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Animaniacs (2020)
Has some good ideas and bad agendas behind it
I grew up watching "Animaniacs (1993)", rewatched it in full in my teenage years and plan to rewatch it again eventually to score and review it on IMDb. I also strongly hate the concept of remakes and believe they just don't have the right to exist (which in my favoured gaming industry is sadly still a fringe opinion compared with the more correct, irritated sentiment the fans of non-interactive visual media have developed towards the concept by now). So perhaps I'm poised to be biased against "Animaniacs (2020)". However, I believe in giving things (even those born entirely of greed, nostalgia-baiting and creative cowardice) a fair shake, which I'm going to do from the next paragraph on - pretending that it's a standalone work and not a reboot, and judging it accordingly. For my thoughts on how the reboot compares with (my memories of) the OG, you can check my reviews on some specific episodes.
"Animaniacs" is a comedy cartoon, with several sketches per episode which primarily end up using one of two sets of characters: either the Warner siblings (boringly PC and preachy classic cartoon style tricksters) or Pinky&the Brain, two mice (a genius and an insane one) on a quest to take over the world. Third in frequency, though backloaded to mostly Season 3 is a segment featuring Starbox&Cindy: the former is an alien commander of a genocidal fleet about to destroy Earth kidnapped by the latter, a cute toddler, before he can send the invasion signal. On balance, the mice are the best segment and the most consistent one in quality: their sketches are varied (in spite of very much being formula-based), imaginative and very funny, and the characters are very charismatic. Starbox&Cindy probably come second - they have much less quantity, but they have their own, distinct style, a progressing plot and a lot of fun and charm. The Warners tend to be the most uneven in quality and too prone to propagandising their progressive writers' worldviews and conspiracy theories. Still, they have their moments of quirky fun and merry songs.
Disappointingly, a lot of humour is of the gross-out type; and a lot of other stuff feels very strongly like a time capsule of late 2010s' (not even 2020s') America. Inevitably, a lot of segments feel quite boring, and as if the creators enjoyed them more than anybody in the audience conceivably could. Still, some imaginative segments and funny gags can be found and do tend to make up for what is otherwise a fairly pedestrian experience. It's not a hall-of-fame-er, but is a neat little cartoon, clearly targetting adults without being (fully) of that awful "modern Western adult cartoon" stock, where ugliness, disgustingness, swearing and torturing the characters came to be seen as selling features. It can even be enjoyed with kids - mostly, and with some prep-work for a partiular episode based on your parental sensibilities.
Animaniacs: Soda-pressed/A Starbox Is Born/Royal Flush (2023)
Best episode of the season, best "Starbox&Cindy" of the show
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 3: 5/10.
When "Starbox&Cindy" first appeared in "Animaniacs (2020)", I thought that it was potentially an amazing addition to the segment roster, which could return some of the variety feel the OG series had while not bankrupting the show via Bernadette Peters' singing paycheck (worth it as she may be). Peppering some "S&C" in seemed like an absolute winner, what's with the idea being absolutely hilarious and very stylistically distinct (and awesome). For the two first seasons we only had 1 "S&C" per, but apparently the creators just decided to backload the segment, as in the somewhat smaller S3 we have 3 entire "S&C" episodes, for almost 4 times the density. In the end, I would say S3 has exactly the "S&C" density the rest of the show needed to have, perhaps even if it meant sacrficing some of the plot progression focus they apparently wanted to have in each new installment for a more serialised approach. (Though maybe the plot focus could be maintained if they had another quality running non-Warner, non-Pinky&the Brain segment - the gnome living in people's mouth clearly wasn't cutting it; but I tend to think that "Dog days" proves that you can have very fun plot-disconnected "S&C" one-offs.) And while S2's segment had me doubt my intial like for the concept a bit, being decent but not as great as S1's one, this "Starbox" is the best one in the show. It's true to the formula/concept and yet has some great fun with the theatre aspect, and "sinners in the hands of an angry Cindy" bit being just fascinating style-wise - and hilarious. The direction "S&C" plot takes in S3 is cool, though the finale to it is pretty bad/weird and doesn't seem to go anywhere, which rather makes me question the need to pseudo-advance the plot if you're not actually going to actually change the status quo. Honestly I could do entirely without the alien king and the Predator-style assassin, they kind of muddy the idea a lot, but I don't suppose I hate that story progression, questionable as that might make what exactly Starbox's role is and how is it different whether he or the assassin gives the signal.
The P&tB segment is decently fun, though it feels just a bit too safe humour-wise and the finale is nonsensical. The Warners' first segment is interesting - the story is fun and the moralising is subverted a little bit, which I always enjoy.
All and all, a lovely episode.
Animaniacs: Animaliens/Murder Pals/Groundmouse Day Again/Island Of Dr. Warnerau (2023)
"Animaniacs (2020)" goes horror
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 3: 5/10.
The odd one out of the segments of this episode is the Pinky&the Brain one, which is a continuation of the previous episode's segment's story - a rather rare example of a plotline split between episodes in this series. The segment is very good (though I could do without some moments) and has a fun resolution to the plotline. But for all of the other ones, we're dealing with the series' foray into horror, with the Warner siblings' segments in particular delievering some inspired and spooky monster designs. The "Murder pals" segment also has a very fun visual aesthetic, styled after the look and texture of mid-last-century paper comic strips. All and all, visually, in terms of the actual art, this episode has a lot to praise, even though I found the plots/humour to be more of a mixed bag.
Animaniacs: Planet Warner/Talladega Mice: The Ballad of Pinky Brainy/D.I.Why (2023)
There's not much to thi episode, really
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 3: 5/10.
Standing as possibly the worst episode in the season, this one just seems uninspired. The Pinky&the Brain segment seemed very gimmicky, based around doing American movie celeberity voice impressions, something that leaves me very cold. The gross-out humour didn't exactly help. The first segment, while a nice spoof of the "Planet Earth"s, is more inside baseball - likely very fun for the creators, less so for me. Finally, the final segment I just didn't find funny at all.
Honestly, I'm finding it quite difficult to remember, let alone say, much about this one.
Animaniacs: What is That?/Mouse Madness/Christopher Columbusted/Fake Medicines (2021)
Incredibly imaginative parts mixed with culture war virtue-signalling
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 2: 5/10.
The first two segments of the episode are both great and incredibly imaginative: the first one is purely comedic, whereas the second one has genuine horror elements that for some reason consistently managed to unsettle me a good deal - in addition to the comedy that remained great! The last segment is alright, not too much to complain about. These three might have some plotholes, gross-out moments or things like that between themselves, but standalone they'd probably get a 7 (an 8 with the OG intro). But man, that Columbus segment!..
Compare that segment with the one in "Animaniacs (1993)" about another great historical naval explorer, Magellan. Perhaps Magellan's feat is greater; perhaps Columbus' calculations were wrong, his discoveries - born of luck, and his governing style - abhorrent; but still, the song about Magellan is comedic, playful and yet informative and underscoring just what a massive feat his circumnavigation (concluded in his absence) was. Columbus' one is just non-stop meanspiritedness, soapboxing and bad takes ("buT tHerE WerE AlrEadY pEOpLe THerE" - great, when were intending to inform the greatest political, industrial and intellectual centres of the world of their forefathers' discoveries of these new continents? They'd forgotten there were other continents for crying out loud, a rediscovery is still closer to discovery, especially when done over months, not centuries, like their forefathers had to do on account of technological backwardness of their time and region.
I can't be the only non-American non-progressive non-fan of culture-wars among the audience of the reboot. This segment seems to mostly tie into the American debate about Columbus Day that has rotten the writers' brains. But I don't care about this debate and don't want to be explicitly propagandised to by either side while watching "Animaniacs" of all things! The 1993 version was irreverent as its core value, unlike this one that couldn't be more reverent to its progressive golden calves.
Animaniacs: Yakko's Big Idea/Mouse Congeniality/Rejected Animaniacs Characters (2021)
Possibly the best episode of the season
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 2: 5/10.
Other than my usual complaints, this episode is, well, possibly the best of the season. The (the) Pinky&the Brain segment is definitely one of their top ones, and oh wow, has there been some very stiff competition in this season alone! - (t)P&tB definitely do form the backbone of the reboot and represent the most competently and consistently executed part. This segment had a couple of fun subversions to the usual running jokes (though the final twist couldn't be more predictable). It's somewhat perplexing to have two Maduro/Trump Tower episodes back-to-back yet without a clear narrative link, though I suppose it beats some of the show's other obsessions.
The Warners' segments are also very watchable and fun, but also a little bit gimmicky - they come across as a result of the writing room wheezing with laughter at their own ideas, but then not quite executing them the way they were in their mind's eye or just failing to grow more meat on them. Well, they can't all be winners, and these ones would still get to at least be among the prize-takers.
Animaniacs: Rome Sweet Rome/Backwards Pinky/Wakko's Short Shorts: Now Loading (2021)
Orange man bad
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 2: 5/10.
"-Orange man's badness affirmation requested. Group identity threatened if orange man's badness not affirmed. Do you copy? Over.
-Orange man bad. I repeat, orange man bad. I repeat repeat, orange man real bad. Orange man dumb-dumb and bad-bad, over.
-Copy that. Me happy, orange man's badness affirmed. Orange man done now! We have avenged Hillary!"
In what is likely (God I hope) to be the worst episode of the series and is definitely the worst of the season, we have the writers deciding to boldly broach a never-before heard topic and deliver a few thousand blows to a hitherto-too-sacred target. Oh, wait, they didn't do any of that, they just kept doing the literal opposite until I could watch no longer. Going to be one hell of a timecapsule a few decades from now ("If the unhinged orange man doesn't win the 2024 vote and start a nuclear war, HA HA HA!").
Animaniacs: WhoDonut/Mousechurian Candidate/Starbox and Cindy (2020)
"Starbox and Cindy" is amazing!
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 1: 5/10.
"Animaniacs (2020)" (at least so far) isn't quite as varied as its preceding version was, with only two segments: the Warners themselves and Pinky and the Brain. That's enough to carry the show: the Warners can be placed in any setting to deliver either a normal story or some musical number; and Pinky and the Brain *did* very much carried a show on their own, though they're definitely much more formula-based. In this episode both of their segments are competent at worst. However, there was space for more characters, more types of sketches. After all, who'd say no to more Rita and Runt, for instance? Well, the show's budgeting department, I guess. But you can always come up with new stuff, right? Well, they didn't quite do that with "Starbox and Cindy". It's somewhat of a borrowed formula from "Pinky, Elmyra&the Brain" - and possibly, though I've not watched them and thus can't confirm - from "Invader Zim" and "Kid vs Kat". But there's just something about it.
The segment's intro is an epic, pathos-filled narrative of an evil, conquering-and-destroying alien civilization converging upon Earth with a massive fleet. The sentient life is slated for consumption once the grim commander Starbox, the pointman of the invasion, sends the signal from his landed saucer. The fleet will only begin the conquest once the signal is received, and will wait until then. Only, the aliens are toy-sized, and commander Starbox is kidnapped by a little girl before he can send the signal, his saucer left behind in her sandbox. The intro is amazing and just keeps putting a smile on my face on rewatch. The idea that Earth is about to face apocalyptic annihilation it can't fight back against or prevent - only, the apocalypse can't begin while the commander is dressed up or flung around by a cute toddler, is so hilariously absurd and yet compelling that you can't help but feel invested. Cindy coos uninterruptedly as the wordless but expressive Starbox surmounts obstacle after obstacle just to try and reach the signal pad in his saucer. The artstyle of the segment is very different to the rest of the show, it's softer, smoother and more pastel in colour. There is something very comfy and pleasant about that aesthetic and Cindy herself - again, juxtaposed so well against that evil alien Dan Dare Starbox, his predicament and Earth's possibly delayed doom. Bizarrely, though, the segment is never followed up on in this season, and my hopes aren't too great going forward. Maybe it just uniquely appeals to me and most fans hated it, but I feel like "Starbox and Cindy" every other episode would be pure gold."We're waiting, we're waaaaiting!"
Animaniacs: Warner She Wrote/France France Revolution/Gift Rapper (2020)
Tonally weird
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 1: 5/10.
Watching Season 1 of "Animaniacs (2020)" I've occasionally felt that the series was kind of lost tonally: is it a kids' show, or can it go darker; is it irreverent or politically correct? The end result is sometimes quite weird: in "Good Warner Hunting" segment from Episode 5 the show zigzags from implying dark things, to switching to a lighter tone, to outright showing pretty dark, disturbing things, to inexplicably reversing the dark elements in the finale. Here a similar thing happens with "France France revolution" - the show doesn't know how respectfully and how darkly it wants to portray Marie Antoinette. So we get a portrayal that doesn't end up tormented like the male antagonists, but gets its historical dark finale strongly implied. Imagine if the Warners' fawning over Lincoln in the OG series had them joke about boring theatre making one want to blow one's brains out - that's the dissonance that comes across.
The rapper segment was also weird. It seemed to want to set up a "rap vs Shakespear" thing (pandering to a stereotypical boomer audience, I guess), but ends up just going "rap vs rap", with Shakespear just having been awkwardly shoved in... for some reason... In the end, when some particles interrupt the crowd's applause, I thought the idea was that Yakko's performance magically "cured" a portion of the crowd of their hip-hop "infection" and their outlandish clothes suddenly transformed into business-casual ones - it would've been very lame, but it would've made at least some thematic sense. Instead, that part of the crowd was always there in the background, and it's just one guy randomly disappearing into thin air... from excitement, I guess?.. It wasn't that exciting, my writer dudes...
The first segment is the best, a classic-style Warners story, though also containing disappointing gross-out humour etc.
Animaniacs: The Cutening/Close Encounters of the Worst Kind/Equal Time (2020)
This episode represents the worst qualities of the reboot
My overall rating of "Animaniacs (2020)"'s Season 1: 5/10.
There are a few things that have consistently worsened my experience of watching Season 1 of "Animaniacs (2020)". There's the intro with its pussification ("Dot has wit" instead of "Dot is cute"; the new - female - CEO doesn't get hit on the head as the "xylophone" sequence gets cut short; the "gender-balanced, pronoun-neutral and ethnically-diverse" section, while perhaps parodic in character, doesn't feel self-aware enough), not to mention incosistent capitalisation of "Hulu" (truly the worst sin!). Then there is the too-common gross-out humour. Finally, there are a lot of segments that are just too repetitive: jokes at the expense of Trump and US conservatives, jokes about the dreaded "Russian meddling in the US elections" and jokes at the expense of foreign white men with weird accents and bad teeth (a weird one, but the show is legitimately obsessed with that!).
In this episode we have some gross-out bits in all three segments, and a nice dose of "dem Russians are stealing our votes!" conspiracy theory in the end. The show sure gets a lot of mileage out of "Russian spies badly impersonating everyday Americans" gag! I think there is some very of-its-time zeitgeist behind all of that, when it was collectively decided by the US media elites that comedy had to become politically- and progressively-oriented, even if it came at the expense of the actual laughs. I hate it, though.
The plots are all very boring, to add insult to the injury; not to mention the middle segment insulting the audience's intelligence somewhat more than usual this time.
Dead Like Me (2003)
Had shaped some of my worldviews, and still holds up
This review is written after having watched through the series for the 4th-ish time.
The big catching-up-on-series project that I'm now concluding was supposed to end with watchthroughs of two series I had seen before and loved, "Dead like me" and "The mentalist". The latter disappointed me by being much worse than its remembrance in my head, so I'm absolutely elated that this series holds up. It's difficult for me to be unbiased about 'Dead like me". It's my default answer to "What's your favourite series?", and it's shaped a significant chunk of my personality and worldviews. If I could maximise my neutrality, I'd possibly rate the first season "good" rather than "great". On the other hand, I've mustered enough neutrality to rate the second season as only "great", not "excellent", so on balance I feel like I'm being rather fair.
Now, to some it might sound a bit reversed - usually it's S1 that's considered the better one, and some loss of quality is alleged for this series' second half or at least the 4th quarter. I beg to differ, and have observed how at least some of these opinions tend to base themselves on a mistaken belief that the original showrunner had left the show halfways in, or three-quarterways in - in reality, it was 5 episodes in, so his contribution is rather limited all and all. I think S1 is somewhat more philosophical and profound (and I happen to love this series' philosophical ramblings, which hardly ever happens to me elsewhere) and quirky, whereas S2 is a touch darker and more story-driven with more cohesive themes. Now, being more story-driven is not always an improvement in the series: as proven by the rather lame arcs of Georgia's relationship with Trip, or Daisy's with Ray. They have their moments, but often feel boring and ill-conceived, much like the relationships themselves. There are also occasional lasier writing moments throughout the series, but mostly writing is very high-quality. It's firmly set in its location and era, so you'll have the impetus to learn what that "Lotus" was that is now no match for this newfangled "Excel", or what it means to "Kazaa" something, or what "FICA" is.
"Dead like me" is many things at once. One, arguably the main, element is the narration by George, who in her beautfully-low voice muses about peculiarities of life and death, positing profound thesis or drawing unconventional metaphors. Sometimes these tie in with the ongoing scene, sometimes they advance a cohesive theme of an entire episode in an example of brilliant writing, and sometimes they're just a stream of consciousness. The plot and atmosphere are excellent, as we see a variety of situations that explore life, death and the various glitches in the system that may interfere with a reaper's job, or be the result of a reaper's interference with the natural, preordained chain of events. George's reaper division handles accidental deaths in particular, and we get a variety of legitimately bizarre comedic deaths - although to be honest, the show has rarely worked for me as a comedy, and I especially loathe the toilet humour it commonly contains. I kind of get their reasoning with that, the same as why George was killed by a toilet seat and not any other part of the deorbited space station (beyond the absurdity humour value) - in a series so thick with the pathos of death, it serves to ground life in comparison, show that it involves not only happiness or opportunities but also certain not-so-elevated problems.
The characters are oftentimes great and played by charismatic and capable actors, starting from the undead reapers themselves, whose conversations can be absolutely fascinating and fun even when talking about nothing much in particular, to the (however temporarily) living. In my previous watchthroughs at a younger age I really hated the character of Reggie, and thought that she was brought from a legitimately crazy person in S1 to an entitled brat in S2 a bit too sharply. This time around, I've been able to sympathise a lot more with Reggie and haven't seen such discrepancy, although I still feel like her parents let her get away with way too much, even taking her trauma into account. I've also been able to appreciate some finer points such as Daisy's catholicism arc a lot better - I have an incredibly in-depth essay on its conclusion posted on the relevant episode's ("Rites of passage") review page. I think I've been a bit more annoyed at George for not sticking to her and the reapers' rules as well.
The series' philosophy is highly deterministic: fate can only be averted by actions of reapers, and even then there are likely to be "reapercussions" - yet fate must still be written by some sentient beings, such as whoever brings Rube the information on deaths. It is also delightfully, softly nihilistic. I would argue that the main theme of the series is not simply death, and not even simply life, to which death gives urgency, and not the society with its ritualised enforced behaviours, but the difficult, fruitless search for meaning. In her life, Georgia saw no meaning, refusing to live by the boring, unreasoned canons and milestones the average person lives by. She then tried to recover some of that unfound, unexperienced meaning in her undeath, but found the barrier too great now. The other reapers tend to live more by the rules, and yet Daisy's catholic arc, for instance, is yet another example of a search for meaning beyond that which life or undeath offer, a hope to peek at a cosmic truth that has shaped the world and humanity such as it did. Yet the informational void is too vast - like George not knowing whether her family is OK even while standing at their porch in one episode, the reapers standing at the gates of wherever the souls go to have literally no idea who plans lifetimes and deaths, and what is beyond the lights. Rube knows a bit more than others, but withholds that knowledge. Whatever christian angels or hindu deities shape the universe of "Dead like me", even if they live among the living, they remain a great mystery, and as such the true, cosmic meaning of life and death remains unknown, and just a matter of uninformed speculation.
Just like in the real world, perhaps there is nothing there after all. Or at least, nothing beyond what we decide for ourselves, based on our own reason and values.
My ratings by season: S1: 7
S2: 7.
Dead Like Me: Haunted (2004)
The series' final note is entirely off-key
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 2: 7/10.
I had remembered the series' final episode being very bad, with Mason's face turning blue from the dry ice being a particular lowpoint of cartoonishness. Well, that episode _is_ bad, and perhaps drives a lot of the sentiment that I've seen, that seems unfounded otherwise: that Season 2, or specifically its second half, is bad in its entirety. I'm at a loss as to why this episode is the highest-rated of the series, when it should rather be the opposite. At least "Nighthawks" had a brilliant plotline buried below the clipshow.
In S2 there are 3 episodes that I consider bad: this one, "The escape artist" and "Death defying", but at least "TEA" had the fun plane plotline and the seeming telegraphing that the noose was tightening on George's identity; and "DD" had George finally arrive to a common-sense realisation, that her behaviour in the Trip arc has been bonkers, in the end. In this one, on the contrary, George concludes the series by doing something so stupid, Mason would be ashamed to mess up that badly. The boredom and plotholes that this episode introduces are just too immense even without that final kick in the 'nads.
Dead Like Me: Rites of Passage (2004)
A masterclass in writing, and a brilliant conclusion to Daisy's catholicism arc
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 2: 7/10.
Sometimes the themes that a given "Dead like me" episode operates with seem like a little bit of a medley. George's musings occasionally have a very stream of consciousness quality to them, and tether only to a concrete scene; or to none at all. Other episodes have a singular prominent theme throughout: like life's and death's unhappiness in the great episodes 1 and 2 of this season, or the passage of time in all its forms and with all that follows in another good one, "Hurry". So does this episode, but the brilliance of its sublime, subtle writing is such that it maintains its theme almost entirely throughout - yet you'll only understand it past the midpoint, and then will be struck by the depth with which it is explored. Daisy's catholicism arc is also concluded, while maintaining said theme. And then, in the end, the theme is spelt out rather explicitly, just so you can be sure that you're not seeing patterns where none exist.
The theme is privilege, and its arbitrariness. It's a familiar theme to American media especially, but it's the implementation, not the novelty, that gives me such joy. Be warned, this is going to be a long essay: this episode has inspired me to consider making a YouTube channel in the future to record my musings about the show and suchlike, but for now this will have to suffice.
The episode begins with George's musings about why one star gets to become a part of the Big Dipper, and another just flames out. Initially one thinks that it's just yet another metaphor for death. George has commonly wonders about how death makes its selection after all. After a brief digression with the crazy grandma (an absolutely disgusting character who brings nothing to the story, but is at least not quite as bad in this appearance as in the next episode's one) we get a scene of Daisy reading the Bible to Mason and Roxy, with George soon arriving. It's interesting here that all three (as well as Rube later) explicitly associate themselves with death, like they are many embodiments of death. That's an interesting sentiment, as it's at least not how George usually thinks of herself and death, and not how she explained it all to the schizophrenic guy. Daisy notes that Moses got a special death from god - he wasn't taken by death, but kissed by god. She clearly seems to understand that not only as a sign of god's special favour to the prophet, but also of god's connection to the practice of reaping - god taking Moses' soul via a kiss. Rube later mocks her, noting that god also banished death from heaven, and as such her catholicism is pointless - she won't get in.
Rube brings to the meeting a VIPR package for George, with all the other reapers expressing chagrin at her getting one with only one year of service logged and little experience at handling complicated reaps. Each of the 3 makes arguments why George doesn't deserve the honour while they do, but Rube just swats them away. He explains why Mason didn't get it, but even as he himself doubts George and tries to enlist Roxy's help, the newbie gets the VIPR, and that's it.
Taking a bit of an aside, I have to praise the props makers for the (otherwise awful) scene with Reggie and the grandma - they've prepared a whole slew of "newspaper clippings", each with a different article. We'd only ever known that the event of George's death made her famous, but never saw any reporters, nor has the lawsuit against the Russian space agency been discussed or depicted in any way. Outside of that seeming discrepancy, I'm also iffy on how they've chosen to name the Russian spokesman quoted in these articles: I can sort of believe that the newspapers just randomly decided - in the respectful Russian way - to refer to him by name and patronym, or made an in-universe mistake by confusing his patronym with his surname, or even that he has a weird surname that just looks like a patronym (after all, Roman Abramovich and Svetlana Alexiyevich exist). Still, that's a bit of an additional annoyance.
In the concert subplot Roxy gets George in, and Mason has a difficult time proving that he has a valid reason, a permission to get in, to the guard until a goth bandmember (?) lady somehow points him out as dead to her crew, which gets him inside. It's interesting how "Dead like me" plays with these sorts of glitches in the world: a guy who just randomly can see Gravelings was an episode's subject, and now a girl (and her goth crew?) who can tell reapers apart from the living without quite realising their nature.
In Daisy's subplot she finds the priest, her reap, renouncing the faith while drunk. She gives herself a stigma - a catholic phenomenon - with a knif,e to show off her undead healing, and tells him what is known to her of the reaper system. She hopes that perhaps her words will enable him to connect the dots in some scriptures, to discover the true secrets of the universe via esoteric christian knowledge, but to him nothing really falls in place. When he later dies, she again asks him a question with the same intention - whether the lights are as the christian afterlife has been described. However, he only says: "I'm as curious as you are". The lights he walks into are a nondescript blue corridor evoking mystery, perhaps, but not divinity. Daisy leaves her cross, a source of so much commotion, in the font with the dead priest. Rube, meeting her at the site, immediately notices that, and asks whether the reap went to her liking. Daisy is disappointed by two things: 1) is that the priest dispensed no deep esoteric knowledge that would help her make sense of the world - whatever christian scriptures he knew turned out to be insufficient; 2) which she says, and which finally states full-throatedly the theme of the episode: he was a priest, yet he got no golden angels and trumpets for his lights, no kiss from god Moses-style (which perhaps would've enabled Daisy to see him!), no honours at all above a secular man.
If the christian god exists in the "Dead like me" universe, he doesn't reward his servants, the men of cloth, even though they're so elevated in the hierarchic catholic faith. No honours are bestowed upon them in death. Mason is having a hard time getting in, but George gets an easy way. George gets the VIPR without having put the hours in, as arbitrary as anything else, as any other death. Some star arbitrarily ends up in a spot, which from Earth makes it a part of an imagined dipper; another doesn't. It all loops around. Privileges aren't earned, they're happenstantial.
It is however interesting in that light (pardon the pun) that the yoga guru whom Rube reaped in Season 1 did get a different kind of light, pink-ish, and a direct visage of a Hindu god; and the gay guy at the gay wedding seemingly had gotten some golden lights (?..) Perhaps in the world of "Dead like me" christianity is a false religion, and hinduism is the true one - hence, the first episode invokes god with a pointedly lowercase "g", as in, one in many?! Deepest lore indeed! Notably, Rube invokes a practice from Mumbai, the Tower of Silence on which sky burials are performed, to make his usual point to Daisy: nothing really has meaning beyond death, it's pointless to wonder about that. Daisy walks away from his offer of a ride, however. She has lost her faith, but still can't come around to Rube's grounded (or obfuscating) views.
Meanwhile, Mason, like Daisy, tells all, but unlike her he does that unprofessionally, to a group of goths none of whom are his reap. The goth leader wants to die and be made a reaper by Mason, and while Mason doesn't state it (and in fact mocks him, trying to take back his revelation), we know that it's impossible: reapers are chosen by fate, and only appear to fulfil a vacancy. Even if it was his time, the goth couldn't guarantee the privilege of becoming a reaper. Arbitrariness again.
George and her new friend, the future killer, discuss how fame changed Lowerdeck's stature, but that he's still a human. When he is shot on live television, he gets a candlelit vigil by at least dozens or hundreds (in spite, ironically, of his lyrical hero asking people not to mourn him in his songs). He asks if everybody gets that, perplexed; George, in what must be a golden example of reaper dad jokes that the poor reaped souls just don't quite get, replies: "No, no lights for me, not yet"; conflating the (candle)lights of the living world with the lights that beckon the departed souls. She does later note that it's easier to mourn somebody famous, whom you didn't know and, bookending the episode, that while some get a candlelit vigil, for others, for "nobodies like her", there's only a sky full of stars. Why do some get the one and others only the other? Well, quite arbitrary, isn't it? Now, of course, Lowerdeck was a famous singer, and Georgia Lass literally had accomplished nothing, and by design too, so it's not quite apples to apples, but the point is clear: nature inherently elevates some, but not others; dispenses honours on some, but not others; kills some earlier and others later, and to others yet offers undeath as a reaper; and none of it seems to take merit into account. After all, is there a reason why VIPRs with their money grants are a thing, beyond the reapers wanting bragging rights, and the difficulty of getting within touching distance of a celebrity?
On one last note, Lowerdeck's song is interesting: "So that I may die easy; so that I may die young". He got his wish in the end, and it's arguably one of the best deaths receivable - George would disagree with the latter part, of course, but frankly for her it's especially true: would she rather have been a reaper in a decrepit body? Still, I suppose one has to find that life, with all of its undeserved honours and snubs, has a bigger draw than even dying young and leaving behind a pretty corpse.
Dead Like Me: Forget Me Not (2004)
A brilliant episode
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 2: 7/10.
I've not read anything by Asimov myself, but the way I've read his "laws of robotics" series described as is: "First he sets out the rules, and then explores the edge-cases and what happens when the rules are broken or flaws in them reveal themselves". In a way, "Dead like me" can be described the same way: we're given the laws of how the world and the reapers' job work, and then explore the various edge-cases and malfunctions. In this episode we see an interesting one: a spirit that doesn't realise it's dead due to dementia. The gang's attempts at explaining her death to her are fun, and George's eventual solution is pretty cool. We also get a little bit more of the worldbuilding by acquainting ourselves with the Natural Causes division, and how Gravelings are (or at least can be?) made. Finally, there are just a great many fun and cool scenes, such as the spelling bee reap.
There are moments that I enjoyed a bit less: Mason's really cringy behaviour towards Ray; Georgia's strange (admittedly half-hearted) impulse to stop Nina's death (Haven't we been over this before? Like, she just seems to forget occasionally how reaping works); and Nina's disappearing without any real lights. Still, a more-than-great episode overall.
Dead Like Me: Pilot (2003)
Brilliantly establishes the threads and themes
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 1: 7/10.
This episode makes it easy to dive into "Dead like me" and sets up a good amount of the show's overall plot threads and themes. It's perhaps "Dead like me" at its highest-pitched action note, what's with train crash - however this scene does not overshadow the others due to absolutely fantastic writing and acting in them, their emotional and philosophical depth easily measuring up to the spectacle. When "Dead like me" shines, it really shines, and completely alleviates my concerns that upon a rewatch I'd find this series, which has been so foundational to my personality and worldviews, lacking. The idea of avoidance of experiences being its own virtue had really resonated with me. George starts moving away from it a little bit as the series goes on, "My room" being, maybe, the main crack in this edifice, but it is here where she presents it perhaps with the most conviction and clarity. Now, while I don't believe absolutely in this idea, I do like it at its strongest as shown here. Perhaps it has to do with my tendency to like the characters more in the beginning of their character arcs, when what makes them them is not watered down or averaged out. George indeed has figured stuff out before her peers - not only about the tooth fairy, but about life itself, and the unhappiness people bring to themselves by clinging to arbitrary goals. I guess George takes it a step further than I would by dropping out of college, but the depth of this conviction (or, rather, lack of conviction?) is quite respectable. I guess unlike her I've always seen some activities as worthwhile, and university as being a part of them and a stepping stone towards them - if you don't have such goals, the value of which you can logically justify to yourself, there is indeed no reason why one shouldn't sabotage oneself.
The show addresses its main themes and concepts head-on from the very start. The value of life, the fear of death, and the pointlessness of it all. It's a very soft, comforting nihilism, not at all an aggressive one, but the show is deliciously nihilistic nevertheless. George's reaping of the young girl is not only an immediate allegory and reinterpretation of the events that have transpired in this very episode, of her very own life and death, it's also a middle finger to the more pearl-clutching audiences, which I love. What is brilliant about it is that unlike a lot of protagonists of fantasy series, George isn't going to be abolishing the "injust" system any time soon - she can't help but rebel, yes, but her rebellion is inherently futile, and not only is she made to do penance and actually carry out her job, she actually understands it rationally. The emotional need to rebel being quelled by an intellectual realisation of an impossibility to do so is not a common theme in Western media, and it's a brilliant piece of the wonderful puzzle of this series' worlbuilding and George's appealing character.
Going by this episode, I'd actually expected Mason to end up having a closer connection with George - they have wonderful chemistry in the scene at the bank, the actors are great even when clearly just having fun - but he actually ends up drifting away from her a little bit. In a way, maybe it's a reflection of George's relationship with her father as shown in "Sunday mornings" - she can hold a serious grudge, and Mason's too unreliable and prone to petty betrayals to really be worth putting faith in, even if he's fun to be around. Maybe that's reaching, Betty's not dissimilar and it goes very differently with her after all, although there's also the fact that George specifically wants girls' company.
Really, this episode is just great. Yes, it's not without cringier or unexplained moments (so what exactly happens between the autopsy and the funeral, what does George do all that time while a disembodied ghost with the reapers? Is most of that time just walking to her home, if it's far away enough?), nor without my usual nitpicks such as usage of the imperial system, but that doesn't overshadow true greatness, and not at all is it an one-off shot.
Dead Like Me: Business Unfinished (2003)
Best episode of the season
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 1: 7/10.
The main plotline is pretty great: it is comedic, but also thoughtful, and gives us a bit more worldbuilding still. Mary Kate is a very fun character, although a bit of a cliche. Her walking into the lights was absolutely beautiful.
The writing did feel a bit inelegant at times, however. Daisy gives Rube a cause for suspicion a bit too easily; I didn't particularly like the type of "closure" that Rube gives Roxy (and her whole plotline is a bit questionable); and while the end scene of George sailing is beautiful, I'm not sure what it's supposed to depict - is it a far-ish future, when George has settled her financial difficulties and taken up sailing? She seems to have some skill handling a rather large sailboat, and travelling pretty sharply to the wind - I don't know whether it takes a lot (or any) money to join up an adult yacht-club in the US Northwest, but she's surely spent some time at it, which doesn't really gel with the following episodes and her story at the moment.
Dead Like Me: Nighthawks (2003)
Consists mostly of recycled clips, but the new material is very good
My overall rating of "Dead like me"'s Season 1: 7/10.
Going by the "popular vote" on this site, this episode is the least liked one of the show, and for a good reason: much of it is just randomly recycled short clips from prior episodes. That really sucks, not much to discuss here. But my personal least liked episode of the series' Season 1 is a different one, "A cook", even though I've ended up rating it higher. The reason being "A cook" is just very lame plot-wise and doesn't actually give much food for thought, whereas when "Nighthawks" stops self-plagiarising it's actually a damn good episode. While some things seemed a bit contrived to me, it has its own mood, and it very much taps into these themes and questions that "Dead like me" so brilliantly explores, so it's just sad to see the clipshow weigh it down to drown.
One thing that I've enjoyed would be the delightful bit of continuity with George's insomnia - in "Reaper madness" Mason did warn Georgia that insomnia is an occupational illness for the reapers. Now you may say: "Hold on, that's not really been shown before!", but what Rube suggests in this episode rather clears things up: his take is that George only cannot sleep because she's "standing too close", emotionally connecting with her "reaps". Is it true is an open question: Rube not only sees nothing wrong with concealing information from George, he actually thinks it's the right thing to do; and he's the sort of person who in general would associate an illness with a person's failings, rather than with it just being the state of things. However, the other reapers indeed don't seem to have these difficulties, so either Mason's supplies really go around, or emotional and mental self-discipline does at least help. It's interesting then that in a way that characterises Mason as also "standing too close", something we don't actually see in him - if nothing else, other than George you would at most expect Daisy to react that way, and she's probably usually too busy rifling through the dead's pockets on most days to get emotionally contaminated. Mason is not at all without his sentimentality, but you'd think he's way too desensitised by the job, and nevertheless...
The other thing is, of course, the main plotline, which I'd absolutely score a 7 or something on its own merits. Rube is acted out brilliantly in again teaching George the lessons that she absolutely understands, but cannot quite internalise: you cannot meddle with death, and you cannot let it bring you down. He's both paternal and patronising; and George is likewise brilliantly shown as an incredibly confused and conflicted person, who wants to rebel against the system where in her past life she'd just swum along, but now it's even more futile, as the system is not the beatable (or relatively ignorable) social expectations or soullessness of corporate job, but the unavoidable death itself, and absence of information caused by the physical world itself (lying on her porch George has to admit to Rube that she doesn't _actually_ know if her family is OK). That whole scene is just excellent, and is a storylet worth imbibing. Now, of course one would have preferred to see it standalone, but outside of "Pilot", "Dead like me" doesn't seem to like to play with variable episode runtimes - a blemish of the old series of course, slaves to their dedicated slots and not yet free to spread their wings on the on-demand media as they were.
Gravity Falls (2012)
Too scary for the "below-5" demo, too lame and childish for the "above-5"s. Funny sometimes.
My expectations for "Gravity Falls" were rather misplaced - I expected a continuous adventure story arc with some comedy, "dark-for-children" aesthetics and adult appeal. In the end, "GF" attempts to be all these things and more, but fails at most of them - other than at comedy, that one's good most of the time. My main issue is how childish it is - of course, it's a children's cartoon, I don't exactly expect bare boobies and blood splatter (although it kind of has the latter on occasion, so maybe I should!), but I remember the sort of kid I was at 6, and I would've been facepalming just as hard at the cringy morals as I do now. It has a moral in every episode, and these are so surface-level, aimed-at-toddlers, that it completely discombobulates you when it has some horror elements, which do go pretty hard for a kids' show (of course, nearly every situation magically resolves itself by each episode's end). But wait - many of these morals are about... dating?.. And teenage relationships?.. Who IS the target audience for this thing?! What teenager will suffer through an episode of "friends good actually" to get to the next one's "be the best version of yourself to get the chick", which in itself is a lame moral?! I found some morals morally suspect as well, but your mileage may vary.
The show boasts some great characters (Wendy, Bill Cipher), some meh ones (even the great Kristen Schaal of "Flight of the Conchords" fame can't always make the sugar/coffee overdose that is the character of Mabel palatable), and some legitimately disgusting ones (Grenda, the cops). Some of the visual designs and setpieces are also great (Bill Cipher, the series' supposed antagonist, especially packs some stylistic punch), and really ask to be appropriated by a better series. The plots are usually very dumb and hole-y. The first season is more serialised as our twins muck about the town, stumbling into supernatural mysteries and lame life morals; the second is slightly less serialised, as Bill Cipher appears for more than 1 episode and actually does some antagonising for a spell. However, I appreciate the series' comedy the most and don't appreciate its lame overcontrived adventures or boring-to-tears life lessons. As such, I like S1 more. However, I don't recommend watching either - there surely are better cartoons to pass the time.
My ratings by season: S1: 3
S2: 2.
Gravity Falls: Into the Bunker (2014)
The best adventure episode of Season 2
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 2: 2/10.
Both good episodes of Season 2 of this series are in the beginning, episodes 2 and 3, and this episode manages to not only make for a cool adventure (the setting being very conductive for that sort of thing, kind of reminding me of an episode of "Godzilla: The series"), but be very very funny in the meantime (which to me always ends up the biggest draw in "Gravity Falls") and have more of the Dipper-Wendy "romance". Now, this episode makes some cringy progress/resolution to that thing, but it was a cool ride.
Are some moments very contrived? Sure. Is "doing _junk_ with friends" one of the most ridiculous attempts at self-censorship the world has ever seen? Eh, probably not, but it's up there. But hey, I tend to hate "GF"'s adventure episodes, and this one stands out as an actually neat one, so what the hell.
Gravity Falls: The Golf War (2014)
You wouldn't think it, but it's the best episode of Season 2
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 2: 2/10.
The premise of this episode is pretty silly, but boy does it manage to draw out all the best in "Gravity Falls" - the humour is legitimately great, the imaginativeness is through the roof, the characters (Pacifica especially) are amazing, there is an awesome action setpiece, the moral gets pushed back on a bit and there is even a space for a tragic working hero's tale which is guaranteed to put a smile on your face with its tongue-in-cheek seriousness.
The story still has weakpoints, and the moral is still pushed pretty hard, but eh, forgiveable stuff, especially considering how god-awful "Gravity Falls" can get on a bad day...
Gravity Falls: Northwest Mansion Mystery (2015)
Awesome visual design wasted, dropped this episode towards the end
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 2: 2/10.
So the scene of Dipper and Pacifica's first encounter with the ghost is absolutely breathtaking: it's beautifully drawn and very dark, wouldn't at all be out of place in a more serious horror work. The way the ghost emerges from the fireplace legitimately invokes a cutscene for some cool "Dark Souls" boss. The Northwest Mansion is a cool and stylish setting for the episode, and Dipper and Pacifica have chemistry as characters. But again, like in the previous episode (and like in the upcoming "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape from reality" with its freaking awesome "fake Wendy falling apart into worms while pointing as the world itself goes "Silent-Hill"" scene), these awesome, atmospheric visuals are wasted on this toddler-targeted hogwash.
Now, looking at this scene where the hunting trophies chant "Ancient sins" as blood pours from their eyes and maws, does it quite track that the ancient sins in question are that some lumberjacks weren't invited to a party? I mean, the show shows the lumberjack's death and environmental destruction - wouldn't these two be better sins? But then they couldn't quite cram in some stupid moral lesson quite as easily, could they? And look, I'm a person very sympathetic to left-wing politics, I am, but surely vandalism-and-lumpens-worship of this episode is taking things a bit too far? Frankly, why are Americans so unable to even entertain the idea of taking their dirty shoes off while inside?! And wouldn't Pacifica be a way more interesting character without the bog-standard "defection from decadence" plotline? Another question is - since when does Dipper have fame as a ghostbuster of some kind, and has technological equipment (!) to help?! Is that a misplaced and belated episode of "Extreme ghostbusters" (god I wish it was, it would actually be _so_ dope)?!
Mabel and her revolting friends continue to be a mistake as well.
Gravity Falls: The Love God (2014)
Couldn't finish this drivel
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 2: 2/10.
There were some moments of fun among what felt like hours of boredom, but I didn't stick around to the end. I especially liked the bard's song ("<...> my sandals are so open-toed!"), and a few other jokes also landed, but my god, they actually managed to make "Gravity Falls" romance suck! I was actually surprised by how unperturbed I was early on into the show with the Dipper-Wendy plotline, but this expansion of dramatis personae in this arc is way too much. The plot is stupid, the plotholes are immense, nothing makes any sense, and the moral lesson is crappy.
I guess the flaming giant head balloon is a cool visual, but again, wasted on this show.
Gravity Falls: Summerween (2012)
Cool monster, bad absolutely everything else
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 1: 3/10.
So I've got to say, the Summerween monster turned out to be legitimately creepy. However, the lame, childish writing, that unpleasant character Grenda (?) (can't help but wonder if there is an agenda there), etc rather kill what could've been a cool episode for me. Even the humour fell flat in this episode, and I like "Gravity Falls" imuch better as a comedy (even though the audience of this site seems to rate comedic, best episodes much lower in comparison with the lame moralising adventure-style ones).
Gravity Falls: Bottomless Pit! (2012)
A missed opportunity
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 1: 3/10.
You'd think an anthology episode made up of 3-4 mini-stories would be a chance to comically play with the various characters' altered perceptions of the world, or with fantastical and perhaps grim conclusions - instead it's literally just more of the same, but lamer and shorter. The writers are hacks.
Gravity Falls: Irrational Treasure (2012)
Among the unfinishable episodes for me
My overall rating of "Gravity Falls"'s Season 1: 3/10.
This episode is one of the worst in the season, facing stiff competition for the title with several others that I'd also dropped. With a lame plot, boring quirkiness, and a particularly weird moral, this episode inspires nothing but annoyance.