Amphibia Review: The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers / A Day at the Aquarium

"These will be formative memories."

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Another week, another late, late review. Let's dive in!

It feels a bit weird how little we've seen of Marcy since her debut; even though "Scavenger Hunt" gave her a decent amount of character work, as with "Marcy at the Gates," the focus was still largely on Anne's relationship to her rather than vice versa. "The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers" is a similarly safe take on the characters to some extent, but it manages to find a new energy in putting the two, unequivocally, on the same side, and with no internal conflict between them in sight. Instead, it's just a night for them, Sprig, and Polly to have fun at the castle, uncover some secrets, and reflect on their missing friend.

Even if I've been a little colder on the Newtopia episodes than I'd like to be, I'm very much a fan of how Amphibia has been plotting itself. The show takes advantage of very episodic sensibilities, but tightly wound around a linear timeline, and through that, it's able to dutifully examine every potential shift in the status quo and its characters with a nice amount of care. There can be some weirdness to rise out of it—the pacing might not be everyone's style, and I feel like we've been struggling a bit to plug Marcy into things—but for the most part, it's offered Season 2 a level of variability and freshness that I feel last season lacked. In the case of "Sleepover," the immediate acknowledgement that this is the night before Anne and the Plantars reconvene with King Andrias ensures that the episode can occupy a specific time and place, but its most interesting contribution is how it exists as an opportunity for Anne and Marcy to reflect upon Sasha, the sleepover queen who set forth the rules that their present sleepover abides by.

Amphibia Review: Little Frogtown / Hopping Mall

"Y'know, I've always wondered, can you miss someone you never actually knew?"

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This review is late enough, so let's just get right on into it! This week's episodes: "Little Frogtown" and "Hopping Mall." Who cried? It's okay. We'll get to that in a minute.

(Note: in light of being back in college and the lack of timeliness with this review, it will be shorter and less comprehensive. But you've seen the episodes already! You don't need me to help you with that side of things!)

"Little Frogtown" is perhaps the most keen Amphibia has ever been on prodding at the fourth wall, though under Hop Pop's voice, that's hardly a detriment. There's so little that can go wrong with a Hop Pop-led episode; he's the sort of character you could saddle with almost any premise and he'll make it work, so who better to take on the series' second big genre parody episode? (The first one, "Children of the Spore," was also notably led by him.) In this case, after Hop Pop discovers the Newtopia sandwich shop of his long-time friend abandoned and ransacked, he sets off to get to the bottom of his unexpected caper, and with the screen tinted to a grayscale and internal monologues abound, we're off to the races.

Close Enough Review: First Date / Snailin' It

"Oh, sorry, I was trying to be sexy but I have no game."

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As we near the end of Close Enough's inaugural season, it's worthwhile to look back and see how things have evolved over the course of the past fourteen episodes. Even if the show still feels as loose as it always has in this week's batch, I feel like they continue to develop a fantastic trend for the series: devoting their time to developing our cast, and using absurdity to make grander statements about them rather than just putting them at its mercy. There was a definite tug-and-pull between those two camps at the start of the season, but it feels like the series' interest in fleshing out its characters has ultimately shined through, and I feel like it's managed to offer Close Enough a sense of maturity and pointedness that makes it feel unique and tantalizing. "First Date" and "Snailin' It" might not be the greatest refinements of that mentality, but their investment in having something more human to say ensures that they have an appreciable sense of purpose.

That's not to say that things didn't start off a little rocky. "First Date" was one of those episodes that, at least for me, benefitted from a rewatch more than anything else. I think a lot of that comes from the recognition that even if neither of its concepts did much for me compared to Close Enough's usual surrealism, it's a strong episode for its characters; you just need to be able to accept that its thrills are a little subdued by the show's standards.

Josh and Emily's plot is the simpler but more involved of the two, with Josh attempting to reinvigorate their love life when Emily fears that they've lost their spice by recreating their first date to a haunted house. It's an iffy conceit for me, personally, however flashy. Playing around with haunted houses theoretically presents shows a chance to cut loose and throw as much horrific imagery at the screen as possible while bending the rules of a show's universe on a whim, but since Close Enough's absurdity is so deeply-ingrained in its identity, there's so little to gain from the premise that it almost takes the show's edge off. That's not to say that the visual of a humanoid creature with a massive jaw for a chest and an exposed neck-butt isn't provocative, but it doesn't feel as shocking or inspired because we understand it to be fake within the context of the show's universe, and that feels hollow compared to the more creative frameworks the show has used to strong effect in the past.