[7.3/10] A nice way to end the season. The A-story worked well as one of those “Louise has a heart” stories the show does with some regularity now. I’ll admit, there’s a little less impact to her showing her empathetic side given how much the show has gone to that well over the years, but I get why they do it. She’s the type of character who’s tons of fun when she’s conniving and ready to buck the system, but whose inner goodness is that much more significant when she eschews that to help someone.
That’s what we get here. Louise herself is one rubber cockroach-based prank away from being sentenced to join the “Think-gineers”, a group of nerds who meet after school to do brain puzzles, by Mr. Frond. She finds a way around her probation when Kaylee, an awkward fourth-grader, wants Louise’s help to get herself homeschooled. Kaylee’s plan is to get in trouble so that her parents will decide Wagstaff isn’t right for her, but her problem is that she’s too much of a good kid to arouse the ire of any teachers. That gives Louise a mission and a stalking horse for pranking.
What follows is good for some solid chuckles. Lousie trying to teach Kaylee how to be bad has shades of Bart Simpson trying to teach Martin Prince how to do the same, but it’s a venerable strain of comedy and makes room for Tina and Gene to get in some good lines. But the real complications come when Frond is worried about Kaylee and asks Louise to spy and snitch on her in exchange for being removed from probation.
This threw me for a loop, if only because I thought the natural endpoint for the story was that Louise would give up her own chance at being exempt from punishment in order to help Kaylee, being self-sacrificing for a greater good. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. At the last minute, Kaylee tells Louise that she wants out of Wagstaff because she doesn’t have any friends and no longer wants to have to deal with people. Louise realizes that this is all a self-defeating plan from Kaylee, one that has her hiding rather than confronting her problems, and that helping her pull off a prank would be a short term gain but a long-term loss for her fellow student.
So she thwarts the prank and tries to fall on the grenade to Mr. Frond, who’s just awed that Louise was looking out for Kaylee even though it meant putting the kibosh on a prank Louise really wanted to pull off. Being responsible for someone else really did get through to Louise. One link-up between Kaylee and the Think-gineers later, and one cockroach-bumping high five between Lousie and Mr. Frond ties a really sweet bow on this one. Again, it’s not a groundbreaking story for the show, but damn if it isn’t a solid one.
The B-story is much milder but still worth a few yuks. Bob has to bring Jimmy Pesto’s hernia medicine to him, and ends up playing with all of Jimmy’s grown-up toys after Jimmy passes out from the drowsiness. The laughs aren’t uproarious, but it’s a fun enough Bob story, and him and Jimmy getting caught in an inverted table/hernia laugh vicious cycle is a nicely off the wall result. We even get a minor glimpse of Jimmy’s loneliness and the fact that he actually wants Bob there.
Overall, this is a pleasant, if not overwhelming way to end the season, with a very nice rendition of a familiar Louise story, and a weird but cute Bob story.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-08-11T04:10:43Z
[7.3/10] A nice way to end the season. The A-story worked well as one of those “Louise has a heart” stories the show does with some regularity now. I’ll admit, there’s a little less impact to her showing her empathetic side given how much the show has gone to that well over the years, but I get why they do it. She’s the type of character who’s tons of fun when she’s conniving and ready to buck the system, but whose inner goodness is that much more significant when she eschews that to help someone.
That’s what we get here. Louise herself is one rubber cockroach-based prank away from being sentenced to join the “Think-gineers”, a group of nerds who meet after school to do brain puzzles, by Mr. Frond. She finds a way around her probation when Kaylee, an awkward fourth-grader, wants Louise’s help to get herself homeschooled. Kaylee’s plan is to get in trouble so that her parents will decide Wagstaff isn’t right for her, but her problem is that she’s too much of a good kid to arouse the ire of any teachers. That gives Louise a mission and a stalking horse for pranking.
What follows is good for some solid chuckles. Lousie trying to teach Kaylee how to be bad has shades of Bart Simpson trying to teach Martin Prince how to do the same, but it’s a venerable strain of comedy and makes room for Tina and Gene to get in some good lines. But the real complications come when Frond is worried about Kaylee and asks Louise to spy and snitch on her in exchange for being removed from probation.
This threw me for a loop, if only because I thought the natural endpoint for the story was that Louise would give up her own chance at being exempt from punishment in order to help Kaylee, being self-sacrificing for a greater good. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. At the last minute, Kaylee tells Louise that she wants out of Wagstaff because she doesn’t have any friends and no longer wants to have to deal with people. Louise realizes that this is all a self-defeating plan from Kaylee, one that has her hiding rather than confronting her problems, and that helping her pull off a prank would be a short term gain but a long-term loss for her fellow student.
So she thwarts the prank and tries to fall on the grenade to Mr. Frond, who’s just awed that Louise was looking out for Kaylee even though it meant putting the kibosh on a prank Louise really wanted to pull off. Being responsible for someone else really did get through to Louise. One link-up between Kaylee and the Think-gineers later, and one cockroach-bumping high five between Lousie and Mr. Frond ties a really sweet bow on this one. Again, it’s not a groundbreaking story for the show, but damn if it isn’t a solid one.
The B-story is much milder but still worth a few yuks. Bob has to bring Jimmy Pesto’s hernia medicine to him, and ends up playing with all of Jimmy’s grown-up toys after Jimmy passes out from the drowsiness. The laughs aren’t uproarious, but it’s a fun enough Bob story, and him and Jimmy getting caught in an inverted table/hernia laugh vicious cycle is a nicely off the wall result. We even get a minor glimpse of Jimmy’s loneliness and the fact that he actually wants Bob there.
Overall, this is a pleasant, if not overwhelming way to end the season, with a very nice rendition of a familiar Louise story, and a weird but cute Bob story.