Day Two, Part 1: Let's Talk Plot Points and Cliches
As we begin Day Two, looking at the different themes, plot points, and cliches of "Act Your Age", it is important to remember that Phineas & Ferb as a show not only uses many common tropes and cliches, but also makes fun of and at them, during various points in the series. Even in the songs "Carpe Diem" and "Hey Ferb", the word cliche is mentioned, which brings additional substance to that fact.
With that, a few of the plot points, tropes, and cliches from "Act Your Age" are:
-- The biggest plot point of course is Phineas finding out through Baljeet and Buford that Isabella has had a crush on him for a long time, a secret that they decided to let out as she was leaving town (Ohhhhhhhhhh do I have thoughts about this 😠🤨)
-- Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz going through a mid-life crisis, which included a myriad of common cliches including hair-dyeing, purchasing of fast exotic supercars, jet skiing, and skydiving
-- The boys and the girls being in separate groups, gossiping about each other
-- The rather toxic teenage relationship between Baljeet and Ginger, with both the manipulative and jealousy tropes being mentioned
-- The crew re-joining to make a "romantic dinner" setting, in an attempt to get Phineas & Isabella together
-- Phineas and Isabella unknowingly singing a Duet together, "What Might Have Been"🧡💗
-- Phineas and Isabella reuniting in front of the Flynn-Fletcher house, talking together, confessing, and realizing that they've had crushes on each other (Isabella for at least a decade, Phineas since High School). This leads to a hug and a kind moment between them, and soon afterwards at the crescendo of the episode, their first kiss!
-- Other random common cliches/topics/moments include the boys always looking for food😂, the teens talking about College, and at the end, Vanessa picking up Ferb in her own Supercar
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To keep this part short, I am only going to focus on a couple of these points today, with some of these topics to be brought up on one of the following days… And I am going to start with the big one…
I knew going into this that there were only two things that I was going to be genuinely upset about writing (the second thing will be on Day Four/Part 3), and what is so disappointing is that for whatever reason this was made into the main turning point of the episode…
Why exactly, in all that is holy and good, why did after at least a decade of silence did EVERYONE, and particularly Baljeet and Buford, decide it was ok to tell Phineas Isabella's biggest secret, that she had a massive crush on him throughout their childhood, and more importantly, feel it was ok to tell him this as she was LITERALLY WALKING OUT THE DOOR?!😡
In what world is this even remotely realistic, even marginally logical, to first keep a secret that important for that long, but then to just freely spill that secret like it was nothing, and then to add insult to injury, tell Phineas all of this as Isabella was literally about to drive away. It's like they all got hit with a green beam that made them think that this would be a good idea all of sudden. It's completely absurd and is the #1 part of this episode that I would change if I had that ability. (I could keep going about this but it's probably best for my sanity that we move on🤣)
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The other point I want to bring up today is a more general theme that the episode has, primarily it's abundance of cliches, both of the teenager kind and the mid-life kind. Now, I want to be clear, I do enjoy cliches, particularly of the romantic kind (so many Phinabella fanfics have cliche endings and if the story is good I'll love every single one of them!🧡💗). However, both the amount of cliche moments and the kind of in your face level of them, I don't know, in my personal opinion it didn't come off quite as humorous as it may have been intended. It's very possible that this may have been because I was looking and expecting for something slightly different, after having made the mistake of reading so many great P&F fanfics before I got to watch AYA for the first time.
In addition, particularly when it came to Doof's mid-life crisis, it felt in large part like it was done to fill time, and didn't exactly mean anything to the episode, which I understand happens in some of the P&F episodes, but it just felt more random then usual. This isn't to say it wasn't at all funny, because by itself it was, but in terms of the whole episode and what I would have expected, it just wasn't quite the same.
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I know today's portion of the mini-series was a little bit down, but this is like a rollercoaster, and oh am I excited for tomorrow, as we get to talk about in my opinion one of the best characters of this great show!💗
Until then, Carpe Diem, and God Bless!
