Summer Camp Island Review: Catacombs / Wild Hearts Can't Be Caboodled

"I  never meadow yeti I didn't like." "Oof..."

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Usually, I try to start all of these posts by trying to find connective tissue between the two episodes at-hand, flimsy or not. But perhaps nothing speaks as much to Summer Camp Island's wild unpredictability as the pairing of an episode that does everything right—the truly fantastic "Catacombs"—and one that feels frustratingly uninvested in itself—"Wild Hearts Can't Be Caboodled." Does that mean today's thesis statement is a lack of a thesis statement? Maybe. Let's just move along.

Perhaps taking a cue from our preceding episode, "We'll Just Move The Stars," "Catacombs" is another episode operating, by and large, through a sweet, personal analogy. In effect, "Catacombs" is a coming-of-age story as told through Saxophone and his favorite childhood comb. Per yeti tradition, he had to put it on a wall in the Yeti Catacombs alongside all of the other combs of their species, but in a fit of nostalgia, he retrieves and ultimately loses it (only to be rediscovered by Oscar), causing every yeti's fur to grow at an absorbent, potentially-deathly rate.

He's the perfect candidate here as far as being a main character is concerned, memorably appearing in one of the show's earliest, defining episodes, the equally-sweet "Saxophone Come Home." There's an emotional fragility and softness stemming from his struggles to part ways with his adolescence, and it makes for a great throughline from one episode to the next while feeling like it almost contributes to an ongoing character arc (and one that I'd love to see more of). Saxophone operates, too, as an exceptional counter to his best bud Oscar, whose actions are basically dictated by his adorable immaturity and strangely naive idea of how the world works—an idea that emphasizes finding combs in the wilderness, and subsequently calling off plans to stand in his cabin and pretend to comb bangs that he doesn't have.

Lucy also tags along for the episode after finding Oscar's acquisition of the yeti comb fishy. I appreciate the season's ongoing quest to plug her more into the narrative like this season's equivalent of Max, landing some pretty memorable roles across the past few episodes (including the next one), but there's definitely a sense of the show still trying to figure out how she fits into everything. Her bookish academia puts her in around the same territory as Hedgehog, but the fact that Hedgehog's also present for this outing makes Lucy's inclusion feel almost superfluous outside of her knowledge of yeti lore.

Even so, there's enough balance for everyone to have their moment, and "Catacombs" is an appreciably generous episode with its comedic beats. Lucy lands a great bit of back-and-forth with a suspiciously-sponsored trivia gate; Oscar spends half of the episode inside of a pouch made of Saxophone's excess fur (a "furry sauna" or a "dry Jacuzzi" by his own definition) and struggling to wring out laughs for his yeti puns. Ultimately, though, this is Saxophone's personal journey that they're a part of, and he rightfully dominates, singing a cute, heartfelt song about combing time and, by the end of the episode, coming clean about his sentimentality to a group of angry yeti elders. It's a specific brand of personal growth we've seen used a couple of times throughout the series—in a lot of ways, this episode mirrors another winning Season 2 episode, "Molar Moles," which found Oscar owning up to his youthful blunders in a similar fashion—but the show's undying earnestness makes it hit home just right. Letting go is a part of growing up, and it's a lesson SCI teaches beautifully.

"Wild Hearts Can't Be Caboodled," unfortunately, can't really compete. Granted, its goal is a far throw from the poignancy of "Catacombs," but it's not assisted by the weathered state of its comedic sensibilities—a weird thing that can seldom be said about the show. Working with a more cliched premise isn't completely out of the ordinary for SCI, which has always proven game to reinvent those ideas and make them fit more into the show's mold. It just doesn't seem like even the show can do much with the tried-and-true body-swapping trope; in this case, Hedgehog's attempt at unsupervised magic to groom a unicorn per training ends up causing Hedgehog and a defective unicorn, Caboodle, to swap out. Ultimately, it falls squarely in the middle as far as that plotline goes, and unfortunately towards the back as far as the show's quality is concerned.

To SCI's credit, there are times when the show shines through its premise. While Oscar and especially Hedgehog are caught in thankless work (which I'll touch on in a bit), the supporting cast gets a lot of time to shine, with "Caboodled" taking advantage of a surprisingly large portion of the show's characters. Lucy shines through the most as an obsessive horse girl whose attachment to her assigned unicorn goes woefully unreciprocated, and while it's not much to work with, it makes for a fun, recurring bit of comedic conceit in the episode that works to ever-so-slightly shape her character. Barb's role here as the groundskeeper of the unicorn stables, too, is greatly appreciated; the character is always such a fun presence to have around, and her judgements of the different unicorn teams, laughing nervously at Lucy's possessiveness and gleefully deeming Osc-Hog her "weird team," keep things pretty fun even at their limpest. God bless Whoopi, honestly.

Unfortunately, the meat of the episode just isn't fulfilling. While there's a lot of fun moments to come out of Oscar being trapped in a unicorn's body but increasingly becoming a fan of the new state of his existence, the fact that he's incapacitated as much as he is means that the show can only pull from a very specific well of jokes. Hedgehog falls a victim to this as well; as the only voice of reason and the only character with much of a sense of control, there's too much weight on her role to enable Hedgehog to do anything particularly interesting aside from struggle to keep Oscar and Caboodle in line. Hedgehog and Oscar's camaraderie is enough to shine through and make things palatable, but it never crystallizes into anything particularly meaningful; the closest it gets is Oscar soothing Hedgehog's nerves to acquiesce Caboodle, but that moment feels incomplete with the lack of follow-through. Lastly, Caboodle is just a profoundly dumb, uncooperative horse. The physicality can be fun, especially transplanted into Oscar's body, but his shtick's pretty thin from the get-go.

Perhaps if there was anything more interesting as far as the ending's concerned, the premise could've worked, but the ending comes across as appropriately underwhelming. "Caboodled" reaches an interesting fork in the road when Susie and the other witches are brought on as guest judges for the day's concluding unicorn marathon. There's a legitimate threat, then and there, that Hedgehog might be caught for using magic without their knowledge and put at the mercy of her instructor, but instead, the episode continues to aim at the lowest common denominator: Susie sees nothing wrong in Caboodle-Oscar and considers him to, in fact, be the best he's ever been. It's a weird bit that comes across as a fun subversion in theory, but in practice, it makes the narrative completely toothless while downplaying Susie's intelligence for the sake of landing the episode's final taunt.

But hey... "Catacombs," though. Let's just call it even.

FINAL GRADES:
"Catacombs": A.
"Wild Hearts Can't Be Caboodled": C.

On Friday: Oscar and Hedgehog return an overdue DVD, and help Ramona with her farming.

For my review of the last two episodes, "French Toasting" and "We'll Just Move The Stars," CLICK HERE.

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