Welcome everyone, to a (very) late episode of SpyXFamily! Apologies for that, I had to finish the His and Her Circumstances review, checking it over until I was happy. Still, that’s done and ready to go up Thursday so it’s time for some good old family fun! So without further ado, lets dive into the episode.
Overall this was a pretty slow week for SpyXFamily, with neither episode really furthering anything plot wise. Instead they were just 2 cute, longform gag sequences. This is fine enough, it was certainly cute. But there was nothing really… noteworthy. Nothing particularly heartwarming nor narratively important enough to get invested in. I’m sure for most this is fine, I want to be painfully clear that this was still a fun episode. But I’ve heard some gripes from friends and colleagues about how they found it to be rather dull, and I can’t bring myself to disagree. Still, every now and then this kind of break from the serious stuff is good. You can’t keep your audience tense all of the time. So long as this doesn’t become the new status quo, I’m sure it’ll be alright.
Getting into the episodes proper, the first half was easily my favorite. Part of that no doubt has to do with me going into it already knowing the punchline though. I think knowing that Glooman wasn’t getting kicked out of the school is what made the jokes land, and that the episode would be a lot better for some people on rewatch. Suddenly the wholesome scenes between classmates become more than just cute kids being nice, though it’s definitely still that. They become another rung on the ladder. Another layer on Glooman’s house of cards that will inevitably fall. You watch the scene knowing what’s going to happen, and so you giggle or laugh or smile like any audience member does when they are “in the know”. That was me for this half of the episode. And I enjoyed it all the more because of that.
That isn’t the say the heartfelt stuff didn’t work either! It’s still a bunch of small children coming together to wish their classmate a fond farewell. It’s a reminder that, for all their cruel childlike pranks, these aren’t bad kids. Damian, despite getting annoyed the more Glooman asks for, still puts up with him and does it because its the kind thing to do. He even, unprompted, gives him his school supplies to have something to remember him by. The same goes for Becky singing him the choir song, the smallest, most heartfelt request Glooman made all day. Sure, there’s a joke behind it at the end. But that doesn’t make it any less wholesome. And I think that dichotomy, when you know how the episode ends, only enhances them both.
As for the 2nd half, this was much more boring. It had the same structure as the first, massively relying on a punchline near the end, except this time it was Yor running across town to deliver Anya her gym clothes than the wholesome interactions and misunderstandings of children. Sure, production wise it was cool! Yor got to do some parkour and save a vase. But aside from that the only real meat of the section for me was Loid coming down at the end and offering to get lunch with her. It feels like of the few times the romance angle of SpyXFamily has been brought up, which is something I wish it would do a lot more. Still, it was some cute fun, and I had a decent time watching it. Just not something that lends itself to any sort of conversation or memorability.
So yeah, all in all this was a cute but forgettable episode of SpyXFamily! Nothing to exciting, nothing to memorable, just a wholesome dose of cute popcorn fun. While it’s not my favorite thing in the world, I still acknowledge that for some people this is exactly what they want. Something where they can relax, have fun, and not have to worry about international relations, terrorists, or Loid getting blown up. And this week was exactly that.
