“You stayed in the ground too long.” ‘Too Far’ concerns itself with the concept of the ideal Gem as seen through the lens of Homeworld culture. It isn’t Pearl, created to serve. Garnet’s unending fusion likewise makes her unsuitable. In Peridot’s eyes it’s Amethyst, the gang’s perennial screw-up and slacker, who most closely fits the […]
“TV lied, man. If you can avoid growing up: do it.” Gravity Falls took one of the final episodes in what might be its final season to speak directly to both the children and the young at heart who love it. When we cling to the dream of eternal youth, we sacrifice our futures on an […]
“How long will you be visiting Earth?” The obscene, the banal, and the beloved are the three misshapen legs on which Rick and Morty lurches through life. ‘The Wedding Squanchers’ starts with a wedding invitation and Rick accidentally mailing Jerry across the galaxy and ends with Rick in prison and Earth assimilated by the Federation. It’s […]
“I survived on garbage in the middle of the ocean! I scratched my way out of a grave! You think you can kill me? Nothing can kill me!” “Jesus (bleep)ing Christ, holy (bleep)ing Jesus, Jesus (bleep)ing Christ. It’s a conspiracy,” Forrest hisses to himself in his empty office, staring at crumpled photographs of his many(11) […]
“It’s just thunder. It happens when it rains.” ‘When It Rains’ is an old story: a spiky, unpleasant person learns to accept help and to open up to those around them. It’s a little shopworn, a little canned, but it’s still a pleasant quarter hour and a successful about-face for a character who looked headed […]
“Oh, I do some pretty bad stuff.” Rick and Morty has ugly bones. It’s a show predicated on the idea that watching a drunk abuse his grandson across space and time is inherently amusing. This is, unless you’re particularly squeamish about the aforementioned abuse(or gratuitous drool), right on the money. We love to watch the titular […]
“What are your values, son?” A man is dead and Forrest is to blame. The goodness Forrest’s father once saw in his son has been burned away by Forrest’s belief that what he does as the host of Review is more important than and/or somehow separate from his personal integrity and what its dissolution means for the people […]
“You’re like…an angry little slice of pie.” ‘Catch and Release’ is a quiet, laid-back episode with much more to recommend it than the series last two entries. It gives Peridot some much-needed depth without resorting to making her likable, boasts an impressive array of gorgeous backgrounds, and makes a meager stab toward setting the stage […]
“The car always wins.” ‘Rixty Minutes’ was one of season 1′s strongest episodes, a twenty-minute reel of Justin Roiland shouting at himself and improvising with every halt and hesitation left in for the hell of it as the cast of Rick and Morty binged on bizarre interdimensional cable. ‘Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate’ pitches itself as […]
“Man, RVs are amazing. I can’t believe we’re sitting at a table in a moving vehicle.” Old men teaching young men to hit on women is a time-honored part of masculinity, but it isn’t hard to see the predatory undertones in teaching boys to pursue and charm. Gravity Falls comes at the institution with a man-eating […]
“Are you certain you wish to veto this review?” Avoiding responsibility for his own actions is perhaps Forrest’s most readily identifiable hallmark. Here’s a man who burned his own marriage to the ground on what amounts to a whim and now resents his ex-wife for having broken his heart, a man incapable of recognizing himself […]
“I bet the only thing more horrifying than that sound will be the moment it stops.” Forrest MacNeil is the worst kind of faux-perpetual motion machine. He may run forever, he may in fact be incapable of ceasing to pursue his destructive path, but he needs an incredible amount of fuel to keep going, and his […]
“Try it again. What have you got to lose at this point?” Lucille’s dry words of encouragement toward Forrest’s dad as he shivers and sobs at the prospect of firing yet another arrow at his whey-faced son, already pincushioned with two, might as well be the tagline for the show’s promotional campaign. Forrest has left […]
“Well, let’s just try to keep it simple?” It’s a baffling decision on the part of whomever at Cartoon Network pulls the particular levers that determine these things to air two episodes about the overbearing mothers of supporting characters back to back. ‘Sadie’s Song’ doesn’t really cover any territory that last week’s ‘Nightmare Hospital’ didn’t […]
“Grandpa’s back, baby!” The monster in ‘Big Trouble Little Sanchez’ isn’t Coach Feratu. the vampire gym coach who dies off-screen about five minutes in, but the specter of Rick’s looming mortality. Oh, and also Jerry’s inferiority-driven projection of Beth as a cackling xenomorph queen. When Rick decides to switch his mind into the body of […]
“Do you know how many children I see every day who’ve cut off their faces playing with swords? None! Because they all have parents who love them and who don’t let them play around with deadly weapons like some sort of gang member!” Strong art direction can make even a mediocre episode of Steven Universe sing, and […]
“All our dumb horns can do is glow, point toward the nearest rainbow, and play rave music.” ‘The Last Mabelcorn’ takes a long, hard look at how mistakes can shape us without destroying our essential goodness while also giving us a scene in which Mabel, Wendy, Candy, and Grenda double-cross a gnome in a crooked […]
“So he made a universe, and that guy is from that universe, and that guy made a universe, and that’s the universe where I was born? Where my father died? Where I couldn’t make time for his funeral because I was working…on my universe.” ‘The Ricks Must Be Crazy’ is an object lesson in the […]
“Soon all of this will be lost to the sea.” Hannibal’s final hour has come and gone, crumbling into the ocean like the bluff outside the title character’s seaside retreat and taking with it one of the most horrific and visually audacious shows ever to air. ‘The Wrath of the Lamb’ is not without its […]
“There is one final capstone to place on this monument of dishonesty.” ‘Catfish, Haunted House’ is relatively low-key for an episode of Review. It’s not because Forrest somehow has a normal set of experiences. In fact, he loses his life’s savings, perpetrates fraud on his ex wife, and is stabbed and knocked down the stairs by the […]
“HOLD ON TO THAT BRANCH OR DIE, CAT!” Every place-setter episode risks biting off more than it can chew on the way to setting up future adventures. ‘The Stanchurian Candidate’ is fun and lively for the most part, but it never quite has time to land any of its threads in a satisfying place. The opening […]