User blog:Justsomeordinarydude/Pasture Bedtime Reaction

Originally uploaded 28/6 on DeviantArt

I wasn’t overly fond of this episode, to be honest. While not exactly bad television and certainly not without merit, Pasture Bedtime comes across as mildly annoying, as well as a wasted opportunity. I’ll start by outlining what I did like. The highlight of the episode was Liam himself, who we got to see a lot more of, and we got to learn more about his life on the farm that he talks about all the time. He had his fair share of moments in the show, and I kinda liked the ending where he forgives his friends for sneaking behind his back to attend Girl Jordan’s party, though he does trick them into thinking he was eating their pet pig before revealing that to be a lit. Liam is a nice kid, but he isn’t stupid or a pushover. He figured out straight away after waking up that his friend had sneaked away, given their appearances at that moment. He shows just how much of a fun loving kid he is during all their activities at the farm.

The other lead characters are serviceable. They’re the nerdy friends who have a chance to participate in a cooler alternative than the sleepover their close friend Liam is offering to them. At first, they remain loyal to their friend (it was a nice moment when Lincoln respectfully rejected the offer to attend Jordan’s party for the sake of loyalty to his friend, and convinced the others in his peer group to do the same). Though that loyalty quickly expires once they see a painfully high frequency of incoming videos from the other kids about how awesome the party allegedly is. Lincoln’s own loyalty quickly dwindles too, once he finds out his cannonball record is at stake. Of course, their betrayal and deception comes back to bite them later on, as the whole party just turns out to be a series of humiliating events for the boys, from Lincoln and Clyde undressing and having their clothes stolen by the dog, to Rusty and Zach receiving unfortunate reactions to hot sauce and a dodgy hair product respectively.

And all of this ties into what doesn’t work especially well about the episode. The humour is hit and miss. While some of the humour surrounding Liam’s farm scenes works to an extent, the so-called amusement present during the sequences when the boys go to Jordan’s party isn’t that great. It just seems overly mean-spirited just for the sake of being so. Like some forced humiliation conga just to drive home a point. Maybe the point of that was to drill into the minds of the viewers an Aesop about never betraying one’s friends because it leads to negative consequences, but there could have been a smarter, less over the top and blatant way of doing that. I don’t even mind the approach of mean-spirited humour against the main characters per se, as long as the gags are actually funny and they serve a worthwhile purpose. But here, it’s just to demonstrate how Lincoln and the boys regretted their decision and should have remained at the farm, and honestly, the premise of Lincoln’s gang hanging out at Girl Jordan’s party could have been used for something far superior in terms of narrative output. Speaking of which…

Girl Jordan also could’ve had a much larger role in this story, as the synopsis originally made me think she would have. She has always been among the more popular of the background characters within the eyes of the fandom, and recently her popularity has spiked (since she is now the 1027’th girl they are all pairing with Lincoln…). As such, her having more to do here than just briefly appear at the start and end of the episode would have been appreciated. Furthermore, I won’t even bother complaining about how predictable and generic the whole approach to the narrative was for the umpteenth time, since it has been pointed out to me that the general expectation is for many episodes of the show to be predictable or generic to an extent. I guess technically, that is true, but can’t fault a guy for hoping for better.

I guess that reaction is a bit all over the place, but to be truthful, that’s just my opinion of the episode. Its serviceable and has a few laughs here and there, but it’s just not that entertaining and has some notable problems. Liam is given a lot of time to shine, though the writers simultaneously dropped the ball regarding Girl Jordan. The boys are serviceable characters, though that’s pretty much it. The story does nothing to enhance their characterisation in any significant way (though to be fair, that probably wasn’t the point of the story). Overall, it’s not bad, not at all, it’s just… meh. But when ‘meh’ is the weakest this season has been so far, I’d say that says more about the strong quality of the season overall than the relative weakness of one episode. To be honest, even ‘meh’ is a cynical way of putting it. It’s okay to solid. It succeeds in being somewhat entertaining on at least a basic level, and there are a few moments of merit and enjoyment to be found in the episode. I guess I’m just looking for better. Still, just because it’s not stellar quality doesn’t mean it’s poor, that would be an unfair judgement…

Final Rating: 6/10