Amphibia Review: Ivy on the Run / After the Rain

"We all have our off-days, I suppose."

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This week's episodes were "Ivy on the Run" and "After the Rain." My editor told me to add more to this part but I feel like that would be stalling, and if you've gone out of your way to read what I write, you don't deserve that! You deserve the best. So I hope your general circumstances are comfortable and good. If they aren't, I hope this review makes them better. I don't know how it could, but I'm not you. Anyway: episodes!

If there's anything that always works in Amphibia's favor, it's shifting the focus out of our core cast of characters and giving peripheral figures more of a chance to shine. Ivy Sundew, especially, has proven herself to be particularly endearing, a rare instance of a romantic foil done right. A lot of that comes down to the fact that she's always felt fleshed out beyond just being half of Sprigivy; she matches her counterpart with a fistful of spunk but the same adventurous, sunny spirit. It's because of the sheer joy of her character that "Ivy on the Run" works, giving its rudimentary plot a fun paint job.

The plot, on its own, is standard fare for any show. Ivy desperately yearns for the sort of worldly adventures that Sprig went on, and that yearning finds her increasingly disillusioned by her mother Felicia's frilly tea lessons until she swears off her mother entirely as someone who doesn't understand her and runs off in search of a new life. It's all about the details with "Ivy on the Run," though; Sprig and Ivy are an infectious duo as always, and the episode's sideline incorporation of Anne, Polly, and eventually Wally getting into Muay Thai shenanigans makes for a cute sub-plot that beefs up the narrative's central themes of patience.

While it becomes a bit clear what conclusion the episode is heading towards once we get into the climactic martial arts fight between mother and daughter for Ivy's freedom (those Karate Kid clichés be damned), it's certainly an unexpected delight that the idea of a brawl was raised in the first place. And yes, as most Amphibia episodes do, "Ivy on the Run" pushes everything to a place of understanding, but the fact that it lands on a new set of characters this time and creates some exciting new revelations—Felicia is a highly-trained martial arts expert from years of exploring the land for tea, and is priming Ivy to go on the journey with her—makes things feel worthwhile. It's a good time!

"After the Rain," however, most undoubtedly overshadows the episode it's paired with... though not necessarily in all of the right ways. As an episode that exists within a vacuum, it's alright, telling a straightforward story with some emotional pivots and a sweet resolution. Amphibia's greatest issue across episodes has always been that it struggles to step outside of that vacuum, though, and "After the Rain" faces the brunt of that ordeal the most because of how much anticipation was placed into it to be something different. Perhaps it's unfair to judge it against the expectations created around it, but with the degree that "After the Rain" was hyped up by those behind the show themselves, I don't think it's a sentiment that can really be dismissed. This is an episode that wanted to be momentous, but didn't really succeed.

On the verge of traveling to the first temple, Anne needs Hop Pop to fetch the Calamity Box, only for him to discover that it's seemingly missing. That's such a massive point of intrigue that could take "After the Rain" in a number of directions, but none of the directions that it ultimately takes really do justice to that set-up. While Amphibia is smart to create a devastating rift between Hop Pop and a heartbroken Anne, it feels like it prioritizes all of the wrong sentiments. Anne isn't angry at Hop Pop for losing the Calamity Box, and that fact is never something she explicitly mentions as weighing on her anger; she's just angry that he lied to her about where he was keeping it, and that makes everything feel a bit shortsighted and overdramatic despite the fact that there is a lot to be worried about in that specific moment. 

From that point forward, "After the Rain" pulls a lot of punches, turning what could be a deeply character-driven, poignant episode into something far too pedestrian for the circumstances. While I enjoyed the conception of the episode's magpie beetles, a species of insect that resurfaces once every two decades in search of loot to make a shell for mating, it simultaneously steals too much focus away from the heavier concepts in favor of flashy action. Admittedly, the episode's most thoughtful beat comes out of the situation, with Anne forced to put her sense of betrayal aside and work with Hop Pop to save the kids from their deathly love-nado, but the meat of "After the Rain" should be deeply interpersonal, and it spends too much time fragmenting everyone without delving enough into their psyches. (Anne, the most hurt person of all, spends most of the episode comically venting to a rock.)

The moment that "After the Rain" tries to posit as its big, breakthrough moment is, admittedly, a bit of a revelation: Hop Pop reveals that he feels so much pressure to protect his family because he considers himself responsible for the untimely death of Sprig and Polly's parents, who were consumed by herons when he was out of town. The issue is that the episode doesn't really give that reveal much breathing room. Instead, it's presented quickly through a series of detailed panels in a way that gets everyone to reconcile rather than letting it really soak in. The show would be smart to take a piece of information like that and allow us, as an audience, to form our own judgments, as as a similarly-constructed episode like "Hopping Mall" did, but it's too focused here on getting out of the tunnel.

All of that causes the episode to feel like a blur. In the face of the substantive material that it has to work with—material that's weighed on the show for quite a while—its goal seems simply to be a matter of patching things up quickly, and I feel like that speaks to a lot of the iffy feelings Amphibia has left me with in terms of how it struggles to find a unique identity. This was an opportunity to the series to take a legitimate risk and make a grand, defiant statement about its characters, but the show instead glosses over that room for nuance for the sake of navigating through its narrative with too much safety and comfort to come into its own. 

I don't intend for these comments to come across as overly-critical or mean-spirited; I'm rooting, unequivocally, for Amphibia's success. I just want to see the show break out of its reliable habits, take chances, and be bold. Here's hoping Season 2, as it ramps up, can reach that place.

FINAL GRADES:
"Ivy on the Run": B.
"After the Rain": C.

For my review of the last two episodes, "Night Drivers" and "Return to Wartwood," CLICK HERE.

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If you think my articles are good, that's probably because of my editor, Glass! Follow them on Twitter @Glass_Shardon.