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Gravity Falls Review: Boyz Crazy

Another really strong episode of Gravity Falls!



We open with Wendy and Dipper performing some voice overs for security camera footage in the Mystery Shack. Mabel interrupts and begins a happy dance (Dipper initially thinks she got into the Smile Dip again, which was a nice bit of continuity) about the upcoming concert featuring her favorite Boy Band, Sev'ral Timez.

"We're not threatening!" 

Robbie comes in, and Wendy is upset with him and wants to break up, but then immediately changes her mind after he plays her a song. Dipper believes she's been brainwashed by some subliminal messages and turns to Stan for help. Stan tells him how his own girlfriend Carla was stolen away from him at their "favorite 50's themed 70's diner" and agrees to help.

Note Pacifica in the background there.

Meanwhile, Mabel, Candy and Grenda have arrived at the concert, but find it sold out.

Undeterred, they sneak backstage to find that their favorite boy band is a bunch of vat grown clones, something, I think, we all suspected in the 90s.





They sneak the clones back to the Mystery Shack. Dipper and Stan notice, but they're so wrapped up in trying to uncover the subliminal messages that they ignore the five clones living in their attic.

Meanwhile their manager has tracked them down, and we get my favorite line in the episode.

"Have you seen any perfect boys around here?"
"Only when I look in the mirror. Up top!"

He leaves, but not before the goat eats his rear license plate.

Dipper and Stan are still plugging away at finding the message on the CD, until a random insult by Robbie convinces him to play it backwards. 

He was getting pretty frustrated there.

They find the hidden message, and take off for Lookout point, while Mabel learns that Ergman Bratzman, the manager, was arrested for driving without a rear license plate. Heh heh.

Mabel doesn't want to let them go, having become accustomed to having her own personal boy band,

 and she orders them to eject Candy and Grenda.

Stan and Dipper roar into Lookout Point.

"Kid! Mister Pines!"
"That's MISTER Pines to you!"
"That's what I just said!"

And Dipper frantically gets the tape copy of the subliminal messages to play. 

He does and Wendy is outraged. Robbie tries to explain that he didn't know there were subliminal messages on the song, that it was like that when he stole it from some other guy, which does not go over well with Wendy. Dipper sees his chance and asks if she wants to hang out, and Wendy angrily and understandably rebuffs him too.

Mabel sees the error of her ways and releases the clones into the wild and at the end, they serenade a deer and kiss a tree. 

This was really an outstanding episode. Probably second only to Fight Fighters for my all time favorite. It's just such a loving lampoon of the Boy Bands it's skewering that I can't help but love it.

Gravity Falls Review: Carpet Diem

We open with Mabel and Dipper playing some "Attic stuff mini-golf," and they seem to be having a pretty good time until Mabel's alarm clock goes off.

She mentions that she'll be spending the night with Candy and Grenda, and Dipper is disappointed that she'll be gone and then horrified when he notices Calling All Boys: Preteen Edition and realizes that the sleepover will be taking place in the attic.

Dipper gets fed up and leaves as the sleepover kicks into high gear. He passes on Soos' horrifying death trap of a break room, and winds up sleeping outside where a wolf gnaws his leg

but he still finds it preferable to being inside.

The next day, Mabel and her friends awaken after their sleepover bender.

Dipper returns to find their attic golf course in ruins. They fight and decide they need separate rooms. Which works out, because Soos discovers a hidden room within the Shack.


I didn't catch this on the first viewing, but a friend pointed out the date circled on the calendar probably has some significance. Based on Dipper's expression, he certainly seems to think so.

Grunkle Stan says he'll award to room to whichever twin accumulates more Suck-up Points, so the kids fall over each other to see who can perform the most dangerous and/or demeaning chores.

This goes on for a little while, until Dipper is in the new room. He builds up a static charge while walking across the carpet, and when he touches Mable, the electrical shock causes them to switch bodies. 

They waste no time sabotaging each other. Mabel had previously made Stan an omelet that looked like his face, now Dipper, in her body, makes a sandwich filled with rocks.

Right after that, Mabel as Dipper sings "Breaking stuff is so much fun, I am Dipper and I stink!"

I liked this bit. Pleasantly ridiculous and they move on to other things before it wears too thin.

Soos switches bodies with Waddles and that's pretty entertaining too.

"Yes! I should do out loud wishing more often!"

Old Man McGucket ("Local Kook") tries to eat him, while Waddles in Soos' body works out pretty well for Soos.

A bearded witch chasing a talking pig! My horoscope came true!

Meanwhile, the body switching is starting to backfire. Dipper as Mabel is conscripted for another slumber party where Grenda reads age-inappropriate romance novels and Stan thinks that Mabel as Dipper's odd actions mean that he's going through puberty, so he reads to him from "Why am I sweaty?"

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. As the situations collapses, Dipper and Mabel find themselves in the secret room, but so do Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland, Candy and Grenda and Soos, Waddles and Old Man McGucket. Madcap bodyswapping ensues for a while, until everyone winds up in his or her own body.

My horoscope didn't say anything about this!

Dipper moves into the carpet room and Mabel stays in the attic, but they each miss the other when it comes time to stay good night. Dipper moves back into the attic with Mabel and he gives the carpet room to Soos.

The post credits scene is Soos talking to the woman to whom he became engaged while Waddles was in his body.

Another solid episode. I think the seeds for future developments have been planted here, between the date circled on the calendar and the carpet being number 78 in a series of experiments.

Gravity Falls Review: The Deep End

I was a little bit disappointed with Bottomless Pit!, but Hirsch and company bounce right back with "The Deep End".

A heat wave has struck Gravity Falls, so the kids scrape Stan off the floor and head to the local pool. Once there, Mable instantly falls for yet another boy, and Dipper continues crushing on Wendy, who's working there as the lifeguard.

The pool is looking for an assistant lifeguard and Dipper jumps at the chance, because it means sitting next to Wendy all day, even if his boss is the rather intense Mister Poolcheck.

(Interestingly, Mister Poolcheck was part of the angry mob in the previous episode.)

Dipper gets the job and he and Wendy have a ball making mischief.

Stan finds the perfect pool chair, but Lil' Gideon steals it out from beneath him. I'm no fan of the two Gideon-centered episodes, but he works great here. I just feel like his schtick wears too thin as the focus of an entire episode, but as in "Irrational Treasure", he's pretty entertaining in a supporting role.

Mabel gets closer to her mystery boy, who is actually a trapped merman by the name of Mermando. He became seperated from his family and trapped in the pool and can't escape on his own. Mabel vows to rescue him.

"You're like the coolest guy I've ever met. And you can play at least one chord on the guitar."

Things are falling apart for Dipper. Stan's fight with Gideon escalates and he serves a short stint in pool jail, though, thankfully, not in solitary.

Dipper is tasked with restoring order and has to work a night shift. Unfortunately, that's the night that Mabel (among others) breaks in to the pool to orchestrate Mermando's escape.

She abandons her first plan, which was to build him artificial legs out of fish sticks and

instead, steals a cooler and a cart and sticks Mermando in it.


Dipper catches her in the act, and though Mabel tries to bluff her way out,

Dipper notices something amiss. She flees and he takes off in hot pursuit.

She makes to the lake, but the cart overturns. Dippers asks her "Why do you even need the cooler?!"

"I needed the cooler to save my new friend because he needs to go home and he's really nice and we combed each others' hair and he needs to be in the cooler because he breathes water because he's a merman!"

And that's what I love about the show, because the characterization for those two is so great, that those lines seem exactly how they should respond.

But, with the cooler overturned, Mermando is suffocating on land. Mabel begs Dipper to give him reverse CPR,

and Mermado comes around. The first thing he asks is "Why didn't you just roll me into the water?" which is something I really like in entertainment. People make mistakes or don't always make the optimal choice in an emergency, even when that choice should be obvious.

Mabel appeals to Dipper's basic decency and he gives Mermando the megaphone, even though it will mean his job. Before, he goes, he bids farewell to Mabel.

Mermando: I have never met anyone like you.

Mabel: Same here. Except for a zombie, a gnome and a couple of cute vampires.

Dipper: I don't remember the vampires.

Mabel: I don't tell you everything.

and then they kiss.

"awwww..."

And then we get a Free Willy leap on the way to freedom.

In the end, we learn that, even though Stan snuck in overnight to claim the chair, Gideon anticipated this and coated it with glue, thereby getting the last laugh. The closing credits roll on the poor boy in pool jail.

Wonderful characterization, funny lines, physical comedy (I still giggle thinking of Mermando getting pecked by that woodpecker), solid subplots that intersect with the main story.

I liked this one a lot.

Gravity Falls Review: Bottomless Pit!

With "Bottomless Pit!",( much like Jeopardy, we mustn't forget the exclamation point), we get the first anthology episode of the series. I had never associated the show strongly with the Simpsons. Sure, it's an animated comedy series with a brother and sister and an overweight man-child but it's had a distinct enough identity to avoid such comparisons up until now. But the Simpsons is also renowned for its Treehouse of Horror anthology episodes, the fifth of which, the one with "The Shinning", Homer changing the future and kids being eaten in the cafeteria, is, in my opinion, one of the very best episodes of the series that has spanned twenty years.

This is by no means, a bad episode, mind you; it's very funny in parts,just not as consistently riotous as, say, the Time Traveler's Pig or Fight Fighters. It's a bit lackluster in parts, is all, and coupled with the fact that the format reminds me of funnier episodes from another series, probably makes me less charitable than it deserves.

The episode begins with Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Stan chucking items into a nearby bottomless pit, but the wind picks up and "an invisible pushing force" knocks them in.

As they're falling, Soos suggests they tell stories to pass the time. Dipper says "I've got a story! It's called the time Grunkle Stan got us thrown in a bottomless pit where we spent the rest of our natural lives!" and Soos strokes his chin and exhorts Dipper to "go on" in a such a way that does nothing to disabuse the viewer of Simpsons parallels. 

Dipper is up first and his story is called "Voice over," and is probably the weakest of the lot. After Wendy, Soos and Mabel put together a techno remix of Dipper's squeaky-voiced exclamations, Dipper resolves to change his voice. I do appreciate the absurdity of Kristen Schaal making fun of someone else's voice, however.

He runs into Old Man McGucket, who happens to be working on a voice changing potion. Dipper drinks it and his voice changes to a deep, resonant radio announcer's voice when he wakes up. There's a running gag where his friends beat him with blunt objects because they don't recognize his voice, but it's mostly a pretty flat installment.

I really liked the next one, though. 

"Soos' Really Great Pinball Story" (Told by Soos) Is That a Good Title? Do They Have to Be Puns or Whatever?

Soos is playing pinball on Stan's creepy old pinball machine, Tumbleweed Terror, and hopes to knock "POO" off the high score list. 

 When he can't do it, the twins recommend that he tilt the machine to give himself an edge. He gets the high score, but the vengeful talking skull inside the machine shrinks them down and traps them inside.

Dipper: Guys, there's an awful lot of green lightning coming out of that game.
Soos: Naw, that's a normal amount of green lightning.

At first they're excited, ("Hushed exclamation of wonder!"), but when they realize that the machine brought them inside to punish, the bloom some comes off this particular rose.

Soos knows where there is a manual reset, so after a brief flirtation with the pinball wench, he has Mabel arrange a distraction, ("Are either of you good at jumping up and down and making annoying noises?") so he could trigger it.

"My time has come."

He balks when he realizes that he'll erase his high score, but finally does the right thing when the twins are in trouble and resets the game.

Grunkle Stan has a very brief installment where he talks about how he won "The Football Bowl", which is self-aggrandizing and dissatisfying to the other listeners. I liked it, though.

Dig that Pitt Cola sign!

Mabel finished off the episode with the strongest story, "Truth Ache", where after Stan lies his way out of a ticket by claiming he has a doctor's note for a seeing eye bear after he's pulled over for trying to teach a bear to drive.

What seems to be the problem, officers?

Why, it's right here inside my jacket.

This offends Mabel's sense of justice, so she seeks out some magical teeth that force Stan to tell the truth all the time. Of course, telling the truth all the time when you have little or no concern for other people's possessions or emotions is a pretty bad idea, and Mabel and Dipper tackle him while he's in the process of calling the police station to admit his massive tax fraud.

At the end of the episode the pit spits them out right where they fell in, right in front of Gravity Falls' ubiquitous goat.

In this land of ours, there are many great pits, but none so bottomless as the the bottomless pit.

I enjoyed it. It was a nice change of pace and pretty funny in parts.