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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