Saturday, November 21, 2020

Something Ventured, Someone Framed - (The Owl House Season 1 Episode 9) - 'Toon Reviews 42

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Something Ventured, Someone Framed

With how many episodes the series has now brought to life, I’m convinced that even at its weakest, there will always be at least something worthwhile to take from it.  That’s what happens here where the main plot may not be the best executed, but it still has enough good appeal and benefits to the broader goals of the series.

The standout character this time around is Gus, who in all honesty is the least interesting of the major players, at least to me.  He’s merely an excitable kid over the little things in life which can be a little much after a while especially, as it lacks the charisma and wit of other excitable characters like Luz.  His conflicts are also far too simplistic to be truly compelling.  He runs a club at Hexside honoring humans with his knowledge on their artifacts wildly misinformed.  One member, a new student Mattholomule, challenges Gus’ appreciation of humans with his own artifacts which, despite being clearly fake, have far more accurate descriptions.  The club is impressed enough to consider him the new president, and Gus feels threatened, though compared to other conflicts in the series, it doesn’t seem to have much magnitude.  For that, when Gus aims to protect his president title by bringing in an actual human, Luz, in to show the club, it’s hard to get fully invested. 

That said, an enjoyable lead like Luz getting involved does pick the story up somewhat.  Even after learning to appreciate Eda’s teachings in Hexside’s first appearance, she seems to be in the right to feel like the school’s a better place for Luz to learn magic.  Honestly speaking, Eda really hasn’t delivered on that lately other than one half-hearted lesson and trying to convince Luz to do magic through dishonest unethical means.  Anyway, other than Eda’s disapproval of Hexside, a major thing holding Luz back from going there to help Gus is the fact that she’s been banned from the school.  The ban, though, is dealt with in frankly the most idiotic way possible with Gus claiming that it was lifted when it wasn’t.  Him lying like this has major weak points in the form of consequences that are way too easy to see coming.  Obviously, if someone were to see Luz despite her disguised in a cowl, or even that the wanted posters Gus stashed are missing, the gig will be up almost instantly.  Plus, there are bound to be severe consequences that can come from breaking a rule like this that most people would feel are simply not worth the risk.  It doesn’t help that, again, this is for a not so compelling cause on Gus’ end.

While the basis for the plot is pretty weak, the episode makes up for it with its own aspects that are legitimately charming and creative.  Though it’s brought on through awkward nervousness and feeble excuses, the Hexside tour Gus brings Luz on to cover his tracks is a very nice scene.  It allows for interesting looks at what the school has to offer from extracurricular activities to especially deeper looks at its many tracks.  Gus’ track, the Illusionist track, really stands out for its creative bits of how the students manipulate forms and visions at their will.  The look at this track even brings legitimately charming moments from Gus and how he utilizes illusion magic, mainly with a vision of himself taking notes while the real him is busy.  Such an amusing bit even comes into play later.

As the human club meeting draws near, focus on the rival for Gus’ president spot, Mattholomule, becomes relevant.  He clearly falls into the one-dimensional mean character type, making for a not so enjoyable antagonist, but to be fair, he has a little bit of depth to his persona.  His smug ways aren’t all there is to him as he becomes genuinely worried about the club discovering that his human artifacts are fake, making for some humanity within him.  The same jerky tendencies are back at the forefront when he discovers the human Gus brought in was banned, but his vulnerability makes this realization meaningful to him.  Even so, it’s practically sickening when he sounds like he’s legitimately apologizing to Gus for being a jerk, and Mattholomule rats Luz out and gets her thrown in detention.  That right there not only makes Mattholomule really detestable, but highlights the glaring flaws with Gus’ whole plan that could have been avoided if he considered what was worth it.

Another creative element comes from this with a look at Hexside detention.  Though Luz is used to it, she’s not used to it consisting of a pit of monsters that trap students in mind controlling pods just for being out of line.  Luz even says that this is going too far to be detention and is actually a death sentence.  Gus is quick to atone for putting Luz in danger like this, so he deliberately gets himself and Mattholomule thrown in detention to help her.  During the escape, there are some solid shows of character from everyone in the detention pit.  Mattholmule shows he does have depth after all by helping guide Gus through the pit, even though he gets trapped in a pod and mentally manipulated.  Luz is upfront with Gus’ lie, and just when you think she’s about to disown him as a friend, she shows great likability as Gus explains himself.  He says that he was desperate to keep his club president position because it’s the only place where he feels like he’s taken seriously.  Being an actually pretty young student moved up some grades who’s barely noticed is also a huge factor to his actions.  That’s the heart and compelling understandable weight that’s needed to make all that happened worth something.  The story would have been stronger if there were hints of this from the start, but being here at all is fine too.  Best of all, Luz sees the humanity in the background to Gus’ actions and is still on friendly terms with him.  Then they both escape detention with a legitimately awesome showing of Gus’ illusion magic where several visions of him and Luz distract the pods.  The main plot might not be too special, but it does have a well-constructed payoff, and that’s not even all.

This whole episode is a fine example of a main plot and subplot going well together.  While they usually feel very disconnected save for one little scene, here they both follow the common thread of getting Luz to Hexside.  Plus, the subplot itself is very good, especially compared to the main plot.  It allows for major character growth on Eda’s part where even though she’s against Hexside’s teaching practices, she realizes her teaching methods are very flawed too.  All it takes is seeing how much of a nuisance Hooty has become from her teachings.  It’s here where she puts aside her opinions on matters and comes to the mature conclusion that Hexside really is a better place for Luz to learn magic.  Really making Eda stand out is all the work she’s willing to put in to make it happen.  The head of the school, Principal Bump, is pleasantly surprisingly on civil terms with Eda as they arrange for Luz’s ban to be lifted so she can attend.  However, given Eda’s records of her days as a student, she has to spend the day going through all the acts of delinquency she committed on the school in her youth and fix them.  It’s hard work on Eda and she clearly doesn’t enjoy it, but her putting up with things she doesn’t want to do brings even more pleasing maturity.  Plus, it’s a solid reflection of what parenthood could be like. Then when Luz’s adventure with Gus brings property damage and chaos, Eda is just as disappointed in her as Bump is.  In Gus’ favor, he willingly takes the fall for what happened which is fair and accurate to the truth, further aiding his own appeal as a character.  So the efforts to get Luz into school end up meaningful, and the main players come to good conclusions for this particular episode.  The plot is benefitted too with Luz getting one step closer to becoming a witch, and from one statement from Eda, there may be a break from the one witch-one coven setup coming.

For one last good measure, we close the episode with a humorous montage of accounts of Eda’s many incidents with the descriptions getting edgier with each new one.  I like to consider that a welcome touch to a pretty good episode.

The main plot here isn’t too compelling, but creative touches, an appealing subplot, and all characters coming through in the end make any setback worth it, especially for the long run.

B+

The Ranking

1.      Lost in Language

2.      The Intruder

3.      Covention

4.      I Was a Teenage Abomination

5.      Witches Before Wizards

6.      Something Ventured, Someone Framed

7.      A Lying Witch and a Warden

8.      Hooty’s Moving Hassle

9.      Once Upon a Swap

The next Owl House review has Luz learn about the proper way to take care of Palismen when taking Eda's out for a ride leads to trouble.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews, Amphibia serves up "Lily Pad Thai" and "Plantar's Last Stand." 
If you would like to check out other Owl House reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

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