Sunday, July 16, 2017

'Toon Reviews 4: The Loud House Season 1 Episode 8

Linc or Swim
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The potential for the fun of this cartoon is set pretty high for having a focus on swimming pools.  Sometimes, the cartoon itself lives up to the potential, but other times it kind of falls flat.  Starting with what gets the plot going, we’re treated to scenes of the Loud siblings performing all kinds of antics that get them banned from all the pools around town.  For the most part, it’s easy to sympathize with them since they make it clear that they just want to have fun and there’s a lot of humor in their pool time mannerisms like Lynn’s insistence on chicken fights, Lana making soup out of the pool water, and Luan struggling to teach Leni how to play Marco Polo.  Almost everyone has some enjoyable moments, although I do feel we get a little too much of Lily’s “fecal incident” moments (blech).  However, through it all, Lincoln ends up being the easiest to sympathize with since he doesn’t appear to be doing anything to break the pool rules, yet he has to be banned along with the sisters, meaning he has to suffer for what wasn’t his fault which costs the cartoon value.  The rest of the cartoon follows Lincoln’s attempts to set up his own pool for his own solo pool time, his sisters finding out and joining him, and Lincoln being forced to deal with it.  For much of this sequence, I find myself going back and forward from enjoying the sisters themselves with no authority, and feeling for Lincoln who can’t get his fun in because of them.  We do ultimately get a nice compromise to appease everyone with Lincoln realizing it’s better to do things with your loved ones than by yourself, and the sisters ending up with a bigger pool, and this would be a good place to end the cartoon.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t end because it decided we just needed a scene of Lincoln accidentally destroying the big pool with a cannonball forcing everyone to squeeze into the old small pool, and then cap it all off with another unsettling “fecal incident” gag.  I just don’t understand why they had to make everyone suffer even more when both sides of the issue reached a good conclusion.  I know that the message of doing things together is still strong, but it was also clear before things went wrong again.  I still like the cartoon overall, but little moments of frustration, especially the ending, prevent it from being one of the strongest efforts. 7/10
 
Changing the Baby


 
 
 
 
 
 
Lily is perhaps the least interesting of the Loud siblings since she’s just a baby and is unable to develop her own distinct personality and interests, although she does have massive appeal when she interacts with the other siblings which almost always come off as really cute.  These statements serve as the central point for the plot of this cartoon.  Lincoln becomes concerned that no one in the family wants to spend time with him because they don’t like the things he likes.  It isn’t long before Lincoln gets the idea that having Lily be the one to spend time with him is the way around this because, just like what I said earlier, she’s just a baby and doesn’t have her own distinct personality or interests yet.  The scenes of Lincoln and Lily hanging out together have a certain charm to them for not just make you feel glad that Lincoln has someone in the family he can see as a close friend, but also a strong cuteness factor from Lily as she explores Lincoln’s interests which in turn adds an appeal to both her character and the whole cartoon.  The cuteness doesn’t stop there though when the rest of the cartoon further explores the theme of how the Loud siblings actually have a lot in common despite being different.  In this case, they all want someone who likes the things that they like. To get around this, they all strive to take Lily and mold her into their closest family member, resulting in more cute and funny moments to add to the appeal of this cartoon, aside from some moments where the older sibling involved flat out forgets that Lily’s a baby.  The ultimate payoff for this cartoon is the final message.  Following a humor-filled chase scene where everyone fights each other for the right to spend time with Lily, they all come to the conclusion to let Lily herself decide what she wants.  In a somewhat surprising twist, Lily ends up crawling to a neglected Clyde, who just so happened to end up with Lily’s blanket that Lincoln, admittedly kind of selfishly, threw away earlier.  The scene of Lily hugging her blanket is an interesting and adorable way of showing that you really do have to let people be who they are, even if they are just babies.  With that, we get a satisfying end to the plot where everyone’s happy, and Lincoln learns that sometimes you don’t always need family to hang out with you since he has a best friend, in his case Clyde, who likes what he likes.  The many interactions with Lily, the growth of the idea that all the Loud siblings are not alone with dealing with the issues of a big family, and the overall message easily make this cartoon one of the sweetest and most pleasing. 9/10
The Ranking
1.      Undie Pressure
2.      Project Loud House
3.      Space Invader
4.      Driving Miss Hazy
5.      Left in the Dark
6.      Picture Perfect
7.      No Guts No Glori
8.      Changing the Baby
9.      Sound of Silence
10.  A Tale of Two Tables
11.  In Tents Debate
12.  Linc or Swim
13.  The Sweet Spot
14.  Heavy Meddle
15.  Get the Message
16.  Making the Case

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode of the season as we get a sleepover cartoon with a hint of LGBT representation in "Overnight Success," and the Louds discovering dark plans for what Mom and Dad plan to do with them that the audience finds out isn't so dark at all in "Ties that Bind."

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