Skooled!
Now this is one big and exciting follow-up to the big reveal
of the identity of Eclipsa’s daughter and the truth behind the Butterfly family
lineage. It’s a spectacle of action,
drama, and new depths to the ways of antagonistic characters. However, the thing that makes everything so
exciting is that the biggest parts of the episode can catch you off-guard.
The first few minutes are devoted to the
slacking, partying, stuck-up attitude of Pony Head. She’s welcomed warmly by the princesses of
St. Olga’s Reform School when they hear that she’s come to party. This intro also comes with her many
detracting attitude issues when she makes a scene over needing to take an exam
before brunching. Pony Head is certainly
not too enjoyable with her complaints, though it is interesting that the school,
despite being devoted to being wild, now has become somewhat restrained.
Thankfully, it’s shortly after this moment
when the episode really starts getting great.
The instant Ms. Heinous literally leaps onto the scene propels the
episode into an intense direction. The
princesses are quick to fight back and defend the place where they’re now free
to be true to themselves with a robot army and all. With Ms. Heinous’ monster side starting to
show more, their foe is far more powerful than they anticipated. Her attacks get so brutal, she even
reprograms those robots to attack the princesses, only to just rip out their
hearts that act as bombs. That’s not
even mentioning her old lizard henchman, Rasticore, fully recovered from being
blown up, packing a serious punch at her command.
Ms. Heinous certainly makes a powerful
introduction, but the really interesting part of her role comes when she enters
one particular room. There, it’s
revealed that all this time, St. Olga is actually a robot who raised Ms.
Heinous and left her the school. Ms.
Heinous looks through the master file stored in St. Olga which brings
compelling reasons to why she is the way she is. Most of them aren’t what she’s looking for,
but they say a lot about her background.
She never saw anything wrong with her magical and monstrous attributes,
but St. Olga always forced her to hide them against her will. Also, as with the students before the uprising, Ms. Heinous was also forced into intense proper etiquette. This is all very sad to learn that she was
very different from how she is now only to be forced down a path of
darkness.
These feelings are even more
apparent after she sees the memory of being switched and renamed at birth, and
becomes the fully monstrous Meteora as a result. When she carries out totally monstrous deeds
of ripping off Pony Head’s horn and destroying her own henchmen, you can’t help
but feel for her not being true to herself.
Also, while she has a believable goal to end the episode by approaching
Mewni to take back the throne that belongs to her, it’s a sorry sight that
she’s doing so in an unethical way.
All
of this goes down in an episode that starts out lightly only to surprise with
heavy drama and deep character reveals.
A
Booth
Buddies
If there’s one thing to say about the focus on potential
couples Star and Marco have gotten involved in this season, it’s that it
relates to a believable occurrence in life.
Just because a boy and a girl are best friends doesn’t always mean they
get together. In fact, much of the early
run of episodes suggest that idea too.
Nevertheless, given how close they are and how much they show how
important they are to each other, them getting together does make a lot of
sense. However, now is not the best time
for the latter to happen since they’re both involved with other people, and that
makes what this episode ultimately leads up to an issue.
While at a wedding reception, Star gets
excited when she spots the old photo booth from the Bounce Lounge. These feelings are believable since she and
her friends have frequently used it in past episodes and was once part of a
favorite location. Upon seeing the booth,
Star is eager to relive the good old days and take some best friends photos with
Marco. However, she’s very hard to
please all throughout. She wants Marco
to look the exact same way he did in the first photos they took in the booth,
but he doesn’t fit her standards no matter how hard he tries.
That’s pretty much it for the majority of the
episode. It’s just Star desperately
wanting to recreate past best friends photos and Marco being unable to give the
camera pose she sees fit. This direction
is not very exciting and doesn’t exactly bring out the best in either
character. Star feels very picky about
what she wants from Marco, and Marco, even though he does try, just rolls along
with this ridiculous activity.
To its
credit, these behaviors do have appropriate consequences. Because so many photos are taken, the booth
becomes jammed and Star and Marco are locked inside. In fact, the booth breaks down so badly that
a little creature living inside it has to take it to his home dimension to fix
it. He also gives creative background to
the booth to explain why the door can’t just open to let Star and Marco
out. Apparently, it reads into their
innermost feelings and the doors will only open if the photo they take shows
those feelings.
Out of this, Marco does
make a passionate statement about how different his dynamic with Star feels
ever since she admitted she has a crush on him.
I’ve often questioned how both of them could easily go through their
friendship as if something as big as that moment never happened. Marco at least gives a believable reason
through just keeping his weird feelings about the moment to himself. The fact that he can’t take the best friends
photos the way he used to is simply allowing those feelings to show.
With enough money for one more round of
photos, he vows to do something about those feelings on the matter. He does so by kissing Star. I know this is a huge moment for these
characters and their relationship, but it really feels wrong that they did so
despite being in other relationships, especially Star. It’s hardly ever a good move that two people
had to be betrayed for one couple to work.
To add insult to injury, the booth owner was lying about the true
feelings thing the whole time, meaning Marco kissed Star for pretty much
nothing. All I can say about Star and
Marco getting together because of this kiss is that if it happens, they both
have a lot of explaining to do with Tom and Kelly respectively.
Despite the issues coming from the kiss and
little happening with Star and Marco stuck in one place, this is still a fine
watch of a simple moment getting them to really open up.
B-
The Ranking
1. Butterfly Trap
2. Total Eclipsa the Moon
3. Moon the Undaunted
4. Deep Dive
5. Stranger Danger
6. Sweet Dreams
7. Skooled!
8. Return to Mewni
9. Rest in Pudding
10. Night Life
11. Demoncism
12. Toffee
13. Monster Bash
14. Is Another Mystery
15. Marco Jr.
16. Club Snubbed
17. Puddle Defender
18. Sophomore Slump
19. Starfari
20. Lint Catcher
21. Princess Turdina
22. Ludo, Where Art Thou?
23. Scent of a Hoodie
24. King Ludo
25. Marco and the King
26. Death Peck
27. Book Be Gone
28. Booth Buddies
29. The Bogbeast of Boggabah
30. Stump Day
31. Trial by Squire
32. Lava Lake Beach
33. Holiday Spellcial
34. Ponymonium
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where we see how Pony Head deals with the loss of her horn, and Eclipsa finally reunites with her daughter.
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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