Summer Camp Island Review: Honey Moondog / Royally Bored / All the King's Slides (Puddle and the King Chapters 1-3)

"Choo choo! All aboard! Last stop: a heightened understanding of the physics of true love."

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I'm not gonna lie in saying that the prospects of the Alien arc of this season scared me a bit. Puddle and the King have been two characters that I have, perhaps controversially, always struggled with a bit; while I've found them pretty darn delightful in small doses, they can become exhausting for me when they're pushed more towards the forefront, with episodes like "Space Invasion" and "Tortilla Towels" being among the most frustrating entries in the show to me. Every appearance from the aliens risks them becoming a cumbersome presence that exist to weigh on Oscar and Hedgehog.

It came as a surprise to me, then, just how much I enjoyed this week's offerings. Whereas the Susie arc was made up of four deeply interconnected episodes with a focus on telling one story, the alien arc is more in the spirit of how SCI usually conducts itself, though with a sharper focus on the aliens and their kingdom. While there is linearity to the episodes, going from Puddle and the King's departure to their return and focusing in large part on Oscar and Hedgehog assuming the throne temporarily, each installment is interested in exploring vastly different concepts. Some inevitably landed for me more than others, sure, but combined, they come across as a pleasant return to form that, nonetheless, feels distinctly invigorating and special.

"Honey Moondog," especially, quelled a lot of my fears about what I feared the arc could be, kicking off the trilogy with the soundest and most delightful episode of the bunch. While I have a lot of praises to sing for the King and Puddle here (which we'll get to), so much of that is indebted to some classic Osc-Hog shenanigans. For such a winning duo, it's a little unfortunate how much last season de-emphasized their partnership in favor of solo outings, so seeing Oscar and Hedgehog back in their element and playing off of each other as enjoyably as they do here is like the balm that our troubled souls need.

Summer Camp Island Review: Meet Me in Massachusetts / Witches in the City (Susie and Ramona Chapter 3 + 4)

"The sunsets are so pretty in Massachusetts."

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While I certainly enjoyed last week's offerings, I feel like there were a lot of places where they left me with some unfulfilled desires. There's an obvious novelty in their conceit, allowing us to witness the start of Susie and Ramona's friendship, but it felt like it was ultimately insistent on enabling the success of what followed, their greatest qualities being the devil in their details as opposed to the wholeness of their narratives. (One of my greatest issues was just how little it felt like we saw Ramona and Susie bonded by "Ghost Baby Jabberwock's" end.) But the special's second half, "Meet Me in Massachusetts" and "Witches in the City," sort of... make the witch arc work, indebted to their predecessors but nothing short of triumphant as the two pieces of the puzzle that complete the despairing picture.

I feel as if there's a very direct correlation between how much Susie's chapter progresses, and how much stronger it grows; it's fairly clear that the deeper that we get into it, the more we're attending to that which SCI found most exciting to showcase. Each chapter offered something different, of course, and interesting in its own way, but beginning with "Meet Me in Massachusetts," things finally start to fall into the right groove, pushing the arc patiently towards a satisfying, revealing, and emotional close that snaps us back into SCI's present with some new thoughts to process.

"Meet Me in Massachusetts" still comes across as largely set-up, but it's set-up that begins to more closely approach the island as we currently understand it to be, and that makes its offerings more enticing. Its most immediate contribution is the addition of Betsy, the final witch to join Susie and Ramona's coven enabling them to forward their plans to save magic. (Comically enough, she shows up on the island with a badminton racket, believing that she's been sent to reform school for wearing pants rather than about to be indoctrinated into witchcraft.) We also get to see the genesis of her friendship with fellow, soon-to-be-camp counselor Alice, and while it's far from as meaningfully-developed as what it's designed to mirror, it doesn't have to be; it's just pleasant silliness with the side effect of accentuating Susie and Ramona's intimate connection.

Summer Camp Island Review: Susie's Ark / Ghost Baby Jabberwock (Susie and Ramona Chapter 1 + 2)

"You mean she wasn't a sandwich the whole entire time? Plot twist."

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There's something inherently exciting about the fact that, every time Summer Camp Island returns, it seems to have a brand new bag of tricks up its sleeve. Now in its third season, SCI is looking to make its most complex transformation yet, spearheaded by a four-part special about Susie and Ramona's friendship and the history of the island and with future clusters devoted to specific groups of the island's residents (the yetis, the aliens). There is a little bit of dread on my end in terms of that decision; off the heels of a seemingly-truncated Season 2 (only half as long as the first) and with an even smaller episode count (12), I feel nervous for the show's future beyond this point. But with however much time it has left, it's good to see SCI going all in, keen to keep reinvigorating proceedings when they're not even tired yet.

The season kicks off with "Susie's Ark," taking the form of a bedtime story from Jimjams to Pajamas, Oscar, and Hedgehog—an appreciable means of retaining the show's lovable, slice-of-life feel while working the characters into a narrative that they would otherwise be eschewed out of entirely. Much like last season's premiere, "Meeting of the Minds," the episode uses its position as our opener largely for set-up, empowered most strongly by the inherent excitement of seeing the show back. That's not a strike against the episode by any means, but it's sort of the sacrifice that such a plot-intensive episode has to make. You have to set the pins up to be able to knock them down, after all.

Amphibia Review: The Shut-In!

"Nightmares are real!"

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Well, it's that spooky-ass time of year again. Admittedly, spookiness has sort of persisted across the entirety of this year, and perhaps most ironically, October isn't really shaking up to be any more scary than any other month this time around, but escapism! While Halloween in the traditional sense might be cancelled, there's nothing like a good Halloween episode to stir us into that fun, autumn mood, and "The Shut-In!" is pretty much exactly that.

Continuing television's long-held tradition of fictitious-but-eerily-comparable holidays, this isn't technically a Halloween episode. It's all about Amphibia's warped version, the Blue Moon Shut-In, the night where the moon turns blue and everyone locks themselves inside of their homes and tells stories until the sun rises again out of fear that staring at the moon could transform them into horrifying beasts. (There's also jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating for practical supplies, but... it's not a holiday.)

I was initially a little hesitant about how this episode falls into the narrative of the show, to be honest. It feels a little odd considering how elegantly last episode wrapped up this leg of the season, with Anne setting off to Wartwood once more and Marcy being approached with an ominous proposition from the King, for us to suddenly be back home without any indication of time passing. I honestly feel like that plays to the show's benefit, though, in retrospect. A good holiday special should have a relatively timeless quality to it, and there's something of an appreciable coziness to being back home, bereft of narrative complications, for some fun, scary stories.

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.