Amphibia Review: Lost in Newtopia / Sprig Gets Schooled

"TEAM P'ANNE FOR LIFE!" "...Our team name's bad." "Yeah, could be better."

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As Hop Pop says at the start of this week's batch, we've got a few days to kill before Amphibia dives back into the nitty-gritty, and that can only call for one thing: filler episodes! Sure, the term has some fairly negative connotations, but there's nothing wrong with loosening up and being able to indulge in the sense of fun at the heart of the show. That's something that both "Lost in Newtopia" and "Sprig Gets Schooled" set out to do, and while they're no great shakes, they make for pleasing enough episodes to hold us over while continuing to key into the fun in our change of setting.

"Lost in Newtopia" feels like a direct follow-up to last week's "The Plantars Check In," giving Anne and Polly a chance to cut free in Newtopia and try to experience the city as locals (and even, amusingly, holding Sprig back after his big solo outing). It's a pretty decent conceit, and most importantly, a great opportunity for Amphibia to actualize the sorts of ideas that powered its conception in the first place; more than any other episode, it's most certainly an ode to Matt Braly's childhood trips to Thailand and the outsider feelings that coincided with them.

Amphibia Review: Scavenger Hunt / The Plantars Check In

"C'mon team, it's PUZZLE TIME!"

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In light of last week’s Marcy extravaganza, I was naturally very curious to see the sort of road that Amphibia would take following such a massive development—would the show barrel into the heavy subject matter that such a shift implies, or would it spend time getting comfortable with our newest addition to the cast? “Scavenger Hunt” and “The Plantars Check In” do a little bit of both, and although the Amphibia takes it pretty easy for this batch, it’s also the show excelling at what it does best, with great character work and sharp joke-writing galore.

“Scavenger Hunt” is a fairly standard way to follow up “Marcy at the Gates,” but it certainly works well. If that episode was intent on exploring the two characters’ new and transformed dynamic, with Marcy now being a respectable ranger for the royal guard and bearing a greater degree of autonomy, “Scavenger Hunt” dives into a pesky fragment of their relationship from back home: Anne’s inability to cope with feeling inferior to her friend’s astounding intelligence and puzzle-solving skills. Hop Pop and Polly fawning over Marcy at Anne's expense, too, only serves to aggravate those self-doubts.

Close Enough Review: So Long Boys / Clap Like This

"YEAAAHH! Finally, some white guys are making it! YEAAAHH!"

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If last week's episodes demonstrated the greatness that Close Enough is very capable of reaching, this week's batch perhaps more represent the weakness that can come out of its composition. Neither episode is particularly bad, but they come across as somewhat strained efforts that struggle to offer much new, even if they manage to make some interesting comments along the way.

"So Long Boys," thematically, is pretty easy to appreciate. The idea of centering an episode around Josh being intent upon receiving a vasectomy risks Close Enough flirting with some gracelessly bawdy material, but to the show's credit, that aspect is fairly restrained. Instead, it's a character piece, centered around Josh feeling a need to step it up and become more responsible following a pregnancy scare from him and Emily having unprotected sex. It's instantly easy to appreciate Josh here; even if he's the sort of guy that organizes a vasectomy party built out of inappropriate sight gags, he's also the sort of guy who always wants to do right for his family without any amount of selfishness impeding upon that.

Amphibia Review: Marcy at the Gates

"Let me see that power pose!"

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With our arrival to Newtopia, we've officially reached the season's first big shift. I'm, admittedly, a little saddened to see the road trip aspect gone so soon, but there's something undeniably promising about how eager Amphibia is to keep pushing its narrative forward, unafraid of dedicating itself to the ideas that it's orchestrated. While those may be as opaque as ever, though, as of right now, Anne and the Plantars have reached their destination, and equally important if not moreso, we've found Marcy!

Marcy's always been something of a mystery over the course of the series. We know that she was transported to Amphibia alongside Anne and Sasha, but beyond that, she's not someone that the show has been too intent to comment upon; her whereabouts persisted simply as one of the show's many loopholes, left at the sidelines until it could be meaningfully addressed. It's a joy, then, to finally be able to see what Marcy's personality is like beyond what little has been established: that she's a best friend of Anne and Sasha's, and that judging by the opening intro, she was very shocked to be sucked into the Calamity Box.

Close Enough Review: Robot Tutor / Golden Gamer

"...Bone?"

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Whereas last week was, in my eyes, a bit of a mixed bag, this week's episodes present Close Enough bouncing back with, as always, the unflappable determination that makes it perpetually exciting. It's something I touched on then, the special appeal of the show, and I think "Robot Tutor" and "Golden Gamer" manage to actualize that perfectly, demonstrating Close Enough's knack for taking a fairly conventional idea and managing to fully reinvigorate it with the brand of fun so unique to its identity, ensuring that whatever material the show has will be a one-of-a-kind experience.

Case in point: not dissimilar to prank episodes, there's something sort of iffy about plots centered around robots that will end up, inevitably, having some evil turn that threatens the life of the protagonists. "Robot Tutor" is able to do the premise one better, though, by really honing in on its characters rather than succumbing to the cheap thrills at its core. More than just being an excuse for everything to go batshit, it's a chance for Close Enough to demonstrate the strength of its characters and even find perhaps the most unlikely hero yet: Candice. I don't think she's a character that the show has really struggled to implement, always being used to provide a fun, childlike flippancy, but I've never really known what potential she had to be anything more than someone for the adult cast to bounce off of. It's surprising, then, to see her put at the front and center of a premise, and even moreso that she makes the episode.

Amphibia Review: Swamp and Sensibility / Wax Museum

"SWEET TADPOLE MARY!"

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I feel like it makes for an interesting sidenote to acknowledge that, if Amphibia was being churned out at the same rate as last season, Season 2 would've already concluded; instead, though, we've only really gotten to one major narrative shift (in last week's "Toad Catcher"), with the show as a whole cruising along at a nice steady rate that I feel has really assisted in my ability to assess the show with contentedness. It's nice to get a better idea of what the show is supposed to feel like, unwinding on its own terms without the contrived urgency that its eight-episodes-per-week release model created, without allowing any episodes so far to really slip through the cracks... not like an episode as notable as "Wax Museum" would really have that concern.

"Swamp and Sensibility" certainly does, not to knock on the episode too much. It's nice but no shake-up, finding our protagonists taking an unexpected pit stop in Ribbitvale, the most expensive town in all of Amphibia, only to unexpectedly spot... One-Eyed Wally? His return is pretty exciting—he's the latest contestant in Season 2's game of recontextualizing the characters we met along the preceding season, and I've always had a soft spot for the guy—and the revelation that he's actually more properly known as Walliam, the progency of the rich Ribbiton family and heir to their family fortune, makes for a nice, unexpected bit of revision.

It threatens to undo some of Wally's charm, but using that bit of personal history to accentuate his love for living like a tramp is as smart of a way to go about things as Amphibia can get. In a lot of ways, it shares DNA with Season 1's fantastic "Wally and Anne," instilling the usually-wacky character with an appreciable level of heart and depth to ensure he's more than just a wild card in the cast. Little touches the episode makes along the way, too, like Wally hiding accordions under the floorboards of every room in the family mansion to keep himself sane, speak to the sweet degree that its conception is realized.

Close Enough Review: Prank War / Cool Moms

"What are you doing?! I've got a job! And a kid!"
 "And a husband!" "THAT'S DEBATABLE!"

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With "Prank War" and "Cool Moms" marking the midpoint of the series, it's interesting to look back on how the past season's been and the extent that Close Enough has found its footing. It's not like this is a show that's really had an uphill battle to fight: there's few shows that can get away with being as self-assured with their place in market. The greatest concern, then, is just Close Enough resting on its laurels, even if that can be really hard to define; Close Enough, in being Close Enough, is wildly unpredictable no matter what, after all. Continuing off of that, these two episodes are basically the show at its most true to itself, with all of the good and bad that entails.

"Prank War" is another chance for Close Enough to go balls-to-the-wall without any deeper ambition than allowing events to transpire as they may, but it certainly manages to reach an interesting place. The idea of an episode being centered around pulling pranks risks a certain predictable outcome—the half-dozen episodes of Regular Show centered around pranks, too, had me fearing what new could even be brought to the table here—but to the episode's credit, it detours far from the usual line. By the midpoint, I assumed that the extent to which Josh's final prank goes wrong, with Emily and Bridgette giving a bush prankster the Big C (a coma) and having them put in a holding cell on charges of manslaughter, was an extension of prank episodes' rote "subversion": Emily and Bridgette are actually gonna be fine, I thought, and are pranking Josh back by pushing things to their limit rather than indulging in his immature shenanigans. (Snakes! Buckets of water! Hockey masks!)

Amphibia Review: Quarrelers Pass / Toad Catcher

"Do you have to do this every single time?" "Honestly yes, repetition helps it stick."

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A new week, two new episodes. It's hard to really draw a connection between our latest set, but to me, they represent the show at its highest degree of functioning, yielding a solidly fun, character piece for the Plantars in the front, and setting the stage for the quieter ongoing narrative going on in the back. Let's dive in.

"Quarrelers Pass" is the more inconsequential of the two episodes, but it's still enjoyable in its own right, despite being fated to fly under the radar. Its set-up is incredibly simple: Sprig and Polly's quarreling reaches the point of becoming a hindrance on Anne and Hop Pop's enjoyment of their journey to Newtopia, and when their path splits into two (though with both looping back in on each other), they decide to separate themselves from the pair and set them out on Quarrelers Pass, "a road of reconciliation for weary travel mates." Sprig and Polly, then, are tasked with hashing out their problems and getting to the other side in one piece.

In light of how I was fairly critical of Polly in her episode from last week, "Truck Stop Polly," I think it's worth commenting on the fact that she works in this episode to astonishingly great effect. Part of that is probably how much of the episode is ingrained in her caustic tone and unstable relationship with Sprig, which is the perfect vehicle for her personality quirks, but more importantly, it's neutralized by Sprig clapping back. "Truck Stop Polly" struggled because there was nothing she could bounce off of, instead having her spend almost 11 minutes talking to herself, but we're able to hit the ground running with someone else in the mix to help power the episode along and create a fun dynamic.

Close Enough Review: Skate Dad / 100% No Stress Day

"That dude just got ass-knifed!"

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Pushing onwards through Close Enough, it's become obvious that there are two different types of episodes. On one hand, there are episodes that are dedicated to furthering the development of the show's cast by making pointed revelations about how they operate, or commenting on the ways that they deal with the show's themes of adulthood, responsibility, and aging. On the other, there are episodes that simply make it their mission to do weird stuff without much intent of deeper messaging. It's not that the former sort of episode can't indulge in surrealism while having a point it's trying to hammer forth—"The Perfect House" explores ideas of escapism with a house that warps into a sitcom, and "Logan's Run'd" explores falling out-of-touch through a club that murders old fogies—and that just makes the existence of the latter episodes more confounding and dissonant in the face of the sorts of ideas Close Enough wants to toy with, even if they offer the same brand of joyous lunacy.

"Skate Dad" is, fortunately, in the former camp, and if the fact that its climax has Josh skidding his crotch across a street until it combusts into flames, it didn't have to sacrifice the show's absurdity in the process. If anything, it was a shockingly cute episode, maybe even a little low-key, because it's most focused on how it can funnel ridiculous elements into a very basic but meaningful conceit. Josh wants to bond with his daughter, and when his old skateboard catches her eye, he's ready to become the ultimate skate dad... or at least he was, until he stumbles, gets ass-knifed by a skateboard in an attempt to demonstrate an ollie, and has a metal plate inserted over his taint.