Dr. Rabbit, you better start looking at the classifieds. K.O.'s gunning for your job and honestly, he's better at it.
I love the premise for the episode "K.O.'s Health Week." It's a love letter and satire of how PSAs were shoehorned into 90's kid cartoons. Think the infamous Sonic Sez comments or even the misguided Cartoon All-Stars attempt to tackle a complex issue like substance abuse. Absurd antics aside, this episode gives some genuinely solid advice and thoughtful nuggets of wisdom.
One of my personal favorite segments covers self-esteem. As goofy as Brandon's delivery is, I love that this addresses that even sarcastic or seemingly mild self-deprecating comments pile up quickly. Bonus points for RMS reacting in sheer horror with how carelessly and flippantly Brandon puts himself down too. Honestly, even if someone uses self insults as some go-to for making themselves look more approachable or thinks it's funny, that does make others uncomfortable. It's not about preserving their comfort, though. They're wondering what's going through your head and making you feel so bad about yourself. They're worried, not charmed. It's easy for little jabs to become negative self-talk and then become things you earnestly believe about yourself.
I have horrible problems with self-esteem. There's immeasurable value in practicing self-love, no matter how cheesy the presentation may be. A lot of this cartoon is about the importance of community, family, and friendship, but loving yourself as much as those loved ones is just as important. Loved ones can help pick you up and support you in a difficult time but it takes the ability to fully, honestly love yourself to bolster their efforts. Sometimes, what's going on internally gets so big and overwhelming that you need to join the group efforts to raise yourself back up.
It's such a clever narrative move to plug "K.O.'s Health Week" before the end of season 2. "Rad's Alien Sickness" has a brief primer on what PV is like as a Saturday morning cartoon villain. "Dark Plaza" explores some of the consequences of Laserblast taking a dark turn. Health Week plants a few seeds on the underlying problems between K.O. and T.K.O. and what challenges K.O. may be facing next.
So, K.O's advice to Brandon is a tip of the iceberg introduction to self-love. While Brandon benefits from adopting some self-affirmations, grace, and patience, K.O. doesn't realize just how difficult this lesson really is. He's kind, gentle, and sensitive. He takes after his confident, self-assured mama but he doesn't recognize the intense self-reflection, struggle, and resilience Carol developed to become who she is. Carol loves every part of herself, including the fallout with Mr. Gar and how grief over Laserblast almost destroyed the kind, eager cadet she was. She's no longer Silver but she became the more worldly, composed person she wanted to be. She packages patience, grace, and understanding next to her empathy.
When K.O. meets his trauma, it's packaged as angry, angsty, set the world on fire T.K.O. Many people have what they consider a dark side, thoughts, bad habits, or some unappealing trait. Brandon's 'dark' side is a perfect mirror image. It takes mild readjustment to recognize himself and tell himself that he's loveable. K.O. sees T.K.O. as something other or separate. The many phases K.O. goes through in learning about, compromising, and eventually accepting T.K.O. are a fantastic reflection on what it's like to sit with yourself. Sometimes, it's an all-out brawl where you're trying to lock certain emotions away or mold yourself into a more socially pleasing, palatable shape. Sometimes, it's bargaining. Sometimes, it's acknowledging your feelings and that's satisfying as a first step, but it's a stopgap solution. Setting K.O. and T.K.O. as separate entities shows that self love can be as complicated and dynamic as someone's relationship with anyone else.
My favorite segment hands down tackles Mental Health. As someone that lives with anxiety and depression, I can attest to how dangerous it is to forget or downplay how much mental health interacts with every other part of overall health. I heard someone commenting on how it shouldn't be parceled out and should be included as part of health awareness in general. O.K. K.O. backs up that sentiment 100%!
So, the interaction between Crinkly Wrinkly and Barista Pup tees up how obtuse it is for a customer to say "Just smile" to a frustrated, burned out retail worker. This acts as commentary on how much effort corporate mandates for a never-ending happy to please mask sits at odds with someone's dynamic mood and the reality of their mental state or personal circumstances. It's complemented by how dismissive telling someone to be happy is to actually helping them navigate whatever challenge they may be facing, corporate setting or no. People are complicated. Just a little respect and understanding goes a long way.
The bulk of the segment is K.O. encouraging the barista to drink water, reach out to a friend or family, or journal as means to healthfully vent or navigate whatever was on her mind. In her case, she was probably just a bit tired, dehydrated, and frustrated after a long shift. Where K.O. genuinely helped her, he needed some of those notes for unpacking his ongoing struggle for validation and feeling heard. Carol is trying her best. K.O. channels how much he misses a father figure through how above and beyond he goes for others in his Health Week and as a hero. K.O. is placing others above his own welfare and needs. It's a lighter touch here. Meditation, talking things out, and water help Carol because she's self-actualized and resilient. These things generally work for upbeat, positive K.O., but he needs all of these to maintain his own overburdened ecosystem. So yes, he suggests all of these methods to someone else.
Going turbo and releasing T.K.O. is K.O.'s visual breaking point. Health Week shows an earlier warning sign of when K.O.'s at a tipping point. When the Bots threaten to interrupt his carefully manicured and intensive project, he shows what it looks like when K.O. embodies how aggressive and furious T.K.O. is by default. It's distressing to see K.O.'s sweet temperament crack like that. There's a subtle difference between K.O.'s restraint and how gleefully T.K.O. lets his frustration out.
After the group hike, I love that it's the Boxbots that step in to help K.O. get home after he collapses from exhaustion. While the cartoon generally focuses on Rad, Enid, and Mr. Gar as K.O.'s major support system, the Bots are a reminder that there are kind, helpful people outside of a typical support system too.
Hero and villain status aside, K.O. has shown genuine interest, sympathy, and support for the Bots. That kindness had a rolling ripple effect. You don't know everyone that is positively affected by your efforts and kindness. Sometimes, it's the most unexpected people that step up when you need someone to lean on. It's a nod towards how many layers and moving parts there really are to a healthy community. Besides that, K.O. spent plenty of time as a mentor and teacher. Any solid teacher can tell you they learn as much from their students as much if not more than they teach them.
I'm not really approaching this like my other deep, in-depth episode analyses. While I do write and put together videos on topics I hope others will like or even suggest, a lot of these have been part of my own mental and emotional health journey. I just spent the better part of the last week in intense group therapy sessions trying to encourage and foster healthy, mindful habits in grown adults that have hit rock bottom. Every lesson in Health Week is important. I was focusing on the things that I needed to hear the most the last two weeks.
The right person in the right circumstances told me how important self care is. It sounds obvious. It seems obvious. But the way he said it made me feel seen and recognized enough that the words stuck. It wasn't just words. It was treated as a given or something that I would do because I'll put in the work to make it happen. It's not boot straps. It's reaching self actualization because I want it rather than it being a seemingly unreachable horizon.
