Amphibia Reviewcaps: The Dinner/Battle of the Bands “It’s You”
Hello all you happy people! And i’m almost to the finish line. 6 months (subtracting the ones where there were no new episodes) worth of weekly coverage and with next week i’ll have completed my second full season of reivews of a show as they came out, and my first full season of amphibia. If you’d like to see season 1 it’s up high on my stretch goals at 45 with reviews of Disney movies based on shows (The Proud Family, Recess and Kim Possible), Gravity Falls and more along the way if your curious. Check it out HERE. I’m also doing exclusive reviews eveyr month now with the coasional one thrown in randomly so check that out. New period starts in a week so please join before then.
So naturally with the big finale and all the tensions in amphibia close to reaching a boil next week, this week’s a bit more low key. Still not unimportant, with some massively good character work and in fact The Dinner is easily one of my faviorites of the season, but still nothing to move the plot too far forward. Just some nice character stuff to help inch us towards the climax next week. The calm before my heart is stillbeatingly ripped out of my chest. Which I will grant the show, having my heart ripped out Mola Ram style by some combination of Brenda Song and Keith David is how I wanted to go, i’m just not ready yet. So while I steel myself for the utter heartbreak of next week, I have my throughts on this weeks episodes under the cut!
The Dinner:
I did tip my hand a bit by saying this was one of my faviorties of the season.. and I stand by that. This one was excellent. It was rife with tension while still somehow being a fun breather episode before hell arrives.
As the title suggest the Plantars are having Grime and Sasha over for a fancy dinner, followed by games and such. Only Annearcy are happy about this though, Marcy still not getting quite how bad Sasha has gotten during her stay here and Anne hoping she has changed.
The Plantars, Sprig in paticular, still resent them for the whole toad tower fiasco, which is fair. You don’t forget someone trying to murder you over night, let alone your whole town. Hop Pop is using Frobo as the Grill by the way which is just visually fucktacular I gotta admit. He does get some more use these episodes, being used as a Grill here and as the fog machine and Polly’ sminon next episode. Good work boy. That’s my robot frog soldier builder whatever you are.
Sasha and Grime are likewise not enthused. Sasha isn’t because her friends expect her to “Ugh” change and grow and stuff and isn’t happy about it and is confident she can return to rulling over them once her plan is done. Dude.. that’s not how a healthy throuple works. Or a healthy anything. Grime is more worried about her blowing it with her anger and control issues, but feels. this is VITAL to convincing the plantars to trust them long enough for their plan to go off. He even demands she remove her sword and all her knives... and she has a lot of them. Evne in her boot “How do you even walk?” Good question grime.
My answer?
So what follows is about 8 minutes of the most hilariously awkward dinner since that time Micheal Scott decided to have a dinner party even though his relationship was horribly crumbling, as everyone but Anne and Marcy shoves their foot in their mouth at some point or makes some sort of screw up. Oh and Polly I guess she’s more content to just watch the show. Seriously i’m not usually a fan of cringe comedy.. but the series makes it work here as our heroes attempt to interact with thier old eneimeis and vice versa.
For starters we have our guests arrvial, where Grime and Sasha both look objectively terrifying before things cool down. Then we have dinner itself where both Hop Pop and Grime prove to be the racist kind of grandpa as Grime asks what frogs they subjigated to get these turnips and Hop Pop makes an awkward lightbulb joke about Toads that Grime finds hilarious but everyone else was rightfully afraid would get the old man gutted by the other more violent old man. I imagine this happened a lot on the Lost Light once Megatron took over co captiancy. You just don’t fight a guy for a good hundered years without being nervous he’s going to blast you to fucking pieces.
Sprig dosen’t help before all this by taking a seat next to anne and marcy specifically to piss her off, and out of all of them is the most openly hostile to her. Given Anne’s his best friend and Sasha did a LOT of emotional damage to her.. yeah fair enough.
Things only esclate when it comes to frog pictionary. Suprisingly Hop Pop gets Grime’s Drawins and Sasha gets his, with both her and sprig trading escalating barbs and her barely containing her rage when Anne calls her on it since unlike her, Sprig has a reason to still be upset with her. This reaches a breaking point when Sasha attempts things, trying to desperatly win her friends back with the old times now they have their ownt imes apart.. only for Sprig to accidnetlay mock Sasha’s near sucicide,s aying she “slipped”.. granted I do think he geninely just can’t forgive her.. but it’s very clear she did not.. she let herself go to save them, and he’s just as in denial about it as Sasha and just as much a dick about it.
Sasha flips out at him, and gets penalized for talking which only pisses her off MORE and understandably so. Anne leaps to the plantar’s defense but honestly.. both sides are understandabliy angry here. The Plantars are right to still not trust her after everything especially since she hasn’t outright apologized to them and her and Grime’s general response to the incident is “One Time!”... which works for say, taking the last slice of pizza without asking or slamming their face in a car door, but not so much “Trying to murder all of you for personal and stupid reasons.”. But at the same time Sprig DID cross the line really bad when she saved his fucking life. It dosen’t automaitcally erase the bad things she did but it dosen’t give him lisence to mock her. WHile I get he’s 10 and dosen’t get it was part suicide, he still is blantaly ignoring her trying to do something selfless because he can’t admit there’s any good in Sasha. Sasha is not a GREAT person.. but there IS good in her. She just has to WANT to seek that out instead of her inherent seflishness and need for control and Anne and Marcy are absolutely right for trying to help her instead of just slamming the door in her face.
But soon eveyroen gets distracted by the cake which floods the room with molten lava. Hop Pop assumes it was some sort of trick.. but hilariously turns out no, Grime really was trying to be nice. That’s just how this works and it’s delcious once it hardens.. assuming you survivie the hornets, with fighting them being the best part of it. And yes hornets shoot out of the cake. Are you suprised at this point? They also paralize grime leaving our heroes without the one person among them who knows what their doing.
SO our heroines are forced to fight some hornets, with Sasha trying to take lead.. only for Anne to do so and succeed at it, figuring out that while weapons can’t pierce them their own stingers might and having Marcy use her crossbow to launch the stinger in grime at them, and then has Sasha distract the rest to take them out.
So our heroines reconcile with Sasha admitting she might not want to change and Anne admitting that’s okay.. she just has to accept things have changed with THEM and that her friends HAVE. And genuinely or not Sasha agrees to that, while Grime is bummed he missed the party and the lava hardens into chocolate, with eveyrone enjoying some cake and dead insects. As you do
Final Thoughts on The Dinner:
As I said, this is one of the best episodes of the season> The tension is paltable, and it dosen’t fully resolve it, rightly as we still have one final season to go for that. More than that.. it’s hilarious. All the jokes land, and there were far too many to get into here.
Battle of the Bands:
Now this is a classic breather episode, our last chance to rest and get all slice of lifey before things go up in flames next week.
With the town all nervous because of Sasha and Grime’s presence, Mayor Toadstool decides to spin the wheel of fun to decide on an activity. I can’t remember if this is a new thing or not but I loves it. It lands on Battle of the Bands so the girls decide to get their old band Sasha and the Sharks back together. As for the rest of the cast, Hop Pop and Sprig join a Jug band and Grime has his own musical domination to plot out, so that just leaves us with the thropule, Poly and Frobo for an episode.
The group have fun... until Anne unveils her heartfelt song based on her time here. Well okay only Sasha isn’t having fun and quickly tries to take over, as you’d expect and Anne pushes back as you’d expect. Sasha takes her ball and goes home as.. you get it by now> The plot here is not very complex or unique.
But as with all the Sasha episodes this season including the last one, we get a deeper sense of her character. Here she outright admits she dosen’t know what to do when she’s not in control. She needs to be in charge of the situation. It also explains why unlike Marcy and Anne she didn’t change for the better: Her need for control shuts out any possiblity of self reflection and thus self improvment. Self Improvment, and I know this from experince, requires you to admit your flaws and face them. It’s something I can admit to struggling with as I fall back into old patterns often. Admitting flaws would be admitting a loss of Control and Sasha.. can’t. She honestly can’t.
Of all people i’ts TOADIE who convinces her sometimes i’ts better to let someone else take the lead and that it’s better to support the ones you love than subjugate them. Granted Toadie himself is too far in the opposite direction, but he makes a valid point.. something I never thought i’d say. Sometimes you just have to let someone do what they want.. and watching her two girlfriends perform up on stage.
I also will say I love a good talent show, battle of the bands what have you episode. One of my faviorite movies, True Stories, climaxes in one.
And yes that was John Goodman and yes he does indeed sing...
Seriously watch this movie. It’s fucking amazing. And yes that was the Talking Heads David Byrne, he wrote this movie and there’s two talking heads songs in it. Watch it.
Point is we get a great one, paticuarlly chuck.
He grows SINGIN tulips just a fun one.. but i’ts that finale with the girls that really makes it with Sasha realizing that them being HAPPY is better than her being in control..and they didn’t grow PAST HER or leave her behind just because they grew.. they simply should be free to be themselves. And that maybe trying to conquer a country just to do that ain’t right. IT’s really sweet
So she runs in to do the guitar solo, and its aweosme and they only don’t win because it turns out Grime is fucking MAJESTIC on a harp. But Sasha finally grows a bit admitting that having fun is what mattered...
And it’s abotu to burst as Mayor Toadstool, in a show of how far he’s come, points out Anne is leaving soon and Anne gives a heartfelt goodbye to everyone.. that said.... someone clearly has other plans.. and for once i’ts NOT Sasha.
There’s nothing but foreshadowing in that face. That’s a face that says “Uh.. about that”. And again SASHA is showing emotinal vunerablity and hapiness.. but it’s Marcy, whose pretty open emotiionally whose visably worried and clearly knows Andrias has other plans.. other plans he talked her into. Gratned he probably didn’t tell her said plans involve The Watcher with a Thousand Eyes, but she still KNOWS she’s plottingthings.. and know’s she’s about to betray the people closest to her.
Before we move on though those outfits ar esharp. Just damn. Especially Sasha’s punk look. The songs this episode are also both excellent and I had no idea Brenda Song and Anna Akana could sking like that. God damn.
So with Anne leaving for home she gets one last group photo. It’s majestic and we’re out.
Final Thoughts:
This one is pretty good. Not a lot to talk about outside of Sasha but a really fun episode that both moves her foward and moves us toward the finale. ANd it’s nice to see the three just happy together... before the hell that’s about to arrive.
Next Week: War Were Declared, our heroes prepare to fight bravely against the hoard of toads... and both Sasha and Marcy come to the crossroads of destiny
Tommorow ON This Blog:
So it’s up to Jean Grey and Emma Frost to go in and sort it out.. and then fight off the full might of an alien empire. No pressure.
Hello again, in case you didn't get my ask, which scene or episode would you say the main cast of Amphibia (Brenda (Anne), Justin (Sprig), Amanda (Polly), and Bill (Hop Pop)) does their best performances as their characters?
Alrighty, let’s get this show on the road.
Brenda Song’s best performance would have to be when Anne was describing little details about her mother in Hopping Mall. There’s no doubt in my mind that she was pulling stuff from her own experiences in life associated with Brenda’s own mother. Loved that delivery on the particular line of, “ You know the funny thing is...Right now...I’d give anything just to hear her singing.”. Easily my favorite performance from Brenda’s acting as Anne, where she embodied this characterization that is seriously important for viewers to buy into her acting. When Anne was breaking into tears I didn’t picture someone behind the mic, but felt like I was seeing an actual person pouring their heart out. Now that right there is how you know that’s great acting from an actor or actress. Not to say her acting in the amazing Season 1 finale, Reunion, wasn’t good either, as Brenda did a great job with her dramatic acting chops there, too. It’s just that Hopping Mall struck a chord with me, given how well Brenda poured herself into embodying those feelings one has of their connection to a parental figure.
With Sprig’s VA, Justin, I’d say his top notch performance is either the Grubhog Day, Fiddle Me This, or, again, Hopping Mall, as each of these stories showcases more underlying drama that Sprig’s VA had to emulate besides his usual shtick of being the hyperactive comic relief. Really liked his performance of building up frustration against Hop Pop’s hard lined training regiments in Fiddle Me This, where Sprig finally has an outburst at him for pushing him so much into a contest that he just wanted to have fun in. Grubhog Day showed more of his insecurities of trying to please Hop Pop, despite not wanting to take responsibility on the whole Grubhog tradition Wartwood does annually and have fun at the fair. Sprig has usually been seen by Hop Pop as the irresponsible trouble maker, so this was another great opportunity to explore that idea yet again of how much this weighs on the poor kid’s mind of not feeling good enough for him as a son, which Justin did a well in acting out those emotions and especially at the end when he says, “ I knew it was important to you, so I played along. I just wanted to make you proud.”. Hopping Mall is more or less along the same lines as before, except very profound, with how it explores Sprig’s emotional tip toeing around something he’s insecure about, which was whether or not it’s silly to miss his own mother, even though she passed away when he & Polly were very young. Justin delivered Sprig’s lines at the end with such conflicting emotions, yet deep longing, toward wanting a mother.
Amanda’s best acting as Polly is one I’m gonna have to chalk up to Truck Stop Polly. Season 2 was all about upping the stakes a bit more emotionally for exploring each character’s struggle in Amphibia’s wilderness outside of Wartwood, where showing Polly’s conflict of trying to find comfort provided for some very nice acting material from Amanda. That delivery on, “I really am just trouble aren’t I? You were right. Maybe you should’ve left me back in Wartwood...”, really made me feel for Polly because she’s not used to this kind of traveling and being the youngest certainly doesn’t help in that regard, either. Hope to see more dramatic material with Polly in the future because Amanda can do a damn good job with pulling off dramatic stuff when needed, of course.
As for Hop Pop, that’s tough to nail down because Bill Farmer is such a wonderfully talented VA it’s hard for me to decide on what his best performance was, overall. I’m leaning towards either Hop Popular or Fiddle Me This, which showcased good material for Bill Farmer to further bring the character to life with his terrific acting chops. We got to see his insecurities at trying to make a living as an upstanding figure in the election episode, where he had to put the needs of others above his own desires for wanting back his food stand. Fiddle Me This did an excellent job showing his terrifying concerns as trying to be a role model parent, by doing everything he can to provide for his kids, since he’s the only adult Polly & Sprig got in their lives they can learn from in general. Bill Farmer’s remorseful delivery on, “I just wanted to give you a better life, than the one I can give you now...”, to Sprig goes to reinforce his acting skills being so experienced, as seen with what he accomplished in A Goofy Movie, of hitting that right note of gushing out parental affection, as if it were his own son Bill was talking to.
Long story short, the voice cast for Amphibia are simply well rounded and awesome.
