they also
offer delightful, rapid-fire visual gags. (What other episode would offer the
glorious visuals of hardened, delinquent versions of both Oscar and Hedgehog?)
The plot also devolves into some entertaining buddy comedy once Osc-Hog
attempt to quietly infiltrate Susie's pantry for a magical spice grinder to
destroy the farro seeds: as Oscar scrambles inelegantly about her kitchen,
Hedgehog bores and distracts Susie with feigned miscomprehension of a
painfully simple door-opening spell. ("Step 1: Say 'Welcome.'" Hedgehog: "I
can't get a handle on it.")
Of course, eventually Susie catches on, and she helps guide the episode to a
graceful conclusion. While, as I mentioned earlier, her involvement isn't
unakin to her swooping in at the end of "Jeremiah," I appreciate her
appearance more here because it doesn't sideline Oscar and Hedgehog; it
brings them back down to earth, and gives her a chance to quell Hedgehog's
anxieties in a surprisingly affecting way. They all take a walk down to
Susie's basement, where she explains that, unlike what Hedgehog heard
earlier, farro seeds don't forecast a definite future; they merely
demonstrate potential outcomes. As she and Hedgehog stare at the ceiling,
farro seeds floating mid-air like stars in the night sky, Susie stresses
that in a realm of extensive possibilities, the only guarantee is that
there's an endless amount of ways the future could go... so don't spend all
of the present worrying about it.
It's such a simple message, but in true
SCI fashion, it's delivered
against such a thrilling context and with so much pathos that it resonates
beautifully. In that sense, "Tomorrow's Bananas" is the show at its absolute
best: it manages to play to the emotional and whimsical strengths of the show
while still feeling fresh, and it's always in touch with itself, allowing it
to deliver a message that really sticks with you. As a fellow sufferer of
anxiety (among other maladies), there's nothing I appreciate more than a show
like
Summer Camp Island that truly understands what it's like to
live with imperfection and manages to address it with spectacular earnestness
and heart. That's the sort of messaging that children's television is made
for, and considering how rare it can be to find it elsewhere, that's what
makes it so enduring.
FINAL GRADES:
"Jeremiah": C+.
"Tomorrow's Bananas": A+.
Next review: A mouse and a snowflake go on a journey, and Osc-Hog goes camping!
For my last reviews of "Oscar & His Demon" and "The Emily Ghost
Institute for Manners and Magical Etiquette,"
CLICK HERE.
If you like my stuff, be sure to follow me on Twitter
@Matt_a_la_mode.
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