Yada Yada Berries / Down By the River (Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 4 Episode 5) - 'Toon Reviews 38

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Yada Yada Berries

When it comes to Mewni’s mostly unwarranted mistrust of Eclipsa, even after she saved everyone, there is potential for interesting stories to come from this.  This episode delivers in that regard with a fairly creative way of trying to off her and a murder mystery that evolves as a result. 

It starts as a normal civilized breakfast Eclipsa sets up to have with the monsters living in her castle while the Mewman servants question why monsters have to be treated civilly.  Then when one of the more-often seen Mewman servants, Manfred, takes Eclipsa’s bowl of oatmeal with berries on it away, events take a major turn.  Manfred spitefully has a taste of the oatmeal and when his tongue touches the berries, he’s instantly turned to stone, meaning this breakfast was a trap set for Eclipsa.  Apparently, these are no ordinary berries.  As the episode title implies, they’re yada yada berries which petrify anyone who eats them so they can no longer talk incessantly or ‘yada yada.’  Even with this threat to her life, Eclipsa remains nonchalant and collected.  However, because her goal is to help Eclipsa become more trusted as a Queen of Mewni, Star makes it her mission to find out who tried to give her those berries. 

From here, it’s an intriguing murder mystery that takes Star and Marco to a surprisingly civil looking assassin’s square in Mewni.  There’s a nice assortment of characters that make up this area.  Some of them include returning characters like Rasticore who is still in the process of regenerating his body for a second time.  There’s also a small child who doesn’t look like she could have any role in assassination called Babs who has a peculiar case of pink eye.  Despite that, she’s the one who appears to have been sent to give Eclipsa those berries, though she couldn’t go because of her illness.  This leads Star and Marco to the only creature reported to have purchased yada yada berries from the local apothecary called Sherry, a chameleon monster called Reuben.  His actions were out of being forced to eat breakfast out of a dog bowl instead of at the table by the servants, and he was taking it out on the queen.  As a twist, even he’s innocent because he planned to do this after the breakfast when the berries were first discovered.  Star, as impulsive as she often is, approaches Apothecary Sherry with a fistful of spells to demand answers.  In spite of her intimidation, Sherry just gives an edgy remark about people buying the berries from her before daring to petrify herself.  Sherry may not give any answers, but her being turned to stone allows Star to view all the receipts and discovers plenty of Mewmans have purchased the berries.  In her mad search for answers, Star dares to lock everyone on the receipts up and demands the yada yada berry culprit to fess up. 

In the midst of this brash move though, Eclipsa shows up and makes a major first step in improving as a queen.  Though she clearly favors monsters over Mewmans, she is very civil and fair to the imprisoned Mewmans.  She accepts that they don’t like her, but she lets them know that she’s willing to overlook this entire incident and try to get them to like her if they give her a chance.  It honestly turns out to be kind of jerky that they’re still bitter towards her as she lets them all go.  Ultimately, there’s no payoff to who tried to petrify her, at least not now, but how well Eclipsa takes this whole thing is honestly remarkable.  The petrification isn’t even permanent anyway. 

As you can tell, even if the prejudices are still way out of line, there’s a lot to love in the story staging and character moments of this murder mystery.

A

Down By the River

 

Despite showing openness to having Eclipsa as queen, Moon certainly made a shocking decision to leave with River for a simple life in the woods.  This episode showcases what’s become of her decision as well as set up a new role for her for this season.  However, the execution of this start of a new path is pretty mixed. 

At first, you’d think this episode will be all about Mewman society as a whole adapting to this new order of monsters.  The opening scene features what looks like a really small family called the Maizleys which later turns out to be normal-sized and has lived in a monster-sized house.  Because Eclipsa is allowing monsters back into civilization, they also take back homes that used to belong to them.  Even as the one monster is civil towards the Maizleys, this is actually a decent drawback to Eclipsa’s reign.  As great as it is that justice is being given to the monsters, it is legitimately neglectful that the Mewmans have no place to live.  They may have been prejudiced jerks, but they don’t deserve to lose their homes. 

So the Maizleys have to go find a place to live in the woods, and in their travels they come across Moon and River adjusting to their new simple life of just doing nothing.  Moon starts out as being friendly but also points out that she and her husband just want to live their lives alone.  The Maizleys sound respectful of their wishes but it soon becomes easy to figure out where this story is going.  They all become total pests to Moon and River where their customs end up interfering.  They gunk up their water supply, throw dangerous creatures onto their property that even injure River, and keep them up all night to fend off a ridiculous sounding creature.  They’re just annoying neighbors that have no regard for anyone else’s feelings and offer little to no good. 

It’s hard to blame Moon for waking up late at night incredibly enraged at these major nuisances, ultimately screaming at them to leave, a departure from her usual elegance.  However, Moon doesn’t exactly end up sympathetic either.  The next morning she’s making pies, but this action is part of a way out of line method of dealing with this random family.  They’re exploding pies meant to blow them up.  I know they’re annoying, but that’s the most disproportionate retribution if I’ve ever seen it.  It almost becomes disturbing that Moon starts genuinely looking for them when they’re not where they’re expected to be just so she can attack. 

To her credit, Moon does back down on her aggression when she finds that the Maizleys did respect her wishes and leave.  However, they explain all the horrible things they’ve been through ever since Moon snapped at them.  The problem with this is that they’re only told, but never seen, so it could be possible that this is just a bluff to get them to stay.  It’s also kind of sad that they don’t know how to do anything for themselves and need someone like Moon to tell them what to do.  As a result of that, Moon decides to let the Maizleys stay, and dotes on them to help them learn proper survival skills.  At least, the Maizleys generally learn from her teachings, and Moon being open to other families settle on their land is in line with how she can still be a ruler despite not being queen. 

As it stands, the abundance of nuisances and disturbing approaches to dealing with pests don’t make this episode very comfortable to watch.  With solid story beats coming from the recent dynamic shift as well as good instances of chemistry, especially from Moon and River, it’s not without charm.

B

The Ranking

1.      Escape from the Pie Folk

2.      Swim Suit

3.      Yada Yada Berries

4.      Moon Remembers

5.      Ransomgram

6.      Butterfly Follies

7.      Down By the River

8.      Lake House Fever

 

 

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Star turns to Pony Head to boost Eclipsa's popularity, and Star arranges a dinner with the Spiderbite family.

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.