Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Ruthless People / What Wood Lincoln Do? (The Loud House Season 3 Episode 13) - 'Toon Reviews 30

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Ruthless People


A stronger emphasis on family bonding and more satisfying stories means that we don’t get mean-spirited stories with unsatisfactory endings very often anymore.  This cartoon is a reminder that not happening as often doesn’t mean we’re clear of them for good.  While it’s not as bad as the absolute worst works of the other seasons, it does not leave a very good impression for how set it is on making a selected few suffer no matter what. 
This tone isn’t felt all the way through though.  The beginning features plenty of the strengths that have made the shows improvements noticeable with innocent family bonding from all the Loud siblings.  Also, the catalyst for the story is quite interesting when their playing around results in a hole in the wall which has been weakened by termites.  In fact, termites have spread all over the house and are causing it to fall apart.  With no local hotel big enough to hold 13 people, the decision is made for the family to split up.  Half of them go to stay with Pop-Pop at his retirement home which is seen as great fun while the other half goes to stay with Aunt Ruth with an unhospitable reputation.  Needless to say, no one really wants to go to Aunt Ruth’s.  Lincoln then starts a trend of sweet-talking someone to go to there in his place. There’s cooperation as the rest of his group does the same rather than admonish him.  There really isn’t anything too bad at the start, and it seems like everything is all set for a decent watch. 
That’s when the cartoon becomes not only less pleasing, but also unfair and disproportionate with what the show has established.  Pop-Pop’s retirement home turns out to be a total bust with all the fun places closed off and him and all the other residents going along with extreme elderly customs.  Those customs include not having any salt whatsoever on their food and going to bed at 6.  The fact that Pop-Pop easily complies with this completely goes against the point that he’s more active than his age suggests which was established a while back.  Also, it’s very contrived that this retirement home built up as this awesome fun place would suddenly have a state of affairs this poor. It feels like seeing this half of the Loud family suffering is the main intent of this cartoon, which can’t bring out good entertainment.  This feeling is especially apparent when we only see the other half in phone calls at Aunt Ruth’s to inform that they’re having fun at a lake house she has.  We don’t even see her motives behind getting a lake house, further suggesting it’s only there to make the group at Pop-Pop’s feel even worse.
The same act of bargaining to change places with favors occurs, but the treatment is still one-sided.  Termites were brought to the lake house and Aunt Ruth has no problem moving them back to her dump of a home.  As for the other half, they just happen to take part in a cruise Pop-Pop’s retirement home can suddenly afford.  Then the cartoon doesn’t end; it just stops with one group unhappy while the others keep living it up.  I suppose it’s better than one kid suffering all throughout like in other bad cartoons, but maybe there shouldn’t have been suffering at all. 
The cartoon goes for a message of making the best of any situation, but no one ever does that.  One group gets good conditions and loves them, and another gets bad conditions and hates them; there’s just no justice and no adjustment.  It’s disappointing that after many satisfying works, including the start of this cartoon, the final product turns out so weak.

D-


What Wood Lincoln Do?


Life has many venues to explore and try out, and it goes without saying that you’ll never realize the potential you have in that field if you never try.  At times you may be assigned something or choose to try something that’s difficult for you and you’ll need help with it.  Even so, the right thing to do is to look for ways you can still be active or try to get what’s taught to you to show you’re still willing to learn and get better.  While that would be a great center for this story, it doesn’t quite reach its true potential for appeal through mostly opting for spending a lot of time on the obviously bad path. 
Lincoln’s class is assigned woodworking, which is a subject he gets easily nervous about with painstaking details of blurry vision, jelly legs, and ear ringing to show it.  This is all the weight he has to be hesitant of completing the woodwork assignments, and truth be told, it can be seen as relatable to be nervous about something that seems hard.  At the same time, and this may just be me, but having this many ailments over fear of failing an assignment is pretty extreme.  It works much better as a short joke scene like one of Clyde getting hospitalized over a fear of blowing up balloons.  Taking Lincoln’s anxieties this seriously is kind of hard to do over something minor compared to other reasons people have panic attacks.  There’s no reason why he can’t just learn about woodworking from someone to overcome his fears. 
At first, it seems like that’s what the cartoon is going for.  Mom offers to help Lincoln with his first woodwork assignment through getting the right materials and showing him each step of the process.  However, this is where the cartoon becomes problematic.  Lincoln can’t get anything right, so Mom insists on doing the whole thing herself instead of pushing Lincoln to do the right thing.  She could at least do what’s right first and have him follow later.  Even when she does the whole thing, you’d think Lincoln will be braver to do his next assignment himself, but no.  He didn’t pay any attention to the work of the first one, and resorts to incredibly lazy and dumb measures to complete other assignments he gets.  When told to build a birdhouse, Lincoln instead steals an elaborate one belonging to his pet bird, Walt.  Then when he’s given a special assignment to build a desk for his teacher, Mrs. Johnson, he tries to buy one from the store behind her back.  He goes through so much trouble to fake hard work when he’d be better off just trying his best, even if he fails.  Plus, he really should have expected Walt to not be happy that he took his house and would fight back at some point. 
As one could expect, Lincoln’s apparent ‘craftsmanship’ is revealed to be a fraud and he’s met with disappointment.  He does ultimately realize that trying his best would have been the better option to conquer his anxieties in the end, and does just that with his next assignment.  This is a nice conclusion, but I can’t help but think the whole cartoon would have been stronger if Lincoln tried his best to learn woodwork right from the start.  That could have made for a worthwhile lesson that there’s no shame in not being the best at something no matter how hard you work.  The majority of time spent on Lincoln taking the easy and lazy way out of his work without trying doesn’t really sit right with me for how obviously wrong his actions are. 
This is still a good story and does ultimately stress the importance of trying that I support, but I just feel the whole thing could have been stronger.
C+

The Ranking

1.      Head Poet’s Anxiety

2.      Roadie to Nowhere

3.      Shop Girl

4.      Breaking Dad

5.      Gown and Out

6.      Fandom Pains

7.      Insta-Gran

8.      Selfie Improvement

9.      Net Gains

10.  No Place Like Homeschool

11.  The Mad Scientist

12.  City Slickers

13.  Missed Connection

14.  Fool Me Twice

15.  Deal Me Out

16.  Teachers’ Union

17.  Tripped!

18.  White Hare

19.  A Fridge Too Far

20.  Pasture Bedtime

21.  What Wood Lincoln Do?

22.  Friendzy

23.  Pipe Dreams

24.  Rita Her Rights

25.  Ruthless People

The next Loud House review features Lana advocate for animal rights, and Lincoln and Clyde find legitimate talent in detective work.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is a Steven Universe disappointment, "Rocknaldo."
If you would like to check out other Loud House reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them. 

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