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Starsitting
When
Buff Frog, one of Ludo’s original henchmen, received a sack full of tadpoles as
a bribe in the Season 1 finale, it would be hard for one to assume that he’d
take to being a father of them so seriously.
As this episode shows, he really does take to fatherhood with extreme
pride and devotion, giving him receiving the tadpoles much more weight and
value.
Also nice to see is that the
events of that finale have given him a lot of respect for Star. He entrusts her and Marco to look after the
tadpoles while he takes care of some interdimensional business complete with a
binder of rules to follow and special notice that one of them, Katrina, is
especially delicate.
From there, the
episode is all about babysitting antics where the caretakers assume that the job
will be easy but slowly realize that it’s a lot harder than it seems. This is one of the more common plot threads
that many of us have seen in other shows, but here it stands out a bit for how
babysitting becomes difficult for Star and Marco. They both have vastly different ideas to do it which don’t mesh well. Marco
aims to take care of the kids by sticking to the binder while Star straight-up ignores the rules and does what she can to let the babies have
fun.
At first, Marco seems like the one
to side with the most since Buff Frog’s rules are clearly there for a reason,
and it would be foolish and reckless of Star to just ignore them. Sure enough, when she pokes one of the
babies’ heads, though this act was mostly due to her giving into temptation
since she did try to hold herself back, all of them go on a wild croaking
spree. Star also makes things worse by
replacing their muddy lunches with cake, ignorant of the fact that these babies
have a much different diet from her, thus resulting in an even bigger mess.
Fortunately, out of all this, Star’s caretaking
methods do prove to have some value. It
seems that all the activity she allowed the babies to do got all of them except
Katrina to mature a bit by growing legs.
Granted, this just allows the babies to go out of control by running
around the house with Star and Marco bearing the brunt of it all, so Marco’s methods still
have value. However, when all the babies
are lost, it’s Star’s sense of fun that tracks them down when an earlier scene
of playing music gets relevance when she does it again and all of them except
Katrina come out to dance. To further
make a point of her advocacy for fun, Star gets to Katrina by throwing the
binder at a floor full of bear traps.
The binder itself is fine though.
The episode ends with both Star and Marco seeing the
benefits of both their caretaking methods and Buff Frog coming back saddened
that he missed his babies growing legs, but happy for at least being there to watch Katrina
get hers. This makes this babysitting
episode stand out more for showing that there’s no set way of taking care of
kids and having a lot of heart from the care and admiration everyone has for
the tadpoles. Star’s attempts at making
the job fun can be a little much at first, but it all comes together as
something enjoyable and cute despite everything.
A-
On the Job
It’s
always a nice idea to merge two segments of one episode together into one
cohesive plot. This one highlights the
events that occur before and during Star and Marco babysitting Buff Frog’s
tadpoles.
The start of the episode
features a montage of Buff Frog reveling in the joys of fatherhood as he takes
care of and has fun with his babies. However,
he also encounters some hardships as a father when he doesn’t have any food to
give them. Like many of us, Buff Frog
proceeds to get around this problem by getting a job.
Considering that Buff Frog once had a job
as a villain's henchman, he’s determined to relive the same villainous image he had
before even though his coworkers claim he’s gone soft now that he has
kids. This is kind of harsh as if it’s
shaming the idea of having kids.
Fortunately, this mindset between Buff Frog and his coworkers doesn’t last
long when Buff Frog finds a way to get his babies food. The group spots rats trading corn, a food
exclusive to Mewni, suggesting something odd about that kingdom’s security
practices. They try to
capture one of the rats to demand them to tell them where they got the corn,
and Buff Frog seems to have retained a lot of his henchmen skills as he leads attacks and interrogations of any rat who
passes by.
However, he’s constantly held
back by everything he does reminding him of taking care of his babies. It’s an interesting and somewhat relatable
conflict of struggling to balance the tough and soft part of one’s character
after having children which is nice to see at play. It makes the team’s prior judgements of him
going soft have more weight to them, but the scorn is balanced somewhat by the
boss, a talking fly named Boo Fly, standing up for Buff Frog and thinking of
good reasons for his actions even though he sees what Buff Frog is doing as a
problem. Also worth noting is that Buff
Frog doesn’t get too caught up in thinking of his babies and knows he has to
try and restrain himself when interrogating the rats.
Unfortunately, one last slip-up involving
accidentally bringing out baby toys ruins the team’s element of surprise and
costs Buff Frog the best job he had.
It’s moments like this that surprise you with how sympathetic Buff Frog,
someone who started out as a common henchman to an antagonist, has truly become
through his development shown since the second half of Season 1. His sympathy is shown even more through a
text message from the previous episode originally shown as a comedic cover-up
get much more emotional weight for Buff Frog to continue on with getting his
babies corn.
Ultimately, Buff Frog and
the rest of the monsters end up not getting corn, but they do discover that
there’s a hole in the force field surrounding Mewni’s cornfields, thus leading
to something to look forward to from them in the future as is the ending shot
revealing that the rats were bringing the corn to Ludo the whole time. In addition, Buff Frog shows some benefits to
his fatherly actions by saving the team who fired him when they get attacked by
King River for invading, and they don’t go unnoticed which nicely makes up for
everyone else treating his parenting like it was a problem.
This episode has a lot of benefits overall
with strong character development showing how far Buff Frog has come since the
beginning, interesting plot points with promise for the future, and while
attitudes towards having children can be too harsh at times, they genuinely
improve in the end. After this, I look forward to cover what Buff Frog gets up to next.
A
The Ranking
- Ludo in the Wild
- On the Job
- Mr. Candle Cares
- Wand to Wand
- Starstruck
- Starsitting
- Star on Wheels
- Camping Trip
- My New Wand
- Red Belt
- Star vs Echo Creek
- Fetch
The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review features Star, Marco, and friends go out for Goblin Dogs, and Glossaryk locking himself in a donut box after one bad wand training session.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews from Rocko's Modern Life it's "Who's For Dinner?" and "Love Spanked."
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.
