Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Home of the Fave / Hero Today Gone Tomorrow (The Loud House Season 3 Episode 23) - 'Toon Reviews 30

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Home of the Fave


The parents of the Loud family have their faults, but it’s clear they really love all 11 of their kids.  Dad especially shows this with the amount of cartoons of him bonding with them making sure he treats them well and see him as someone to look up to.  In this cartoon, as that trend continues, he’s put through the relatable challenge of showing that he loves his kids equally. 
Given how many cartoons there are of specific siblings suffering while others get away with bad behaviors, mostly in the earlier days, this is an interesting topic.  It has the potential for others to realize how unfair it is when a parent supports one kid or one set of kids while others are left out or belittled.  As the beginning of this cartoon shows, that’s very likely to come up a lot considering how many kids Dad has to be there for.  He’s going to the store, and Luan and Lola come along with him.  However, he seems to interact way more with Luan than Lola along the way making jokes all the way through making purchases.  Considering how painfully obvious Luan’s puns tend to be and how she and Dad are the only ones laughing at them, Lola is left annoyed as usual over this pun onslaught.  Her annoyance and attitude is even prominent back home, suggesting that she feels that Dad favors Luan over her, which Dad believes is the case. 
Making this direction stand out is how there’s legit proof that Dad knows what it’s like.  It even comes with a flashback where his own father spent more time with his brother, making him feel left out in favorite pastimes like cooking.  This is interesting information, and I hope we see a cartoon about Dad’s brother in the future so he stands out as more than just a plot device.  As for now, Dad spends the rest of the cartoon going to great lengths to show that there are no favorites in the Loud family.  Since Lola’s upset, he spends a lot of time with her doing all her favorite things.  It makes for a collection of a few mildly humorous scenes all while he’s wearing a dress from riding in cramped princess cars to fumbling through a fashion show.  At the center is genuine fatherly love that comes from the joy of spending time with one of his kids. 
However, this is only Lola Dad’s giving attention to, and there are plenty of other kids for him to consider.  He often sees one of the kids looking disappointed and believes that they're jealous of the attention he’s giving to others.  He’s jumping through one activity after another and it’s clearly exhausting for him.  Eventually, he pulls off the ultimate stunt of making separate dinners for every kid so that everyone has their favorites.  That surely can’t be too relaxing with all the work that goes into each dish.  Even then that’s not enough to satisfy him as he pushes hard to fulfill any small request up to the point of giving everyone treatment only one of them needs. 
There’s a believable outcome to all this when Dad breaks down from all the pressure and is put into a funk in the form of a Peanuts reference.  There’s also great reassurance that he didn’t need to worry about anything coming from all the kids if you can believe it, and Lola wasn’t even jealous to begin with.  Granted it seems contrived since she was clearly upset by Dad and Luan’s puns before getting to the checkout where she couldn’t get a free balloon, but the point still stands. 
There’s a balanced perspective to all this where Dad proves he loves his kids equally, and they don’t harbor any ill-will when one specific kid gets tended to.  All this unfolds in a good cartoon to believably display the nature of parenthood.

A

Hero Today, Gone Tomorrow


One thing that makes some of this season’s last cartoons is fleshing out supporting characters who have only had small roles or cameo appearances prior.  For this cartoon, there’s development for Lynn’s best sports partner Margo.  Now Margo has only had one speaking role while the rest of her appearances were silent cameos easy to miss.  Being one of the few members of Lynn’s team to actually be named, it’s very fitting that she stars alongside her in a cartoon.  In addition, it further adds appeal to Lynn’s character despite being rough and aggressive in most instances where she has a major role. 
The start shows that she and Margo have great chemistry as friends and are very supportive of each other.  This also applies to little things like getting a burger.  However, since she’s so used to coming out as the star athlete, Lynn finds it hard to accept what soon occurs.  During a soccer game, although she brings in most of the points as usual, when the opposing team closes in on her, she has Margo make the game-winning shot.  From the great aesthetics of Margo’s moves when making the goal, she’s instantly praised for her efforts, leaving Lynn without her usual praise. 
At first, she’s fine with this change of pace, but then one of the girls from her basketball team, Paula, points out that this seems weird for her.  By the way, since Paula is still playing with a broken leg, call me ridiculous, but it feels like that injury is somehow something she was born with.  Is it ever going to heal?  Anyway, it’s only when Margo starts getting special treatment over that goal when Lynn starts to really be bothered as depicted by a nerve in her neck that keeps intensifying.  This proves Paula’s point, although I’m not a fan of how she points it out almost the exact same way every time.  It makes the cartoon feel repetitive. 
It also turns out unbelievable when you consider some of the ways Margo gets attention.  I get videos of her move and discussing it during gym, but why would a goal excuse her from a test and book fine?  Even if she is a great athlete, she still needs knowledge and the library needs money.  Also, if Lynn is a regularly great athlete, why is the name of a burger suddenly changing after this one great move from another person?  Things like this make Lynn’s jealousy perfectly understandable.  It’s crazy that Margo gets attention for one move that she never got for her many great moves.  Where’s the justice in that? 
Even so, Lynn is still in the wrong when in her next game, she purposefully tries to score a winning goal herself, and only succeeds at the last second.  Since this is a rude unfriendly act no matter what, Margo rightfully calls Lynn out knowing very well what she was doing.  After all, just because there’s little justice in the treatment Margo got for her one win compared to Lynn’s several, what Lynn does doesn’t have justice either.  If Margo’s happy for Lynn when she gets attention, it’s only fair that Lynn be happy for her too.  In the next game, her efforts to apologize are nicely understood in the end, and there’s even a nice twist where the injured Paula wins the game this time.  The last scene of the three of them enjoying a burger as friends is perhaps the best satisfaction one could ask for in this story. 
While the lengths of the praise for one win in a middle school soccer game lean towards ridiculous, the chemistry of the featured friends and Lynn’s good side are on great display.  That’s enough to make it a well-done starring role for characters familiar and rarely seen.
A-

The Ranking

1.      Really Loud Music

2.      Head Poet’s Anxiety

3.      Roadie to Nowhere

4.      Tea Tale Heart

5.      Shop Girl

6.      Breaking Dad

7.      Gown and Out

8.      Home of the Fave

9.      Fandom Pains

10.  Insta-Gran

11.  Driving Ambition

12.  Selfie Improvement

13.  Scales of Justice

14.  Middle Men

15.  Net Gains

16.  Crimes of Fashion

17.  Everybody Loves Leni

18.  The Spies Who Loved Me

19.  No Place Like Homeschool

20.  Hero Today, Gone Tomorrow

21.  House of Lies

22.  The Mad Scientist

23.  City Slickers

24.  Missed Connection

25.  Fool Me Twice

26.  Deal Me Out

27.  Teachers’ Union

28.  Tripped!

29.  White Hare

30.  A Fridge Too Far

31.  The Loudest Thanksgiving

32.  Sitting Bull

33.  Predict Ability

34.  Game Boys

35.  Pasture Bedtime

36.  Absent Minded

37.  What Wood Lincoln Do?

38.  Jeers for Fears

39.  Friendzy

40.  Pipe Dreams

41.  Be Stella My Heart

42.  Rita Her Rights

43.  Ruthless People
 
The next Loud House review shows Mom legitimately bonding with her kids as the new head of Lucy's writing club, and we start seeing the nature of Luna's relationship with her female love interest, Sam.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Raising the Barn" from Steven Universe.
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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