Amphibia Weekly Round-up Review (feat. "Cursed!," "Fiddle Me This," "Anne of the Year," and more!)

"I'm not sure if all this was a blessing, or a curse." "It was literally a curse, Anne."

Since tomorrow's episode, "Reunion," is something that'll undoubtedly be major, I'll reserve an individual slot for it considering that I assume that there will be a lot to say about it. In the meantime, though, there's six episodes to cover, so let's just dive on in, because there's lots to discuss.

In its final stretch of episodes, Amphibia's getting more ambitious, though its occasional adherence to its own norms tends to play out to its own harm. When Amphibia tries to fiddle with new, engaging ideas, it's almost always a success, getting to demonstrate the strength of its writing, but at this point in time, it can regularly get bogged down by its own sense of regularity.

Case in point: cliffhanger ending aside, I wasn't too swung by the season's penultimate episode, "Anne of the Year." It's an episode aiming to be the culmination of Anne's time in Wartwood: she's gone from a local freak of nature to Frog of the Year, voted upon by its citizens as the resident who best exemplifies selflessness and Wartwood's values. Naturally, Mayor Toadstool disagrees and prepares for disaster in the form of the massive party that the FOTY has to plan for Wartwood, and even more naturally, Anne goes crazy over it.

It's an unsurprising, well-worn twist that doesn't do "Anne of the Year" any favors; at a certain point, its premise just feels so fatigued that even though there's a sense of importance to the episode, it just comes across as any other outing for the show. It stings too, somewhat, considering that Anne's already proven her legitimate selflessness before in one of the season's best episodes, "Toad Tax," where she also wins over the unequivocal respect of the townsfolk. If "Anne of the Year" is aiming to reaffirm that point, then why does Anne's character get knocked back to square one?

There's a similar sentiment to "Fiddle Me This" and "Children of the Spore," but both episodes, especially the latter, tell a compelling enough narrative that it compensates to some extent for the characters' static characterizations. "Fiddle Me This" is the far more typical of the two, with Hop Pop turning into an aggressive coach bent on pushing Sprig to success in an upcoming talent show, Amphibia's Got Talent. The plot is somewhat expected, with Sprig's fiddle performance ending in catastrophe as a result of Hop Pop's spectacles (though having Sprig be almost eaten by a massive bat was something that I, admittedly, didn't see coming), but it really stuck the landing with its ending: Hop Pop admits that the only reason he treated Sprig as he did was because he wanted to be able to give Sprig a better life than the one he could give him with the farm stand. Suddenly, Hop Pop's uncharacteristic drive actually makes sense in a moving way, and Sprig clarifies that he's happy with how his life is, and that's just a nice note to end on.

"Children of the Spore" has a lot less offerings in the character development department, trading in the show's focus on morals for a massive, sprawling genre parody. Hop Pop's fed up with Anne, Sprig, and Polly's misbehavior, and starts to use a spore formula on them which ends up transforming them, and everyone else in town, into mindless, fungal zombies. The set-up of the episode is super iffy, framing Hop Pop as a character who's at his last straw to the point of risking the lives of his kids, and the kids, on equal part, look particularly bad here too, but the build-up to the episode's climax is excellent. "Children of the Spore" is one of Amphibia's most well-paced episodes, making greater and greater reveals whenever necessary and ensuring that everything on-screen is captivating; it's just the circumstances surrounding the episode that don't feel true to the show.

The most engaging episode out of the past six was, surprisingly, the first: "Cursed!," an episode featuring Maddie, that creepy girl who Sprig gets engaged to in "Cane Crazy." We haven't seen the character used to much capacity, with her appearances mainly being wordless sight gags, but she's a fun character to involve in the story, with Anne and Sprig waking up under the affliction of a curse and believing themselves to have been hexed on account of breaking up with her "by text." However, when it's revealed that she wasn't the one who set up the curse, she gets to actually join Sprig and Anne's side, working together to uncover the true culprit, and she has a fun dynamic with them that makes her an engaging protagonist, all while reminding us, moralistically, that there's a difference between being weird and being heinous. While the ultimate reveal that they were cursed by the town nice guy, Barry, feels a bit too well telegraphed—his appearance here is suspiciously tacked-on otherwise—the ensuing curse battle between him and Maddie is an epic climax. Plus, seeing Sprig and Anne transformed into a massive fur ball and a bird allowed for some great, weird, physical comedy, which I'm always a fan of. Basically, "Cursed!" is an episode that does no wrong.

That leaves two episodes, "The Big Bugball Game" and "Combat Camp." While I enjoyed them a fair amount, there's nothing too special to them; "The Big Bugball Game," especially, was a very pedestrian outing, as most sports-centered cartoon episodes tend to be, following the sort of beats in its narrative that you'd expect and nothing less.

"Combat Camp," though, was a pretty great outing for Anne, Sprig, and Polly, who get dropped off at a day care that turns out to be a combat training grounds, led by Inigo Montoya rip-off Dratonio. It's cool to have Dratonio actually recognize potential in Anne, and I'm sure that we'll see that pay off more next season (or even next episode), considering her new acquisition of a pretty sweet sword, but the meat of the episode is just the kids being used to help Dratonio conduct a heist. It's entirely silly, but all in good fun with a little bit of narrative progression, which is probably the best summation I can give of the past season.

With one episode left, and with "Anne of the Year" ending with Anne and Sasha finally reuniting, it's finally Amphibia's chance to show what the next chapter of the show will be, and I can't wait.

FINAL GRADES:
-"Cursed!": A.
-"Fiddle Me This": B+.
-"The Big Bugball Game": B.
-"Combat Camp": B+.
-"Children of the Spore": B.
-"Anne of the Year": B-.

For the last Amphibia review round-up, including reviews of "Croak and Punishment," "Snow Day," and "Wally and Anne," CLICK HERE.

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