User blog:Justsomeordinarydude/Teacher's Union (The Loud House): A Reaction.

Teacher’s Union

This was a serviceable episode. The plot is rather cliché and generic and there’s nothing which really leaps out as exceptional about this story, but it is entertaining at parts and does provide some screen time for two underdeveloped side characters in Mrs Johnson and Coach Pacowski. Of course, the result of Lincoln and Clyde’s efforts to artificially setup a relationship between them was obvious right from the get go. These attempts never work, do they? In order to prevent a downer ending from occurring, both of them end up with separate love interests, mainly to drive home the message that love is something which occurs naturally. Though it did seem a little forced how two new relationships escalated so quickly. The nurse and coach just happen to share an interest in mini golf and that comes up during a conversation between them while she’s tending to his injuries, and Mrs Johnson pretty much develops a crush on the janitor the moment after she lays eyes on him. Still, the episode is fairly solid and has some entertaining aspects to it. There were scenes where the coach abandons his strict drill sergeant nature whenever he saw Mrs Johnson and become infatuated on the spot, much to the relief of his students. Lincoln and Clyde had a few moments and there was the running gag throughout the episode where Lori, whom Lincoln asked for advice, kept assuming he was the one who needed love guidance, while he angrily insisted it wasn’t him.

The narrative took a risk in that it could have made Lincoln and his friends come across as very selfish and insensitive, given how their intention was to fix up the coach with another teacher so they could get it easier in gym class, even if it means deceiving and manipulating the two teachers in question into liking each other, in spite of the potential consequences that strategy could have (and surely enough, the aftermath of the date between Johnson and the coach was not pleasant). But the episode never goes too far in making them come across this way, especially since Lincoln and Clyde do courageously come clean about what they were doing to the coach after the witness him in a depressed state. Also, Lincoln and Clyde are surprisingly more athletic than perhaps even they realise, being able to make their way through that tough obstacle course while on the run from their angry gym coach, who is apparently strong enough to lift a concrete block the size of an adult male (speaking of which, it just occurred to me, this episode actually featured a sequence in which an adult actively tried to attack a couple of children. Consider the fridge horror factor here. If he caught them, they could have been seriously hurt).

Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to say about this one. As I stated, it is serviceable television. Nothing more, nothing less. It is reasonably entertaining and has decent gags, and the characters are likeable enough in how they are portrayed. It succeeds in fulfilling its essential requirements, so it is what I would consider to be ‘good’ television overall. But that’s it. It’s nothing special, and probably one of the weaker episodes of season 3 so far (then again, season 3 has started off strong, so that is not necessarily a huge criticism). It was fun enough but likely an episode I will forget about very quickly.

Final Rating: 6/10