User blog:AustinDR/My Problems with Lynner Takes All

1. The Humor: What made Lynn insufferable in this episode other than the fact that she is a terrible winner is her quips. Her quips were simply not funny, at least to me. The punchline of the jokes were so obvious, that the execution of them was frustrating. For example, Lynn once says something on the lines of saying the floor is dirty. It's obvious that the punchline is that she'd wipe the floor with them after her victory, but it was unfunny. That, and Luan's puns were especially terrible in this episode. Gluten-ing started, guys? Normally I can put up with her puns, but they were especially groan-worthy here.

2. While I had already disliked Lynn earlier, she was even more unlikable in this episode. I get that they exaggerated her competitive attitude to make a point that she gloats too much, but they did it too well. Really, other than a few moments when Lynn was starting to lose her mind over losing that cat game, she is at her worst here. It's not that she gloats all the time that makes her bad here: what does it is how far she takes her gloating. Making confetti out of her sisters' homework? Not only is that unfunny, but it comes off as being extremely callous; her sisters could probably end up failing because they were unable to turn in their homework on time, and yet Lynn has no qualms with that. Or how about the fact that she actually wrote "loser" on her siblings' foreheads whilst they were sleeping? Once again, it doesn't strike me as funny; it just feels that the writers are deliberately going out of their way to make Lynn even more unlikable than she already was. That doesn't help how she cheats in a few instances: Lincoln is a whiz at anything Ace Savvy related, and yet Lynn uses mind tricks on Lincoln so that she could get him to slip up. And she gets even worse because of that one loss. Look, I understand that the episode is trying to show that Lynn is in the wrong because of her ego, but it oversells that idea.

3. While I find the ending fine because it fits Lynn's characteristics pretty well, I still dislike Lynn because - with this episode aside - she is still a bad character who's lacking in development. I appreciate the small change at the end where Lynn celebrates her victory in private, what makes me not like her has to be her apology. What made Lola's apology more effective in "Tattler's Tale" is the execution. Lola admits that she was wrong to get her siblings to do whatever she wanted under threat of telling the parents about what they had done, she also earns their trust by taking all of the blame. With Lynn, however, she doesn't really have that realization; Lincoln and the others point out to her that she was a sore winner, and she promises to be better. But then the episode ends by her loudly gloating about her triumph in privacy. Once again, because Lynn's realization came close to the end of the episode, it was less effective, and seemed half-authentic. "Lynner Takes All" is marginally a good Lynn episode much like how "Jeffy's Parents" is marginally a good SML video, but later videos or episodes tend to retcon their development.