Summer Camp Island Review: Just You and Me / Glow Worm

"Think of me fondly! And often."

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While I spent the preamble of my last review discussing what I felt like were some of the broader issues concerning what we've seen of Season 2, it's only fair, as we approach the midseason finale, to acknowledge all that the show has done right. The past season of Summer Camp Island has managed to do something inexplicable for any show's second season: it's experimented with its formula and re-adjusted in all of the right ways. Its characters have been retooled and given a greater sense of purpose; its narratives have taken more angles and incorporated larger swaths of the supporting cast; and it followed through on some of the more iffy contributions of the first season with maturity and intelligence. All the while, though, it's held true to everything that made the show so great in the first place—its eagerness to explore touchy emotions and emphasize the powers of friendship at the most blissfully subatomic and earnest level, all while enveloping you like a cozy blanket.

Even if my assessments for some of the past few episodes haven't attested to it, there's something to be said about how even the rockier outings of the show have something charming about them, and that's ultimately made every entry so far feel worthwhile. Perhaps that's just the intoxicating strength of the show's identity at work, but it never uses that as a crutch, allowing every minute of SCI to feel completely authentic whether or not it's a hands-down success.

When everything's firing from all cylinders, though, you're in for a phenomenal episode, like these two. What both "Just You and Me" and "Glow Worm" excel at is the degree that they're able to dig into the characters that they're focused on with laser-sharp precision and perhaps unravel their vulnerabilities, all while emphasizing what makes them special in the first place.

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.

Summer Camp Island Review: Light as a Feather / When Harry Met Barry

"Heh, my pits are hairy too."

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Alright, Summer Camp Island has been in slightly choppy water over the past few episodes. It's inevitable, of course; every show has an ebb and flow, and episodic series especially are prone to the occasional dry patches. SCI is just throwing me for a bit of a loop, because the extent that the past few entries haven't worked for me operates in spite of the tremendous growth that Season 2, in general, has been going through. The struggles of episodes like "Honeydew Hatch" or "Wild Hearts Can't Be Caboodled" feel completely arbitrary rather than systemic, and while that's not the greatest state for the show to be in, at least it reassures that a strong episode could come out of nowhere; the fate of the season is far from set. Today's set of episodes, "Light as a Feather" and "When Harry Met Barry," further assert that.

"Light as a Feather" starts with an interesting idea in the back of its mind, but a lot of those prospects get lost in the framework. The sort of revelations that could come with Hedgehog's first witch coven run wild—it's an excellent chance to shed some light on the back-story of the island, and we do get faint hints of that—but the fact that instead, "Light as a Feather" decides to take the unexpected angle of Hedgehog desperately needing to pee sort of... speaks for itself. That's the plot that the episode chose.

I feel like this is as good of a time as ever to get into SCI's dabbling in scatological humor. It's not a new development by any means, having emerged across the second half of the first season at a fairly noticeable rate and almost always feeling like an awkward diversion, though "Light as a Feather" is definitely the most an episode has been conceived with that humor being as crucial to its backbone. I honestly wonder what the intentions are behind those general choices; it comes across as near-incompatible with the other aspects of SCI's comic identity, built out of quiet character work and an eye for subtlety. "Light as a Feather" is neither of those things, leaping out with explicit development in mind of the strangest kind: Hedgehog needs to find the strength of character to operate without the assistance of Oscar, and by peeing in a haunted outhouse.

Summer Camp Island Review: The Later Pile / Honeydew Hatch

"Easy as pie. (Eating it, not baking it.)"

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Summer Camp Island rarely struggles in regards to the potential of its premises. It's almost always able to find interesting and engaging spins on whatever it has at-hand, regardless of how exciting those may initially seem, but as I sat back trying to figure out what to say about either of today's episodes, "The Later Pile" and "Honeydew Hatch," I was struck by a frustrating ambivalence. It's a feeling I've seldom felt from the show, and especially considering how much the latter episode tries to accomplish, it feels... unusual, to say the least. Allow me to explain.

"The Later Pile," first and foremost, is perhaps one of the most straightforward episodes of Summer Camp Island in a while, neither marked by pronounced highs or frustrating lows. That's a weird shortcoming, but I feel like there's almost nothing worse than an episode that lacks any sort of lofty aspirations, especially from a show as routinely inspired as SCI. "The Later Pile" is effectively the documentation of a chore, albeit a strenuous one: Oscar's need to return a late DVD to the library, and subsequently a distant video store run by vampires.

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.

Summer Camp Island Review: French Toasting / We'll Just Move The Stars

"I'm not ready to share my finances."

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We're officially halfway through this batch of episodes, and Summer Camp Island hasn't demonstrated any signs that it's running out of steam. Even if these two episodes present a handful of issues, Season 2's going stronger than ever, and best of all, it's taking a lot of chances, especially on the front of further incorporating its supporting cast into episodes and finding new, exciting atmospheres to explore. For the most part, too, that makes those occasional issues pretty excusable.

"French Toasting," notably, is SCI's first concentrated effort to make an episode centered around Lucy's character, but like her last notable appearance in "Susie's Fantastical Scavenger Hunt," she's not really at the forefront of the episode. Instead, "French Toasting" unravels as a mystery told from Oscar and Hedgehog's perspective when, after reading a book on secret societies and noticing some strange patterns in Lucy, the former jumps to the conclusion that she's the member of a dangerous secret society on the island. That proves to be a bit of a double-edged sword.

The entirety of "French Toasting" is set up as a question—what is Lucy up to?—that inevitably gets answered by the end, and how vague it is creates the unfortunate downside of preventing Lucy from being able to do much as a character. It feels sad that what could've been a spotlight for her character fails to do that simply because she's not in control of anything that's happening; we get the entire story from Oscar and Hedgehog's perspective, and as Susie makes abundantly clear, the two are stalking her, like stalkers.

Summer Camp Island Review: Tub on the Run / Spotted Bear Stretch

"STOP THE PRESSES!"

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I'm beginning to notice a general trend in Season 2, and a good one. There's always a sense, going from the first season to the second of any show, of reassessing what worked and what didn't, and subsequently correcting the sorts of things that fell flat or left a lot to be desired. Some shows slip this up and go off the deep end, burning off the promise they bore, but a smart show takes everything in stride, and without fail, I'm seeing Summer Camp Island making the right sort of choices, especially in these two episodes. Even if they're not anything too lavish, they're signs that the show's got an upgraded agenda and it's ready to play.

I'll be the first to admit, for instance, that the mere idea of "Tub on the Run" gave me some pause, as I have a lot of conflicting feelings about the relationship between Hedgehog and Max that emerged towards the back of last season. It felt very quick and unexpected, barreling through three or so episodes with on-and-off infatuation and culminating in Hedgehog being turned down without feeling like there was ample time for her feelings to develop or take form.

Summer Camp Island Review: Acorn Graduation / Dungeon Doug

"Chase your dreams, little acorns."

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Our season premiere, "Meeting of the Minds," set up a major development for the fledgling season: Susie as Hedgehog's mentor in becoming a witch. While it's always hard to predict when exactly SCI will choose to follow up on its overarching story (i.e. when the spooky version of the ending credits theme's gonna play), it seems like these latest two episodes have been intent on actually pushing things along into interesting directions, with the former of today's set continuing Hedgehog's narrative development, and the latter being a treat for Oscar's character development—Season 2's other greatest trend.

Let's start with "Acorn Graduation." It's all about that long-awaited first day of Hedgehog's training, met with the expected mix of conflicting emotions from our protagonist. At the very least, though, the deal is sweetened a bit with a letter from Ramona and a little caveat thrown in the mix: a magical punch card that Hedgehog can use to notify Ramona any time Susie gives her grief, which turns out to be... very often, and almost immediately, because she's Susie.

I'll admit that I've always been skeptical of the character in more commanding roles in the series. I feel like it's tough to work with characters like Susie who are powered by their self-absorption and transparent distaste for those around them, and truth be told, all of the episodes where she's been put more towards the front and center—"It's My Party" and "Mr. Softball," most notably—didn't work for me one bit. Her toxicity has always functioned best as either the dissenting voice of reason or the neglected voice of cruel authority, and "Acorn Graduation" really pushes that sometimes. There's an especially difficult stretch where Susie and Hedgehog are butting heads and power-tripping to such an unflattering extent that it becomes hard to really advocate for either character, with Susie being characteristically harsh and dismissive of the training she's putting Hedgehog through, and Hedgehog exploiting her punch card hoping it forces Susie to face hell from Ramona.

Summer Camp Island Review: Molar Moles / Tortilla Towels

"Ooh, we're all about truth now, huh, cookie boy?"

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Whereas the last two episodes were squarely in the middle of the road for me, "Molar Moles" and "Tortilla Towels" find Summer Camp Island at both its most exhilarating and middling. It's the curse of an episodic show, but also something of a blessing at the same time; even if SCI can be somewhat inconsistent, that can also be to the show's benefit since there's no telling what could happen next. You might get a "Molar Moles," or you might get a "Tortilla Towels," but it's a perpetually exciting gamble.

We'll start with the overwhelmingly good: "Molar Moles" is Season 2 demonstrating that it hasn't lost the ability to knock you over the head with an amazing, truly unexpected episode, immediately joining the company of some of my favorites from the series. I think a lot of that comes down to how intoxicating SCI is with its world-building; episodes like "The Soundhouse," "Campers Above the Bed," and now "Molar Moles" showcase the show's ability to create a beautiful, lived-in universe for episodes to take place in far removed from the camp we're so accustomed to seeing. Being able to see this, too, not just through the new environment but through the strange book of morals and laws which its mole inhabitants abide by, allows everything to feel all the more vivid.

Summer Camp Island Review: Meeting of the Minds / Ava's Yard Sale

"Call me spaghetti, 'cuz I'm noodling!"

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I don't think there's a lot of other shows I'm ashamed to have slept on as much as Summer Camp Island. A truly bright spot on CN's current line-up (...at least until it ceased to be a part of the line-up), SCI brought about a strange but immediately inviting change of tone from a lot of other cartoons that I've seen: a sense of serenity and ease bordering on slice-of-life and powered exclusively by the pursuit of a good, happy time. By the end of the first episode, I was entranced, and that excitement persisted long enough that I decided it was time to take the show on for regular review coverage. Hooray!

That's not to say the show is without its bumps and bruises, and indeed, those are evident from these first two episodes; Season 2 bears the same lovable idiosyncrasies and confidence in its brand of adorable weirdness, but also the same road blocks. Neither "Meeting of the Minds" or "Ava's Yard Sale" are the grandest statements of the return of such a quirky show, emanating a "business as usual" vibe, but at least that business is of Summer Camp Island's variety... and it's difficult to do wrong with that.