Summer Camp Island Review: Oddjobs / Tumble Dry Low

"Science Chat, Science Chat / Take a load off at the laundromat"

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Perhaps it's premature to give some general thoughts on the past half-season of television with two more episodes to go, but the past handful of episodes have had their fair share of ups and downs. A lot of that boils down to, I think, the varying degrees of comedic and narrative alchemy Summer Camp Island can pull on its premises. Even if SCI is able to reliably make something unique out of whatever idea it's working with, its strength is recontextualizing and imbuing tried-and-true ideas with the show's flavor. The result of that over this batch of episodes, though, has been occasional inconsistencies, with some simply not going the distance, and mirroring off of that, "Oddjobs" and "Tumble Dry Low" are a nice microcosm of the past season.

Let's start with "Oddjobs." Whereas other shows have to accommodate for the tone of a holiday episode, sacrificing a part of their style for the sake of feel-good festivities, Summer Camp Island should theoretically be built for that kind of fare. Granted, the fact that our series takes place over one long summer means we can't get a proper Christmas episode, but framing it instead as a new, Christmas-adjacent holiday called "Sweater Breakfast," wherein everyone wears sweaters and has breakfast, is cozy perfection.

That's where things start, and I really wish it stayed there. Miraculously, despite obviously finding workarounds to enable a holiday episode to play out, the plot that we settle on isn't exactly wrapped in yuletide cheer: Howard gets Hedgehog's and (begrudgingly) Oscar's help to locate the problems with UMPS, which is struggling to meet Sweater Breakfast quotas and ship every sweater out on-time. There's a nice bit of world-building, revealing the meager UMPS trailer to contain a portal to a sprawling package facility, but it's about as Christmas-y as the facility's decor, with a coat of garlands and sweaters covering the drab, fluorescently-lit grays.

And then there's UMPS' newest intern, the titular Oddjobs. It's weird but exciting to see Season 2 introducing its first new character to the show, and while I'll always encourage broadening the cast to further flesh out the show's universe, Oddjobs struggles to feel believable as anything beyond a vessel for the shallow plot to live through. All she exists for is this episode, with no sense of being a realized, three-dimensional character that'll find meaningful use in the future. There's something of a strange and ethereal twist to her, with Oddjobs turning fuzzy and globby every time she risks becoming overwrought with emotions, but it never operates to any end and merely serves as a momentary obstacle, making its inclusion and focus all the more disconcerting.

For the most part, she's just a ball of positive reinforcement and energy unaware of the fact that she's causing infinitely more harm than good. Oddjobs manages to conjure up a dynamic with both Oscar and Hedgehog, bonding to the two of them early on by taking a legitimately excited interest in them, but the character has a one-track mind that pushes the episode into a cycle: she does something destructively for the sake of fun, Oscar rides along with her, and Hedgehog grows increasingly distraught at the realization that Oddjobs is the root of UMPS' problems.

That also puts "Oddjobs" in the awkward spot of having to hammer together a happy ending while simultaneously confronting Oddjobs about her inadequacy, and the ultimate outcome feels like an easy middle ground that merely fulfills your expectations. She isn't a bad person; she's merely bad at the job that she has at hand, and after proving that she's able to keep Howard, Hedgehog, and Oscar up through one nightmarish night of shipping packages, she earns the new title of UMPS morale officer.

It's almost too neat of a bow to put on everything, and it's one that deprives "Oddjobs" of having much to say, or at least anything in line with SCI's usual sense of messaging. Sadly, too, that makes the episode feel weirdly conventional for a show dedicated to being unconventional, and without much of the show's feel-good nature shining through, it's ultimately an episode that simply doesn't ring true to the series.

Luckily, things rebound nicely with "Tumble Dry Low." We've seen quite a bit of narrative development for Hedgehog, but seemingly at the expense of the sort of quieter character development that makes SCI so tantalizing. With Season 2 focusing more on Oscar's character than ever before, I feel as if she's kinda slipped through the cracks outside of the handful of episodes dedicated to exploring her ongoing quest to become a witch. At best, she's been the functioning half of a team, but at worst, she's faded behind other members of the show's cast in episodes where she's supposed to be an equal. In that sense, "Tumble Dry Low" felt like a sweet return to form, granting her agency over a much more subdued premise and allowing her to really shine.

While I haven't really had a chance to talk about it much, some of my favorite SCI episodes are the more low-key entries of the show with lessened stakes, or far more interpersonal ones through which the characters involved can rise to the top (see: "Time Traveling Quick Pants" or "Moon Problems"). While the show always maintains that sort of relaxed energy, it's been a while since the show's done an episode at "Tumble Dry Low's" scale; most of it is spent inside of Hedgehog's cabin and at her desk, and the climax takes place right outside of her front door.

Instead of going on some grand adventure, this episode's all about Science Chat, Hedgehog's AM radio show. It's, again, a little unfortunate how rarely Science Chat comes up considering that it's very clearly Hedgehog's pride and joy; even if her core audience is only a tight-knit group of four other science nerds, it's an endeavor that's distinctly hers, with limited interference from her manager, Oscar. The gist of "Tumble Dry Low," then, is what happens when her radio show gets slowly overtaken by Pajamas, who steps in during a quick break and ends up pivoting Science Chat away from the science that once lovingly formed the show's backbone... all while drastically expanding the program's listenership.

Pajamas is a character that I've struggled with in the past, but I think her childish naivete works to great effect here. There's something inherently funny about how her innocent laundry advice is interpreted with nonexistent, deep psychological meaning by the radio show's callers that warps Science Chat into an advice show, whether or not Pajamas is fully aware of it. She's excellent, too, in that she clearly possesses no malicious intent, even if she's pushing the show further and further from where it started and causing distress upon Hedgehog. Oscar's support of Hedgehog throughout the episode, too—he constantly supports Hedgehog's attempts to insert "science broccoli" back into the podcast and protects her as manager when external forces threaten to erase her voice from the show—ensures that there's nothing frustratingly mean-spirited about what's going on. It's merely a stressful situation that Hedgehog needs to navigate.

I think the greatest part about "Tumble Dry Low," though, is the statement that it's intent on making. In a lot of ways, the episode reminds me of Season 1's "Puff Paint," which used its simple premise to comment on the nature of art, and potentially SCI in general. In that episode, the moral was that art can take any form whether or not it has some deeper meaning, and you don't have to appease those desires if it goes against your own prerogative; "Tumble Dry Low" takes a similar stance on the nature of creating simply out of a joy of what you love.

Although Pajamas makes Science Chat a far more accessible show, it's also a show far removed from its original purpose and what made it a source of pride for Hedgehog and her core four. Even if she could easily secure a lucrative business deal and have Science Chat air across the country, she'd be leaving behind the reason she started... and so she rejects the deal and everything returns to the way it should be. As someone who's been doing this for the past four years of my life, too, and as someone who's tried and failed to appease to different audiences, it's a message that I found particularly poignant to myself. I suspect a lot of people in a similar boat, no matter what their walk of life is, will resonate with it, too. It's a thoughtful ending to an incredibly thoughtful if understated episode, and an episode that will most likely fly under a lot of people's radars in spite of its strengths.

With only two more episodes to go for the time being, it'll be interesting to see the sort of tone that SCI wants to strike for its midseason finales. For however much the past handful of episodes have jumped around in quality to me, SCI isn't a show that I'd ever consider misguided. I have the utmost level of confidence, then, that it'll finish things off on a strong note, and a note leaving us with as much to think about as always.

FINAL GRADES:
"Oddjobs": C.
"Tumble Dry Low": A-.

Next Tuesday: Hedgehog and Betsy go werewolfing, and Oscar goes to therapy.

For my review of the last two episodes, "Light as a Feather" and "When Harry Met Barry," CLICK HERE.

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