With BoJack's perceived death in his own TV show, it leaves me shocked. Not because they actually did it, but because I can't imagine how this show will end. How will everyone else react after everything BoJack's done? Will they see it as only a matter of time? Will they feel sad or happy? What if someone ignores it completely?
I took a long break between seasons, so not every episode is fresh in my mind. I binge-watched the last two seasons, too, so I'm on a BoJack high but haven't given the series much thought. At this point, I think it's time to reflect.
BoJack Horseman is an unusual series that pushes animation and TV's boundaries to the brink. Its storytelling prowess is unimaginable, and the feats it pulls off leave me speechless. Even though I know nothing is like something else, I will never see anything like BoJack Horseman, again, ever.
To follow five characters, develop them and explore their backstories to see how they inform each character is rare. Few shows, movies or books can pull off such a feat, but this show makes it look easy.
I'll never see another show like BoJack Horseman, and I can't wait to hold on to it, forever. I can rewatch this series, entire episodes, and I will, but once you finish a show for the first time, it feels like the journey's over. When I refuse to finish it, it's like their lives are still happening without me. But once I reach the end; that final chapter, this delusion shatters and it feels like a goodbye. Whenever I rewatch an episode and know how it ends, it reminds me of my absence, how I'm a viewer taking a peek into a snapshot of their lives.
SCORE: 8/10
[9.5/10] If there has been one thing consistent about Aang from the beginning, it’s that he follows his own path. From the minute we met him and he was more interested in riding penguins than showing spiritual reserve, it was clear that this was an Avatar who did not fit the mold. There was a uniqueness to him, a purity, that belied the chosen one bearing he had to carry.
That’s what stands out in Avatar: The Last Airbender’s wide-ranging, epic, moving finale. More than the moral turmoil that Aang had experienced in the last few episodes, more than the massive battle between the forces of good and the comet-fueled Fire Nation, there is a young man, making a choice because it’s what feels right to him, what feels true, and it is that trust in himself, that commitment to being who he is, that sees him through.
What is almost as impressive about the final two episodes of A:tLA, which essentially constitute one massive climax for the whole series, is how they manage to give almost every notable figure in the series something meaningful and dramatic to do. The episode truly earns the epic quality of its final frame, whether it’s focusing on the Order of the White Lotus retaking Ba Sing Se; Sokka, Toph, and Suki trying to sabotage the Fire Nation air fleet; Zuko and Katara confronting Azula; or Aang having his showdown with Ozai. The combination of all these great battle, all these profound and grand moments, make for an endlessly thrilling, dramatic finish for this great series.
The siege of Ba Sing Se mostly serves as a series of fist pumps for the viewer, getting to watch these trained masters face their foes with ease. Like the rest of the episode, it shows off the visual virtuosity as the series pulls out all the stops for its final battle. Jeong Jeong redirects fire with awesome force. Bumi launches tanks like play things with his earthbending. Pakku washes away enemies with a might tidal wave, and Piando slides on the frozen path over the wall, slashing away at Fire Nation soldiers all the while.
And Iroh? Iroh breathes in the power of Sozin’s comet. He creates a fireball that bowls through the walls of the famed city. He burns away the Fire Nation banner that hangs over the palace. It is a sign that for as much as A:tLA is a story of the last generation letting down the next one, there are still members of the old guard there to fight for what’s right and make a stand for a better world.
That world is threatened by the Fire Nation Air Fleet. In truth, the cell-shaded CGI war balloons look a little dodgy. Something about the animation is a little too stilted, to where when the cinematography is cool, the computer-generated elements stick out like sore thumbs and hurt the immersion of the show. Nevertheless, there is something truly frightening about Ozai and company at the head of those ships, imbued with power by the comet, launching these fireballs and streams of flaming destruction down on the land below. It is a terrifying image that brings to mind footage from Vietnam of fire raining from above. As much as the cel-shading looks a little off, the imagery of the elemental powers used in the episode is awesome, in the original sense of the term, provoking terror and astonishment.
Thankfully we have our two favorite badass normal folks and the resident (and as far as we know) only metalbender to help destroy the fleet. It is a nice outing for Sokka, Toph, and Suki, who find a way to not only contribute to the great war effort, but to have moments of risk and drama where you wonder if they will make it out alive or not, featuring big damn hero moments for each of them.
It’s hard to even know where to begin. There is Toph launching the three of them onto the nearest ship, turning into a metal-coated knight, and neutralizing the command crew. There is the hilarious interlude where Sokka manages to lure the rank-and-file crewmen into the bombing bay with the promise of cakes and creams, with the lowly henchman making extremely funny small talk before being dumped in the bay. It’s nice that even in these heightened moments, the show has not forgotten its sense of humor.
But that humor quickly gives way to big risks and bravery from the trio. I appreciate that Sokka’s ingenuity gets one last chance to shine, when he’s inspired by Aang’s “air slice” and repositions the ship he’s piloting to cut through the rest of the fleet, downing as much of it as possible. That move, naturally, leads their vessel to go down itself, and the big escape separates him and Suki.
Still, Sokka and Toph are undeterred, and after some close shaves, Toph uses her metal-bending abilities to change the fin on another airship to send it into its neighbors. Again, it’s nice to see the show, even in this late hour, finding creative uses for its characters’ talents, which give each of them a chance to have a hand in saving the day. That includes Sokka and Toph finding themselves pursued by Fire Nation soldiers, and Sokka getting to use both his boomerang and his “space sword” one last time. And when despite having taken out their pursuers, it still looks like all is lost for the pair, there is Suki, having taken command of another airship, there to save them from their tenuous, dangling position.
It’s a superb series of sequences, one that manages to combine some incredible in-the-air action and combat with character moments that feel true to the people we’ve come to know over the course of the series. Toph still has her smart remarks; Suki still manages to be in the right place at the right time, and Sokka, far from shrinking from the moment as he feared after the invasion, employs the creative solutions to difficult problems that have become his trademark. It is a great tribute and final triumph for all three characters.
But they are not the only trio of Avatar characters who find themselves embroiled in combat on the day Sozin’s comet arrives. But far from the larger-than-life, heroic tones of the battle in the skies, the fight between Azula, Zuko, and Katara has an air of tragedy about it.
What’s impressive is how, so near the end of the series, A:tLA can make the audience feel for Azula, even as she is at her most deranged and dangerous. It is late in the day for a character study, and yet we delve into Azula’s broken psyche in a way that the show has only toyed with before. What’s revealed is scary, but also sad, the pained cries and last gasps of a young woman who never really had a chance, who was brought up by a tyrant like Ozai, rather than a kindly old man like Iroh, and it left her damaged and alone.
It also left her paranoid. One of the defining leitmotifs of Avatar: The Last Airbender is the way that Aang, despite being the chosen one, laden with a solitary destiny, has found strength in his connections to his friends, who sustain him in times of doubt and difficulty. The finale underscores the importance of that by contrasting how Azula alienates everything approaching an ally she has, and it leaves her not only vulnerable, but deeply suspicious, until she loses her grip on her own sanity.
That’s dramatized in the way she banishes a humble servant girl for daring to give her a cherry with a pit in it, in how she banishes the Dai Lee for fear that they will turn on her the way that she got them to turn on Long Feng, in her equally harsh banishment of her twin, elderly caretakers (or at least one of them), when they express concern for her well-being. Though Mai and Tai-Lee have only small roles to play in this episode, the force of their presence is felt in the way that their betrayal of Azula leads her to believe that everyone is a backstabber or turncoat in waiting, and that, poetically enough, becomes the source of her downfall, to where when the threat truly emerges, she has no one there to help and protect her.
And yet, that is not the deepest depth of her loneliness. In a particularly difficult moment, one where Azula has taken out her anger on her own hair, she sees an image of her mother in the mirror. It is a bridge too far, the ultimate pain that Azula has refused to confront, replaced with ambition and intimidation so as not to have to face it. But that vision represents a knowing part of Azula, one that understands how she’s succumbed to fear and paranoia, one that cannot help but feel the hurt of the belief that her own mother thinks she’s a monster, and one that knows despite that, her mother still loves her, something that makes that pain all the more unbearable.
It also makes her less capable, less focused, less ready to face her brother in a duel. Zuko sees the way that his sister is slipping, and is willing to face her alone in the hopes of sparing Katara since he believes he can win. Their fight is a beautiful and tragic one. The combination of Azula’s blue flame and Zuko’s red one echoes the red and blue dragons that reinvigorated Zuko and Aang’s firebending abilities, and which represented the conflicting sides of Zuko’s own psyche. The opposing forces swirl and twist in the field of battle.
But unlike the rest of the episode, this is not played as an epic confrontation. It is played as a moment of great sorrow. While the whirl of the fire blasts rings out and the structures around the siblings singe and crackle, wailing violins play. Azula cackles and cries out, her eyes wide, her smile crooked, her demeanor unhinged. Zuko is not simply conquering an enemy who has tormented him since he was a little boy; he is doing what he must do against someone who has everything, and yet has lost everything, including her mind.
That just makes Azula all the more dangerous, but that ends up making Zuko all the more noble. While Azula is wild and unsteady, Zuko is prepared, baiting his sister into trying to blast him with lightning in the hopes that he may redirect it and end this. Instead, Azula charges up her power and, at the last second, aims it a bystander Katara rather than her brother. The move throws off Zuko, and in the nick of time, he dives in front of the blast and absorbs the electricity to spare Katara. It is the last sign of his transformation, an indication of his willingness to sacrifice himself for one of the people he once attacked himself. It is a selfless gesture, and a desperate one, that shows how Zuko’s transformation is truly complete.
It also leaves Katara fighting a completely mad Azula all by herself. I must admit, I was mildly irked when Zuko cast Katara aside and intended to fight Azula solo, sidelining one of the show’s major figures, but I should have known better than to think the series would avoid giving her one of those vital moments of glory and bravery.
With a dearth of water in the Fire Kingdom capital, and Azula too crazed and unpredictable to fight straight up, Katara must also be creative. Her water blasts turn to steam against Azula’s electric fury. But Katara is as clever as she is talented, and in yet another inventive way to defeat the enemy, she lures Azula over a sewer grate where, just before Azula is able to launch a deadly attack, Katara raises the water and freezes the both of them in place.
Then, in a canny move, she nabs a nearby chain, uses her waterbending abilities to move through the ice, and confines her attacker so that she is incapable of doing any more damage. It is an imaginative way to end the fight, one that show’s Katara’s resourcefulness and gives her a much-deserved win. She heals Zuko, who has truly and fully earned her respect and admiration. Azula has only earned a bitter end – her manic screams devolve into sobs, the loss of so much, the crumbling security of who she was and what she was fading away, until all that is left is a pitiable, broken young woman.
Azula has been a one-note villain at points in the series, one whose evil seemed inborn and whose nature left her without some of the complexity that other figures in the series have possessed. But here, she becomes a tragic figure, one who has committed terrible deeds and who tries to commit more, but whose being raised to obtain power at all costs leaves her unable to enjoy or sustain the only thing she’s ever wanted, and utterly alone.
Aang, on the other hand, is trapped between two things that he wants very badly: to defeat Ozai in order to end this war and save the world, and also to avoid taking a life. Their confrontation lives up to the billing and hype it’s received over the course of the series. The mountainous range provides the perfect backdrop for their fight, with plenty of earth and water for Aang to summon as he combats the series’s big bad at a time when Ozai is infused with the tremendous power of the comet.
The two dart and dash across those jutting rocks, a furious ballet accented with mortal, elemental beauty. Ozai declares that Aang is weak, that he cannot defeat Ozai, particularly at the height of his powers, and despite the realization that this is not the kind of show where the hero fails in the final act, you fear for Aang, for what will be required of him in order to end this. This is, after all, not how this fight was supposed to happen. Aang was supposed to have mastered all four elements, to be Ozai’s equal, not a talented but inexperienced young upstart trying to best the man who has conquered the world.
So in a difficult moment, he retreats into a ball of rock that provides temporary but needed protection from Ozai’s assault. It calls to mind the big ball of ice that Aang retreated to a century ago, a safe haven when the weight of the world became too much for him, and he hid rather than rose to face it. It cements the possibility that Aang is not ready for this, that he was never ready for this, and for all the good intentions he may have, he will pay the ultimate price for that.
Instead, when Ozai penetrates the rock and sends Aang flying, he reaps more than he bargained for. The former Fire Lord’s blast shoots Aang into a nearby rock, and as a sharp point digs into the scar from where Azula nearly killed him at the end of Season 2, it triggers the Avatar state.
Aang emerges from the pile of rubble that the gloating Ozai approaches. Aang glows and speaks with a voice of thunder and fury. Ozai comes at the demigod with all his power but Aang slaps away his flaming blast with the back of his hand. The Avatar assembles the four elements, bringing them to bear against his opponent. He surrounds himself in a bubble of air; he summons earth, fire, and water in rings that surround him. He comes at Ozai with his full force, sending him reeling through rock and rubble, confining him with the land itself. Aang raises this swirl into a knife’s edge, driving it down into his prone opponent.
And then, once more, at the last minute, he stops. The whirl of elements turned into a lethal weapon evaporates into a harmless puddle. Aang stands, unable to do it. Even in the moment where he seems poised to fulfill his destiny, Aang cannot bring himself to snuff out a life in this world. It is against everything he believes in, everything he stands for. Ozai declares that even with all the power in the world, Aang is still weak, that his inability to do what must be done to his enemy renders him lesser.
It is then that Aang finds another way. He confines Ozai using the earth itself once more, rests his hands on Ozai’s persons, and begins to bend the energy itself. What ensues is a spiritual struggle, one that matches the confluence of red and blue that signified the two sides at war within Zuko. For a moment, it appears as though even in this, Ozai will triumph, that the red glowing embers that represent the cruel spirit of this awful man will overtake our hero. It’s rendered in beautiful hues, a burst of light erupting across a dark landscape.
But Aang is not to be overcome. The outpouring of pure blue light emanates from his body. He will not be moved, not be altered, not be changed. Instead, it is Ozai who falters, his ability to bend fire, his tool for committing all of this evil, is taken away from him. The threat is over; the war is done, and Aang has fulfilled his destiny, on his own terms.
There is release, a chance to reflect and take stock and enjoy the glow of having completed this difficult journey. Aang and Zuko speak to one another as Roku and Sozin once did – as friends. (Incidentally, the also confirm that the entire series took place within just a year, which seems kind of crazy.) They embrace, the two young men who were once bitter enemies now trusted allies. Mai and Tai Lee are released and seem to have new destinies themselves. Zuko credits The Avatar to a throng of people at his coronation as Fire Lord, and he is not surrounded by Fire Nation loyalists, but a balanced group of supporters from all nations, there to help rebuild the world. “The Phoenix King” promised to burn down the old world and make a new one from the ashes, and in a way, he has made good on his promise, albeit not in the way he intended.
There is such hope and catharsis in these last scenes. Aang is at peace, his mission complete, freed from the burden that created so much hardship over the past year. Zuko too is in a place of calm, having restored his honor and ascended to the throne, though not as the vicious ruler his father envisioned, but as the kind and noble man his uncle did, one ready to lead his people to a new era. After one hundred years of war and bloodshed, there is the hope that this new generation, one that has tried to cast off the scars and mistakes of the past, can make a new way forward.
We also get one last scene of Team Avatar as we knew them – simply enjoying one another’s company. Iroh plays music, the rest of the gang chats, and Sokka creates an embellished, mostly inaccurate drawing that he defends in his trademark way. This is a family – an unlikely one, filled with individuals collected from across the world from different backgrounds and temperament, but one that, through their shared vision and efforts and care for another, really did manage to save the world.
Aang gazes upon this scene lovingly as he walks out to see the new day and drink in the peace of his surroundings. Katara follows him, and in a wordless scene, with the glow of golden clouds behind them, the two embrace, and then kiss.
It’s the one scene in this finale that I do not care for. As I’ve said before, despite Aang’s crush, the chemistry between him and Katara always felt more friendly, even motherly, than romantic, a childlike crush Aang would need to one day move past than the trappings of true romantic love. It sends the series out on something of a false note, albeit one that the show has teased many times over the course of its run.
Still, it represents the larger idea of the episode – that even with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Aang chooses his own path, one true to who he is and what he believes. I’ve expressed my skepticism about his unwillingness to take Ozai’s life, but however foolhardy it may seem at times, it is a reflection of the young man who never seemed like the Avatar he was supposed to be, who instead, forged his own way. That way was often off-beat, confused, and at times, well-meaning but foolish, but it was always a moral one, and more to the point, one that reflected the unique attitudes of the young man who carried them.
He chose to run rather than be sent on his Avatar training. He chose to fight rather than sever his connection to the people he cared about. And he chose to find another way rather than violate his personal, ethical code against killing another human being. In the end, he became his own sort of Avatar, one that did not simply accede to the will of destiny or expectation and tradition but instead made his own way without sacrificing the purity of his spirit or his convictions. There is something admirable, something true in that, and it makes for a satisfying finish to this incredible series.
Avatar: The Last Airbender truly deserves that superlative. Though the series took some time to find its voice, eventually it would flesh out an incredible world, filled with well-developed characters, a deep, generational lore, and a core cast who grew more multi-dimensional and complex as it progressed. The show deserves to take its place among the great stories of chosen ones, the stellar, epic tales that offer hardship and hope, struggle and success, tragedy and triumph. With an attention to detail and character that made those larger-than-life events meaningful, it captures an amazing journey. The series is the story of a collection of young people, amid a war and a struggle they are not quite ready for, renewing the promises that this world can offer and discovering who they are in the process. In that, they returned harmony to the four nations, and to one another, and that’s what makes A:tLA so great.
[8.4/10] We live in the finite. Everyone reading this has a limited amount of time on this plane of existence. Maybe you believe there’s an eternal paradise waiting on the other end. Maybe you believe in reincarnation. Maybe you believe that we’re simply waves whose essence is returned to the fabric of the universe. Whatever you believe, almost all of us can agree that whatever we have here, our fragile world and fragile bodies, are not built to last.
That is both terrifying and maddening: terrifying because, like Janet, none of us truly knows what’s on the other side, and maddening because there is so much to do and see and experience even in this finite world, and given how few bearimies we have on this mortal coil, most of us will only have the chance to sample a tiny fraction of it.
So The Good Place gives us a fantasy. It’s not a traditional one, of endless bliss or perpetual pleasure or unbridled success. Instead, it imagines an afterlife where there’s time enough to become unquestionably fulfilled, to accomplish all that we could ever want, to step into the bounds of the next life or the next phase of existence or even oblivion at peace. The finale to Michael Schur’s last show, Parks and Recreation, felt like a dose of wish fulfillment, but with this ending, The Good Place blows it out of the water.
Each of our heroes receives the ultimate send-off. By definition, nearly all of them have found ultimate satisfaction, a sense of peacefulness in their existence that makes them okay to leave it, having connected with their loved ones, improved themselves, and accomplished all that they wanted to. If “One Last Ride” seemed to give the denizens of Pawnee everything they’d ever wanted, “Whenever You’re Ready” makes that approach to a series finale nigh-literal for the residents of The Good Place.
And yet, there’s a sense of melancholy to it all, if only because every person who emerges from paradise at peace and ready to leave, has to say goodbye to people who love them. Most folks take it in stride, with little more than an “oh dip” or an “aw shoot”, but there’s still something sad about people who leave loved ones behind, and whom the audience has come to know and love, bidding what is, for all intents and purposes, a final farewell.
But The Good Place finds ways to make that transcendent joy for each of our heroes feel real. Jason...completes a perfect game of Madden (controlling Blake Bortles, no less). He gets loving send-offs from his father and best friend. He enjoys one last routine with his dance crew. He inadvertently lives the life of a monk while trying to find the necklace he made for Janet. It is the combination of the idiotic, the sweet, and the unexpectedly profound, which has characterized Jason.
Tahani learns every skill she dreamed of mastering (including learning wood-working from Ron Swanson and/or Nick Offerman!). She connects with her sister and develops a loving relationship with her parents. And when it’s time to go, she realizes she has more worlds left to conquer and becomes an architect, a fitting destination for someone who was always so good at designing and creating events for the people she cares about. Hers is one of the few stories that continues, and it fits her.
Chidi doesn't have the same sort of list of boxes checked that leads him to the realization that he has nothing more to do. Sure, he’s read all of the difficult books out there and seemingly refined the new afterlife system (with help from the council) to where it’s running smoothly, almost on automatic. But his realization is more from a state of being happy with where everything is, with what he’s experienced.
He has dinner with his best friend and Eleanor’s best friends and has so many times. He’s spent endless blissful days with the love of his (after)life staring at the sunset. His mom kissed Eleanor and left lipstick on her cheek, which Eleanor’s mom wiped off. I love that. I love that it’s something more ineffable for Chidi, a sense of the world in balance from all the bonds he’s forged rather than a list of things he’s done. And I love that he felt that readiness to move on for a long time, but didn’t for Eleanor’s sake.
Look, we’re at the end of the series, and I’m still not 100% on board with Eleanor/Chidi, which is a flaw. But I want to like it. I like the idea of it. And I especially like the idea of someone being at peace, but sacrificing the need to take the next step for the sake of someone they love. The saddest part of this episode is Eleanor doing everything she can to show Chidi that there’s more to do, only to accept that the moral rule in this situation says that her equal and opposite love means letting him go. Chidi’s departure is hard, but his gifts to Eleanor are warm, and almost justify this half-formed love story that’s driven so much of the show.
Unfortunately, no matter how much peace he finds, Michael cannot walk through the door that leads to whatever comes next. So instead, he gets the thing he always wanted -- to become human, or as Eleanor puts it, a real boy. Ted Danson plays the giddiness of this to the hilt, his excitement at doing simple human things, the symbolism of him learning to play a guitar on earth, on taking pleasure in all the mundane annoyances and simple fun and things we meat-sacks take for granted. Each day of humanity is a new discovery for Michael, and there’s something invigorating about that, something heightened by his own delight at not knowing what happens next in the most human of ways.
The one character who gets the least indication of a next step is Janet. We learn that she is Dr. Manhattan, experiencing all of time at once. We see her accept Jason’s passing, hug our departing protagonists, and take steps to make herself just a touch more human to make her time with Jason a little more right. But hers is a story of persistence, of continued growth, in a way that we don’t really have for anyone else.
Along the way, the show checks in with scads of minor characters to wrap things up. We see the other test subjects having made it into The Good Place (or still being tested). We see Doug Forcett deciding to party hard now that he’s in Heaven. We see Shawn secretly enjoy the new status quo, and Vicky go deep into her new role, and The Judge...get into podcasts! As much as this show tries to get the big things right for all of its major characters, it also takes time to wrap up the little things and try not to leave any loose threads from four seasons of drop-ins across the various planes of existence.
That just leaves Eleanor. She takes the longest of any of the soul squad to be ready. She tries, becoming okay with Chidi’s absence. She overcomes her fear of being alone. But most importantly, she does what she’s come to do best -- help people better herself. There’s self-recognition in the way her final great act, the thing that makes her okay with leaving this plane and entering another, is seeing herself in Mindy St. Clair and trying to save her. The story of The Good Place is one of both self-improvement and the drive to help others do the same. Saving Mindy, caring about her, allows Eleanor to do both in one fell swoop.
So she too walks through the door, beautifully rendered as the bend between two trees in a bucolic setting. Her essence scatters through the universe, with one little brilliant speck of her wave, crashing back into Michael’s hands, reminding him of his dear friend, and inspiring him to pass on that love and sincerity back into the world. It is, as trite as it sounds, both an end and a beginning, something circular that returns the good deeds our protagonists have done, the good people they have become, into some type of cycle that helps make the rest of this place a little better.
Moments end. Lives end. T.V. shows end. The Good Place has its cake and eats it too, returning to and twisting key moments like Michael welcoming Eleanor to the afterlife, while cutting an irrevocable path from here through the crash of the wave. It embraces the way that the finite gives our existence a certain type of meaning, whether we have a million bearimies to experience the joys and wonders of the universe, or less than a hundred years to see and do and feel whatever we can. And it sends Team Cockroach home happy, wherever and whatever their new “home” may be.
In that, The Good Place is a marvel, not just because it told a story of ever-changing afterlife shenanigans, not just because it tried to tackle the crux of moral philosophy through an off-the-wall network sitcom, but because it ended a successful show, after only four seasons, by sending each of them into another phase of existence and made it meaningful. There’s a million things to do with our limited time on this planet, but watching The Good Place was an uplifting, amusing, challenging, and above all worthwhile use of those dwindling minutes, even if we’ll never have as many as Eleanor or Chidi, Michael or Tahani, Janet or Jason, or any of the other souls lucky enough to be able to choose how much eternity is enough.
[8.6/10] So there was a post on Reddit the other day, asking when movies stopped showing people getting into elevators. OK, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it. Movies used to show their characters walking to the door, walking down the hallway, getting into the car, stopping for gas, rolling on, arriving at their house, opening the door, and boom, that’s how you got to the next scene. Then, Godard happened, and suddenly you just cut past that stuff. The character was just in one room and then in the next and with a brief establishing shot or transition or even nothing more than the switch of backdrop, we eventually trust the audience to understand that the character did all that boring stuff in the meantime.
It’s the grammar and literacy of film audiences, and it’s just baked into our brains at this point. You don’t need to be told that Michel Poiccard didn’t apparate from one part of Marseille to another. We understand it intuitively in a way that audiences in the 1960s didn’t because we were raised on it. Maybe not to the degree that BoJack Horseman was raised on film and television, but still we know.
There are expectations on how this whole T.V. show thing works. Even in the post-Sopranos, peak T.V. era where everyone wants to do something a little differently, there’s basic rules for what television is, and how its deployed. You may not have A-plots and B-plots. You may not have three cameras or rising and falling action. But there are rules, damnit, and you’d better abide by most of them or risk alienating your audience (or taking refuge in being confusing which means your show is daring and smart).
And one of those rules, not in so many words, is don’t just have your character stand around and talk to the audience for half an hour. Save it for your one man show. Leave it on the stage. But for television, you need dynamism, you need things happening, you need multiple characters and incident and developments or people will get bored. You can’t leave your main character naked out there, especially in an animated show, when you’re not even limited to sets or locations or visual variety in the way that live action does.
But BoJack Horseman does. It gives you 21 uninterrupted minutes of its title character giving his mother’s eulogy, recounting his family history, doing a gallows humor-filled stand up routine, and processing the death of a woman he hated but still wanted approval from in one giant stream of consciousness presentation.
There’s interludes of humor in the form of those black comedy bits and the occasional musical accompaniment gag. There’s a cold open that flashes back to a glimpse of BoJack’s emotionally screwed up and emotionally screwing up father, and of BoJack’s first taste of how he thinks he’s supposed to process his mother’s absence. But for the most part, it’s just BoJack, in a room, practically talking directly to the audience, for a whole episode.
It is bananas. You could perform it as a monologue for your high school. You could print the whole thing out and turn it into one of those giant movie posters where the words make up the imagery of the film in some kind of literary pointillism. You could listen to it in the car and not miss much beyond the occasional coffin-side glance or impressionistic moment. It’s not something that had to be on television, that could only work in this medium.
And somehow, that’s what makes it feel as bold as it does, because it chooses to set aside all those tools in the T.V. toolbox that help make us feel things: the sad music, the hauntingly lit scene, the expressive reactions of other characters. It eschews using those same sweetners that help keep up the audience’s interest during a half-hour sitcom: scene changes, change-of-pace sideplots, pure comic relief. And instead it just gives you a sad, messed up horse on stage, digesting his relationship with his parents in real time for what is an eternity on television, and hopes it can keep your attention, make you feel BoJack’s pain, and thread the complex emotional and familial needles the series has been toying with for four and half season, with words alone.
Television is, as BoJack and BoJack wink at, considered more of a writer’s medium than a visual medium like film. That’s changing, but it comes from the fact that television started out as something much cheaper, much faster, and much more disposable than its cinematic brethren. There wasn’t money or time to worry about fancy images or incredible sets or stunning cinematography. You needed to film twenty something episode in about as many weeks and do it on the budget provided, which meant the spark had to come from the talents of performers like Lucille Ball and the skills of writers who could make three cameras and two rooms feel like an entire world.
That’s the advantage of the T.G.I.F. shows that Horsin’ Around is spoofing. Yeah, it’s easy to make fun at the laugh track or the outrageous situations, or the cornball humor. But those shows emerged from a long and proud tradition, of folks who may have been doing what they had to for a paycheck, but who also made some magic with the meager tools at their disposal, who taught a generation of latchkey kids and people whose lives were far removed from the ease and security of a T.V. family what good could look and feel like it.
It’s a feeling that BoJack has been chasing for his entire life, and it’s led him here, to twenty-minute half-rant/half-confession delivered to his mother’s coffin. And in those twenty minutes, he chews on his confused feelings about his parents, the way that he doesn't so much mourn his mother but mourns the end of a possibility for love from her than he didn’t really believe in in the first place, the way that he tacitly admits his father taught him not to rely on her or anyone, the way he acknowledges the screwed up solace in admitting that you’re drowning together as a family, the way he cherishes those brief respites when you can stop and see your family being as graceful and happy as anyone else’s, the way we confuse and expect big gestures in lieu of the everyday work of being good, the way we look for hidden depths and transcendent meaning in coffee mugs and I.C.U. signs and sad horse shows that may or may not be able to sustain them.
He does it all from a podium, a lecturn, a stage, that lets all that raw emotion and complicated feeling spill out and just sit there with the audience. There’s no subplot to cut to, no wacky interlude from Todd to take the edge off, no break from a man making peace with the fact that he’ll never make peace over this. It’s just there, in one big dose, for BoJack and the audience to have to swallow at the same time, in a way that T.V. almost never makes you do.
T.V. is usually gentler, easier, more escapist than that, even at its most challenging and un-user friendly. If you watch the 1960s Star Trek series you can see the wild new locales the show journeys to every week, the occasionally repetitive but differently-flavored guest stars who would arrive on a daily basis to fight our heroes or help them or just create a problem for them to be solved. And if you watched long enough, you would recognize that every other episode seems to have Captain Kirk schmoozing, smooching, and seducing his way out of (or into) whatever the problem of the week is.
It’s easy to write of Kirk as a womanizer until you realize that T.V. was different in the 1960s. However more colorful and adventure-filled Star Trek was relative to the twenty-minute speech of “Free Churro”, it was also meant to be disposable, watched once and never seen again, before Netflix binges or home video or even syndication were reasonably expectations for people to string all these disparate stories together in one cohesive whole.
You realize, then, that Kirk wasn’t meant to be a lothario in a series of continuing adventures. He was meant to be a passionate man in a bunch of disconnected stories that happened to feature the same characters. He didn’t leap from bed to bed -- he was just fated by the laws of television to find The One over and over again, because like BoJack says, and the arrival of the Starship Enterprise in last year’s Star Trek Discovery vindicates, the show just goes on.
That’s what we do when people die. We try to make sense of their life, and our relationships with them. We try to take all those individual moments that they lived, all those big events, and the moments that we shared with them, and sew them together into some sort of narrative that makes sense to us.
But lives aren’t stories. They don’t always have happy endings, or arcs, or resolution. Sometimes they just end. Sometimes you only see part of who your parents were and are and try construct the rest into something you can extract meaning from. Sometimes you only feel the ways your absent friends shaped you, or scarred you, and try to understand how and why it happened now that they’re no longer around to be asked. Sometimes you take that rush of moments and try to build it up into something you can wrap your head around, a series of episodes with lovable characters and continuity and choices that are as comprehensible as they are kind.
And sometimes, someone important in your life is gone and everything’s worse now. There are rules for television, unwritten stricture for how we communicate with one another in the medium, expectations that the audience can walk in with that may be subverted but have to be respected.
But life and death have no rules other than that each of us must experience both, however brief or painful or confusing that may be. And there are no rules for grief, the process by which we try to come to terms with a parent’s death, the marks their presence and absence have left on our lives. So BoJack Horseman breaks the rules of television, stops telling us stories, and just gives us twenty minutes of raw, writerly confession and digestion, as interconnected and familiar and yet unknowable as the real life tangles of being alive and watching someone die, without the comforts the glowing screen normally provides its hero, or its audience.
Mogami: "So what you're experiencing is a parallel world that could've easily come to pass had your circumstances been slightly different. I'll just sit back and observe how you fare in this environment without your powers."
Mogami: "You had many relationships in real life, and you were fortunate enough to be surrounded by good people. But situations like that are rare."
Mogami: "You're extremely talented brother is just a stranger here."
Mob: "It'd be so much easier if I was stronger."
Mogami: "I'm sure this seems incomprehensible to you,"
Mogami: "But she's bullying you to secure her position in society."
Mogami: "But after living in this world for six months without your powers,"
Mogami: "After my demise, I became an evil spirit and decided to use my powers for myself this time..."
Mogami: "You are allowed to use your powers for yourself. You should use them for yourself."
Dimple: "You're not staying here? Shigeo's done for. You gotta accept that. Why not run away?"
Reigen: "Because I still have faith in him."
Dimple: "In this situation? You're not really that stupid, are ya?"
Reigen: "Yup, actually, I am. Let me guess: this is the first time someone's placed so much trust in you too, right?"
Mob: "Apologise."
Mogami: "And that's why I didn't want you to travel the same path I did."
Dimple: "Yo."
Mogami: "The six months you spent here are forever etched into your heart and mind."
Mob: "I'm surrounded by good people. I need to be more thankful for them."
Mob: "When you interact with other people, it can have an effect. And because of that, I was able to change. Thanks to them, I'm stronger. Much stronger than if I'd been on my own."
Mob: "Wait... That's right."
[Grabbing hand.]
Mob: "I remember now. I came here to save someone."
Dimple: "He really has changed huh?"
Narrator: "The powerful blast created from Mob's positive emotions at 100 percent annihilated the great and powerful evil spirit Mogami."
Mogami: "No matter how much you struggle, your path will lead you to the same place mine did. To ruin."
But he's doing the opposite of yours, Mogami. Yours led to ruin because you started using your powers for yourself (to save your mother). Mob is using them to help people (which you did before you went down the ruinous path)
God damn, the animation though
Mob: "That people are able to change. Mogami and Minori both taught me it's possible. The people around me changed me as well. Now I understand I can do the same thing for others too."
Mob: "I don't get it, Master. Why aren't you claiming your reward?"
Reigen: "Just look at how many people got hurt. Not exactly a big success. You should never accept money that you feel you haven't earned. If you do, you'll start taking the easy way out every time."Reigen: "You know... You're better off working part-time for me than becoming famous or powerful. I hope this serves a good lesson for ya."
Dimple: "Come on, give me a friggin' break..."
Review
I know that all sounds like a bunch of nonsense, so let me make this simple. I interpreted this episode's message as, "positive emotions will trump negative emotions and that people and positivity can enable you to change." The problem is that this is what the episode propagates in the second half, but in the first half, it's exploring way more ideas like privilege, bullying, and selfishness. But it's forgotten in the second half? Also, the final message still disregards the earlier one on privilege. I guess it's addressed by Mob pledging he'll use his powers to help people?
This episode is really convoluted, unfocused and confused. It's trying to juggle all these different ideas under the guise of "positivity beats negativity" but it comes off as undercooked.
6/10
[7.4/10] The A-story here is a little Chang-heavy for my tastes. I know he’s supposed to be annoying/terrible, especially early on, but his jerkassery and racism makes me really just want him off my screen. But I like it as a Jeff story. Jeff hangs out with Chang to soothe his Spanish teacher after a marital separation and reap the benefits of exemptions from Chang’s draconian assignments, only to realize that he’d rather reunite Chang and his wife and get everyone in class off the hook, than have to continue being Chang’s friend just to reap those rewards. It’s a nice instance of Jeff “kind of” doing the right thing for the group.
The B-story, with Troy and Abed trying to recover their lab rat despite Troy’s rodent-phobia’s is a lot of fun. I like the emotional throughline of Troy having to learn to make sacrifices for his friends rather than the other way around, and the American Tail references worked for me hook line and sinker. Plus, Donald Glover’s line read for his remark about Abed dropping the subject was hilarious. It’s a good physical comedy/noise-making episode for Glover in general.
The C-story was good too! It’s rare that we get a Pierce/Shirley story at all, let alone one that doesn't just devolve into sexual harassment. Pierce’s public speaking tips are fun, and the pair have a good comic energy. Shirley embracing Pierce’s tips at the end, right down to a hilarious “Heeeeeeere’s Brownie!” reference, and succeeding, was a good beat.
The more marginal stuff in the episode is all good too. I like the running gag about Pierce thinking Jeff’s ability to get laughs comes from his chair. People pointing out Jeff’s fake outrage and argument tactics is superb. The Dean’s “go green” efforts are a hoot, right down to the “This better not awaken anything in me” line. And the montage that connects Chang’s salsa dancing, Shirley’s presentation, and the meaningful “Somewhere Out There” duet is very well done.
Overall, too much time with Chang, but otherwise a very nice episode.
Notes
Review
Now that I'm 3/4 of the way through this show, I think I'm ready to spew some thoughts before I finish it.
Right now, no matter how unremarkable the writing is, this series will always have me hooked. Just the premise and the animation is enthralling enough; I will watch it until it's cancelled (I hope there's a Season 2)!
After all the Marvel and DC superhero stuff these days, a show like this is refreshing. There's no "make the funny joke and move on" bull crap; these characters go through crises and grow. And it isn't like the DC universe with its edginess and gore for indulgence's sake, but for character development that emphasises its impact. Yes, the animation's limited budget shows itself now and then, but other times, it impresses.
I really like this show, and it's becoming one of my favourites quite quickly. And yes, my ratings for it aren't that high, but they're still respectable. I respect this show. Anyway, that's enough for now, I can't wait to see how the season ends, and I hope season 2 is green-lighted soon.
Yours truly — C. Clobsters
SCORE: 8/10
Notes
Review
Man, that was a wild ride. I was half-expecting there to either be a disaster or a feel-good ending that would make me cheer or something. Instead, this episode presents it like real life. There's no melodrama, no drama at all, really, just catch-up, cocktails and closure. It's beautiful, and I'm glad BoJack doesn't have a closed ending.
I expressed my fear in my previous review that once I finish this show, it'll feel like these character's lives are over. If I never reach the end, it seems like they're living their lives without me. Thankfully, the series is open-ended, and so there are unlimited possibilities. Unlimited. Anything could happen from here on out, and it isn't overly optimistic, sappy or depressing, but it's more hopeful than when the series started.
BoJack Horseman is good at depicting human emotions and real-life moments. Despite 3/5s of their main cast being anthropomorphic animals, each one feels distinctly human. With each meeting and chat with the other four—Mr Peanutbutter, Todd, Princess Carolyn, and Diane—the closure they all share is so mundane that it's relieving.
This ending is perfect. BoJack's finally ready to reintegrate into society, Princess Carolyn has found happiness, Todd has rebuilt his parental relationships, Mr Peanutbutter has looked inward, and Diane has found someone she trusts. They've all grown, changed, and are ready to move on with their lives. Man, I can just imagine what amazing things they will do in the future.
Well... it was nice while it lasted. :)
SCORE: 7/10
[9.7/10] This episode clearly deserves a longer review, but what I’ll say for now is this:
This may the best parody of anything ever. That’s bold talk, I know, but there’s just such genius in how Harmon and company distill down the tropes and quirks of the Ken Burns-style Civil War documentary and meld it with the insane world of Greendale. The talking heads, the text messages as letters, the sound design over still images, it’s all just perfect. The show captures the rhythms of those documentaries perfectly, in a way that elevates the homage even if you’re not intimately familiar with the source material. There’s a specificity to everything that really works.
And while four characters get most of the spotlight, it’s a nice outing for the rest of the cast too. Shirley is great as one of Troy’s lieutenants, and her descriptions of the battles is a comic highlight. Pierce’s staypuft-esque pillow weapon is a neat way to integrate him into the episode. Chang’s “interns” being enlisted as kids who know nothing but pillow fighting is a fun conceit. And Britta’s blurry, poorly framed photos are a laugh every time.
But what elevates this episode above Community’s other fantastic parodies is that it uses these events for pathos and meaning, not just for comedy. There’s something inherently absurd, and yet so true to form, about Troy and Abed having this massive bedding war. The show plays around with their usual shtick, but also goes to some real places though.
My favorite of these is the intercepted/exchanged letters. Abed’s description of Troy’s fears is funny, but you get why it hurts. And their later exchange -- “You weren’t supposed to see that”/”You weren’t supposed to think those things” -- feels true to real fights between friends. Troy’s response is just as cutting, telling Abed that no one else will have Troy’s patience with him, playing on Abed’s own insecurities in a remark intended only to hurt. There’s a truth to the way that fights between friends are the most painful, because by the very act of friendship, you’ve made yourself vulnerable to someone, and there are few things that sting as badly as someone using those vulnerabilities against you.
What I forgot about “Pillows and Blankets” is how good Jeff’s arc here is. I’d remembered the silly emoji-laden conversation with Annie, and his “it really summed it all up” ending, but I’d forgotten that he has his own journey here. It’s about him deciding to use his words not just to benefit himself, but to do good in the world, or at least for two people he cares about. As is often the dynamic on the show, Annie gives him the moral disapproval and nudge that motivates him to make the change, and it culminates in something outstanding. Cool, detached, self-serving Jeff not only plays along with the “imaginary best friend” hats, but uses his speechifying skills to bring Troy and Abed back together, to do something selfless. It’s some of his most meaningful growth in the whole series.
Of course, it’s wonderful to have Troy and Abed reunite in that fashion. It’s pretty plain, even for a bold show like Community, that they weren’t going to break up arguably the show’s best duo forever, war or no war. But having their friendship on the line in this skirmish, and having them continue to whack each other with pillows so that friendship never has to end, is a way to thread the needle between Ken Burns style “futility of war” missives and the heart that exists between these two lovable weirdos who don’t want to let one another go, even if it means extending their fight to accomplish that. It’s a nice note to go out on, one that deftly puts an end to their feud while staying true to what started it and who these characters are.
(And as an aside, the closing pledge drive mini-skit is a delight to anyone who’s watched a regular array of PBS.)
This is truly one of Community’s high water marks, a mix of parody and character stories and high concept arcs brought together to make something hilarious but touching all the same. Greendale’s Civil War becomes the Civil War, realized in the goofiness, pain, and sincerity of affection between two young men who need one another more than they need to set a record, or stand by their principles, or to win.
IS IT MY FAVOURITE EPISODE SO FAR? IT'S MY FAVOURITE EPISODE SO FAR.
After being grounded by her mum, Hilda discovers her neighbour mysteriously disappears and reappears in the blink of an eye.
This episode was a thrilling time travel tale about regret, reminiscing on what could've been and the consequences of your actions. Because GOD DAMN, HILDA DIED TWICE. Speechless noises. It was just so sudden, distressing yet heartfelt. You can see Hilda means well, but since she doesn't think it through, it all goes to hell. I mean, and I can't stress this enough, she got herself killed, twice, as well as several versions of Mr Ostenfeld, as well as Tildy! This episode has so much death!
I like how they imbued the episode's themes with the other two characters, and it was exciting to see Trolberg back in the 20s? No, the themes & premise aren't anything new, but the way the episode presented them struck a chord with me. Bella Ramsey gives another charming performance, and Rasmus Hardiker's Alfur is just as endearing. Seeing the contrast of second-trip Hilda and the third one, hardened and bitter by time, was heartbreaking; I won't forget her sacrifice.
Hilda: "And all things considered, it didn't work out too badly."
Alfur: "We saw our selves die... twice!"
It's heartwarming, tragic and powerful. I've no issues with this episode, and I think it encapsulates what I love about Hilda so much. This episode is beautiful in every sense of the word.
TECHNICAL SCORE: 8.5/10
ENJOYMENT SCORE: 9/10
NOW THAT WAS AN EPIC MID-SEASON EPISODE!
Ahlberg's back at it again, with a devious scheme to install an automated bell system all over Trolberg. But in doing so, every creature—woffs, elves, nisse and trolls—are struggling to live in peace. So Hilda and the gang set out on a daring mission to shut it down, once and for all!
This episode had a fun operation that brings together Hilda, Frida, David, Alfur, Tontu and the lost clan! But not only that, we learn more about the bell keeper. We get a little glimpse into his psyche and what's made him so bitter after all these years. After he saves Hilda's life, he convinced me he was someone we could trust. I loved seeing that character's growth and Hilda unite a group of her friends to come together to stop a common enemy: Ahlberg.
Bartell Bragga, the leader of the lost clan, has a few fun little gags, involving Alfur and combat!
Bartell: "We've declared war on the bell tower. We'll take it down brick by brick. Or die trying!"
It's just all-round fun, epic and satisfying to see Ahlberg crushed by one of the bells he had installed, much like Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco. Except Ahlberg doesn't die.
David: "The pigeons are in the coop. Bartell and Agnes look ready for battle. Alfur... not so much. Over."
It's vast in scope, fun and gathers a large cast to fight for the wilderness' creatures. That twist at the end is very menacing. I also hope Hilda gives Johanna more attention in future episodes; she seems worried all the time.
TECHNICAL & ENJOYMENT SCORE: 8/10
[7.5/10] A charming and colorful introduction to this miniseries. This has an Adventure Time meets Miyazaki feel to it in the early going, which is a combo that really works for me. I like the setup here, with Wirt as the older brother who is, as his name portends, a worrywart and also a little dramatic, and Greg as the younger brother who is more sweetly naive and fearless to the point oblivious as they make their way through the woods. It sets up a good dynamic for their adventures, and I like the relationship between them.
That works here when the two brothers encounter a mill-working woodsman who seems a little dark and warns of a mysterious beast but is also willing to give them shelter and maybe directions. Wirt’s abject anxiety over this guy, in contrast to his little brother’s more childlike “just go with it” attitude makes for a nice contrast.
The animation here is also really nice to look at. The character designs have an old world toy look to them, which I like, and the wash of autumnal colors and dark spooky moods are inviting. The skirmishes and escape with the giant wolf creature is visually exciting and even a little gruesome in places, and the lighting in particular makes this feel distinctive.
There’s also a lot of laughs and fun little setups and payoffs. The banter between the two brothers is worth a smile even when it’s not going for an explicit gag. Greg’s various names for his frog, the running gag of him leaving a trail with the candy from his pants, and his effort to execute Wirt’s discarded plan are all good bits.
Christopher Lloyd also makes an impression as the woodsman, adding something dark and a little foreboding to all of this. His talk about the work of keeping the lantern going being his burden and Wirt being responsible for his brother’s actions as the elder sibling suggests a connection or a hard history there that we’re not privy to. There’s a strange, almost philosophical bent to him and his concern about the beast, which I found interesting.
Overall, this makes for a cool introduction to the miniseries, giving us the lay of the land and a good sense for the characters as we continue on Wirt and Greg’s adventures.
[7.9/10] I’ll confess, I’m hesitant about The Owl House’s reluctance to let its characters commit genuine sins rather than simple accidents/misunderstandings. King can’t actually “temporarily disappear” Willow and Gus when he’s jealous, just sprays them by accident. Luz doesn’t really think she’s better than the kids in “detention track”, they just have a miscommunication. Amity didn’t really reject Willow as her friend because Willow was bad a t magic, she was just forced to by someone else.
This is a show for kids, granted, but also an ambitious one, with big reveals and good character arcs that mean it’s fair to hold it to a higher standard than giving its main players moral outs like that. People mess up. That’s real life. This is a good enough series to tackle that head on rather than treating the idea with kid gloves.
And yet, I like the twist here. The show has already hinted at their being former friends with some cryptic, unspoken break-up. That bill is paid now, and it’s a doozy. Despite the pair being playmates as youngins, Amity threw Willow out of her birthday party, ostensibly for being a
“weakling” at magic, and started hanging out with Dasha and others who pick on WIllow constantly.
But the truth is that Amity never wanted to end the friendship, but was told to do so by her parents. I’ll confess, I don’t love that it’s a “cruel to be kind” situation, where Amity’s parents threatened to hurt or otherwise stymie Willow and her family if Amity kept hanging out with her. It lets Amity off too easily.
But I do like that, similarly to Pacifica Northwest in The Owl House’s spiritual predecessor, Gravity Falls, we’re learning that Amity isn’t bad. She is, instead, the product of a home life that’s designed to mold her into something bad. And if anything, she’s tried to find respites away from it, to be a different person than the one she’s expected to be. Throw in the classism and sense of prejudice to the whole thing, and you have a potent story of someone dragged into the muck of arrogance and bigotry, who’s trying, through good, eye-opening friendships, to climb her way out of it. That hits home in a way the nerfing of Amity’s actions doesn’t for me.
I also like the concept here. While it's a little nuts that, even in a magical school, they would have the students “print out” photo memories that could seriously damage the minds of the witchlings they come from if damaged, and then just leave them sitting out. But regardless, it’s fun to have an Inception-like scenario of Luz and Amity running around in Willow’s head, trying to right what went wrong after Amity accidentally burned several of Willow’s memories. (Again, accidentally being the key word here.)
For one thing, Luz is a great side character. I enjoy her as the protagonist, but it’s a reminder that she has a Homemr-esque ability to just being a wacky and hilarious secondary figure for an episode and still excel in that role. Her excitement over Willow’s history, and the fun she has loping around in her mind is neat.
I also like the conceit of the fire monster destroying memories turning out to be “Inner Willow.” Certain other Disney productions prepared me for the twist, but I still like her as a representation of Willow’s anger at Willow. It’s a good way to dramatize the idea that personal betrayals like that can turn joys and fond remembrances and other positive emotions from past memories into nothing but frustration and resentment. The tragedy of not only halting a friendship for the future, but wrecking the fond recollections of the past, is a canny choice.
The B-story is a nice bit of comic relief. Gus trying to find the most interesting person to interview for his school paper project, with Eda and King competing for the spot, is good fodder for hijinks. THere’s not much to it, but the gags are solid. (I like King describing his greatest attribute as his decisiveness, only to then yell, “Wait I changed my mind!”) Plus, the fact that Gus ultimately chooses Hooty is a superb swerve.
But I also like that the ending isn’t just about absolving Amity for the actions in the past; it’s about fixing her actions in the future. Regardless of whether Amity had a comprehensible reason for ending her friendship with Willow, she didn’t have to sit idly by while the mean girls picked on her. Her resolution in the present to stop that teasing, and her impulse to distance herself from the mean girls shows Amity learning and making amends. It’s the kind of thing I do appreciate on this show, that even if they go light on main characters screwing up, they go big on them not just apologizing, but taking steps to make it up.
That’s what makes Amity’s growth here so engrossing. It’s not the excuse for the past. It’s the sense that, as we can see from her brown hair in old photos, she doesn’t quite fit in with the Blythe family. She’s been crammed into a mold that she doesn’t fit into. And now that she’s fund a more supportive, healthy group of people to fuel her, she’s beginning to make good on her mistakes in the past, and chart a better way forward for her life on the Boiling Isles.
Notes
Fennec Shand: "That was fast."
Boba: "We'll lockdown at the palace."
Skad: "It's a bad idea."
[Boba turns.]
Boba: "Is that so?"
Skad: "...it is."
Boba: "And where do you propose we wait for reinforcements?"
Skad: "...here."
Boba: "...here? In these ruins?"
[Skad nods.]
Boba: "Nonsense."
Boba: "The palace offers greater protection."
Drash: "If you want to abandon Mos Espa and hide in your fortress, go ahead. We're staying. The people who live here need our protection."
Mok Shaiz: "Does Fett have any other resources to call upon? He used to live in a Tusken Raider tribe in the desert."
Peli Motto: "It's an X-wing. What's an X-wing doing here?"
Peli: "Well look who it is!"
Boba: "I thought I smelled something."
Cad Bane: "Before you get any ideas. I've got back shooters too."
Drash: "Hey... Thank you."
Fennec: "Manners. I like it. You're welcome."
The Mandalorian: "It's against the Creed. I gave you my word. I'm with you until we both fall."
Boba: "You really buy into that bantha fodder?"
The Mandalorian: "I do."
[Boba nods.]
Boba: "Good."
The Mandalorian: "We got real problems."
The Mandalorian: "Our energy weapons can't get through, and our kinetic weapons have too much velocity."
Pyke: "Sleemo!"
The Mandalorian: "Okay, little guy. I'm happy to see you too."
Drash: "Can you pick off some of the fighters?"
Freetown fighter: "I'm used to desert hunting. Can't miss at this range."
Peli: "Peli's got you covered."
Cad Bane: "What's your angle?"
Boba: "This is my city. These are my people. I will not abandon them."
Cad Bane: "Like the Tuskens."
Cad Bane: "Let's find out."
Boba: "This is my city!"
Cad Bane: "You tried to go straight."
Cad Bane: "I knew you were a killer."
Freetown Bartender: "The rancor's on the loose!"
The Mandalorian: "It's gonna be okay."
Peli: "Where'd you go, kid?!"
Boba: "Thank you."
The Mandalorian: "All right. But this is the last time."
"Directed by ROBERT RODRIGUEZ"
Review
Btw, I still like this episode. And I've gotten complaints that I'm just being negative for no reason, but to preemptively combat this, let me say it's because I'm trying to study the shows I'm watching because I'm a screenwriter. I also criticise stuff I like.
6/10
[8.6/10] I have to admit, I am a complete sucker for this sort of thing. I love the novelty of a television show or movie reinterpreting its own story as though it’s a story being told in-Universe. From C-3PO recounting the events of Star Wars to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi to Arya Stark watching a stage play of the events of Game of Thrones, there’s just something about a story exploring how stories distort and reimagine and reshape real events and people for the sake of poetic license that really works for me.
And it worked for me here! For one thing, I love how meta this whole damn episode is. It’s not the sort of thing you can do too often, or your story becomes a little too much of an ouroboros, but once in a while, it’s a delightful opportunity for comedic reflection. (Though Community made a cottage industry out of it.) I laughed out loud at Sokka talking about the play as the sort of “time-wasting crap” he misses. I really enjoyed the touch that the poster for the show mirrors the cover of the AtLA DVDs. Even just the show being split up into three acts, or Suki noting that Teem Avatar gets beaten a lot, was a nice, self-reflective touch.
I also love the craft of the way the episode turns its story into a stage play. Having Aang be played by a woman on stage, Peter Pan-style, is an inspired move. The attention to detail in how bending was portrayed on the stage – with colorful ribbons and other stagecraft, was very creative. And most importantly, it worked as both a parody of Avatar’s story, of theater conventions, and the way that real events become exaggerated when committed to fiction.
That comes through most in how all of the show’s protagonists are caricatured in the stage version of their lives. Sokka as a guy who cannot stop making meat jokes, Katara as someone who’s always crying and making speeches about hope, and Zuko as someone constantly talking about his honor are mighty fine one-note parodies of our heroes. The dialogue and delivery of the show is hilarious, and it provides a nice opportunity for AtLA to make fun of itself, but also to have its characters make fun of each other, with Toph in particular saying there’s a lot of truth on that stage.
That feeds into the way that the show, cartoonish and outsized though it may be, feeds into everyone’s insecurities about who they are and how others see them. The silliest of these in Sokka crying at the story of Princess Yuweh. It’s a broad moment where she’s talking about having eaten pickled herring, but the magnitude of that event still affects Sokka.
The most heartening of them is Zuko regretting the way he betrayed his Uncle Iroh. As silly as the two are portrayed here, it has enough of a ring of truth that it serves as a reminder to Zuko of one of this greatest regrets. He’s still tortured by what he did, and it’s a nice way to show that even silly or inaccurate art can move us or affect us when it touches on something sensitive in our pasts or personalities. But I love the way Toph reassures him that by staking out his own path and joining Team Avatar, Zuko has redeemed himself with his Uncle even if he doesn’t know it. It calls back nicely to Toph’s conversation with Iroh, and her “sign of affection” for Zuko after telling him that he was all Iroh talked about is a sweet moment all around.
The trickiest of them was Aang being upset by the depiction of Katara and Zuko as romantic in the stage show, with stage-Katara talking about Aang as being nothing more than a little brother. It plays into his concern that he is not masculine enough and that his crush does not see him as anything more than a little kid.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not big on the Aang-Katara shipping business. I never really felt the chemistry between them (save for the moment in the titular Secret Tunnel) and as much as I enjoy the relationship between the two characters, it never really scanned as a believably romantic one, which makes all the teasing and agonizing over Aang’s crush on Katara kind of dull to me.
On the other hand, there’s a realness in their scene together outside the theater. Whether or not they make sense, there’s truth in a young kid having a crush on an older girl and worrying that he is not seen as mature or manly enough to cut the muster. (Hell, it happened with me and my wife!) Aang’s pain and frustration at caring for Katara and his distress when it’s not clear that she returns his feelings, feelings he blocked his charka for, are sympathetic.
But so are Katara’s, who very reasonably says that there are much bigger things going on right now than their romantic feelings, and that she is unsure of how she feels. The heightened environment of being on the brink of war and conflict, is not always the best environment to find your true feelings. As much as the last episode set at ember island devolved into overwrought Dawson’s Creek-style teen angst, this felt realer and believably awkward and painful for both Aang and Katara.
And yet for as funny an episode as this is, and as much as it leans into the character’s feelings about themselves and others, the end turns to the greater task at hand. The depiction of Azula slaying Zuko, and Ozai killing The Avatar, are clearly disquieting to the Aang Gang. The theme of the evening has been the way that even this exaggerated show reflects a truth that can unnerve our heroes. Seeing visions of their own failures and deaths is just as worrisome, evincing a fear that the future these men and women on stage are depicting will have as much truth of the real world in it. It’s a chilling reminder of the magnitude of what’s to come, and the threats that lie ahead. Art, as Shakespeare put it, holds up a mirror to nature, and sometimes the reality of what it reflects can rattle us, in the best and worst ways.
[9.5/10] Holy hell. This was incredible. I love that after A New Hope pulled a lot from classic Japanese films like Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress, the franchise is coming full circle. Japanese artists are now translating the tropes of Star Wars back into a feudal Japan setting, and it could hardly be cooler.
The art here is just gorgeous. This is the most beautiful blend of 3D animation with 2D flourishes since Klaus. The choice to go black and white, with only electronic things like lightsabers, droid lights, and whistling birds appear in color creates a striking aesthetic. And the design choices are downright stunning, from straw-covered R2 units, to the force-sensitive combatants and their artistically-conceived hair and clothing, to vehicles, weapons, and whole species reimagined with an ancient Japanese flair.
The basic premise works just as well. The notion of a Sith warlord coming to harass a humble village, while a calm ronin springs into action to save the innocent from their oppressors, fits wonderfully into this new rendition of Star Wars. That’s no shock. Episode IV reinterpreted a number of standard ronin tropes into a space setting, and watching those tropes reabsorbed and remixed back into a feudal setting is a thrill.
The action here is top notch. This is one of the best lightsaber battles we’ve seen in ages, with stellar choices in the blocking, shot-selection, and choreography. I love the little choices like letting the “camera” focus on the Sith’s hood floating away in the wind while we only hear the sound of her clashing with the hero. There’s a real mood and atmosphere which adds to the epicness of the confrontation. Intensity in the pace, eye-catching poses, and clever shifts and ruses to get the upper hand all make this a stand out among Star Wars skirmishes.
I’m also a big fan of the texture to this one: little moments that don’t contribute that much to the fairly simple “story” but which add color and intrigue to the world the characters inhabit. A ten-year-old being the chief because his dad’s asleep or ran-off, the hunched tea-maker fixing the droid, the bounty hunters fighting back against the Sith are all little details, but make this world feel more alive and lived-in beyond the immediate story.
On the whole, this is one hell of a coming out party for Star Wars: Visions. I’ll confess, I’m not much of an anime afficionado. But “The Duel” is enough for even a relative neophyte like me to sit up and take notice.
What a fantastic series! I really hope Amazon greenlights Season 2! As a superhero fan, "Invincible" is a breath of fresh air. Ah... it's good to have superhero stories that aren't just the DC and Marvel line-up.
SCORE: 9/10
Reggie? Rickie? Ritchie has one messed up business. The cops definitely need to shut him down.
Throughout the episode, I thought the mystery was going to be something profound, or there would be a big revelation, but it turns out it was a huge waste of time. Well, almost.
Mr Peanutbutter and Diane's relationship is on thin ice. Princess Carolyn has to try to keep Mr Peanutbutter from tearing his house apart, and Diane is trying to keep in contact with Mr Peanubutter, making sure he knows she's safe. But it's then when they find Cuddlywhiskers. He talked about his time as a filmmaker and the moment he won an Oscar.
Up until this point, BoJack has been juggling solving this mystery with Diane and attending all his meet and greets to help him win an Oscar. Along the journey, Diane's been getting calls from Mr Peanutbutter and keeps refusing them. But when they find Cuddlywhisker's home, Diane finally picks up, and Mr Peanutbutter is furious.
"I'm glad you're safe, but I was worried about you."
"You have to call me. It doesn't matter what's happening. It doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night. You can't keep doing this to me."
- Mr Peanutbutter
Cuddlywhiskers then finally arrives and sits down to drink tea and talk with BoJack and Diane. He talks about how he found no happiness in winning an Oscar yet felt even more miserable. Diane tells Cuddlywhiskers that "Everyone was worried" about him, how he "can't just disappear" and how he "really hurt a lot of people."
"Sometimes you need to take responsibility for your own happiness."
"It takes a long time to realise how truly miserable you are, and even longer to see it doesn't have to be that way. Only after you give up everything can you begin to find a way to be happy."
- Cuddlywhiskers
Cuddlywhiskers' words resonate with BoJack and Diane. For BoJack, because he's trying to win an Oscar and has been told it'll be "the happiest moment in his life." And for Diane, she's started to think about her own happiness and how she's been leaving Mr Peanutbutter disconnected from her life.
IT'S REFRESHING.
TECHNICAL SCORE: 7.5/10
ENJOYMENT SCORE: 8/10
[8.4/10] When I realized we were getting an anthology-style episode centered on Hooty, I assumed this was going to be a comic relief, assorted hijinks outing for the show. And I would have been good with that! The King story, which falls the most into that framework, was delightful. Instead, this is one of the most powerful episodes of the show, and it caught me completely off guard.
As I mentioned, King's story is probably the lightest. Hooty trying to help him by uncovering what type of demon he is has all sorts of comic potential. The taxonomy of bugs/bipeds/beasts creates a solid framework for the silly “tests” that Hooty runs on King. And the comic exchanges that ensue between them are quite funny (let’s not talk about the cocoon).
But naturally, it lands someplace more profound. I honestly love that Hooty cheerfully tells King that he still doesn’t know what kind of demon King is, but that he’s still glad that King is who he is. But I also like how the show leans into King's distress at thinking he would have at least one answer to his identity and being thwarted even there. It's a familiar trope, but I still love that it’s bringing out that emotion (in the throes of demon puberty, naturally) that allows King to discover that he has a special vocal ability, showing that Hooty did do some good.
(That said, I find the reveal of King's obvious relative coming to give him a letter and Hooty just swallowing it utterly maddening. I know it’s a way to prolong the story until when the show’s ready to unbox it, but still! C’mon! What a tease!)
Eda’s story is my absolute favorite though, and one of my favorite things from the show writ large. The scenes and memories in her dream help us to better understand her psyche and sympathize with what she went through to become the superlative witch we know and love. The fact that she hurt her father in one of her transformations helps establish why she felt she had to stay away from the people she cared about and not let anyone get too close. And with the flashback to her breakup with Raine, we see how her embarrassment and insecurity about it prevents her from actually opening up, forming new bonds, or asking for help. It’s incredibly sad to see these traumatic moments in Eda’s life, that still cause her pain today, and they help illustrate what she's grappling with.
I love where the show ends up with it all though. The imagery of her on the beach, tethered to the owl who’s trying to get away just as much, is a powerful, impressionistic reputation of her challenges. (As Disney properties go, it made me think of Kingdom Hearts.) I adore her epiphany and urge to try to live with the owl, commune with it, rather than fight each other. The owl calming down and even curling up in her lap is a great rendition of that concept, and the fact that once she makes peace with it, it gives her a new powerful “harpee” form is a neat way to pay that off practically.
I’d never really thought about the metaphor behind Eda’s curse. I’d kind of taken it to be a chronic disease or something along those lines. But in this episode, it feels like a metaphor for mental illness or other emotional disturbances. The idea of worrying that you’re going to lose control of yourself and hurt someone, the fear of letting someone get close lest they get to know that side of you, the reluctance to ask for help, all align neatly and resonantly with mental health struggles. So that makes the notion of making peace with those parts of ourselves rather than fighting against them all the more powerful. Whatever the analogy (and this one doesn’t map perfectly onto Eda’s circumstances), the way the realization feeds into Eda’s breakthrough is wonderful.
Luz’s story leans back into the comic hin=jinks side of things, but also pays off the long-simmering attraction between her and Amity. While I love Hooty’s dorky attempts to set the mood for love (him as a paddleboat is particularly delightful), the shtick with Luz trying to prevent Amity from seeing it gets a bit over-the-top sitcom-y for my tastes. Again, the show leans hard into the teenage embarrassment angle, and loses some of the truth of their otherwise adorable crushes on one another.
At the same tie, there’s the kernel of something really genuine at the heart of this one. However high volume the illustration, it’s relatable for two people to like one another, but be uncertain about making the first move, or if the other person will think they’re cool enough, and wanting the big steps in your relationship to be perfect for the sake of the person you’re wooing. The pair’s romance is very sweet, and their teenage nervousness about it very relatable, so that helps cover for any broadness in the material.
And they pull the trigger on it! Seeing them finally ask each other out is very wholesome, and the support Luz gets from her adoptive family makes it all the sweeter.
I also love how it makes everything work within the confines of the frame story. Hooty feels unimportant and gets some encouragement from Lilith that he’s an essential part of the household. (I mean, he is the household.) So him trying to help his family members with their problems, thinking he made a hash of things, only to see that his meddling got them all where they needed to be is a really nice note to play for the show’s resident punching bag.
Overall, this is one of my favorite episodes of the show to date, one that serves all of the main characters well with a unique format and big boost for Hooty to boot!
[8.5/10] Poor Luz. From the minute she’s desperate for a distraction to take her mind off the phone reminder, you know whatever eating at her is going to be emotionally harrowing. And it was.
One of my favorite things about season 2 is that it engages with the fact that Luz is away from her mother and her life in the human world. Season 1 is a blast, but in the back of my mind, I often found myself wondering how, if ever, the show would pay the bill of having run away to a place where she faces down supernatural danger on an (at least) weekly basis.
Luz’s visit home answered that question to some degree. But her destroying the portal home to protect her mom, while also separating Luz from her, made for a more interesting emotional strain for our protagonist. Now home isn’t the thing she’s running away from; it’s the thing that’s out of reach, and with it, so is her mother.
That’s hard enough in a season where Luz’s main quest is opening another portal home. But I love how this episode leans into the small, down-to-earth things that Luz is missing from being in the Boiling Isles. After a few oblique hints, the show confirms that Luz’s father passed away when she was young. To miss her and Camila’s ritual, to gather flowers for one another, as he once did, to visit his grave and mourn this important member of their family together, is a sacred thing. To miss that, to be reminded not only of a painful thing like the loss of a parent, but to be unable to comfort someone you love going through the same thing, or be comforted by them, is devastating. No wonder Luz wants to do anything but think about it.
I love that element of this one too. Sometimes, unavoidable, unfixable things take up residence in our brains. It could be grief, or worry, or garden variety pain. Whatever the form, it cannot always be conquered. Sometimes all you can do is try to focus on something else so that this complicated thought or feeling doesn’t weigh you down too badly.
So it’s relatable when Luz jumps at the chance to help Amity with a straightforward problem that promises to distract them all day. I like that Luz genuinely errs here, and not in a take-backsies sort of way. She coaches up Amity and cheers her own in a Witches’ Duel rumble modeled after professional wrestling. She enters the tournament herself once the competition begins and she realizes that simply staying in Amity’s corner wouldn’t keep her occupied enough. She babbles while Amity and her sister need to focus to complete a healing spell between rounds. And in her anxiousness to do something, anything besides think about what’s bothering her, she messes with Amity’s abomination minder and inadvertently alerts Amity’s father that she’s disobeying his wishes.
The need to stay in constant motion, remain totally occupied lest the bad thoughts creep in, makes Luz sympathetic. But at the end of the day, she also lets her problems hurt Amity, and she even lies about it. The stakes aren’t tremendous, but it’s enough of a betrayal to have meaning. And it’s cathartic when Luz admits what she’s going through and explains what drove her to these mistakes to a girlfriend who is stung, but who still cares.
Granted, Amity has her own struggles here. Luz’s story alone would be enough to bump this one up to “great” territory. The Owl House does its audience one better, though, with an episode that explores Amity’s relationship with her dad. The idea that Amity wanted to join this rumble in the first place to follow in her dad’s footsteps is endearing. But it also comes from a place of estrangement. Since he drifted away into his work and her mom’s pan, Alador’s been distant with his children. This is partly an act of rebellion from Amity, choosing to find her own way rather than try out for the Emperor’s Coven like her mother wants. But it’s also partly an effort to understand her dad a little better by doing what he did, since he’s so closed off.
So I love Amity sticking up for herself. I love the shared strength the father and daughter demonstrate when they’re working together rather than at cross purposes. I love Amity continuing the arc she began last season, forging her own path and her own life distinct from her parents’ expectations.
But I also like that she calls her father out for this stuff. She’s frank with him about feeling that distance, feeling like he doesn’t understand her or even know her, feeling like he let her Mom dictate her life and just went along with it. Alador’s admission that she’s right and commitment to do better earns a handshake, not a hug, which recognizes the complexity of a problem that can’t be solved with a single conversation or gesture. There’s truth in that, and it laces Amity’s big triumph of self-actualization with some lingering family problems that haven't been resolved yet.
Interestingly enough, she’s not the only Blight offspring who finds their way in this episode. While Em is in Amity’s corner for most of the festivities, Ed feels out of place and a little useless. His magic skills don’t seem to fit well with anything, and he worries that he’s bad at the lot of it.
Shock of shocks, his problem ends up dovetailing with King and Eda’s efforts to make a blabber potion that forces rumble champion Warden Wrath to spill the beans on Belos’ plans. It ends up being a good story of Edric finding his tribe. He too doesn’t seem to fit in perfectly with the Blight family’s rigorous standards. And when he tweaks the potion, leading to Wrath turning into an unstoppable beast, he worries it will undo the good work and esteem he earned helping Eda and King find the creature ingredients for their brew.
But Eda, ever the fan of coloring outside the lines, pats him on the back instead for mixing magicks and improvising. It’s a nice sign of Ed’s strengths that connects to one of The Owl House’s key themes -- the way supposed misfits have value even if they don’t fit into traditional structures. Seeing Edric praised for his ingenuity even when things go wrong, and made a member of the Bad Girl Coven, is a surprisingly heartening part of what I assumed would be a comic relief storyline.
There’s not many laughs to be had when Luz confesses what’s been bothering her to Amity. There’s a realness to this moment, in the way a young adult wants to seem like they’re unbothered, like they’re not making a big deal out of something, when it’s obviously a very big deal, that I adore. Luz’s talk about the difficulty of being away from her mom on such an important day is heartbreaking.
But talking about it with someone she loves also gives her a comfort that simply trying to run away from the thoughts can’t. Amity offers solace, in the way a good partner would. But she also finds a way to recreate the ritual, just a little, in the way the Boiling Isles allows for. It’s something different, but something hopeful. And the imagery of the two sitting under falling cherry blossoms, sending a bouquet of flowers into the sky with their shared magic, while Camila sets a bloom out for daughter as well, is one of the most beautiful bits of imagery in the whole show. It adds a lyricism to this emotional breakthrough, the hardship of being away, but the peace that comes with support and action instead of distraction and evasion.
The end result is one of my favorite episodes of the series to date. By digging deep into the toughest part of Luz’s separation, The Owl House vindicates what she’s missing by being away, but also the community and support she’s found to help comfort her here.
[9.3/10] For a character whose presence I was a little resistant to at first, I’m amazed at how much I feel for Hunter here. The show has done work nudging him further and further away from his “uncle’s” programming. This is the final straw, the last step that makes him understand why everything about Belos is toxic, and it nearly breaks him.
Why wouldn’t it? I think Eda puts it best in the early part of the episode. People don’t want to hear that everything they’ve founded their lives upon is wrong. It is an unmooring thought to immerse yourself in, whether it’s learning that the societal beliefs your community rests upon are mercenary and wrong, or learning that your personal connection to someone is founded on a lie. Hunter doesn’t want to believe these things about Belos any more than the citizens of the Boiling Isles do. So when he can deny the truth no longer, when confronted with the horrible reality of who his uncle is and who he is, he is shattered by it.
There is so much pathos in that. And as with so much of the show’s subtext, it speaks to real life young adults breaking free from the systems they were brought up in, and learning that the people who raised and mentored them are not the good-natured souls they thought. That gives it extra power.
But for Hunter to figure that out, he and Luz have to discover the truth via entering the Emperor’s mind. I love the setup. Willow’s mindscape was one of my favorite episodes of season 1, so returning to that conceit, and melding it with the series’ myth arc, makes for a strong premise. The fact that Luz and Hunter end up there together, but accidentally, with no way out creates stakes. And the connections to Raine’s resistance and Eda’s efforts to protect her ward without magic all make this one a keeper.
It also feels like the right time to finally get Belos’ backstory in grand detail. It’s a strong choice to make him a garden variety charlatan, moving from town to town with his tricks and scary stories to try to fool the local populace. The idea that the grand leader of the coven system is all colored balls of light, fantastical claims about being able to speak with the Titan, and garden variety fireworks, speaks to the bunk that underlies his order.
What stands out most, though, is the fear. It’s not enough to promise that the Titan is displeased. It’s not enough to claim that the diversity of magic use is morally wrong somehow. He needs a mysterious Other to unite the people against. So he uses wild magic as his scapegoat, setting fires, burning down homes, and blaming it on Wild Witches who dare to mix magicks. That’s what’s so striking about his rise. Anyone can spin pie-in-the-sky falsehoods. What gets Belos his following is showmanship, certainly, but also that sense of terror, that someone and something dark and wrong is coming to get you, and only he has the answers to stop it. Like so many things on the show, it resonates because it’s true to life for how genuine fascist strongmen operate.
Hunter gradually comes to realize that. One of the touches I appreciate most is how he keeps trying to rationalize what he sees in the Emperor’s mind. He speaks of this place as sacred. He assumes the little impish version of Belos who appears to be leading them to safety represents his pure intentions. He justifies a little misleading theatricality in the name of leading the masses to the right path.
Until the Emperor turns on him too. How dispiriting must it be to defend someone all your life, to devote yourself to their service, only to discover that they never really loved you and view you as disposable. That’s the dagger in the heart for Hunter, the personal side of his uncle’s malfeasance, that upends his life and the life he thought he knew in ways that are understandably impossible to reckon with. There’s plenty of interesting hints at play, from the appearance of similar looking/sounding assistants in Belos’ past, and statements that they all betray him eventually. But the emotional thrust of this one is Belos talking about how easily manipulated his nephew is, and how easily replaced.
(Andrew’s crazy theory: My bet is that Hunter is some kind of magical clone of Philip Wittebane’s brother. In Luz’s spectral visit to the human world, the conspiracy nut mentioned town lore that two brothers were tempted by a witch into the humana world. My bet is that Philip tried to recreate his brother in some form (hence the “nephew” terminology) and the physical recreation of a dead person is why Hunter’s a “grim walker.” The theory would also account for Belos’ “You looked the most like him” comment.)
I appreciate how steadfast and compassionate Luz is through all of this. She never stops trying to show him the truth about Belos. She reads all of the events they witness fairly, even though she’s already predisposed toward believing that Belos is evil. But she also tells Hunter that he doesn't have to go back, that he can stay with them, that there’s another way. The balance of frankness and comfort helps mark Luz as a good person, never wavering, but showing empathy to Hunter at the same time.
I’ll admit, the part of this that doesn’t land with full force to me here is Belos revealing to Luz that he is, in fact, Philip Wittebanae. It’s anticlimactic because the show has hinted strongly in that direction for episodes and episodes now, so it’s not much of a shock to the audience.
Theoretically, it could still make an impact given the effect it has on Luz. But she seemed interested in Wittebane’s diary for practical purposes, not an emotional connection to its author, so no big deal there. She already knew Philip was a bad guy from her time travel escapade, sso that’s no big surprise either. And while Wittebane turning out to be Belos’ nom de guerre from after “Philip” was run out of too many towns is a neat twist, it doesn’t change much.
The most you can say is that it’s a strike against Luz’s ability to return to the human world. If Philip is Belos, and he hasn't been able to make the portal work in all this time with all his sources, then it's right for Luz to be discouraged about her prospects for achieving the same thing. But we don’t really get much of a sense of that in the text, just her being gobsmacked by who he is.
That notwithstanding, I still love all the turns and reveals in this one. For one thing, I’m over the moon for the way the episode plays with your expectations for the personifications inside Belos’ mind. The malevolent-looking representation of the Emperor is legitimately terrifying. Big kudos to the designers and animators, who manage to give him an Eldritch Abomination feel that evolves and becomes more grotesque and frightening with each appearance.
It leads to the grand reveal that this scary-looking creature is not Belos’ darkside, and the spritely boy who leads them about is not a good part of him that’s been lost. Instead, it’s the little cherub who represents Belos’ real self, only taking that form to manipulate our heroes and get them right where he wants them. And the ghastly creature turns out to be the collected souls of the palismans he’s imbibed to stay alive, a horrifying concept made all the more gut wrenching when he traps and eliminates them.
I’m also intrigued by the presence of The Collector, another playful spirit who talks to Belos in private moments and seems to have a form and presence beyond what we’ve seen before. (Gravity Falls fans like me cannot help but see parallels to Bill Cipher.) The idea that Phlip found the partner he was looking for all those years ago, and is still collaborating with them, adds a new dimension to his plans. So does the reveal that The Collector is not a demon as we know them, but seems more like a trickster god, rhyme-inclined and childish in its frolics and protestations. More to come, I can only assume.
Otherwise, there’s some other nice details throughout. The reveal that Belos is a witch hunter is no great shakes since the clues have been there for a while, but him meaning to eliminate all witches does step things up a bit. The twist that he used glyph magic in the form of the coven brands to try to kill witches is an interesting spin on something the audience already knows. And I love the tough choice of Eda to use the last of the Titan’s blood to bring Luz back from the mindscape lest she not be around or alive enough to make it back to the human world. This one is filled to the brim with great lore, great character moments, and great storytelling bits that power it from start to finish.
Overall, what I’ll remember about this one is threefold: that devotion Eda shows to Luz in bringing her back, the lore drops that change the game for Belos’ backstory and purpose, and most of all, the gutting epiphany for Hunter that everything he’d anchored his life to is a lie. Poor boy.
[8.1/10] I owe The Owl House an apology. When Luz discovered that Emperor Belos was Philip Wittebane in “Hollow Mind”, I found it anticlimactic. More than that, I didn’t get why Luz took it as such a devastating revelation.
“Thanks to Them” provides a satisfying answer: because she helped Philip find The Collector, because she blames herself for setting into motion all that he’s done since, and because she’s worried her friends will hate her for the part she played in the difficulties that have steadily exploded since.
It’s her big struggle in this season premiere. Belos may have been thwarted, but things seemed potentially dire in the Boiling Isles when they last left, the witchlings are stranded here, and all of Luz’s efforts to find a way back for them have been for naught. It’s understandable that she’d be down on herself, worry that she’s made her friends’ lives worse through her mistakes and association with them. The teenage experience is one of heightened emotions and stepping into the big choices of adulthood for the first time. Luz is sympathetic in her concern that she’s screwed everything up, and relatable in her worry that it’ll make everyone reject her.
This is The Owl House, a warm supportive show, so savvy fans know things are, in all likelihood, headed for acceptance and affirmation rather than guilt and blame. (See also: the endearing part of the “What I did on my summer vacation” montage where Luz comes out as bi to her accepting and supportive mom.) But it’s still a good way to root the epic threats and challenging predicaments of the show’s major arc coming to fruition in something personal and understandable, one of the show’s strengths. It gives the wide-ranging events covered of the show’s new format an emotional throughline that helps the special feel unified.
Honestly, how well The Owl House pulls that format change off may be the most impressive part of an all-around outstanding episode. “Thanks to Them” has to tell a new story in an almost entirely new setting (something the show struggled with in “Yesterday’s Lie”, cross-pollinate a number of characters who’ve barely bumped into one another before, establish the Hexside crew in their new digs, cover the passage of time, resolve Luz and her mother’s reunion, and build toward the series’ endgame with only three installments’ worth of real estate left.
That it could succeed at all with so much ground to cover would be commendable. That it does this all so well, without missing a beat, is a hell of an achievement.
It succeeds in big ways. One of the big boons of the show is that despite the big threats, it’s a cozy show with characters you want to spend time with. “Thanks to Them” doesn’t skimp on the fact that Willow, Gus, and Amity miss their parents, in the same way that Luz missed her mom on the other side of the portal. But it also seems like a blast to basically have a kid clubhouse for several months, with your best friends all living under one roof. The little bits of Willow’s scrapbook, the montage of the crew thinning and working together, the glimpses we get of hijinks make it feel like one big sleepover you’d love to have gotten to join in when you were a kid.
If I had a complaint about season 2, it’s that Gus and Willow’s stories got a little downplayed in favor of other characters, (and to a lesser extent Amity’s stories as well), but I like the collective story they get here. On the one hand, they’re having a blast. On the other, they’re plainly more than a little homesick. On a third (magical demon hand), they’re good kids who are doing their best to adjust and repay Camila’s kindness and cheer up Luz.
One of my favorite parts of this one is the magical shoe being on the other foot here. It’s a shame that The Owl House’s third season is limited to a few specials, because I'd love to see more episodes centered on the witchlings getting used to the peculiarities of the human realm the way Luz did the Boiling Isles. There’s a lot of fun to be had, and even some sweet moments like Luz showing Amity some non-boiling rain. The fact that they have to navigate it in order to solve the rebus puzzle they find beneath the floorboards of the abandoned house serves the humor (from them not fitting in at various human spaces), plot (decoding the puzzle to help locate fuel for another portal), and character (them working together in the hopes of boosting Luz’s spirits.)
There’s some good lore additions going on as well. Masha, the Halloween tour guide and Jacob’s replacement at the historical society all but confirms that Hunter is a clone of Philip Wittebane’s brother Caleb. There’s also strong hints that Belos’ beef with witches stems from the fact that Caleb left him after falling in love with one, which is an interesting angle that would tie into the LGBTQ themes of the series. And, naturally, the reveal that magic comes from the Titan itself, such that mere proximity to TItan’s blood could be enough to get Luz’s powers to work in the human worlds is a hell of a twist.
Those twists have big import for Hunter, of course. As an inveterate Trekkie, I love that he gets obsessed with the “Cosmic Frontier” series (and seems to have admiration for an ersatz Ensign Rutherford). But on a broader level, I like the idea that he loses himself int his world and even cosplays as a way of trying on a different self. More than any of the others, he feels at home here. As he admits to Gus, when eh was in the EMperor’s Coven, he knew who he was and what was expected of him. Now he’s on his own, with the joy and terror of dictating his own destiny and purpose. The idea that ti’s a safe way to try out his true self, with bumpers big enough to keep him safe, speaks to the escape and representation I suspect many viewers feel for The Owl House itself.
To the point, I love how supportive Luz is when she realizes that Hunter literally and figuratively feels more comfortable behind a mask, and gives him one to put him at ease. And there may be no more touching moment in the show than Luz telling Hunter he’s family now, the kind of acceptance and kindness he never got from his biological family, and the poor young man breaking down in tears from the force of the moment.
But as much as I adore Hunter’s progression, I think my favorite part of this one is the exploration we get of Camila. Maybe it’s because I’m a lot closer to her age than Luz’s at this stage of my life, but it’s honestly lovely to get to see things from the mom’s perspective with complexity and empathy.
In particular, I love the choice to account for why supportive, accepting Camila would choose to send her daughter to the human equivalent of a conformatorium camp. Camila’s nightmare about it is heartbreaking. You can see her lauding her daughter’s offbeat creativity, defending her against tsk-tsking parents, and earnestly trying to do what’s best for her little girl.
But you can also see the powers of intolerance and conformity box her in too. You can see the legitimate suggestion from the outside that some of Luz’s “acting out” could be a product of grief over losing her father. You can see Camila trying to keep a stable school environment for her daughter. Most of all, you can see Camila recalling her own bullying as a child (see also: her nervous response to Hunter finding the ostensibly hidden Cosmic Frontier materials), and not wanting her daughter to suffer the same thing.
Seen through that lens, the “reality check” camp is not the oblivious act of a parent who doesn’t get their kid, but instead a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency measure by a loving parent, worn down by the same traditional forces Luz is resisting, trying to protect her child from the worst.
It’s easy for me to sympathize as someone who cares deeply about a bevy of lovable, off-beat youngins’ who come from nerdy stock, since I too worry about the challenges they’ll face in a world that tends to punish, rather than celebrate, difference. And it’s also easy for me to sympathize with Luz, since I too was an offbeat kid whose oddball interests and occasional (read: frequent) lack of tact made it tough to make friends or fit in. This is a familiar story, in a good way, which makes it resonant across the generational divide.
Which is why I like how the climax of this one brings all these threads together to bridge that gap. The return of Belos is terrifying. It’s terrifying because the simple fact of him surviving and making it to the human world is concerning in and of itself. It’s terrifying because he possesses Hunter, once again corrupting this kind soul. And at a base level, it’s terrifying because he returns to his palisman-strocity form, does fearsome battle with our heroes when they’re caught off guard, and most harrowingly of all, mortally wounds Flapjack.
I’m legitimately pretty impressed that a Disney show went there, even if Flapjack’s wounding and death is done in tasteful, impressionsitic terms. It makes sense that Belos would crack into one more palisman. But it feels tragic because Flapjack was this angel on Hunter’s shoulder, nudging him gently toward a better path. It was a pure force for good, one who stayed persistent in its efforts to help when it would have been all too easy to just fly away. Its sacrifice, its willingness to give its life so that Hunter can regain hsi, is an ultimate act of devotion, one made all the more heartening, and all the more heart-rending, by the choices that led Flapjack to that point.
Not for nothing, the battle where Flapjack perishes is another superlative outing visually for the show. The animators always bring their A-game to these big showdowns, and this is no exception. The fluidity of the magical chaos, the fight for the vial of titan’s blood, and the sense of genuine peril is all there in the imagery at play.
But so is the storytelling. Things come to a head when Luz’s role in Philip’s rise comes out in the open. Instead of the judgment and excommunication she expects from her friends, she gets absolution and encouragement. I love the theme expressed in that -- that it is no sin to make an honest mistake, and that it’s a sign of courage and character to keep standing up for what’s right despite that.
There’s a lot of adolescents who need to hear that. It’s easy to beat yourself up for missteps, especially when you're young and everything feels like the end of the world. The idea that it’s okay to mess up, that you can still learn from your mistake, and you don’t have to bear it for the rest of forever, is wholesome and uplifting. And the understanding Luz gets from her support system that Belos’ whole deal is tricking people, and the confirmation that they still love her for who she is, remains heartening.
Especially when it comes from her mom. Camila gets her own bit of redemption here. Let’s be real, it’s nuts that after witnessing a demon monster pop up and threaten the children in her care, Camila’s response is, “Time to take them back to a place where they’ll face many more of them!”
But granting the premise of the show, and understanding that it probably wasn’t going to end in the human realm, it’s just as rousing to see Camila not only support Luz returning to the demon realm, but come join her. It is, in a roundabout way, an apology for trying to send her to the “reality check” camp in the first place, an affirmation of the helpful experiences her daughter had on the other side of the portal, and a crucial recognition that, despite Luz’s sad diary entries, there’s never been anything wrong with who she is.
It’s a lot to tackle in forty-five minutes. And I do still wish we got a full season to explore these ideas in more depth. But damn if The Owl House doesn’t make it look seamless, and feel moving, in the process.
[8.0/10] This was a very well-written episode! Everything is nicely set up, both emotionally and plot-wise. The twists and turns are well earned. Thecomedy is on point, and there’s even some solid Gravity Falls-esque teases for big reveals yet to come.
It’s nice to get an early episode here to establish some pathos for King. It would be easy to keep him as a comic side character, and he could easily excel in that role. But having him genuinely want to be a teacher to Luz, and more than that, to be taken seriously by his peers and erstwhile friends, makes him a sympathetic character. When Luz learns that about him, and eventually leans into his demon-knowing talents, it helps them relate since she knows what it’s like to be disregarded or underestimated, and it brings them closer together from some joint problem solving. That's deft character writing, which does well to establish what I would anticipate being one of the core relationships of the series.
I also love the premise of a terrifying beast who’s loose in the house that turns out to be none other than Eda. The animation on the beast in shadow is fantastic. There’s a real sense of movement and terror to her bounding about the house. There’s a clockwork quality to King warning about demons, and wanting to be heard, only to end up causing one to emerge when trying to help Luz with her witch training so she’ll pay attention to him. The poetic irony of it isn’t lost on me, and the resulting beastie rampaging around makes for a good obstacle and threat for our heroes.
I love the solution though. The show establishes that it’s not clear how a human like Luz will be able to do magic without the enchanted bile sack most witches have. King helping her review the footage of Eda doing the spell, leading Luz to see the pattern and recognize that drawing it on something allows her to make the magic happen, is a really nice touch. There is, again, a clockwork quality to Eda teaching Luz a light spell earlier in the episode and it being the thing that helps them quell Eda’s cursed form later. The action that ensues from King and Luz’s team-up to stop Owl Beast Eda is very good as well.
The humor here is on point too. There’s a lot of good gags rooted in King being a little sad and pathetic, but endearingly so. His discussion of various demons is quite funny, and I’m also a fan of the scrabble-back, adorable and sad sack as anything. The show’s got plenty of good one-liners here, which is an early strength, and even just Hootie’s silly voice manages to tickle my funny bone.
I’m also naturally intrigued by Eda’s curse, the dream where she sees the shadow of who did it, and what it means for her future that she turns into some kind of owl creature. (Her sleeping in a nest and liking shiny objects like an all important light-up pen are a nice touch in that regard.) What I’m particularly interested to know more about is whether this curse is a metaphor for something. Eda explains that she was cursed as a child and can’t remember, but that with medicine, it’s manageable. That's true for any number of conditions people develop, and I’m interested to see whether they explore that idea or tie it more explicitly to real life maladies.
Either way, this is a “regular” episode that nonetheless is really well-built from start to finish. Good show!
[9.5/10] It will be hard to top “Into the Bunker” when it comes to momentousness. Our heroes journey into the underground hideout of the infamous author of the three journals. Dipper finally comes clean about his feelings to Wendy. And if that weren’t enough, Gravity Falls delivers and homage to The Thing featuring none other than Mark Hamill. We’re hitting epicness overload here.
But I think my favorite part of this one is simply how well it handles the long simmering Dipper/Wendy situation. There is something agonizingly relatable about being a kid and having a crush on someone who is a few years older, definitely unobtainable, and deep down in your heart, you know it wouldn’t work, but you still can’t help but like. Dipper’s nervousness between trying to express his feelings, realizing it’s a bad idea, and being spurred on by Mabel to just out with it so he’ll feel better makes you feel for the poor kid.
Not for nothing, this is a great Wendy episode and showcase for why Dipper would nurse his schoolboy crush on her beyond her fun slacker attitude. There’s a nice casual rapport with them, from laughing at cheesy B-movies together to being on the same page about going on neat adventures. More than that, though, Wendy is a badass. Between her using her lumberjack competition skills to open the tree hideout, to spelunking her way through the bunker, to getting into raucous combat with a shape-shifting monster, Wendy proves that despite her lackadaisical bona fides, she’s a capable, kickass champ to have in your corner when you’re in a tight spot.
It’s that fight with a shape-shifter that prompts Dipper to spill his guts. Seeing Wendy hurt or worse brings out a vulnerability in Dipper. He’s distraught and blames himself and laments that it happened before he had the chance to tell that he’s in love with her. Once again, you feel for the poor little guy, so anxious about sharing his feelings up to this point, trying his best to just move on and doing everything in his power not to come clean about his feelings, only to feel crestfallen over the fact that he might lose her entirely having never fully expressed how much he cares.
What a brilliant move it is to have the “grievously injured” Wendy turn out to be the shapeshifter in disguise, with the real Wendy right behind to hear the whole thing. While in other hands, the fake out could feel cheap, here it plays nicely into the established existence of the shape-shifter and the standard “Which one should I shoot?” trope. The move allows Gravity Falls to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to Dipper’s crush and his nigh-pathological inability to speak honestly about it.
Part of what makes it seem like fair play, though, is that Wendy and Dipper have an incredibly mature conversation about it afterwards. I love the reveal of Wendy saying that of course she knew, because she’d have to be blind not to. But she very gently explains that she’s way too old for him, and Dipper knows and acknowledges it. Her reassurance that he can handle any awkwardness, given how much weird stuff he’s already braved, is very wholesome. And I love the resolution that, even though their ages are too far apart to make an actual romance anything but creepy, she genuinely values Dipper’s friendship, thinks the summer was boring until he showed up, and would be legitimately upset to lose their companionship. It’s a great place to land, one that acknowledges why this crush is impossible, but vindicates that there is a wonderful connection between them, just not the one the twelve-year-old thought about in that way. I really admire the way Gravity Falls pays this off in a sensitive and uplifting way, rather than dragging it out for another season or otherwise turning it into wish fulfillment.
And by gum, that’s only half the episode! I cannot tell you how exciting it is to parse through all the major teases we get in this installment. The gang finding The Author’s bunker, replete with the same mysterious symbols and similar machinery to what Stan’s using is such a thrill, that makes it seem like the show’s truly advancing its mystery arc. Cryptic clues that The Author was planning for some kind of apocalypse, that they may have created the various creatures who lurk in Gravity Falls, and that, given the shape-shifter’s comments about them having six-fingers and the type of rubber gloves Stan used, may also have something to do with the suspiciously similar bunker under the Mystery Shack, get the mental gears turning.
I love Gravity Falls’ standalone episodes, but it’s also nice to feel like we’re making progress toward unraveling the big mysteries the show has been teasing from the start.
Plus hey, Mark freakin’ Hamill! He is, as always, great playing villains in animation, giving the shape-shifter a truly malevolent premise. And full credit to the design and animation team. Beyond showing that the shape-shifter has encountered the various supernatural beings of the town (include the “The Hide Behind” from the Dipper’s Guide shorts), they also come up with some fantastic Cronenberg-esque character designs for the shape-shfiters various other forms.
The shape-shifter material itself is pretty great. I love the way the show baits and switches us, with Wendy and Dipper seemingly running into The Author, with an appropriately steampunk-ish, eccentric explorer look that communicates the vibe of someone with all the answers to this strange place. But the moment Wendy smartly clocks the exact same man on a can of beans, and the guy blinks his eyes sideways, you know some freaky stuff is on.
The ensuing “Who’s the real _____” shtick is fun and spooky. As mentioned, it pays off well with the Wendy/Dipper situation, but even before then, the show does a good job of creating a paranoid atmosphere. Not for nothing, while far less dramatic, Mabel and Soos make for a great comedic pairing, (Soos’ failed attempt to do a rhyme had me in stitches) and Soos’ efforts to ensure he remained the right shape were great.
On the whole, this episode is a real homerun. It works on its own as a scary tale of a shapeshifter in a mysterious location tricking and terrorizing our heroes. It works as part of the show’s larger mystery arc, dropping some big clues and our way to a few more tantalizing questions. And it delivers the best ending imaginable to the long-running subplot of Dipper’s crush on Wendy, resolving things with sensitivity, grace, and heart. What a treat this show is, to be so good at story, character, horror, and humor all at once.
Meh. Quite the collection of overdone cliches:
-- It's a crime drama, about a family!
-- The eldest is in charge, but is not the brightest so covers it up with bellicosity. That combination can't possibly lead to trouble.
-- Our protagonist is ambitious, ruthless, and smart. That combination can't possibly lead to trouble.
-- The youngest is dumb and violent. That combination can't possibly lead to trouble.
-- Fortunately, they're surrounded by good women, if only the boys will listen to their wisdom.
-- It's got a beautiful woman, but she's on the side of the law. Oh no! Surely she won't fall for the haunted bad boy.
-- The saintly friend wants nothing to do with the family's evil ways. I'm sure he won't be pulled in.
-- The copper sent to stop them is just as ruthless as they are. What nuanced levels of morality!
-- It's set in olden days so it can be "gritty" and "edgy" with it's violence.
All in all, I liked it better when it was called Ripper Street. I'll watch more, but only because my brother recommended it. If it ends up good, great for me. If it ends up bad, I can berate my brother for his poor taste. Also great for me.
"No we need you!"
Haja: "You have my word."
Owen: "Beru, what are you doing?"
Beru: "We both knew this day might come."
[Beru chucks Owen a blaster.]Beru: "She'll come when the suns go down."
Darth Vader: "Anakin's gone. I am what remains."
Darth Vader: "You didn't kill Anakin Skywalker. I did."
Reva: "I couldn't do it."
Obi-Wan: "Who you become now, that is up to you."
Obi-Wan: "Both were exceptional people... who bore an exceptional daughter. I wish I could tell you more."
[Leia looks at her parents.]
Leia: "It's okay. You don't have to."
Obi-Wan: "Hello, there."
Qui-Gon: "Well, took you long enough."
Qui-Gon: "Come on. We've got a ways to go."
6.5/10
Hop Pop: "A Plantar, Frog of the Year, I'm so proud."
Anne: "Sprig, you have the most important job of all: the spectacle!"
Sprig: "Oh, my frog, oh, my frog, oh my frog!"
Anne: "At the party..."
[Sprig squeals.]
Anne: "You're gonna tell Ivy how you feel about her."
[Sprig frowns.]
Sprig: "Wha— Huh?"
Polly: "I'm just kidding, Wally. Get in there!"
Wally: "Validation!"
Ivy: "Oh, hey, Sprig."
Loggle: "At least the party's lit now, Anne."
Anne: "You were right about me, Mayor. I am selfish. I got so obsessed with proving I deserve this, I ruined everything. I'm not Frog of the Year. Why did anyone even vote for me?"
Hop Pop: "Anne, we didn't vote for you because you're flawless. Eh, far from it. We voted for you because of how far you've come. You've grown so much in your time here, and this town just wouldn't be the same without you."
Grime: "Nice to finally meet you, Anne Boonchuy."
8/10
Gus Illusion: "Did we do bad?"
[Luz gasps.]
Everyone: "Whoa!"
Luz: [Pants] "Gus, you ran away so fast, but I didn't want to interrupt, so..."
[Luz inhales and puts her hand on Gus' shoulder.]
Luz: "I think you should go."Gus: "All right, I'm in. Where do we find these Galderstones?"
Amity: "If you give me back my hairband, I'll read you whatever book you want tomorrow."
Kid: "I can grow an entire forest and make my own butterfly sanctuary."
Amity: "Huh, the human world sounds... odd."
Luz: "Maybe it would be less odd if I showed you around someday."
[Amity sits up.]
Luz: "But, uh, let's turn back. I don't wanna push you."
[Quickly, Amity grabs Luz's arm and pulls her along.]
Amity: "We're getting that diary."
Bria: "Angmar!"
Angmar: "Hmm?"
Angmar: [Playfully] "I said you're on lookout duty. And if I catch you playing with any more bugs, I'll make you eat them! Okay? I believe in you!"
Gus: "No, this isn't right! I won't let you steal these."
Gus respecting the dead. I approve :)
I like the worldbuilding of past Illusionists and human citizens in Bonesborough. It makes the world feel more lived in
Malphas: [Deep voice] "Amity."
[Cut to daytime outside.]
Malphas: [Normal voice.] "I'm just, like, super disappointed in you. Like, I can't even process these feelings right now."
Stranger: "Oh-ho! I am the keeper of the Looking Glass Graveyard."
Amity: "Everything's changed since you came here. Being around you, it... makes me do stupid things and I wish it didn't."
[Luz & Amity tear up.]
Luz: "It's okay, I, uh—"
[Luz sniffles.]
Luz: "I-I do stupid things around you too, Amity."
Bria: "Why isn't my magic working?"
Amity: "So, how's it look?"
Edric: "It looks like you're about to get in big trouble with Mum."
[Emira slaps Edric.]
Edric: "Ow."
Emira: "I think it looks great. But, yeah, maybe don't tell her I helped."
Edric: "Bold move, sister."
Amity: "Uh, okay. Good to see you. Farewell forever."
8/10
Lilith: [Giggling] "Watching the ink dry is the best part."
Hooty: "Avenge me!"
[Hooty pretend dies.]
Hooty: "Bleh!"
Hooty: "Porta-Hooty, reporting for Hooty!"
Luz: "Ooh! A door fit for a tyrant!"
King: "Hehe, that's me!"
Eda: "Get out of here. I'll hold it back and meet you outside."
King: "Ah, no! Keep that thing away from me!"
King: "Eda was right, wasn't she? I was never king of anything. I'm nobody."
Luz: "You are somebody, and I love that somebody very much."
Eda: "You sure they'll be all right?"
Luz: "Hooty knows what to do."
[Hooty spitting maniacally.]
Eda: "You sure they'll be all right?"
King: "But I was too small to do anything."
King: "Someone called me their son. Luz, I think it was my dad."
8/10
Lilith: "Surround the house!"
Hooty: "Sorry. Eda doesn't like trespassers. But I'm always here to make new friends."
Hooty: "I did it! Oh, hey, look, it's a bug!"
Students: "Good luck, Ms Lilith."
[Lilith inhales.]
Lilith: "Thank you, students. Good luck with puberty."
Luz: "It's time for a heist."
Gus: "Finally, I'll know how to become my best self."
Gus clone: [Whispers] "You're always your best self."
[Gus sobs.]
Lilith: "Sister."
Eda: "You've always looked down on me because I'm wild, but, fortunately, that just made me work harder than you."
Eda: "Maybe it is the curse. But then how pathetic are you that you can't best me at my worse!"
Luz: "Eda, stop. You'll run out of magic!"
Eda: "It's my power, kid. And before you showed up, I spent my whole life wasting it."
Eda: "All right, kid. Listen to me. I'm going away, and I don't know... if... I can bounce back this time. Watch over King. Remember to feed Hooty..."
Luz: "Please, no."
Eda: "And, Luz, thank you for being in my life."
8/10
