Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25546256-20180209233903/@comment-28900404-20180213015505

Personally I found each episode to have their ups and downs, though City Slickers is by far the better of the two episodes as Fool me Twice was disappointing.

City Slickers- I found this to be a good sequel to Relative Chaos, as it goes back to the life Bobby/Ronnie Anne have now living in the big city and seeing the Casadegrandes was nice again, especially since a lot of them were pretty good characters. And Ronnie Anne still keeps her characterization from Season 2. However the problem I have is that the description is misleading. Ronnie Anne has "changed" yet the episode never shows any evidence of that, the family don't note any change or signs of different behavior from Ronnie Anne nor does Ronnie Anne act any different. Really this should've been Ronnie Anne having a secret if anything else. Not to mention her city friends didn't come off as the judgemental or gangster type of people (which is what I thought the direction of this plot was heading) in fact they just seem like tamer versions of Lynn and in the end it came as no surprise that they didn't have any trouble with Ronnie Anne being from a non city environment. So it kinda makes the episode weak in that regard.

Lori's subplot was entertaining though (it certainly beats her crying/whining) but her imagine spots of trying to be a "City girl" did add some humor to the episode and the Casadegrandes were still their entertaining selves, so the episode was enough to balance out in the end. I'd give City Slickers a 7/10

Fool Me Twice- I'm going to have the unpopular opinion here I found this to be the weakest April Fools episodes. I know people are divisive about Luan's character in these episode, but to me I think it makes the episodes better. This is basically the episode the fans wanted the previous two episodes to be. But really it plays things too safe. Hiring stunt doubles was a great idea for the premise, but they don't really do anything with them, in fact the moment the doubles come into play the are instantly transitioned into Luan's "scheme" and are used to "ruin their lives" but really in some cases it comes off as denting some of their egos (this is mainly the case for Lola, Lynn and Rita) and for me character's who do nothing but have an ego complex or inflate their egos or pitch a fit when their egos are dented is a huge no no for me as I find it extremely obnoxious. But taking that nitpick out of the equation there isn't anything beyond that and when you look at it Luan basically runining the family's live and humilating them is far worse than any of the pranks she did to them previously.

And while I can agree with people in stating Luan's punishment was finally well deserved it also felt a bit disappointing because Luan was less effective as an antagonist. Part of the appeal was seeing Luan as this over the top villain who takes pleasure in her pranking schemes, it sounds dark, but it works. And with a couple of exceptions in "Fools Paradise" (such as flaring up Lana's allergies) her pranks weren't that bad. I also think having the stunt doubles be in on the whole thing with build up and staging their prankings and teaming up with Luan would've provided a much better twist. As Luan's antagonism would've been more effective, thus if the family did turn things around her punishment would've been more satisfying. As it is it's just too safe and lost the charm of what made the previous two work for me. I'd give it a 5 or 6/10.. It's not a bad episode, it just felt incomplete.