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I never understood why anybody liked The Job, The Finale, The Rival or The Brain and pretended as if The Amazing World of Gumball could do no wrong in regards to good comedy and storytelling, but I am happy to come across something else many of us can agree is very bad. It is just too sad, depressing and painful to see Darwin's naivety get him in danger when he thinks that saying nothing to Jamie until she works it out for herself will solve the problem, and just lets Jamie shout at everybody else who tries to talk to her or Darwin. It ends in one of the cruelest punch lines I have ever seen from this show, with an actual punch included. Darwin's plan of long-term silence almost works when Jamie chases after Gumball, wanting him to be another boyfriend for her, then suddenly comes to the conclusion that love is something you earn. Darwin finally gains the courage to tell Jamie the same thing, but somehow THIS is the one time Darwin should have kept his mouth shut. Jamie learned nothing and does not practice what she preached because she did exactly what Darwin expected she would do to him. She punched him out for trying to teach her a lesson about being a healthier, less abusive girlfriend. All she does is be a rude, despicable person who shouts at or hurts everybody who gets in her way. She is a despicable, narcissistic bully, which is not unusual for her character, but The Girlfriend is a very heinous episode because it misses the point of how it could have resolved its own conflict much better by having Jamie learn why she should stop doing what she did to hurt everyone who disagrees with her, even if she thought it was fun.

The only funny parts of The Girlfriend that make it slightly more bearable to watch are the running gag of when Jamie gets frozen in thought and makes a hilariously ugly, confused face. I can pretend to tolerate the aforementioned episodes if I turn off my brain or pretend to take nothing The Amazing World of Gumball seriously, and The Girlfriend would still be indefensible because it is just that unfunny, even when it is intended to be funny, and it gives kids the worst advice ever on how to handle an abusive girlfriend or boyfriend who is just a bully. Following a potentially serious message with a cruel joke where Jamie punches Darwin for doing what he should have done along is not funny. It is just sad! A storyline pitting a naive boy like Darwin against an abusive bully like Jamie is a horrendous, unhappy idea on principle doomed to fail. It is like the Spongebob Squarepants episode Pet Sitter Pat having Patrick be the worst pet sitter ever who almost kills Gary several times. Storylines that pair up characters who should never be together can be funny, and as a general concept it can make for lots of good comedy, but not when that comedy is as shallow or predictable as...the baseline of abusive or idiotic danger that we would already expect to come from it. All Pet Sitter Pat and The Girlfriend do is go through the motions of abusing and torturing Gary and Darwin with Patrick's idiocy and Jamie's cruelty. Were those episodes intended to be hated by all of us? Because they are, and I hope the mean writers who wrote them and the mean directors who directed them are happy with how angry or sad they have made us from them.

Even though they were made as two very different types of movies, I think Cuties and Turning Red have a lot in common. They both feature a group of four teen girls who are exploring their inner femininity, and the lead girl is torn between two different parts of her cultural identity - sticking to her mother's old family traditions, or follow the song and dance party of her new school friends. Rosalie Chang and Fathia Youssouf are new, promising young actresses who were happy to snag the lead role in the spring of 2018. Amy and Mei Lin enjoy rebelling with their friends and rebelling against their moms, who are played by Sandra Oh and Maimouna Gueye, until Amy and Mei Lin cross a line that costs them their friendship and gets their mom upset with them. At the end of their story, Amy and Mei Lin fully realize their identity. Both films started out with the same intentions, but the execution of every part of the story in Cuties and Turning Red are as different as night and day.

Amy is terrible as a main character; Cuties wants us to root for her but never gives us a good reason to feel bad about her sexualizing herself, and she destroys her positive or neutral connections with everybody by the end of the film except for her mom. Mei Lin is a terrific main character who is rebellious but sympathetic; she has her arguments and bad moments with her mom and her friends, but she is usually nice to them and all are still on good terms with her at the end of the film. Amy never sees her dad because he is marrying a second wife, while Mei Lin's dad is still with her mom and he helps her to embrace her weird side. Coumba, Jess and Yasmine are mean kids who bully Amy went she wants to join them, but Miriam, Priya and Abby are genuinely good friends to Mei Lin who help her when she is feeling down. Amy, Angelica, Coumba, Jess and Yasmine are infamous for their ongoing sequences of twerking dance moves, while Mei Lin, Miriam, Priya, Abby and Stacy have ongoing sequences of normal, non-sexual dances. The Cuties want to become women by performing their forbidden dance at a music contest, while the girls from Turning Red who become women are just attending a typical boy band concert.

These are just five of the things Turning Red has in common with Cuties, while having a much better execution of the same premise. While Turning Red has some questionable scenes of the four main girls flirting with various boys, it is in no danger of facing the same Cuties accusations of sexualizing minors, especially because the girls in Turning Red are animated. While actual teenagers played Mei Lin, Miriam, Priya and Stacy's voices back in 2019, they never had to do the same movements as their cartoon characters. Unlike Cuties, which was a drab slog when it was not disgusting the audience with twerking and period blood, Turning Red was a great fantastic film that knew how to convey emotions and knew how to be the perfect balance of happy and sad. I actually cried a lot in the climax of Mei Lin finding out her mom broke down over struggling to be a perfect daughter, and Meilin showed Ming it was okay to not be a perfect child for their mothers. Even after it was over, I cried again because I was super happy to see Turning Red meet all of my expectations by becoming the early 2020s coming-of-age film for teenage girls that is everything Cuties is not, but wished to become. This is why I firmly believe Turning Red is the much better, family-friendly alternative to Cuties produced at the same time that does not sexualize minors in the process of telling an edgy story about teenage girls discovering their womanhood! Mei Lin, Miriam, Priya, Abby and Stacy are all nice, friendly girls who still have a sense of childlike innocence at the end of the story. Maybe Turning Red is not one of Pixar's greatest films when you do not compare it to something a lot worse, but I can not look at it the same way I would have if the movie Cuties did not exist. I am super proud of Domee Shi for succeeding at everything in Turning Red that Maimouna Doucoure tried and failed to do in Cuties.

While we have had other older movies that are infamous for sexualizing children like Taxi Driver or Pretty Baby, they were much better written because unlike Cuties, they actually knew how to criticize the sexualization of minors with the stories they set up for those characters, they knew how to make us care for the children who were being sexualized in their worlds, and most importantly, they were smart enough to take the RIGHT risks while making a point to not exploit the actors by making them do sexually provocative things onscreen. Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields were too young for any real onscreen sex scenes, and they were also talented child actors who knew how to play their characters who learned their lesson before it was too little, too late for it to mean anything for the film.

Cuties fails in all of these aspects because the Cuties are all naughty girls who have no childhood and bad parents or no parents to keep them out of trouble. It is a depressing mess where they normalize theirs and others sexualization of them. Angelica is the only likable main character, while Amy is a selfish jerk who destroys all of her connections with other people except for her mom in the final scene. She does plenty of despicable things, like stealing her older cousin's phone, trying to take a dirty picture of a boy's private part, taking a picture of her own private part with the phone that she stole, stabbing another boy in her class with a pencil, and trying to kill Yasmine to take her place in the Cuties after she was welcomed back in. Cuties just breaks my heart into a million pieces because even though the director-writer Maimouna Doucoure made this movie to criticize the sexualization of minors, Cuties contains none of the commentary or substance that a movie like this SHOULD exist to have! The even sadder part is that the film gives us none of the reasons it should have given to make us feel sorry for Amy exploiting herself, or any Cutie for that matter except for Angelica, yet it tries to paint Amy's mom as the villain when she is doing the right thing to keep Amy out of danger. Funny moments of joy are few and far in between, and unlike Iris or Violet, the other four Cuties' personalities do not come from a sympathetic place or have a good person like Travis Bickle who can guide them in the right direction. Iris and Violet were well-written and empathetic because they started out as innocent kids who fell down the wrong path of life. Cuties is seriously disgusting and falls flat in this regard because Amy, Angelica, Coumba, Jess and Yasmine begin their story thinking that sexualizing themselves is a liberating way to explore their femininity. Because Maimouna Doucoure "recreated the little girl I was at that age," I believe she would be arrested for projecting herself onto Fathia Youssouf if they lived in the US instead of France.

Cuties is nothing but a melodramatic film that does nothing and says nothing against sexualizing children. The only three big things it accomplished are (1) being a big microcosm of all the world's child exploitation/trafficking problems that demonstrate how bad it can get when the victims internalize their suffering, (2) proving that black female movie directors/writers in France can also be sex offenders like the white males Roman Polanski and Zangro, the latter of whom produced Cuties with her, and (3) waking up all of the American and Canadian audiences who are aware that child actor sexualization is a serious crime, by horrifying them with how widely accepted it is in other nations like France and Thailand. I know what the message of this film is supposed to be, but that is no excuse for it to snuff out the childhoods of five kids, when there are a thousand other ways Cuties could have and totally SHOULD have criticized the objectification of young girls who twerk to get attention online, without actually showing real young girls twerking. Cuties deserves all of the panning it gets, just like what Newborn Cuties had 10 years before it.

It is a sad and heavy story, that is still met with a happy and light ending so that the kids who watch Peanuts, as well as parents or grandparents who have real kids with cancer do not get too upset to watch it again. For 40 years, the Peanuts comic books and cartoons were known for telling lighthearted yet mature slice-of-life stories that only showed kids and their pets, and rarely ever showed adults (except when they needed to in the Thanksgiving special, the mini-series about American history and Snoopy's Reunion). In 1990, we get a very special episode near and dear to the heart of Charles M. Schulz. Because of his own real experience and family history of cancer, I could not be more proud of Charles M. Schulz for negotiating with Sylvia Cook, Bill Melendez and CBS to make this a full 22-minute story, instead of a 5-minute PSA short like the ones he made about brushing teeth, dental hygiene and air pollution in 1978. I also love it when serious PSA stories that introduce a new character for their story, know how to give their main subject character some depth and personality that helps us feel emotionally attached to them for the single story they are in. Oops was a very special Family Ties episode from Season 1 that I watched because it featured Cristen Kauffman two years before she played Betty in Back to the Future and got to work with Michael J. Fox again. Oops was a stand-out serious episode about teen pregnancy which did a good job of fleshing out the personalities and interactions of Cindy Sullivan and her mother Lynn Sullivan. It is the same case with Janice Emmons, her older sister and her younger sister in Why, Charlie Brown, Why. Even in other Peanuts TV specials or movies that do not take on a serious subject like this one, stories that include other new kids we do not see often, really help to expand the world of Peanuts, which says a lot for a cartoon world limited to an unspecified suburban American town with kids who are perpetually stuck in the mid-20th century using rotary phones and typewriters. Yes, even in The Peanuts Movie from 2015.

1990 was an unusual and fascinating year for children's animation; the same year of Why, Charlie Brown, Why? Had Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue when Alf, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield, Tigger, Winnie the Pooh, and the main characters of DuckTales, Looney Tunes, Muppet Babies and The Smurfs come together to teach a brother and sister, Michael and Corey, about how to quit on drugs. Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and Why, Charlie Brown, Why? Deserve to be remembered for being a big start for two new actors each. WCBW is the first acting credit for Sabrina the Teenage Witch star Lindsay Sloane, who voiced Janice's older sister, and the twelfth acting credit for The Torkeltons star Olivia Burnette, who gives a very good serious child's performance as Janice Emmons in this TV special and Mickey Bolen in Casey's Gift: For Love of a Child. CASttR is the first time after Mel Blanc's passing when Jeff Bergman got to play Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who each show Michael his past and future with drugs, and he puts on a memorable first performance for both characters. It is also the fifth acting credit for Jason Marsden, who voices Michael and got to have a very illustrious cartoon acting career ever since, including A Goofy Movie and The Fairly OddParents.

Why, Charlie Brown, Why? Is the yin to Cartoon All-Stars' yang, the various cartoon characters who come together and take Michael on a trippy adventure and encourage Corey to tell her parents about his problem give the story a whimsical tone despite the serious subject matter. Why, Charlie Brown, Why? Is more sad and serious, and tells a much more down-to-earth story like many Peanuts cartoons before and after it, but does not forget to have light moments of comedic relief with Snoopy and Woodstock as the seasons change from fall to winter to spring, and goes deep into showing us a variety of positive and negative reactions to Janice's cancer. Linus and Charlie are Janice's friends and visitors who get a little scared when she tells them how she learned she had leukemia, but they support her all throughout her journey and hope for her to get better. Sally ignores how Janice feels when she does not like riding the school bus and tells Janice she could have stayed and played at home longer after she got well. Lucy acts even worse when she believes Janice is contagious and will get her and Linus sick, and thinks Janice got cancer because she is a "creepy kid."

I am very happy that Janice Emmons survived her cancer, not only because Why, Charlie Brown, Why would be too much of a downer if she died young, but it would also be a cheap way to cut off the story early when there are more sides to this subject to cover in the second half of the story. Transition from fall to winter, and Janice is bald from chemotherapy treatments. Linus stands up to a mean boy who bullied Janice for being bald, and asks him how he would feel if he had cancer and lost his hair. Linus goes to Janice's house to give her a Christmas present, and her older sister is mad that Janice keeps getting more Christmas gifts than them. Janice's younger sister says that all the presents and attention that Janice gets are ways for people who care about Janice to show that they hope she gets well. When spring comes by, Janice is well again and she is happy to be back at school. The swings are back after the winter, and Linus pushes Janice on the swings again with the joyful surprise that her hair grew back in 3 months since we last saw her in the winter. I was proud of Charles M. Schulz for telling a heavy, yet idealistic story that carefully educates kids about cancer and can still have a happy ending without any cheap death fake-outs. 😭 I do not think Why, Charlie Brown, Why? Would be any better or develop Linus's character throughout the story any more if Janice Emmons died in the end or in the middle, and I also do not think Wonder Park would be a better story for June Bailey if her mom died. They would waste good characters by not treating them like an actual person with their own side of the story to tell because they were only a "motivational tool" for Linus's and June's story. June's mom teaches her to keep her light of positivity shining in her, which is an important thing for June to remember to do to keep Wonderland alive on her own whether or not her mother survives. June Bailey's mom surviving her sickness in the end does nothing to nullify June's character development throughout the story, and I would much rather prefer June being rewarded with the return of her mom, than for June to lose her mom and possible learn how to move on from it way too fast.

If I wanted to watch a trippy big-screen blockbuster starring Chris Pine with impressive visuals, I would go back and watch A Wrinkle in Time and Into the Spider-Verse from 2018. A Wrinkle in Time was not a great film either, but at least it does not teach any harmful implied messages in the way Don't Worry Darling did. Booksmart was a really great directorial and screenwriting debut for Olivia Wilde, co-starring Kaitlyn Dever from Last Man Standing and a new rising star named Beanie Feldstein, who I guess are that film's smaller-budget equivalents to Florence Pugh and Sydney Chandler. Don't Worry Darling is the opposite of the masterpiece that is Booksmart because while it has great ideas about trying to help humans be happier and less overworked by taking things back to the simpler times of the 1950s when men always worked and women always stayed at home. For the story time allotted in a 2-hour movie, the pacing is poor because it is 2/3 rising action and 6 sequences of Alice Warren trying to uncover the mystery of this false utopian neighborhood named Victory until she stands up to Chris Pine's character Frank and finds out how she got here. To make matters worse, Kiki Layne's Margaret, the token black character among a main cast of 8 people is the first of three major characters to die in the story, making this another cruelly racist horror film with a mostly white cast to kill off the only black main character first. If Dakota Johnson had played Margaret in this film instead of making The Lost Daughter, I would not have said anything about this, but it just hurts my heart to see Kiki Layne get such a bad role in Don't Worry Darling after she got such a good role in Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers earlier in the same year.

If Don't Worry Darling had another draft, it could have done more with the ideas of Olivia Wilde's character in the film, Bunny, choosing to come here because her kids died in the real world, or Gemma Chan's Shelley murdering Frank so she can take over the Victory project from him. Olivia Wilde really seems to be counting on Warner Brothers-Discovery green-lighting Don't Worry Darling 2 so she can further explore these questions and make a better sequel than the original which already set the bar too low for her, and the half of the original movie's cast who had the most trouble working with her are either already dead or escaped Victory. However, I do not think it deserves a sequel because...for a movie that wants to make a point about gender equality and female empowerment, and how wrong it is to take a woman's life away from them just because you want them to be happier, Olivia Wilde messed it all up with the way she promoted the film. First, there is NOTHING empowering about the way this film presents female pleasure after it is revealed that Jack Chambers kidnapped Alice Warren against her will. He raped her in the Victory neighborhood and I hate how Olivia chooses to ignore that. Second, Olivia lied about firing Shia LaBeouf from playing Jack Chambers when he quit because she never gave him any rehearsal time before filming their scenes. Third, Jordan Peterson is NOT a hero for incels like Olivia wants us to think he is, or he is a hero for the complete opposite reason she says he is because he is teaching life advice incels that will help them to stop being incels.

Olivia Wilde needs to make better movies after this, learn to not lie about men she dislikes to put herself on a pedestal, and get along with people better if she wants to recover from this big blunder in her career, because all she did was make a movie that rationalizes incel behavior and she should not teach her daughter Daisy Sudeikis the wrong messages she will learn from this film when she is old enough to watch it 10 years from now. I am angry and disappointed with Olivia Wilde because she wanted to make a movie with a message against objectifying women, and botched it up by doing the opposite in execution. The only reason I am less upset with Olivia Wilde than I am with the director of Cuties is because Don't Worry Darling is about legal adults, instead of children who do naughty things in a movie they are too young to watch. Chris Pine, Kiki Layne and Sydney Chandler were criminally underused in this film and they deserve much better roles than this. The same goes for Florence Pugh, who was not underused and gives the best performance in the film; she also deserves much better lead film roles than this one. In my humble opinion, Olivia Wilde really owes a huge apology to Florence Pugh, Jordan Peterson, Shia LaBeouf, and her daughter Daisy Sudeikis who may learn the wrong lessons from this movie. It was a nice touch that Olivia cast her real daughter to play one of her character's children, but I am certain that if Olivia Wilde knows what is good for her and for the kid actors who were in this movie with her, she will learn she was wrong to not give this movie better direction and teach Daisy Sudeikis and Marcello Julian Reyes that they should not become like Harry Styles in Don't Worry Darling, because the truth is...Jack Chambers is the real incel of this story whom Olivia Wilde intended for this film to oppose.

Reindeer in Here was definitely worth watching. I adored the positive energy of Adam Devine and Melissa Villasenor all the way through. The voices of Sam-I-Am from Green Eggs and Ham and Wheezer from The Chicken Squad definitely made this TV special special and gave it the life that it needed to be as great as it is. My uncle hated hearing Candace Cameron-Bure in this because we have seen her in too many Hallmark Christmas movies, and it certainly does not help that she left Hallmark for favoring stories about traditional marriages over LGBTQ+ couples. Bill Abbott was also wrong for treating it like a trend and Hilarie Burton called out both sides of this argument when they were in the wrong in different ways. This is why I am glad that Candace Cameron got stuck with the much smaller role of Pinky, even though Candy sounds like a name for a main character you would expect Candace Cameron to play in these Christmas movies. Maybe Candace auditioned for that part and lost it. Instead, Melissa Villasenor got to shine in a new iconic animated role that made me fall in love with MV's comically adorable talents. Reindeer in Here is (thankfully!) not about Candace Cameron Bure, it is about the Adam Devine we know and love from Workaholics, Uncle Grandpa, Penn-Zero: Part-Time Hero and Green Eggs and Ham. The rhyming title of this special may have even been inspired by his Sam-I-Am role. However, Melissa Villasenor as the snow woman with a candy cane nose may become the real breakout star of this Christmas special story, with positive energy and adorable scene-stealing comedy that rivals that of Liliana Mumy in Higglytown Heroes, Katie Crown in Storks and Haley Tju in Amphibia. I actually came to love Reindeer in Here's Candy a lot more than Frozen's Olaf. I highly recommend you check out Reindeer in Here on Paramount+ right now because it has a lot to bring to start a new Christmas classic, about kids who have trouble making friends because their family moves around a lot between every school year. I think the kids who play Theo and Isla can accomplish great things if they continue to have a good acting career and a good childhood after Reindeer in Here, but Henry Winkler also surprised me with the multiple dimensions he gives Smiley that prove his acting career never jumped the shark. If you loved watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I guarantee you will love Reindeer in Here a whole lot more. Thanks to Melissa Villasenor and Adam Devine, Candy and Blizzard were the funniest characters in Reindeer in Here because they were a whole lot of winter fun to watch. Thank you for writing this story, Adam Reed.

I thought the musical premiere of Brace/Off Adventure, the Halloween episode The Yawn of the Dead Adventure, and Say it Again Ham would be The Great North's best Season 2 episodes, and they still are - but this episode (along with its guest star Holland Taylor) is the real breakout star of Season 2, sort of like Liliana Mumy and her character from Higglytown Heroes. I consider this episode a breakout star because Phil Payton did not rank this as one of the 5 best Season 2 episodes for The Great North like he did the other three aforementioned titles, but it had a very good lesson and an end credits song that made me want to rewatch it many times. While Crispin Cienfuegos got promoted at Smoothie Boss and Judy Tobin volunteered at making ceramic stuff, Ham Tobin became good friends with Goldie, an old woman at the Lone Moose retirement home. He was so focused on Goldie, he forgot to call and text Crispin, which was excusable when Ham was driving, but not when Crispin called at a later time when Goldie and Ham were asking other senior citizens to come to their party and Ham was not driving. When Goldie tells Ham about her dead husband Paul, Ham decides to help Goldie honor Paul by throwing Paul the 70th birthday party he never had...on his 80th birthday.

Ham becoming close friends with Goldie throughout the episode was very sweet and wholesome. This is what the Family Guy episode Mom's the Word should have been. Phyllis Diller's death was written into Family Guy by having a funeral for Peter Griffin's mother, Thelma Griffin, and Lauren Bacall played Evelyn, who was a friend of Thelma's. Evelyn and Peter were new friends at first, but then Evelyn kept perving on Peter because he reminded Evelyn of her late husband, Walter, which did not track well for Peter when he just wanted Evelyn to be his new mom. This reminds me to not take for granted the fact that Goldie never thought of Ham as a new Paul just because she may have wanted to dance and party with another guy. Unlike Peter Griffin's mom Thelma, Ham and Judy Tobin's mom Kathleen is not dead in this episode, since she was last mentioned by Wolf to be in Tulsa in the Season 1 finale, so I never thought Ham and Judy Tobin viewed Goldie as a replacement mom the whole time they spent with her at Paul's 70th/80th birthday party. At Judy and Ham's age, Goldie is more like a grandmother who teaches them how to dance and gives good dating advice. Maybe they did view her as a grandmotherly figure, but it was never an important part of the plot for them to bring it up.

While Ham and Judy celebrate Paul's 80th birthday with Goldie, the other Tobins and Honeybee try to tell Kurt to not let Judy make pottery again, but instead he talks them into making pottery like Judy. Goldie successfully gets her 23 fellow seniors to sneak out of the retirement home and party with Ham and Judy in her former home. I really liked Goldie and Ham's duet song about making good moments last, which tied into her message to Ham Tobin at the end. Her husband Paul worked a lot, so she did not get much time with him and then he died two days before his 70th birthday. Ham lets Goldie's story about Paul be a lesson to him and make more time to have special moments with Crispin Cienfuegos. When I get a steady girlfriend, I will let As Goldie as It Gets be a lesson to me and not wait through too much work to get closer to her. If The Great North makes it to 12 seasons like Bob's Burgers, you can bet this will go down in history as one of The Great North's best episodes because of Goldie's lesson to Ham. That and Judy Tobin's 90s rap song in the end credits. I found it kind of funny that the voice actors of Drama John, Bethany, Steven Huang and Mr. Golovkin were only credited for being part of Judy's Slammin' song.

The only secondary characters who talk in the main story of As Goldie as It Gets Adventure before the end credits were Officer Edna and Crispin Cienfuegos. After listening to the Slammin' song for the 87th time, I get the feeling that Drama John, Bethany, Steven Huang and Mr. Golovkin were written into the credits of As Goldie as It Gets Adventure at the last minute because many of The Great North's secondary voice actors who were not in the main storylines wanted to be the tiniest part of As Goldie as It Gets just so they could meet Holland Taylor, since she is older than all of The Great North's primary and secondary actors. The Family Guy episode Mom's the Word aged terribly well because while it wrote Phyllis Diller's death into the series by having Peter Griffin lose his mother and then meet a friend of hers played by Lauren Bacall, an actress of a similar age to Phyllis, it also predicted Lauren Bacall's death 4 months after it aired when Peter hugged Evelyn and broke her back. It was sadly fitting how this was Lauren's final acting credit before she died, and it appears that she died with the last character she ever played. Fortunately, Holland Taylor was still alive the day I wrote this review, in which this episode of The Great North was her final acting credit in 4 months. Hopefully, she will live to take on another new acting credit next year or play Goldie again in a second The Great North episode 3 years from now. Holland Taylor still has 10 more years before she turns 89 like Lauren Bacall, and I am happy that Goldie survived her first episode because Ham did not kill her with a hug. We could learn more about her life with Paul if she has useful stories to tell Wolf, Judy or Moon for how to have better relationships with Honeybee, Gill and Bethany in the same way she taught Ham a lesson for making time to play with Crispin. If there comes a next time for Holland Taylor to voice Goldie, whom I found to very memorable in a good way as a special guest character, I do not want her second or third storyline to be limited to Ham & Judy Tobin again. Even if Holland Taylor's name and voice never appear in The Great North again, I hope she lives to see many more years of this show in her lifetime.

Moon Tobin thinks he caught Bigfoot, but it turns out to be Honeybee Shaw's brother, Jerry Shaw. We viewers were introduced to him in Avocado Barter Adventure, when Honeybee told Judy Tobin about her life in Fresno. I thought it was great that The Great North decided to make Honeybee's brother a new recurring character in the middle of Season 1 by moving him to Alaska for her sister, Honeybee. It opened the door for Jerry to have a lot of hilarious adventures with the rest of the Tobin family, like Dip the Halls Adventure. Nick Offerman and Ron Funches played characters who worked at the same radio station in the Bob's Burgers episode Long Time Listener, First Time Bob, so it was very nice for The Great North to reunite these and even give them another storyline together as Beef and Jerry in the aforementioned Dip the Halls. I think Ron Funches either wanted his character, Honeybee's brother to become another recurring character, or Lizzie and Wendy liked Ron Funches's performance so much that they decided to make him a regular character in the middle of Season 1 for The Great North, which also happened to Danielle Fishel in the middle of Season 1 for Boy Meets World.

I have a lot to say about Keep Beef-Lievin Adventure because of Jerry Shaw moving to Alaska to live with or near his sister Honeybee Shaw, but the real meat of the story, the emotional heart of it is Moon Tobin. Keep Beef-Lievin' Adventure is not a melodrama by any means, but it was still easy for me to feel sad for Moon Tobin like Beef did because...we both like the feeling of what-if, and it broke our hearts to see the youngest Tobin child lose his sense of wonder, and wait for Dungeons and Dragons to become just Dungeons. You will never believe in a hundred million years how this ended - even though Moon Tobin mistaking Jerry Shaw for Bigfoot was the beginning of him losing his interest in catching Bigfoot, Beef Tobin gets Jerry Shaw to fix the same problem he caused by wearing the Bigfoot costume and walk by the woods at a distance near Lone Moose School, to help Moon Tobin believe in Bigfoot again. Moon Tobin thinks Jerry ate the crackers he used to bait Bigfoot the other morning, but Jerry's plane came in at night and the crackers were already gone when Jerry fell into Moon's Bigfoot trap. Wolf and Honeybee are happy that Jerry chose to stay in Alaska with them, but more importantly are proud to hear this new evidence that Bigfoot might be real after all. Another creature ate Moon's crackers before Jerry came to Alaska.

The 200th Bob's Burgers episode was a very special event for Bob's Burgers, and that is why I wanted to talk about it. Bob's Burgers caught fire the night before a very important day, Oceanfest! Linda enters a bad mermaid sculpture in the Oceanfest sculpture contest, and the Belcher kids want to make it look better, but it seems as if they started the fire. The Belcher kids feel bad about how horrible they were for causing the fire, and when they can not hand out fliers and learn the last thermal couple was sold to a shrimp restaurant which had not open yet, they question if they should rationalize another horrible thing to undo the first horrible thing that they did. Tina writes a note on one of the flyers for when Louise and Gene break the window with a brick and steal the thermal couple, but they do not have the heart to do it after all. Tina, Gene and Louise come back to Bob's Burgers with no other fliers given out and ask Linda to back their things, but Pam Shrimple returns with the note Tina wrote her and gives them the thermal couple since her restaurant does not open for another month. Ron and Hugo, who inspected Bob's Burgers the day before Oceanfest, visit again because Ron needs Hugo to apologize to Bob for throwing around the greasy rags, which combusted and started the fire. How ironic that the health inspector unintentionally started a restaurant fire! The Belcher kids are happy to learn they did not start the fire and decide to not move out. Linda rewards Teddy and Pam with a free burger on the house for helping to fix their restaurant, and she is happy to see her freaky mermaid get a chance to win the sculpture contest after all. I think it is unlikely that the people who took a picture by the mermaid were the actual sculpture judges taking pictures for the paper, but it was nice to give Linda hope regardless.

Pam Shrimple had a very familiar-sounding voice to me, and I was happy to learn it was Stephanie Beatriz, who still sounds like Conelly from Twelve Forever. A year after Twelve Forever was cancelled, it was a very special treat to hear Conelly's voice again at the end of Bob's Burgers' 200th episode. Even if you have never heard of Twelve Forever, the 200th Bob's Burgers episode is still an important episode worth watching because it emphasizes focus on Bob's relationship with his kids, and how much they care about helping Bob Belcher serve his Burgers when the chips are down. He was happy that they did the right thing by not stealing Pam's thermal coupler, yet he was also happy that they would almost commit theft to rescue their burger family business. The title of this episode was about Tina, Gene and Louise being bad kids, but the point of the title and the plot was that they had to face the error of their ways and become better kids. In Family Guy, Brian's a Bad Father would have more of a point as a title if that episode was less shallow and had Brian care about trying to be a better father for Dylan instead of using his position as an actor to get hired as a writer on Parent Boppers. It was nice to hear Conelly tell Bob Belcher that he had great kids who did not steal from her, but still wrote a note just in case because they wanted her thermal coupler. If Conelly knew how Reggie Abbott changed her ways to fix Todd's 13th birthday, she could also tell Todd that Reggie is a great friend and win Reggie's heart in the process. In most Bob's Burgers episodes, Louise, Gene and Tina have one plot at school and Bob, Linda and Teddy have another plot at their restaurant, so it is nice to see episodes like this and Best Burger that incorporate the whole family into a single plot where the kids are challenged to rescue the business.

I wish I could sleep for 2 nights in a row like Beef. I would feel very re-energized and sleep through all the danger everyone else is facing. Even though I have only known The Great North for 8 months, this is their funniest episode yet. I felt the same way about the Close Enough episode Man Up after I watched it when that show turned 8 months old. It was very funny when Beef Tobin was taking a long rest break from all his usual household chores, and his dreams were heightened versions of those tasks, so he literally did them in his sleep! I was also really invested in Judy and Ham's horror mystery where they were afraid that the school was turning them into lumber zombies. Wolf and Honeybee eating shrimp to win a new shrimp T-shirt for Beef, I found that plot to be the least interesting of this episode. Something I noticed about the early two seasons of The Great North is that, unlike the early two/three seasons of Bob's Burgers and Central Park, stories taking place at the school have to carry too many recurring characters with dialogue in a single episode. I have to keep track of as many kids in The Great North as I have in Craig of the Creek, and The Great North's kids are harder to tell apart because they have less unique outfits and appearances, but they all show some distinct personality traits for the one minute they have on screen. Fortunately, Fox has been kind enough to Bob's Burgers to let it be the 5th animated series they kept on the air for 10+ years, so I believe Duncanville and The Great North have the same potential in character mileage to stay fresh for a whole decade. I am beginning to like The Great North a lot more than Bob's Burgers, but still less than Central Park.

It was a very good character study of Tina Belcher's weird obsession with every boy she meets. I have a slightly similar experience with girls; I have met many girls I loved over my time in grade school; but I can't settle for just one because we don't stay together for long. Tina and I may not be polyamorous, but we both have a quiet obsession with butts and we both learned it is OK to fall in love as many times as we like. The subplot of Bob hiding Teddy's rat from Hugo was very humorous, but it was the least of this episode. I was super excited to watch it again after I learned that Josh Gad, Rory O'Malley, Daveed Diggs and Andrew Rannells voiced the boys whom Tina imagined singing songs for her. I think the Season 9 premiere of Bob's Burgers accidentally gave Loren Bouchard and Nora Smith the idea for Central Park, because watching it in 2021 is a very different experience from watching it when it first aired in 2018, which I did not do. Now all I hear when Damon, the gum boy, Chad, Jesse and Hayden sing are boys who sound like Birdie, Elwood, Helen, and Griffin. Since they were all auditioning to replace Boo Boo in the boy band, it makes perfect sense that each of their actors would also be good singers for when Tina imagines them singing. What is even funnier is that Birdie and Griffin's conflict in Rival Busker, is very reminiscent of something else that happens during Hayden's song about space.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of those rare sequels famous for surpassing the original predecessor in every way. It had a much bigger budget than the first movie (justified by all of the new liquid metal special effects and more frequent vehicle damage), a longer runtime with a more substantially deep plot (seriously, watch the extended version to see some good additional scenes for which the theatrical release was already long enough without having them), and longer but well-directed action scenes. Joe Morton was a great supporting actor in this movie and another extended classic, the 4-hour happy hour-I mean, The Justice League's Zack Snyder cut. Even compared to the theatrical version of Terminator 2, The Justice League's Joss Whedon cut was too short and too silly. Terminator 2: Judgement Day feels like a great movie on which to blow your entire 100 million-dollar budget because James Cameron pulled out all the stops with non-digital car and helicopter chases, and there was lots of thrilling suspense to be had in every sequence of Sarah and John trying to escape the T-1000. It was kind of nice how Alien inspired James Cameron to make The Terminator with another female protagonist escaping from and then fighting some type of sci-fi monster. The Terminator and Alien were both sci-fi action and horror at the same time, and Terminator 2 and Aliens are sci-fi action movies that downplay the horror elements quite a bit.

I thought it was pretty cool how The Terminator premiered in the same year as another slasher film, A Nightmare on Elm Street. However, that movie is supernatural horror while this is science fiction horror. In The Terminator, the plot is always on the move - just like the main characters trying to get away from the T-800. Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor all she needs to know about the future he is from and the Terminator while he is driving her away from the Terminator. Arnold Schwarzenegger was worried that playing a villain would be terrible for his acting career, but he turned out to like playing the bad guy for once and he had the right body to play a strong robot who looked like a human. However, his one condition for James Cameron getting him back for Terminator 2 was that his T-800 character would become the hero protecting Sarah Connor from a new Terminator villain. In the 1-hour "Other Voices" documentary from the The Terminator DVD, I learned that Linda Hamilton really broke her ankle during filming, which meant all of her running scenes were filmed late in the schedule, and that made the peril of those moments feel even more real to me when I know why Sarah was having a hard time running away from a huge truck and carrying Kyle Reese at the same time.

It is not a good thriller when your protagonist is tortured with claustrophobia to no end, with no means of escape and various failed attempts while the people he cares about get killed out there. This movie is only for people who hate good guys and want them to suffer with no other substance. If you want to see a better, less upsetting movie with this gimmick of one actor, you should go watch Locke instead.

It was a very suspenseful, high-stakes pressure situation with a lot of tension, and very good writing and directing. While Eleanor, Chidi and Michael come up with a new afterlife system to pitch to The Judge Of The Universe, she is trying to reset the Earth and I laughed as we got a glimpse of her journey with the original Good Janet to look for her button-clicker to reset Earth. The jokes with them in the voids of Neutral Janet, Bad Janet and Disco Janet all hit and did not miss my head. The best part of this episode, the real turning point that solves the problem to get Shawn on board with a new afterlife system he did not believe in, is when Michael confronts Shawn and pretends to give up, which annoys Shawn after their ongoing feud for 33 episodes. I was really surprised to see Shawn, the main devil boss of The Good Place, to open up to Michael and admit "Fighting with you was the most fun I ever had." and then Michael says "You wouldn't have let me try the original experiment if things were working. Let's try a new way." It was truly a testament to Marc Evan Jackson's previously untapped acting abilities, plus the director and music composer of this scene, to make us feel sad for a character we spent the whole series hating without it ever feeling forced, and have him agree to Michael's terms against all odds.

But that is a nearly impossible thing to pull off. I believe everything scratch bird said about Corporate being Better Off Ted without the heart and humor. Ed, Edd n Eddy and Better Off Ted usually know how to have this comedy of characters being jerks to each other when they have more varied humor and character personalities. Corporate is really more like if Stressed Eric was live-action with a creepier, more serious tone because it wanted to make Better Off Ted more grim, hopeless, bleak and cruel so it was a "comedy" in name only. 95% of all the Corporate characters are two-dimensional exaggerated caricatures acting like evil killer robot wannabes, because they are just like Maria, Paul Power, Liz Feeble and Ray Perfect's family in the sense that their sole purpose in every episode's story is to make Matt miserable for doing the right thing. The few good characters are clinically depressed suicidal losers who never win because they are just a tool in their torture machine bosses' cosmic design to destroy humanity, and their attempts to do good and help each other always fail in the end. Stressed Eric and Corporate are both the most sadist show comedies I have ever seen, which you should only watch if you want something to hate or learn everything you should NOT do in a dark comedy. If you want to know how to do that style of humor any better, Phineas and Ferb is the antithesis to Stressed Eric's predictable "failure is the only option" sort of comedy where we should root against Candace for wanting to bust the boys and her attempts to bust them are usually interesting to see, and Seasons 3 and 4 of The Good Place are the antithesis to Corporate which taught me why doing good things to fix a messed-up system in our world is not pointless, and potentially effective things we can say to reason with bad people that will help them question how they have been doing things before. On a very related note, Phineas and Ferb taught me that a controlling platypus is a metaphor for corporations, government, teachers, and other unfair-treating authorities that are keeping you down.

The Powerpuff Girls is another mediocre reboot nobody needed because it does not have the fast-paced energy of the original series. There is a lot less fighting and violence in this reboot, and several episodes have unnecessary fart jokes that are not very funny. I disagree with Nick Jennings's creative decisions to delete Sedusa and put Miss Bellum on a 1,000-day vacation. Many of the original show's villains barely get a big part in this show. However, Silico and Duplikate are new villains that I found worth watching. Bliss is no Bunny, but she is OK as her own character, and I like Olivia Olson. I know that this reboot wants to be more character-driven than the original series, and that is OK to have a different identity as long as it stays true to the original PPG characters. Some episodes are entertaining and worth watching, when they utilize the personalities of the Powerpuff Girls and Professor Utonium correctly, and some episodes still have their typical super battles. Maylyn and Donny were also good additions to this new show.

You can be angry at the writers and directors of The 2016 Powerpuff Girls all you want for the direction in which they took this show, but do not hate the voice actors for working in it. Most of them still put on a good performance with the material they were written, and the new voices of the Powerpuff Girls and Princess Morbucks still sound more like who came before them, than the new adult voices of the Rugrats reboot. The new Buttercup voice sounds bad, but with the other three girls, I agree with Nick Jennings's creative decision to give The Powerpuff Girls 2016 some new energy by casting younger new actors with less experience to voice the kids. No matter how badly-received this reboot is, it served as a valuable stepping stone for better animated shows, to get Amanda Leighton in Amphibia and Natalie Palamides in Duncanville. Voicing kids and teens is a good place for any cartoon actors under 30 to get their start. I found Kristen Li's performance of Bubbles and Kate Higgins's performance of Maylyn to be the saving graces of this show. Kristen Li was 13 years old when she was cast in this show with Amanda, Natalie and Haley on June 8, 2015. She imitated what she originally heard from Tara Strong's voice of Bubbles, and she surprised me by giving a sweeter, more organically high and childish performance of Bubbles than what I previously heard before. Tara is still a talented actress in Kim Possible, Fillmore, Teen Titans and Friendship is Magic, I just think Bubbles is a role that didn't suit her so well, in the way Hello Kitty did when she was Kristen Li's age. If Kristen Sarkisian works in cartoons and video games as much as Tara Lyn Charendoff, then she is destined for the same post-Powerpuff success that Tara had. Tara Charendoff-Strong would definitely be a great person to mentor Kristen Li-Sarkisian in professional voice acting.

Josh and Alex have a special thing where they go to the restaurant Medieval Times to celebrate The Cable Guy, and Emily and Bridgette play guitars and sing music together at Solid Grounds, but each pair starts a falling out after one of them has other interests to pursue. Alex is publishing a book Future Viking from 3030, and Emily is too obsessed with photos of Candice to write a new song with Bridgette. After going to Medieval Times alone, Josh finds a lost dog in an alley, The Canine Guy who escaped an evil scientist that created him as an animal-human hybrid experiment! Meredith Breedmore, the evil scientist, comes by to ask Josh if he saw her dog, which he denies, and Pearle recognizes Dog-Boy's van from a cold case. Dog-Boy likes playing with Josh, but he also helps Alex with his Future Viking novel after seeing something in it that other publishers do not see. I really liked the joke when Bridgette said "I'll show you a post!" and Emily's phone bounced off 7 different meaning of posts. The phone hits Al Yankovic, America's only respected comedy songwriter, who settles Emily and Bridgette's argument about family getting in the way of music by telling them they just need to be true to themselves. A bear mauls Weird Al, and more of Meredith's freaky animal-human hybrids run after Bridgette and Emily. Alex and Josh find Dog-Boy at Meredith's lab, but argue over which one of them is more his friend. Meredith Breedmore is making animals who act like humans to make animal movies that improve on CG talking animals. Emily and Bridgette apologize for not getting along before the animals get called over to Meredith's lab by the clap-activated alarm, and Josh and Alex save Dog-Boy by making the most annoying sound from Dumb and Dumber to drive away the other Breedmore animals attacking them. I was pretty disappointed with the punch line that Pearle was only looking for Meredith Breedmore for 5 unpaid parking tickets. While it was a funny sense of misdirection that Pearle was coming after her for a different reason than we thought, I was a bit worried that she may or may not be charged for her animals. Now I am not as worried as I originally was, because in the chance that the courts do find out about her questionable animal services, she might have a point about doing the world a service with real animal actors - especially in regards to the live-action The Lion King and Helen Mirren's When Nature Calls. Rescuing Dog-Boy helps Alex and Josh reconcile their friendship, and gives Bridgette and Emily a new song to compose. While The Canine Guy does not really feel to me like the kind of story that would warrant a full half-hour in Close Enough, it was cool to dive a little deeper into the interpersonal friendships of our four main characters when they have a falling out, and have the Dog-Boy rescue mission bring them back together in an organic way. A lot of the Jim Carrey movie references were funny too, and this episode really made me want to check out Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (which sounds like the kind of detective fit for this plot), and The Cable Guy.

Both of the two main gals try to spice up their love life and each have their own first dates. While Emily recreated her first date with Josh, Bridgette got her first new date with a man who turned out to be a conjoined twin sewn to his ex-girlfriend. The funny thing is, when Alex came to be Bridgette's wingman, he also fell for the woman sewn to the man dating Bridgette. Close Enough takes an interesting turn towards its Regular Show roots when Josh and Emily go to a haunted house, get separated by a magic wall, and find each other in a house of mirrors that tries to keep them apart and convince them they are dead, but that does not stop them from finding each other again. It was short but sweet, unlike Bridgette and Alex's plot. They go to the Conjoined tattoo parlor to be a conjoined double-date with Ron and Joy, but back out of it a minute later after Alex reconnects with Bridgette. I felt just like Candice when she wanted her mom to work with her because she is too busy at FoodCorp. FoodCorp's common PR disasters that reminded me to check every can for a condom really interested me in seeing an episode focusing on Mr. Salt in the future. He was bad at the beginning to steal Candice's idea for the school garden, but he was also good at the ending to allow Emily to come at 6:45 instead of 6:00 so she could play Grave Rollers with Candice. Also, he or Emily should fire the couple having sex who were responsible for the condom in the first place. We saw them twice while Emily was speeding around with the time hat. Emily wanted to spend more time with Candice by planting a FoodCorp garden at her school, but Mr. Campbell prevented her from doing that by only having the kids nurture their emotional garden. I didn't like how the snail tricked Emily by warning her of the consequences at the worst moment when he sneezed and she could not hear what he said during that time skip, that the hat would age her fast if she used it out of the garden. That snail was an evil banana, but Josh came in to be the good cactus and with excellent marksman ship, threw a rock that bounced off the right things to hit the snail and suck him into a wormhole, which aged Emily and Candice down to their original ages the day before Emily met the talking snail.

So Long Boys really made me question how to do a vasectomy. Josh wanted a vasectomy to not accidentally make another baby with Emily. Vasectomies are usually reversible, but not the way Calabasas Urologist does it by burning testicles with a robot's laser. Emily was very sad to pack up Candice's baby clothes. I liked the racial humor bit when Bridgette thought Emily would have seven babies, and allowed her to say something about Japanese people in return. Pearl handcuffs Bridgette to a pipe for being racist by mentioning Emily being Mexican. Josh rethinks a vasectomy after seeing a teenage brother and sister in the Future Father Fun ride who act like animatronic beings, but are actually teenage actors under exclusive contract. Josh and Alex find Cameron and Skye in their makeshift bedroom closet. Alex thinks he is their dad since he was a sperm donor there, and they look and act just like him. Emily runs to Calabasas Urologist to find Josh, but it gets locked down as he and Alex bust Cameron and Skye out of there and run away from the vasectomy robots. Emily sneaks in through the vent to find Josh, and they agree they are not ready to commit to having no more kids. Josh and Emily defeat the vasectomy robots by making them laser each other where their crotches would be. I was disappointed when I learned Skye and Cameron's dad was really a republican senator from Florida, because Alex was a great father figure to them and protected them from the robots when he thought they were his kids. I hope Cameron and Skye come by again to visit Alex in a later season. Clap Like This is a video game that I would love to play if it was real. It has screenshare, and everybody likes to clap their hands. I was very disappointed when Josh almost sold his game to San & Playus because Dev and Mel are just glorified assistants who tricked him. With their newfound riches from Clap Like This, the Singletons celebrate and Bridgette's 26th birthday at WeHo house. Bridgette's mom cuts her off financially and now she has to get a real job instead of just being a social media influencer. I was sad for Bridgette because folding clothes in Forever 23 didn't pay much, she thought the Singleton would buy their own house without her and Alex, and it turned out to be a scary job for her when the mannequins came to life and wanted to turn Bridgette into one of them. Josh needed a lot of extra shifts in Plugger-Inners and took Dante's dangerous off-the-books installations to pay off his family's credit card debt because he was embarrassed to tell Emily and Candice that he did not sell Clap Like This, but fortunately he told them before they bought their own house. After Josh installed a TV at Forever 23, he and his family get trapped with Bridgette because the mannequins want to turn them into mannequins for spare parts. Candice has fun playing Clap Like This, and screenshare mode saves Bridgette and the Singletons from the mannequins when they all clap their hands and their arms fall off. Bridgette's mom tells Bridgette she is not cut off anymore when she sees how little she earns at Forever 23. Bridgette is glad the Singletons are not moving out, but she still takes half of what her mom will give her because she does not want to live off of Alex's budget hummus. Clap Like This made me question how much I would work if I was desperate to earn a large sum of money, and I liked having David Hasselhoff voice himself in that scene where Josh installed a TV at his house.

Prank War started out with a funny premise, Josh believing he was too old for pranks and helping out a Bush Guy his age play a prank on Bridgette and Emily, but then the plot quickly spun out of control when Bush Guy falls into a coma, and the entire story becomes a cruel prank on Bridgette and Emily when they go to jail for manslaughter, and they nearly get killed in a prison riot. I actually thought this was a much bigger, more elaborate part of Bush Guy's prank that was accidentally improvised by his coma. Josh, Alex and Candice need to bring Bush Guy to the jail so he can drop the charges on Bridgette and Emily, and the situation gets really out of control when Candice falls asleep on a big red button and calls in a military tank to stop the prison riot. Bridgette wakes up Bush Guy and he drops the charges, but then one of the prisoners follows Emily home to stab her with a fork and scare Josh, which makes him excited for prank wars again. I don't know about you, but I know that it is not a cool prank to have your victims die in prison for putting you in a coma. Cool Moms was a really interesting episode about Emily and Candice joining a group of cool moms and cool kids to befriend. Jojo and Mia seem like a nice pairing of cool moms, until Emily sees what a bad influence Jojo is on Mia. She gives Mia no boundaries, and lets her to do very bad things like breaking Candice's piggy bank and drink beer underage. While Josh and Alex help Randy find Pearle relaxing in a secret nudist temple, which I found to be the less interesting of thsee two plots, Emily challenges Jojo to an arm-wrestling match so that Mia will not break Candice's arm. Candice's Momm Rulez hat motivates Emily to be stronger and break Jojo's arm, so she lets Mia drive home. Trish, the "norm-core" cool mom, is proud of Emily for standing up to the frightening Jojo, and Candice starts a healthier friendship with Maddie. I really like how Candice's shirt has a cat and Maddie's shirt has a dog and their clothes are nearly the same color scheme. Perhaps they were meant for each other to be friends.

Josh wants to bond with his daughter, Candice, and see if she likes any of the things that he does. They share a common interest in skating, but after Josh gets hurt, Goosh becomes a better Skate Dad than Josh. Josh is jealous that Goosh was good at teaching Candice, and he challenges him to a skate down the dangerous hill of Baxter Street. Unfortunately, Candice skateboards down on her own, and they need to go rescue her. Josh tells Goosh that he wanted to teach Candice to skate because he was interested in skateboards as a kid and his dad never taught him skating. Goosh turns out to be a good guy who sympathizes with Josh because he also did skateboarding to reject his own dad. After Josh skateboards down the dangerous hill with Candice and Emily and survives, Goosh ends the episode by saying "That man's no skate dad. He's a skate father." Later, Emily needs to have a 100% no stress day with Bridgette, and Josh, Alex and Candice do everything on her to-do list for her. The last item on her list, the Earthquake ham, is a big challenge for them because all the hams were stolen by Wurst Bros. Josh uses his genius brain to find a way to escape the meat grinder, and after they raid the vault of stolen hams, they go on a high-speed chase away from Wurst Bros to bring their hams home. When the clowns that Alex told Josh about earlier come back, Josh remembers what Alex said about how they never back down from a bet, he bets his and Alex's lives that they can beat the clowns and Wurst Brothers in his Ladder World video game. Emily comes in to help Josh and Alex win their life bet and learns that video games are her thing for a no-stress day. I think this pair of episodes is when Close Enough really found its footing, and when Close Enough met my high expectations and finally became a jolly good regular show.

Since Close Enough has a funny concept about Emily and Josh being new parents in their 30s who act like immature 20-somethings, I knew Close Enough would have a whole thing about turning 30. Logan's Run'd was cool because 25 year-old Bridgette, the only one of the four main adult characters under 30, doubts Josh, Emily and Alex's night partying skills when they watch The Great British Bake-Off, but they want to come with her. The Logan's night club works just like Logan's Run. If you are over 30, it makes you a Very Irrelevant Person, not Very Important Person, and you are executed on a ruby red couch. I felt kind of bad for Bridgette when she was jail-baited by a 26-month old pretending to be a 26-year old. Alex sacrificed himself for Josh and Emily to escape because he is too old and lame to party, but they rescue Alex by reminding him of the good parts of getting old. I really like how Alex found out that the boss of the nightclub was a hypocrite over 30. This episode about Logan's Run takes place when it was 43 years old. Alex quickly figured out that the nightclub host was 50 years old because he knew about such an old movie that few people in the millennial generation know. That was funny to hear him say "And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you nosy 35-year old kids!" Hopefully everybody else in the nightclub killed him for executing 30-somethings who were younger than he is. Room Parents was pretty bad. By accidentally volunteering to be room parent for the year, Josh got into a cruel and unusual situation with Nikki, who had a fake kid made of straw so she could scam school fundraisers every time she tried to be a room co-parent for a school. Josh got the money back, but but then Mr. Campbell and the faculty decided to make him room parent for life. Somebody needs to tell Mr. Campbell and whomever wrote Room Parents that choosing to turn somebody from room parent for the year to room parent for life is not legally binding just because he says it is. Besides, what is the point of choosing a room parent for the year if you can just unfairly change the rules behind their back so that whomever was room parent for the year will be room parent for every year of their life even after their kid has graduated from the school? That line was not even funny. It was just ridiculous and groan-worthy to hear.

Quilty Pleasures was not that great. I do not like Mr. Campbell's misleading reverse grading systems of what As and Fs stand for, I had no idea what sort of creatures the street urchin kids really were after they quickly turned old overnight, and I am surprised Mr. Campbell, a kindergarten teacher, approved Candice's naked quilt drawing of her family. To me and I assume, also to Josh and Emily, it didn't feel right to hear Mr. Campbell commend them for letting Candice do her own art project when he did not know they spent all night going somewhere else to make Candice's quilt. The Perfect House is yes better because it really spoke to how difficult Emily and Josh's living situation is. When Bridgette and Alex were screwing around with body paint and newspapers, and making a mess of their house, Emily liked visiting open houses to think about a life she could have away from them, and Josh bought a family bike to give them something to do together as a family. I think The Perfect House was like WandaVision a year before WandaVision was even a thing - making fun of the escapism of cheesy 1980s family sitcoms, but also following the format instead of fighting it a la WandaVision's 5th episode, A Very Special Episode.

Regular Show an entertaining show most of the time with a lot of episodes, but...it was just a regular show. After learning about The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, I wasn't sure if Regular Show actually promoted slackerist culture or not. Despite all the different animals and things in Regular Show, their world is very regular and the title is generic. Close Enough is...another regular show, probably even more regular than Regular Show because it focuses on humans instead of. A raccoon and a blue jay, but it has a more apt title. Josh and Emily strive to make a good life for Candice, their 5-year old daughter, and they need their divorced friends Alex and Bridgette to help them pay rent for a big apartment that Candice thought was a mansion in Sauceface. In some episodes, Josh makes some video games that we hope will sell one day, especially after the events of Clap Like This. Close Enough is a great spiritual successor to Regular Show, not because it can have more adult situations that Regular Show ever could, but because it has the same enticing formula in which a regular show could get into excitingly surreal situations. Close Enough came at the right time, for young adults who watched Regular Show as kids 10 years ago. Even kids who are two times Candice's age might enjoy Close Enough if they liked Regular Show, even though Close Enough is too old for them. The Singletons are not the best family, but they are close enough. I do not just watch Close Enough for human Mordecai and human Eileen, I also watch Close Enough for Kimiko Glenn because I absolutely adored her performances in DuckTales 2017 and Into the Spider-Verse.

My only disappointment for Close Enough is that 8 half-hour episodes per season is much too short for an amazing show like this! At least make 10-episode seasons like Rick and Morty. I appreciate the fact that Season 2 expanded Close Enough's scope a bit by giving us new episodes focusing on Bridgette, Randy, Pearle and Mr. Campbell like we haven't seen before in Season 1. I hope Season 3 will also have two episodes each focus on showing us more about Dante, Mr. Salt, Maddie and Trish without being as mundane as Mr. Campbell's story in World's Greatest Teacher.