User blog:Justsomeordinarydude/A Fridge Too Far (The Loud House): A Reaction.

A Fridge Too Far

Season 3 has certainly started strongly, with both Roadie to Nowhere and this story being great television. A Fridge Too Far wasn’t quite what I expected based on the plot synopsis, but it was still entertaining and efficiently executed nonetheless. While the plot synopsis made it sound as if Lincoln himself would be going to great lengths to defend his food from his fellow siblings, what actually happened was Lincoln was merely the first one to do this, with the focus quickly shifting the other siblings copying his efforts and also taking steps to protect their leftovers in the fridge. Soon enough, all the siblings are pulling pranks and setting traps on one another in order to accomplish this end. Of course, what the writers seemed to realise in this instance was to present the conflict in a way that it was primarily entertaining yet not too intensified or overly mean-spirited in a manner that has made certain other stories off-putting in the past. Instead, the siblings agree to a rather creative resolution to their dilemma after Lincoln, through the help of Lisa, devises a method of organising different sections of the refrigerators interior to be designated for each child. Of course, this solution has its flaws in practice, but the narrative doesn’t ignore, and one major flaw (that being, where the food items of their parents will be placed if the entire fridge is separated by 11 colour coded units for each sibling) becomes significantly important later on in the episode as Lynn Sr’s ingredients end up being accidentally disposed of by the siblings before he is due to prepare and impress food critic/investor Timothy with his cooking.

Nevertheless, it was reassuring to see a conflict between the 11 siblings which was handled well and was able to portray the siblings involved in a dispute of devious deeds without going so far as to make any of them come across as despicably detestable. In fact, the efforts the Louds take to protect their leftovers from each other proved to be rather humorous. Lincoln shows he can trick the prank master herself with nothing more than simplistic designs, as he has a melon drop onto Luan’s foot when she tries to pinch his goodies. Luan then does the same to Leni, and then so on. The pranks and traps being set off are amusing physical gags, and the reactions of the siblings having been bamboozled are also rather funny to watch, particularly Luan and Leni’s enraged responses. Speaking of humour, there were also some other funny moments which spanned from the narrative scenario, such as the cute, surprised glare and enlarged eyes of the sisters after Lincoln reveals the new colour-coded fridge he and Lisa worked on. Not only was the conflict not unnecessarily mean-spirited (perhaps the worst of the injuries being Luan’s minor foot injury, which of course healed itself in rapid time in line with typical cartoon habit, as well as Lily being dosed with some form of radiation poisoning), but it actually managed to emit a lot of effective hilarity and provide entertainment value to the episode. This relates to one of my recent discussion posts, in which I spoke about how narrative conflicts in the show should be handled effectively. While I do not expect the complete abolishment of sibling disputes within future episodes (in fact, such an expectation would be absolutely ludicrous), I do not wish to see stories in which the intensity of a given feud is completely unjustified, disproportionate, and/or just over the top entirely. Here, no such faults in the execution are apparent. The feud is presented really well, and the proposed solution of coloured compartments is a creative way of resolving the conflict.

While I wasn’t especially fond of the Lynn Sr subplot involving him preparing food for Tim the food critic, I guess such a plot element was necessary in order for an actual resolution to be found. While the colour-coding was a neat idea in theory, it was still impractical because the kids typically had an oversight/fallacy in their idea. Lincoln, primarily focusing on the initial problem involving the conflict between him and his sisters about the leftovers, devised a solution which mainly dealt with eliminating the cause of that conflict, by providing the 11 separate compartments. But he also did not think of the fact that some food in the fridge would be that of which his parents have brought and may want to use, so of course, he just opts to put a little bit of that into each compartment, which resulted in Lynn Sr’s food being mixed in with the sibling’s areas, and then mindlessly throwing them away. In the end, the kids use their leftovers to help their father cook something to please the critic as their way of making up for sabotaging his original preparations to do so, and a satisfying ending is reached. I guess this sub-plot was added to fill the 11-minute running time, as the main plot by itself, for all its amusing content, was rather simple and didn’t have enough meat to fill the episode by itself. So, they had the food critic stuff to serve as padding. Even still, this was a great episode, even if I realise no proper solution was met. While the Louds made up for disposing of Lynn’s Sr’s food by donating their leftovers towards his cooking for Tim, no reform to Lincoln’s colour-coding organisation was introduced following the exposure of its fatal flaw. So where exactly will Lynn Sr and Rita’s refrigerated goods be stored? Will they continue to be mixed up and lost inside each of the coloured compartments? Who knows. There was even the ending scene which reflected on this, as Rita has nowhere to store her goodies, so she was hiding (which lead to one final gag at the expense of the hated Lynn Jr, which could have very well been a take that, scrappy moment on the writer’s part, but more on Lynn Jr soon). Perhaps there could have been a better way of adding more layers to the narrative which could have made the characters reflect on the underlying faults behind the colour-coding solution, and said alternative could have provided even more humour to the story overall. Still, this was a great episode which succeeded at fulfilling its most important requirements. The characters were enjoyable and were represented efficiently, and the conflict was handled pretty well overall; and despite my critiques, while it was a relative low point, the sub-plot was still far from bad or anything. Overall, very little to complain about, this episode is another strong episode for the third season.

Final Rating: 8/10