Amphibia Weekly Season 3 Reviews: Fight at the Museum/Temple Frogs: A Most Jellical Hell
Hello all you hoppy people! We’re on to Week 3 of my weekly coverage of Season 3! I’m Jake, I review stuff and it’s time for a bit of news and speculation before we move on to today’s episodes.
So picking up from last week where we got the episode titles for the second half of Season 3a, we now have the summaries to go with them, so it’s time to ooo and ahh over the latest episode summaries and see what’s ahead fo rour heroes, and speculate what that might entail.
Mr. X": Anne takes the Plantars to the movies, while the Boonchuys try to stop a government agent from finding them.
I’m mostly excited about this one because RU MOTHERFUCKING PAUL IS COMING. I haven’t watched Drag Race, you may now boo, but I love him in anything she does. Their work as Jackie Slithersteen in Harvey Beaks was a series highlight both times they showed up and it’ll be intresting to see them in a more serious role. Also it’ll be fun to see the Plantars at a movie theater. I love a good movie theater shenanigans story.
"Sprig's Birthday": Anne tries to give Sprig a great Earth birthday.
Nothing really to say here other than this one’s probably gonna hurt.
"Spider-Sprig": Determined to make his mark on Earth, Sprig becomes a superhero.
I haven’t gotten to mention it on this blog as I haven’t covered anything Spider-Man adjacent, but I absolutley LOVED spider-man and hoped this would be some sort of take on that. And given we see a doc ock esque guy using the Annsterminator’s arm in the season trailer, this is going to be REALLY fun. And while the title could just be “oh generic because he’s a superhero” Sprig DOES have most of Peter and Ben’s powers: he can crawl on walls, has incredibly agility and speed, and his tounge is a good subsittue for webs. He only lacks the strength and spider sense, which give shim a mild handicap but nothing he can’t handle. Point is i’m so ready for this.
"Olivia & Yunan": Back in Amphibia, Olivia and Yunan try to rescue Marcy.
Dammit I already used the sinister bug saying things were good.... hmmm
Haven’t broken this one out in a while. Or the bug one come to think of it. But yes we finally get the incredibly gay rescue episode.. which is bound to end very horribly because we’ve seen the trailer. They PROBABLY shoudln’t of shown nightmare marcy. Just saying. Kinda spoils the suprise.
"Hollywood Hop Pop": Hop Pop tries to make it as an actor in Hollywood.
This one was inevitible and will likely be fun. Next.
"If You Give a Frog a Cookie": Anne trusts a questionable scientist who may have found a way to get them to Amphibia.
KATE MICCUI BABY! FUCK YES. God her and keith david on the same show it boggles the mind...
"Froggy Little Christmas": Anne attempts to surprise her mom with a Thai Go float for the Christmas parade while the Plantars struggle to understand the holiday. Meanwhile, King Andrias plans a deadly surprise.
The big one! A heartwarming christmas story, rebcca sugar writing a song and PLOT ADVANCMENT. Who could ask for a better christmas present?
So with all that covered it’s time to dive into this weeks’ episodes! Join me under the cut, full spoilers, etc etc.
Fight at the Museum:
We open with an answer to one of the most burning questions of the season: Where do the Plantars sleep in the Boonchuy house?
Look we had no real clear layout of the Boonchuy house and no real answer as Anne was apparently sleeping alone in “The New Normal’. I can wait on the other stuff because I KNOW we’ll get lore answers eventually because this show is fairly consistent at giving them, just at a slow pace between one off adventures, something this very episode lampshades in it’s own way.
The answer is their all crashing in anne’s room, but all plenty comfy: Sprig has a beanbag, Polly’s sharing the catbed with Domino, which .... just.. just look at it.
My heart just exploded from adorable. And Hop Pop is , judging by the first ep alternating between the floor and Anne’s bed. Seriously the boonchuy’s HAVE a couch he could use that.
Anne however has been awake all night, can relate, trying to find a way back to Amphibia to save her girlfriends, the town and you know both worlds from the sexy wrath of Keith David as a Salamander.
But the realistic consequences of running 24 hours for several days in a row, especially as a child who needs rest, are catching up with her and she’s barely concious the next day, still hoping to spend it the same way she spent the night. The Plantars.. want to watch a british soap opera. My mom could relate... and so can I just replace “British soap opera” with “sitcom about the deep state”. Hop Pop points out the honest facts: they’ve ALSO been working hard to find a way home, if offscreen, but they can’t burn themselves out. Trust me it’s not fun. I’ve burned myself out doing this and I don’t hold the fate of countlres worlds in my hands. I’ll get into the why of Anne’s desperation in a bit.
Mrs. Boonchuy roasts her daughter about researching for once before agreeing with Hop Pop. She needs to relax for once.. and Mrs. B needs to clean all the slime that’s built up in the house so their asses are going to the museum. Anne needs to catch up on missed School, the plantars can learn more about earth , and The Boonchuy House can stop smelling like a ninja turtle. Everyone wins!
We get an adorable montage of the plantars enjoying the museum while Anne nearly passes out a bunch: Sprig marvels at dinosaurs (”Guess you had a monster problem too huh?”), Polly relates to cavemen and Hop Pop is horrified to find earth people think the earth is round (It is)... and signals to Anne he needs to be kept as FAR away from the internet and B.O.B. as froggily possible.
Anne however is still obesseivly researching... until they find a clue int he museum itself and we get a rather huge move forward in the overall lore: Said pot depicts Andrias’ frog friend who looks a LOT like Sprig coming out of a portal, gifting the box to a bunch of vikings. She DID steal it after all as I suspected.. I never thought Andrias lied about that outright.. he simply didn’t see she did it to PROTECT people from him and his god.
They then run into the Museum’s curator, Dr. Jan, an utterly nice woman who has a side hobby in crytozoology and is utterly curious abotu this mysterioius pot and would be HAPPY to help them. Anne turns her down and shoos her away, while Hop Pop wants to know why. \
Anne dosen’t know if she can trust her.. and that’s not only fair but ties into the very reason her obession is at it’s peak. It’s something that hit me this episode> For us True Colors happened about 5 months ago. We’ve had time to obesses over it sure but as simple observers we could move on to other shows and nonsense. For Anne? It was a just a little over a week ago BOTH her best friends/love interests deeply betrayed her, she fought off an invasion, found out the kindly king helping her was a tyrannical monster bent on multiversal conquest, thought her best friend died, saw her new robot brother actually die, went super sayian god super sayian, had one of the loves of her life stay behind so she could escape and saw the other stabbed in the gut while she was helpless to stop it. All in one fucking day, most of that in the span of a couple of hours. And she hasn’t REALLY gotten a break since: she had to emotionally reunite with her parents, spend hours explaining to them what happened after they had the whole frogs thing sprung on them by Hop Pop’s incompetence, was locked in her house for a day, had to fight off a killer robot, found out her new powers really hurt and is deeply disturbed by them, had to keep the plantars from getting themselves killed constantly, barely escaped a mall, had to stop her little brother’s shenanigans by driving a runaway truck with no breaks, and then had 8 cavities removed in one day just to top it all off.
Like when your watching it week to week it dosen’t really register how much trauma this poor child’s been through and how short the time span’s been till you sit back and REALLY think about it. Though I did think about the timeline.. and by that was reminded by the episode list Reunion takes place three months after Anne arrived on amphibia, not only meaning the series has ALWAYS had a strict timeline, but that season 2 takes place over two months, perfectly slotting everything into place.
Point is she’s been through a LOT and after the two people she loves most and the last kindly stranger she met stabbed her in the back and into her gut, it’s understandable why she wouldn’t be quick to trust someone she’s only met 5 seconds ago. She could be a goverment agent or something. They don't know.
Anne being cautious here, especially since Hop Pop has the GALL to call her paranoid.... a week after again he WATCHED MARCY GET STABBED IN THE GUT BY THE MAN THEY ALL TRUSTED AFTER MARCY REVEALED SHE SENT THEM ALL TO AMPHIBIA ON PURPOSE.
But her plan.. isn’t as acceptable. She wants to be bi, do crimes and rob the museum at night. Hop Pop BARELY agrees to it while naturally Sprig and Polly are on board. I’m pretty sure when Poly conquers the world at 12 be gay do crimes will be the worldwide motto. Sprig just likes to be an ally.
At any rate our froggy heroes deck themselves out in matching emo hoodies anne had because.. well she WAS dating Sasha, and rips once up for polly. Anne of course, having already had 80 outfit changes in her backpack alone, has a classic break in black ops outfit.
The break in goes suprisingly well. Phase One is to distract the Guards... which would be a genuine issue if they weren’t at this level of competence
So they simply have hop pop distract them by pretending to be a cat...
Look you’ve seen the top, you know what he actually looks like, I know what he actually looks like. You already have the jellical nightmares. I’m not giving you more by giving it more time to sear it’s way into your soul. I will say they did hilariously mimic the stage makeup of cats well. I’ll also say they did well giving my worst fears and nightmares form.
The kids roles are SLIGHTLY less traumatizing. Sprig takes out the camera’s with his tounge and Polly turns out to have razor sharp teeth because apparently Spirg and Polly’s mom had an affair with a Critter. I mean she’s ball shaped, has razor sharp teeth, and hungers for blood. The signs were there all along this just proves it.
So our heroes sucessfully break and enter, and get the vase. But as Sprig notes this being a heist their contractually obligated to have a twist.. and this one was set up earlier as we saw the Annsterminator forced to patch into the local antenna to scan for them, as it’s scanner was damaged in the fight. But it finds them via the one security camera Sprig DIDN’T sabotage, meaning he finds them, sets off the alarms and leaves our heroes trapped.
The result is an AWESOME fight across the museum as the plantars use EVERYTHING they can. From the cool stacking attack using armor, swords and a mace, to anne grabbing a sword again once again proving her strength to hop pop USING A MOTHERFUCKING GUILLOTINE TO CHOP OFF AN ARM WHILE SHOUTING EAT THE RICH.
Cumulating in Anne holding Annsterminator off while the plantars DROP A DINOSAUR SKELETON ON HIM.
Sadly bones don’t beat metal... they can beat off metal but that’s a whole other discussion, point is the Annesterminator escapes and nearly chokes the life out of Anne till Dr. Jan comes in along with the security so he books it out of there the only way he knows how
Dr. Jan quickly covers for them with the guards who are luckily still this level of smart
So they buy it, especially since the plantars had to ditch the disguises to be effective. Thankfully she’s not mad about the damage or almost theft and more curious as to what the hell any of this is, as you or I would be let’s be fair here.
So they fill her in offscreen and on screen she offers to help, notcing Anne is near passing out and needs rest before they can get to work and Hop Pop points out the simple truth: They can’t do this alone. And it didn’t hit me before, because they’ve come so far.. but they really can’t. I’m so used to shows and media like this where it’s left on the teen protaganists and maybe one or two adult shoulders I forget sometimes.. those people have limites. The Plantar-Boonchuy’s are plenty badass, talented cooks and all around just the best people warts and all, pun very much intedned... but at the end of the day none of them are, as far as we’ve been told as far as Anne’s parents are concerned, Engeineers, scientists+-, historians, superheros, sorcerers supermee.. the kind of people who can help them get back where they once belonged. As we’ve seen the best Anne can do is research, and she’s looking into something that is, at least as far as the public knows, impossible, meaning at best there’s a portal at a goverement black site. With Jan being a historian and into this sort of weird paranormal stuff, she has contacts and tools to help them. She can’t whip them up a portal.. but having someone who can look into Amphibia’s history with earth is better than nothing.
So Anne accepts it, seeing Jan IS genuinely+ as good as she acts and agrees to her quid pro quo of sleeping in exchange for working on this. That night Jan studies the pot and takes Anne’s suggestion of running a black light over it for hidden messages, because why not. Shockingly there is.
Fight at the Museum was excellent, letting the emotinal consequences of last season hit Anne in a subtle way. I do feel they need to talk about it eventually especially since we STILL haven’t heard from either of the girls parents. The fight scenes were also visually spectacular as always and cleverly used the museum setup, as well as having the Annesterminator loose an arm as setup for later episodes as we’ve seen. All in all another stellar episode from the show’s best season.
Temple Frogs:
Picking up where we left off, Anne wakes up rested, refreshed and ready to eat that horse. And Jan messaged her about the temple so the Plantars are all excited to go learn about it. Given this is a children’s cartoon you just KNOW that means the adults in Anne’s life who aren’t frogs have other plans that are going to lead to a life lesson.
Sure enough the Boonchuy’s are headed to the Thai Temple for market day, a day for the local Thai Community to gather to set up stalls, participate in activities relating to said culture and in general just bask in the joy of community. Anne being a teenager with a world saving mission wants no real part of this but the Plantars do and Mrs.B wants her ot stay AT LEAST an hour. Still no name, though apparently Mr. B’s is Jeff so that’s at least ONE down. I missed it but apparently this episode reveals it.
Anne reluctantly agrees and the family heads down to Temple. The Plantars end up feeling right at home as the number of stalls and sense of community feel just like their own market days back home. Anne has grown jaded with it mostly due to having gone here her whole life. We even see an adorable picture of her as a younger kid. It’s precious.
The Plantars are more than happy to explore her culture, respectfully, and Anne lets them loose since they have an hour to kill and she’s on Sample duty. The following part is easily the best and most charming part of the episode: The Plantars each find a part of Thai culture to enjoy and fit in with, without approrating it, and the local Thai community warmly welcomes them to join in. It allows Matt to show off his cultural heritage and a bit of his own past, clearly having gone to similar gatherings at some point, and share them with the children, teens, and grown ass peoples (points to self) watching this. I fully learned stuff with this as Sprig and Hop Pop’s activities are things i’d genuinely never heard of and googled to get the names right as while i’m fine with missing a character name or something, as this is usually from memory and on the day the episode comes out (this one’s way later than usual because the last two days have been kinda busy). It happens. But I flat out refuse to misspell something that people put their heart and soul into. It’s just genuinely nice to learn something about a culture that’s not my own, to learn neat stuff I never knew and genuinly apricate it. I honestly need to do this more often, as I genuinely LIKE learning new stuff and bits of history, in the most respectful way possible off course.
Sprig wonders around till he finds a game of Takraw, a kick based ball and net sport. It follows similar rules to volleyball except you can only use your feet to hit the ball, making it far more acrobatic and a sport i’m now fully interested in looking into as the idea of a bunch of talented athletes doing spider-man style moves while hitting a ball only with kicks sounds utterly awesome. And keep in mind i’m not a sports guy normally, i’m only now casually intrested in Soccer/Football because of Ted Lasso and Wrestling because of the hard works that goes into it, the intresting histories and the nice dollop of bollocks. So the fact this show got me intrested in a sport at all is a feat. Sprig casually kicks a ball back, already having the impressive talents for acrobatics and strong legs needed for the sport, and is naturally invited to join in.
Hop Pop is next and he finds Khon Dancing, where dancers act out the life of the god Rama via dramatic, well timed movements whle wearing glittery costumes and really awesome looking traditional masks. While not mentoined in the episode the story is told by singers on the side whlie the actors pantomime everything else. Hop Pop is naturally drawn to anything theater and fits in perfectly.
Finally there’s Polly who finds herself at Thai School, where they teach thai to children every week, Anne herself later remarking she used to go (Thoguh failed to really learn more than a few phrases. Turns out Polly is a natural, having learned the language from Mrs. B’s soap operas, and thus impresses the other kid.. minus one calling her a show off but that one can be thrown in the hole with Polly’s other enemies when she conquers our puny planet.
Anne notices her mom giving back a LOT of tupperware and getting some back, but thinks nothing of it. Me on the other hand? I got EXACTLY what this meant and reacated accordingly.
Anne finds out it’s only been ten minutes and decides fuck it she’s leaving and gathering everyone. I was dreading these next scenes as I figured , given the conventions of this kind of plot, Anne would drag her family away from their apprecation of her culture and get called out by them AND her mom for being an insesntive dip. But Matt Braly’s too clever for that. Instead as Anne’s clearly touched to see each of her surrogate family immersing themselves in her culture and truly loving every minute of it, and seeing her community gladly embrace them. She dosen’t bother them or even let her presecene be known, she just watches fondly and let’s each one go about there way. She’s especailly proud of Polly, baffled because Anne herself barely learned any Thai, but still proud she’s fluent in it. It shows anne’s heart: She gets that while the Plantars clearly miss home.. they likely also miss their community and is glad hers is helping fill the void.
So Anne decides to fly solo only to run into her mom whose rightfully pissed Anne couldn't wait AN HOUR. The episode really does well setting up Mrs. B as being in the right too. I point this out because WAY too many cartoons have the adult be right because adult. This isn’t AS prevalent nowadays but growing up in the 90′s and 00′s I saw this a lot. Here Mrs. B is right.. because she’s right. Before we even get to the episodes heartwarming and heartwrenching reveal, the fact is she acknowledges how important this is, even without knowing the full stakes, and gladly compromises to let Anne only stay an hour, so Anne still helps her and reunites with the community (having gotten heavily cheek pinched by old ladies earlier), but gets to go get the important info they need. The Plantars are fully willing to take the detour to the temple for most of the day and offered no resistance, so there’s no making them feel bad. The only one who’s impatient here is Anne and while understandable, it’s not really excusable given Jan didn’t say anything like “I might of found a portal home”. There’s no immediate payoff to whatever she’s found, and thus no reason it can’t wait an hour and help her family out and reunite with a bunch of people who thought she was lost and hurting, which to a degree she was.
So even without the next reveal, Anne was kind of a jerk for not staying and helping. The next reveal though clinches it: As I guessed the tupperware was all from dishes the community cooked for the Boonchuy’s while anne was missing, so they wouldn’t have to in the deep depression of loosing their daughter. Not only that the whole community stepped in and helped do shifts at the restraunt and whatever Jeff and Mrs. B needed during the worst moments of their life. And it’s very telling Mrs. B DIDN’T tell Anne till it was clear she needed to know. SHe didn’t want to burden her daughter with what they went through because Anne didn’t go on purpose. It was an accident, she didn’t do anything wrong, and she worked hard , as she likely outlined, to get back. Telling her how much her absence hurt them was unecessary. But telling her now, so she can now how much the community helped them, without asking anything in return, how much these kind people made it so the Boonchuy’s surviived the worst 5 months of their lives with their buisness and sanity in tact, that was necessary. And Anne DOES geninely feel bad about being a dick about it now she realizes not only just what her parents went through, but how much this community really matters.
Bigger issues crop up though as it turns out the Annesterminator has dragonfly drones it sent after her. Anne brushes them off as being from the school newspaper, some reporters were seen earlier trying to get the scoop on her absence. This also puts her disappearance to me around late may early june given we have the Christmas special coming, and the plantars had to get back for the harvest, with the Shut In, , non canon or not, taking place in october and just after the Plantars returned. Which would mean these eps take place in early novemeber or late october. Look I have all eterneity and a few more weeks of episode to figure out the timeline. Point is dragon flies a comin and Anne prepares for a fight.. as does the temple. You mess with one of them, you mess with all of them and EVERYONE organizes to fight, with Hop Pop, Sprig and Polly putting their new skills to work: Hop pop uses cermonial swords to cut down dragonflies, spirg and his new team use the ball to take some out, and Polly organizes everyone. Everyone elses uses pots, pans and wahtever to kick ass. IT’s a sight to behold. Sprig and Polly finish them off with a Takraw Spike Special, and our heroes win. Unfortunately their also fully unmasked in front of a large crowd, and we get that close up from above.
The good news though is the community warmly embraces the Plantars and dosen’t need to know where they came from: They stood with them when they needed to and very clearly took care of Anne. That’s all they need to welcome them. Anne is touched by this and decides to stay both out of respect for her community, and because it’s now not just hers.. but the Plantars too. Plus more people she can honestly tell the frog thing to so that’s nice.
She gets karmically rewarded for this as Dr. Jan couldn’t wait, and having gotten a text from Anne earlier, drove down here. So Anne not only gets to bask in community but gets her clue. ducking behind a tree, Jan reveals the black light message.. and it’s nothing she can read. But thankfully Anne has Marcy’s journal.
Look if the shipping wasn’t at critical mass enough now Anne just.. casually has Marcy’s things in her bag. Though frankly wanting to run away together, blushing a lot together and ... let’s just save time and say just about every scene with Anne and Marcy kinda already told us everything, this is just more blatant evdience their lesbians together.
The message says “Find the mother of olms, she’ll lead you to her destiny” So they have a CLUE... but no earthly idea who she is and I only know what an olm is because of the recap page for this episode on TV Tropes. It’s a species of Salamander. Still it’s better to have SOME direction than none and wether this gets the Plantars home or helps them be Andrias it’s SOMETHING. So point for Jan and for Anne.
Thai Temple is an utterly fantastic episode. It embraces Thai culture, gives us more text to what went on while Anne was gone, has another fantastic fight scene and is just a joy to watch, bucking most of the conventions fo rthis kind of plot to create an utterly heartwarming tribute to Thai Culture. Easily a contender for my best of the year list and that is a tight race and I suspect with only more episodes left it’s only gonna get tighter. I had to give this show an extra slot, 6 instead of 5, simply because it has SO many episodes this year.
Next Time: The Moment’s we’ve been waiting for. Polly tries to rebuild Frobo with the help of some cosplayers, while the Boonchuy’s FINALLY find out the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Bring it on.
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