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Star on
Wheels
We
may be in a whole new season now, but it’s still fascinating that there are
still some Earth customs that Star is learning about. This episode is about her learning the common
skill of riding a bike which is funny and exciting given what happens while
also featuring some heart from her friendship with Marco which is always nice
to see.
The first moments of her
bike-riding lessons have a charm that wouldn’t be out of place coming from an
actual child learning to ride a bike for the first time with Star nervous about
riding and only feeling safe while Marco holds the seat, though her Mewni
upbringing offers a unique edge with her believing that invisible goats are
involved. With this in mind, you might
be wondering how this episode is exciting since it sounds like bike-riding
lessons and nothing more. Well, the
excitement comes when Marco, believing Star is ready for it, lets go of the seat
even though Star insists that he doesn’t.
The real problem of this is that Marco never taught Star how to stop,
and she doesn’t believe him when he says the way to do that is to pedal
backwards, so Star is trapped riding the bike through Echo Creek without
stopping.
From there, the rest of the
episode becomes much more lively and fast-paced with Star running into a
variety of hazards and close-calls while trapped on the bike eventually running
into more dangerous obstacles like nearly falling into a sinkhole (which makes
for nice use of her mewberty wings to save herself) and making it all the way
to the freeway. I’m always in the mood
for a good runaway or chase scene for a nice dose of action and adrenaline, and
this one greatly provides those things all stemming from Star’s believable
inexperience.
While that goes on, Marco
has to chase after her to bring her wand hoping it can help her stop. His role in this scenario has some
distinction through its humor from who Marco has to travel with in order to
pursue Star. There’s Oskar Greason who
lives in his car and just happens to be in Marco’s driveway acting all lax
throughout the whole chase, focusing on his jam sessions, and Glossaryk who for
some reason appears in Oskar’s math book when he lives in the spell book who
also has no urgency in rescuing Star. In
fact, Glossaryk flat out refuses to help since this isn’t a magic problem which
is a little jerky. Their pursue of Star
also comes with its fair share of exciting moments such as Oskar and Glossaryk
performing an funny impromptu jam session from Marco saying that Star is in
trouble with Oskar’s keytar, and Oskar’s car doing some insane jumps and having
to drive without gas or a steering wheel.
However, there are some highly improbable moments that are hard to
ignore when Glossaryk finally decides to be helpful by telling Marco to use the
invisible goats to save Star, and even though there weren’t any before, there
happens to be one right at the moment. It’s
really hard to believe because it’s already established that’s not how things
work on Earth and there was no way the goat could’ve possibly shown up. I know the message is to believe in others,
but this occurrence really does not make any sense. In fact the message is much stronger when Marco
finally loses the wand and gets Star to stop by believing in his claim to stop
the bike by peddling backwards which, as any Earthling would respect, ends the
runaway.
Even if this episode mainly
exists for the purposes of fun, from the thrill of the chase to the heart of
character relationships, it’s thoroughly entertaining one worth checking out.
A-
Fetch
While
the first segment of this episode was a fun magical-hijinks story, this one
about hijinks isn’t nearly as fun. It’s
not bad, but its premise is not very interesting and makes you wonder what the
point of all this was by the end.
The
whole episode is all about Star struggling to get her wand back from a dog who
holds it in her mouth after Star threw it.
The problem is that the dog won’t drop the wand, and that’s basically
all the episode is about. As long as the
dog has Star’s wand, nothing exciting can happen, and it gets frustrating
seeing Star’s failed attempts to retrieve it coming one after another.
When Star tries to grab it, the dog growls at
her, and the dog doesn’t even drop the wand when she’s eating or using human
bathrooms. It’s a gag that overstays its
welcome by lasting for the episode’s entirety making what we get unentertaining. One way this scenario goes on longer than it
should is that Star brings it wherever she goes including school, which she’s
banned from until she gets rid of the dog.
Why does she even need to bring the dog with her? She can just leave it home and try to get her
wand back later, and her having the dog get her kicked out of school makes her
situation worse than it needs to be since it could’ve been avoided.
Even when Star is close to getting rid of the
dog and getting her wand back, frustrations abound when despite having logical
solutions, there’s a catch. An example
of this is when Star finds a lost dog poster, and it would appear that this
would be the end of her problem. However, when she calls the number, she meets
a weird character called Lydia who’s clearly faking having a lost dog, yet
never stops insisting the contrary.
What’s more, the dog still won’t let go of the wand.
Even though this uninteresting conflict goes
on too long, we do at least get a nice twist out of it. When it uses the human bathroom again, Star
has enough and storms in on the dog and finds she has taken the wand out of her
mouth and is trying to use it, later revealing she can talk as she finally
returns it to Star. She even explains
her reasons for holding onto the wand.
She’s from another dimension which has a bunch of problems, despite the
fact that we never hear exactly what the problems are, and wants to be loved
and treated like actual dogs such as Star’s own laser puppies. It’s a very creative reveal and the dog’s
reasons are believable, but think of how stronger and more interesting things would’ve been if she told Star her problems earlier and not when the
episode is nearly over. At least the
ending is a very nice one when Star gives the dog all the basic guidance to
being an average dog and she gets adopted by Lydia. Even Lydia’s reactions to getting a dog are
incredibly sweet, in a somewhat creepy way though.
Still, the episode is mostly one dull
escapade stretched out to fit a whole episode which fails to bring about
anything truly interesting or entertaining.
Maybe it would be better if Lydia and the dog come back, but they never
do in any episode after this. It’s still
decent since it doesn’t do anything too bad despite its dullness and the ending
is heartwarming, but there simply isn’t anything to convince you that you MUST
watch this.
C-
The Ranking
- Ludo in the Wild
- Mr. Candle Cares
- Star on Wheels
- My New Wand
- Red Belt
- Fetch
The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review covers Star on the run when she finally goes too far with magic, and Star and Ludo learn to get a better hold of their halves of the special wand.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is another OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes review on "You're Level 100."
If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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