User blog:AlexKawa/Episode Review: Net Gains

Woo-hoo! The Loud House is back! I've missed it. So, before I get into the episode at hand here, I wanted to say that, first off, you know how stoked I was for this episode. I really wanted to love it. Especially after Thursday night. Oh god! Why didn't I pay attention to the signs I so clearly was given? I actually did it. I finally brought myself to watch Brawl in the Family. Why? Well, since I know that, despite my pleading and begging, you guys will bombard the wiki with "one year" blog posts on Tuesday, I will make my own worst episodes list to prove that there are worse episodes out there. Now, I'll only do this if you guys do assault me with all those hypothetical posts. So I finally saw the episode, and of course it sucked. But I'm not gonna go into detail. Let's just move along.

So, Net Gains. I was REALLY looking forward to this one. I have been waiting, waiting, and waiting for a Lincoln-Lynn episode...And then I saw before I watched it that Lincoln wasn't in it. "C'mon! You had one thing to do!  ONE THING!!  You just needed a scene with Lincoln helping Lynn in some way!  That's it!  And you couldn't even do that!", was my initial reaction. Yeah, I got over it pretty quickly. Still was disappointed at first, but we'll get back into that later.

So, we start off with Lynn doing her traditional "good luck" rituals in preparation for basketball tryouts. Yeah, I bet you expected me to rage again about how much superstitions break me and make me sick to my stomach, and they still are nonsensical to me (no, not just to me; go on Bing, search "superstitious," and check out the synonyms in the definition box), but I've "remember[ed] all the sadness and frustration, and let it go, let it go." So yeah, I've sort of made peace with all that since my little rage in my Insta-gran review. Thanks, Chester. I promise I won't use that quote anymore. So, Flip, recognizing Lynn as Lincoln's sister, picks her for his team. Lynn is distraught by this, and convinces her team to let her do all the work to make sure they win. They catch onto this, and Lynn convinces them that winning is all that really matters. When the other team starts to notice this strategy, Lynn talks Flip into recruiting new players, who they find outside Royal Woods. Flip steals the sign and gets a ticket, which I found pretty funny. So, the new players start acting just like Lynn and take one (or two, I guess) for the team, literally. Lynn realizes this behavior, and promises all her teammates a chance at the next game. Then, we get Pep and the Announcer from, uh, THE episode. Yeah, I'm trying real hard not to name it. Pep was really funny, and I did hear someone say he was one of the few redeeming qualities to the other episode he appeared in. So, for as much as I don't hate that episode, it was nice to see him back in what is definitively a much better episode. So, Lynn's team loses. Like, BIG TIME! But they don't really care. Because they had fun and all worked together.

So, overall, what do I think of it. Well, very great! I feared that the writers' idea of "developing" Lynn would be to pull out a random personality trait that we'd never seen before and "fix" it by the end of the episode. Fortunately, we didn't get that. We got to see a recurring theme throughout Lynn be resolved by her own choice. I mean, yeah, one could argue that the new recruits made her do it, yeah she was influenced by it, but it was still her own choice in the end. Would I say this is better development for Lynn than Lynner Takes All was? Well, from what I know of the episode (I haven't actually watched it yet), I'd say yes. I mean, some would beg to differ that that episode was development, but I think we can all agree that this one was. And even if you thought Lynner Takes All was development for Lynn, hopefully, we can all agree that this is much greater. I was initially very disappointed that Lincoln wasn't in the episode, but it was so good I managed to look past it pretty easily. While I still really want an episode of them working together on something, there's still plenty of time this season to do that, and even if we don't get it in full, we'll always have that scene from Insta-gran to remember. And hopefully, this episode improves Lynn's relationship with her family in future episodes. I mean, by normal TV show standards, The Loud House is pretty good when it comes to continuity, so I think it can happen. And I also applaud this episode for taking a risk. Not just that there was no Lincoln, but that we got an inside look into one of his sisters without him influencing them in anyway. I mean, maybe Friend or Faux? could count because Lisa and Lincoln never technically interacted, but she did take some inspiration from him. So, overall, the risk this episode took deserves to be commended, and the execution was amazing! I'd say this is the best of Season 3 so far.

Rating: A+

And with that, Lynn is now officially my favorite character! I'm on the side of my wiki friend and fellow Connecticuter, Dragonzako. #StopTheLynnHate

Well, that's all I got! Take care, and I'll see you next weekend! Or next Tuesday if you guys do it. Please don't! Peace out!