Greg the Babysitter (Steven Universe Season 3 Episode 16) - 'Toon Reviews 23

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Greg the Babysitter

Flashbacks of Greg’s relationship with Rose Quartz are always nice to see highlighting key moments that would set the whole series into motion.  This one covers some particularly interesting subjects. Showing younger versions of the Beach City residents involved brings a fresh aesthetic to this look at this part of his days with Rose. 

As Steven wonders how his dad got to run a carwash, the flashback unfolds.  It starts by highlighting the need for all people to get a job while also tying into a previous reveal that Greg literally gave up everything just to be with Rose. This is a nice touch of showing that actually giving everything up for love is not a good idea.  Through the use of a montage set to a catchy song, “I Think I Need a Little Change,” we get an effective way of seeing how Greg slowly realized the burdens of being jobless.  The song itself also comes off as a stimulating double-meaning with Greg needing a little change in life as well as actual money. 

There’s also a reveal of exactly how Greg got by while penniless which makes Onion’s family far more relevant to Steven.  His mother, Vidalia, who was once involved with Greg’s old manager, allowed Greg to live with her and get the nourishment and clean laundry he needed.  Through it all, while Greg is shown to have clearly been a mooch, he remains charming and friendly as ever.  Not to mention, Vidalia allowing Greg into her property adds to her already strong likability. It's honestly hard to believe she ever saw something appealing in a relentless jerk like Marty. 

Speaking of Marty, Greg was further taught the importance of having many responsibilities when asked to babysit the kid Vidalia had with Marty, Sour Cream. By the way, baby Sour Cream has an enjoyable quirk of saying “meh” to everything, standing out from other babies.  Greg’s time watching over Sour Cream gets interesting quick when Rose spotted him with another human. 

Being a Gem who’s known for fighting for all life, it’s fitting that Rose was amazed at humans procreating.   Adding intrigue to the moment, she gives a passionate speech of how new human life can grow and change in appearance and choose who they want to be. Contrasting, when Gems are made, they look the same forever and what they’re supposed to do is set in stone with no alternatives.  In general, this is a moving speech sure to get you to rethink mere life. However, considering events of the series that have occurred as of this review, it leaves a stronger impact with what this means for Rose’s character. That's for another season of this show though.  Nevertheless, the truth about Rose makes her later actions stand out more than before all relating to how she herself didn’t have a true grasp of the human life she was protecting. 

Rose actually thought it was all right to let baby Sour Cream wander around and climb all the way up to the top of a Ferris wheel because he wanted to. She had no idea that this move could kill him.  Thankfully, Greg saved him, but needed to be saved himself due to Rose’s inability to stop a Ferris wheel.  It was during this rescue that Greg realized that he and Sour Cream weren’t much different since he too did what he wanted and needed other people to do things for him.  Realizing this through his entire babysitting experience is what got him to take Rose’s speech to heart and grow up by getting the carwash job when he found it. 

This flashback is one of the more light-hearted ones. Still, out of the featured characters, what they get up to, and the big lessons of life they teach, it’s one of the strongest ones people could benefit from through watching.

A+

The Ranking

1. Mr. Greg
2. Monster Reunion
3. Greg the Babysitter
4. Alone at Sea
5. Gem Drill
6. Super Watermelon Island
7. Too Short to Ride
8. Beach City Drift
9. Barn Mates
10. Hit the Diamond
11. Same Old World
12. Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service
13. Steven Floats
14. Restaurant Wars
15. The New Lars
16. Drop Beat Dad

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Connie goes on her first Gem hunt with Steven and Pearl in a wholesome snowy setting.

If you would like to check out other Steven Universe reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

'Toon Reviews 18: Rocko's Modern Life Season 1 Episode 8: A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic/Canned

 If you like this review and want to stay updated for what else I have in store, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter. Now on with today's review:

A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic

The purpose of machines is to make daily tasks easier, but in life, things can still go wrong when using them.  When this scenario is brought to light in animation, there’s a lot of creative potential to how you can interpret it.  This show is the perfect place to exercise that potential, and that’s exactly what it does as we watch Rocko get a new vacuum cleaner to clean his unbelievably messy living room. 

His old one is very faulty and can’t suck up stuff very well, which is a very believable reason to get a new and more powerful vacuum cleaner.  He finds one in a commercial Heffer is watching which goes all out hyping up the new vacuum cleaner called the Suck-O-Matic as the best cleaner there is that matches the seductive feel commercials in general seem to have.  There’s even a creative interpretation of how manipulative they are with a scene of the TV reaching out and taking Rocko and Heffer’s brains as they watch, rendering them temporarily mindless to buy it without second thought. 

Once he has the Suck-O-Matic, there are some off-putting things about it like it not looking the way it did on TV and innumerable safety warnings that Rocko and Heffer gloss over like most people in real life would when reading instructions.  I see myself doing that.  Nevertheless, the big vacuum cleaner works very impressively with how fast it sucks up large amounts of dust, cities of bugs akin to something like Godzilla, and other little remnants of things all around the living room.  It has the impression of a vacuum cleaner you wish existed in real life.  However, the fact that the Suck-O-Matic can also suck up really huge things like all the layers of Rocko’s car and an entire plane further indicates that it could go mad with power. 

This is when the Suck-O-Matic starts wreaking havoc.  When taking it outside, the Suck-O-Matic goes loose and sucks up everything in sight.  If that’s not enough, when Rocko tries to put a stop to the senseless sucking, the vacuum cleaner won’t turn off developing a mind of its own.  More creative ways of showing the problems with machines are shown in a fast-paced climax where Rocko and Heffer tries to stop the Suck-O-Matic.  They try returning it, but they lose the receipt, they look for the manual for how to turn it off, but it’s not helpful by literally telling them to prepare to die, and they narrowly avoid getting sucked by it themselves, but the vacuum cleaner breaks itself suggesting that everything is now safe.  However, this relief is ruined by Heffer taking out a chip caught in its throat just because, and everyone suffers from this boneheaded moment. 

They all end up getting sucked up and just carry on with their lives inside it.  In fact, the last shot shows all homes on Rocko’s block sucked up by the Suck-O-Matic, bringing an apocalyptic feel to the ending.  It’s a bit unsettling that the cartoon ends like this, but at the same time is fascinating for creatively showing how common buying machines off of commercials and enduring their problems is for many. 

With a great collection of exaggerated occurrences and creative outcomes from buying and using machines, this is another good example of a cartoon that’s relatable as well as imaginative.

A

Canned

Everybody needs a job to get by in this world even if it’s not the best but is all you can get.  I can only imagine how hard it can be to get a job after getting fired, but what Rocko’s put through gives a good idea. 

He’s let go of his from his old comic book store job for productivity reasons.  After that, the focus is on Rocko trying to find a new job in order to get by.  It even shows the importance of having a job when the now unemployed Rocko is without food for himself and Spunky, and has no money to pay the bills, the latter being creatively interpreted by traffic meters for all the things he pays for going down.  It’s amazing how positive Rocko remains in spite of this which makes him a likable character to follow as he looks to the want ads for a new job.  

The show's main  strength of exaggerating modern life’s challenges is seen through these new jobs.  Rocko uses a jackhammer to make a tattoo on rhino’s tooth as a tattoo artist, becomes a plumber’s assistant who’s only allowed to pull up the plumber’s pants, and has to say “Oh baby” over and over as a special kind of phone operator.  They’re all effective exaggerations of what could happen on these jobs, and jokes coming from the basic idea of the positions even astound with how much the crew was able to get away. 

Rocko’s job attempt that drives the plot however, is a worker at O-Town’s biggest business center, Conglom-O run by his crabby next-door neighbor, Ed Bighead.  By now, his animosity towards Rocko is crystal clear to anyone who’s been watching the show, especially shown in an earlier scene of him berating Rocko’s dog, Spunky, for eating his plants.  Ed tries to humiliate Rocko by giving him a job in the product-testing department.  However, all of the products Ed has Rocko try for humiliation purposes backfire when Rocko actually enjoys the product while Ed tries it out to see what’s wrong, and karma has him endure the product’s harsh effects.  Each use of a product demonstrates the show’s talents for creativity and interesting ways for Rocko to see the good in the product.  A nose modifier give Rocko various nose jobs he enjoys while Ed, who doesn’t have a nose, ends up with two in his eyes.  Rocko tries some gum that gives him a tree on his head while Ed gets an actual beehive on his head when he tries several gum pieces.  A hairstyle helmet gives Rocko several nice styles, and Ed gets a buzz saw.  Finally, Rocko is sprayed with mad giraffe repellant which protects him as the giraffes stampede at Ed instead. 

The basic idea is the same, but the scenes stand out uniquely and are especially entertaining when Ed, a jerk who wants to hurt Rocko who did absolutely nothing wrong, gets consequences for his unjust actions.  Still, he does come out on top by firing Rocko even though he did exactly what he was supposed to do as a product tester.  Thankfully, Rocko does end up with a new job in the end working at a new comic book store, Kind of a Lot O’ Comics.  It is weird to see him start working here in this cartoon since he already was working there in “Power Trip” but we can just chalk this up to faulty airing order. 

As a result, the cartoon stands as a nice watch centering on the importance of employment backed by a successful collection of jokes and a satisfying conclusion for a character often stuck with bad luck.

A+

The Ranking

1. Popcorn Pandemonium
2. Skid Marks
3. The Good the Bad and the Wallaby
4. Canned
5. To Heck and Back
6. Who Gives a Buck?
7. Dirty Dog
8. A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic
9. Trash-O-Madness
10. Jet Scream
11. Keeping Up With the Bigheads
12. Spitballs
13. No Pain No Gain
14. Power Trip
15. Bedfellows
16. Leap Frogs

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Rocko tries to win a prize at a carnival, and spends most of a day at the beach saving his dog from harm.

If you would like to check out other Rocko's Modern Life reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

'Toon Reviews 1: Hey Arnold Season 1 Episode 19

Part Time Friends
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This cartoon follows one of those plots that involve characters who are close end up spending a lot of time fighting with each other, eventually deciding to end their friendship over frivolous means.  It’s a plot that’s not always pleasing to watch mostly because it’s hard to see such good friends at odds with each other especially when they’re both hard to get behind in their conflict.  About this cartoon specifically, Arnold and Gerald get part time jobs at Mrs. Vitello’s flower shop in order to gain money to buy certain things to have fun.  When Mrs. Vitello throws out her back, she has the boys manage the store alone with Gerald getting the higher authority.  Then we’re treated the two friends becoming at odds with each other with Gerald driving Arnold to work faster and not spend so much time on the quality of certain flower orders and Arnold carelessly getting flower orders wrong.  They both complain about each other’s flaws so much that the cartoon becomes significantly less entertaining to watch than it should be.  Arnold and Gerald have been shown to be a very loyal team sticking together no matter how the other acted.  Seeing them become the worst of enemies just because of this job environment just isn’t like them.  It gets even worse when Arnold decides to quit working for the shop under Gerald’s leadership and what follows is a series of dragged out scenes of the two former friends going out of their way to not speak with each other making their senseless bickering even more painful.  The conflict between them does get more engaging when Grandpa gets involved.  He shares Arnold a story about how he used to be friends with a kid named Jimmy Kafka, but like Arnold and Gerald, they broke their friendship while doing a part time job.  The catch is that they never spoke again, which is a pretty sad yet clever twist to the story.  As for the present matter, Grandpa’s story gets Arnold to see sense when he has a dream of him and Gerald similarly not being friends straight through senior ages which also includes this memorable piece of nightmare fuel to many longtime fans of this show:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, we end with Gerald being unable to run the shop alone and Arnold stepping in to make up with him which is nice, but the cartoon ends before they can use their friendship to fix everything at the shop.  They just set up a problem to solve, and they end without getting to it.  That’s sloppy storytelling, but at least Arnold and Gerald’s fight is over.  This really isn’t the worst cartoon of the show, but its fighting moments among other things grant it a low recommendation from me. 7/10

Biosquare

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Unlike Arnold and Gerald who are best friends, Arnold and Helga are a pairing who we rarely see get along mostly due to how much of a bully Helga can be to Arnold.  Yes, she has that crush on him, but for her own reasons, she keeps it secret by covering her love with mean-spirited nature.  So, when they’re assigned to do a science project that requires them to spend 24 hours together in a greenhouse, it’s easy to predict that things are bound to get tense between them.  Through it all, we see a clash of the personalities of these two people who rarely get along at work.  Arnold is easily prepared for the experiment and approaches each part of it such as one involving a potato and another involving a red ant and black ant living together in the same ant farm with great enthusiasm.  Helga on the other hand is not at all thrilled with Arnold’s recent football-headed scheme.  She eats all her food instead of saving it for the coming 24 hours, complains about the lack of electricity, messes with Arnold’s side experiments, and demands the greenhouse be divided even though she and Arnold are supposed to be living together in the environment.  It’s a dynamic we’ve come to expect and it does have its moments, but most of the time, the entertainment of the situation is Helga’s constant complaining and irrationality.  I understand that she feels the need to be mean to Arnold instead of show him the real her, but this much of it can get somewhat annoying and I just wish she’d realize that things in the greenhouse are the way they are because that’s how the experiment is supposed to work.  However, the beauty of this plot is that it shows that while they are constantly at odds with each other, Arnold and Helga do care about each other enough to work together when the moment calls for it.  The moment does call for it when we reach the climax.  Helga becomes so bothered by a leaky faucet that she goes on to break it which causes a flood.  It only gets worse when Grandpa and Oskar humorously mistake the cries for help for wanting to add more water.  As the flood in the greenhouse gets worse, Helga actually takes initiative by blowing a raft and saving Arnold from drowning by pulling him aboard just as the greenhouse door bursts open.  Then they both show concern for each other’s safety and then share a passionate smile.  For all their bickering, this moment shows that Arnold and Helga can work as a pair if their hearts are really in it.  So, while some of Helga’s moments don’t make this cartoon particularly strong, this cartoon is still appreciative for its portrayal of her and Arnold’s dynamic. 8/10

The Rankings

1.      Pigeon Man

2.      Haunted Train

3.      Stoop Kid

4.      Arnold’s Hat

5.      Wheezin’ Ed

6.      Spelling Bee

7.      Helga’s Makeover

8.      Mugged

9.      False Alarm

10.  Magic Show

11.  Tutoring Torvald

12.  The Baseball

13.  Olga Comes Home

14.  The List

15.  Das Subway

16.  The Vacant Lot

17.  Downtown as Fruits

18.  The Old Building

19.  Field Trip

20.  The Sewer King

21.  Sally’s Comet

22.  Roughin’ It

23.  Gerald Comes Over

24.  6^th Grade Girls

25.  The Little Pink Book

26.  24 Hours to Live

27.  Abner Come Home

28.  Arnold as Cupid

29.  Snow

30.  Eugene’s Bike

31.  Biosquare

32.  Door #16

33.  Heat

34.  Part Time Friends

35.  Benchwarmer

36.  Operation Ruthless

37.  World Records

38.  Cool Jerk

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the 20th episode of the season: "Arnold's Christmas."