Hi, everybody. And welcome back to my Review of Star vs. The Forces of Evil.
After last week's episode and Review, you can tell between the lines that I was excited for what this next episode will bring. And boy did I enjoy it from start to finish. The half hour featured an interesting concept (for lack of better term): One of the Forces of Evil (or if there was more than one planned in this series so far, and I haven't noticed, one of the minions of the Force of Evil) winds up joining the heroes in whatever they're doing that week. Exciting, huh?
Well, if that piques your interest, than this will too:
If you're wondering what our sweetie/rebel heroine does before and during bedtime, this episode is for you! (you sickos.) Halfer 2 is all about Star conjuring spells in her sleep, and it's up to Marco to stop her before she turns the Family Home upside down, inside out, into chaos and into a black hole.
It's "Lobster Claws" and "Sleep Spells".
First up, Halfer 1...
In it, When Ludo fires one of his monster minions, Lobster Claws, Marco and Star attempt to help him adjust to life on Earth.
This segment begins with one reason I love this show so much--
Starco vs. The Useless Minions--Fight for the Magic Wand!: Round 6
Starco is trapped under the hand--hoof--claw--appendages of the evil backups. One of the members, Lobster Claws, is enthusiastic to be chosen to give the finishing blow by taking Star’s Magic Wand. But instead of grabbing it (which had to be in plain view), he grabs...the antler of his counterpart, Deer Beard. OUCH. With this advantage, Star fights back with her finishing blow, and ends this round just like the rest. With her and Marco off to school like the Champs they are, and having lost again as usual, Ludo and his ragtag group of failures head back to the dark dimension from which they came, but not before he sends one of them packing. He forces Lobster Claws to stay on Earth because his performance was a “steaming pile of monster garbage” (his mild, happy, go-get-’em, can-do attitude and sloppy, uninspired work just didn’t fit) compared to the rest of the group, firing him in the process. His partners-in- (literal) crime turn their backs on him and leave in shame. LC kneels to the ground and sobs, losing possibly his dream job, his chance to see his … and a place to sleep (that’s possibly not up to code in the first place.)
--Hate to be Deer Beard (the guy with the antlers) at that moment.
--For that brief moment, when he was kneeling and crying, you had to feel sorry for LC. It had to be the sad BGM that did it, probably.
Hours later, Starco return home to find a strange sight: Lobster Claws sitting in the backyard. They attack, but he doesn’t budge. When they wonder what the problem is, he fesses up. While Star believes he’s lying, Marco believes he’s really in a bind. To drive it on home, LC reveals that he actually always wanted to be a good guy. While Star is totally against it, our heroes decide to go ahead and help Clawsy convert to Good. but...it gets complicated.
Starco and LC take a walk to practice his new goody image. But he hits snags along the way:
-When a guy strolls by on his bike, Clawsy knocks him off. (He’s okay, though)
-When a girl asks for her kitten to be saved, LC climbs to save it...before stuffing it in his mouth. When Star and Marco take it out, he STUFFS THE LITTLE GIRL IN THERE!
-The three find a house on fire and the female owner wants her baby saved. LC rushes in...and instead of saving her child (which wasn’t a child at all), which was actually a Baby Grand Piano, he’s chugging ice cream.
-And finally he’s given the easy, simple, small-form task of walking a lady across street.
He instead causes a fiery rampage.
It’s just clear that LC is just destined to be evil and not good. Especially here.
Star is in the backyard taking a nap, when Ludo and his henchmen show up, ready for the steal. But she “awakens”, making this a diversion.
When they are fake fighting, LC grabs the Wand...and suddenly it changes its look and everything changes. Everyone realizes that LC is an evil force. When Star and Marco notices this, he makes the sad decision to end his episode-long rooting and snap Clawsy of what would’ve been his start of darkness.
Ludo is very impressed with this new-and-improved , and rehires him back onto his army. Marc begs him not to renege, but is knocked out by Clawsy’s...claw. Star remarks that Lobster Claws may have some good in him after all (nope),
Favorite Lines:
“I love cupcakes!” -Bearicorn (before taking a cupcake to the eye-lol)
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“History is so cool. Ben Franklin blowing up that kite monster with his electric lightning powers? Woah.” -Star (Oh Star. It’s like you’re not even trying.)
“Yeah-heh. That’s not what happened.” -Marco
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“It’s okay! I landed on a sprinkler.’
later…
“Where’s a sprinkler!?” -Random Guy
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I love this episode. We get to see one of Ludo’s minions get thrown out of his fray and he gets into Starco’s side, and tries his hardest to be a good guy. But it’s clear that despite his best efforts (or lack thereof), he’s actually evil after all, and that’s hilarious and genius. You feel like you’re rooting for LC to turn good, but when his accidents happen, you’d want to jump ship from that immediately.
But the real reason I enjoyed this episode a lot is this:
We finally saw what would happen when either Ludo or his henchmen actually grabbed Star’s Wand and changed its intentions, furthering the theory that Lobster Claws is evil after all. That was jaw-dropping. (Although we have seen Ludo himself wield to Wand in “Quest Buy”, but technically it didn’t work in that case) It makes us realize that he can be a horrible force to reckon with, even more worse than Ludo! And LC himself doesn’t even realize this. (Makes you wonder what will happen when he does.) Remember that song by One Direction, “What Makes You Beautiful”? Yeah, well, change the lyrics in the chorus, and they’ll fit in this case.
“If only you saw what I could see/You’ll understand why I want you so desperately/
And when I’m looking at you, I just can’t believe/You don’t know (oh, oh)/
You don’t know you’re EVIL/ (oh, oh)/That’s what makes you EVIL”
Oh and a quick thing: does anyone have a urge to dislike Star? I kinda do. Here after seeing Lobster Claws’ tries to be good, she just uses any excuse to just want to blast the crap out of him and trick Ludo into taking him back. And I kinda didn’t like that. More than Marco’s behavior under the Monster Arm the first time in “Monster Arm” (which, by the way, I’ve grown to really like now. I don’t hate it anymore.) I don’t know if that’s just me, but for all intents and purposes, I will say “it’s just me”. I know Star was under suspicion that he’s just “pretending to change his ways to get Ludo to return under surprise mode to jack the Wand”, and I got that and understood that, but I had this strange feeling that at that point, she still won’t believe it, and is now just willing to blast the crap out of LC, which I found pretty crappy. And this is a part of her sweet-yet-reckless character, I guess.
Again, this may be just me on this one.
On the other hand--I love Lobster Claws. He’s sweet, endearing, clumsy and goofy, yet could be a major threat to Starco if he truly gives up his actual dream of being good, and really embraces his “bad guy” character. It could happen as the series progresses, and if it does, I’ll be very happy. But baby steps first.
In the end this episode is great.
And finally, the episode where anything can happen (and considering our main character, that says a lot) at bedtime...
In it, When Star "sleep spells," Marco tries to use psychology to cure her, but her nocturnal magic turns out to be her subconscious defenses against an interdimensional criminal trying to steal her face.
The episode just goes straight into the plot, as Marco wakes up and discovers his living room not looking like a living room, but more like a swamp. Realizing this was made by Star and that her magic has improved, he goes to her, who . Marc congratulates Star for her new creation, but she denies it, even assuming it’s something he made.
--Okay that statue of Star’s face looks really creepy. You try staring into it for a second and see what happens.
Later the next night, Marco wakes up and finds out that Star’s problem has gotten more out of control. She wakes up and stops a beanbag from devouring Marc, who tells her that she has been making spells in her sleep. So he gives her some major psychology help in the form of...Dr. Marco, PhD! (or as his mom calls him, Pretty handsome Dude).
Marc begins a series of tests on Star, involving painting, impersonation someone, and ink blots, the latter of which reveals something crucial about Star: she has mommy issues, specifically those involving her strict methods of making her daughter worthy of being a queen. Dr. Marco has found success and
--Let me say something about this little segment here: I LOVE IT!
Every second I love. Not only it is another example of Classic Marco, but is also funny, too. The goofy graphics you’d find in an 80s action/comedy film, Marc’s cheesy, overacting during his “transformation” and the transitions between Tests, and the music that plays--they sound like something out of an 80s video game or instructional video. All of this make this segment work, and make it what I find is one of the best moments of the series so far.
The next night, Marco wakes up again to find that Star’s sleep-spelling still won’t go away and that his Pretty handsome Doctor Q&A session method didn’t work. In her room appears a large elephant-looking woman, Princess Smooshy, with the behavior and attitude of a female guest on The Maury Povich Show. She says that she has been sent to St. Olga’s, and wants Star for a plan: She wants her face. Literally. She wants to switch faces with her, so that her face can go to St. O’s with Star’s body, and she’ll stay on Earth with Star’s face. Of course, Starco (and me) laugh this off, knowing that her plan is too asinine and stupid to work. So in retaliation, Smooshy steals Star away, and Marco goes after them. After a quick chase through the Jungle-infested Home, Smooshy climbs Star’s expansion pack bedroom’s facade like the King Kong she is and is close to taking her to wherever St. Olga’s, face switching in progress. Dr. Marco tries to stop her with his A-grade PhD method, but it doesn’t work. So Marco just knocks her out with a book; THAT works. And she falls down and is taken away by St. Olga guards. Star thanks Marco for saving her, then asks him about why he counts the number of saves she has of him, because of her powers. She returns by saying that he's awesome, and that he doesn't have to count saves between them anymore. Marco then thanks Star before falling off the roof, asking her to count them again.
Favorite Lines:
-Everything Dr. Marco says, whether funny or not
-“I WANT YOUR FACE!” and
“I CAME HERE FOR YOUR FACE!”
“TO STEAL YOUR FACE!”
“camera phone.”-Princess Smooshy
(Funny her name is “Smooshy”, and that I made that Maury reference.)
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At first, I thought I had no idea how Smooshy came into the picture, or where she came from. At first I thought she was a manifesting nightmare inside Star based on her fears of ending up in St. Olga’s that somehow come to life and is now taking her away for real, but one quick check of the Wikia page reveals that it’s not true. She’s a legit character and she appears as much a major as Star and Marco.
Again, I at first, thought the Smooshy storyline was a little inconsistent with the sleep-spelling storyline. Both don’t appear as the same, they’re barely connected and they have nothing to do with the other, with the latter storyline ending rather quickly one Smooshy came in. Once the Smooshy storyline ended, there isn’t any mention of the sleep-spelling storyline outside of Dr. Marco. Maybe the writers realized they didn’t have enough content to fill the 11 minutes, and threw this one together. I don’t know; it just doesn’t feel right.
As it turned out, one check of the Wikia page after writing the review, and it makes more sense now. Smooshy’s a criminal from another dimension wanting Star’s face to keep her from St. O’s, and Star’s sleep-spelling was there to keep the selfie-obsessed creature from taking her away. And now everything fits. And excuse me for confusing you for a moment.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t funny. I enjoyed this episode more than I thought I would; the writing was strong, the jokes landed great, and the gags were just perfect especially the Dr. Marco gag and the one with Smooshy and Star switching faces. I really enjoyed this and "Lobster Claws". Both are really great episodes that will be on my list of favorite episodes of Season 1.
This episode was a one-two punch of humor and great writing. I’ve enjoyed the previous episodes as well, but this will be one of the highest. I think this show has gotten better, and that’s impossible, but it started out great. So I’m eager to see where it goes from here. And funny I type this, because the next episodes are something I’ll probably be dying from boredom of waiting over.
Guess what: a character we’ve been eager to meet and see again will make his return. Tom (Star’s ex) will return in “Blood Moon Ball”. I won’t reveal anything, but I’ll say that Star is in for a night she won’t forget. And of course, Marco is coming to her rescue. And then it's "Fortune Cookies", where Marco convinces Star that the fortunes in the edible treats contain magical prophecies. But when Star actually believes a fortune will happen, Ludo takes advantage with help of Toffee, his new efficiency expert. Sounds like another good one.
Well folks, let me start the ending of this review by mentioning that I didn’t complete or release this review last week because of some things in my life not going my way--both good and bad. Because of that, I couldn’t finish and post the review on time, causing a delay for the first time in this Review series. But I came through and it's finally finished and released. And I'm happy you guys are okay with this. Thank you.
(Un)Fortunately for me, I don’t have much more of this to do anyway. Because Star is on another hiatus. Two weeks of new episodes, and this happens again. (Ugh) So, Star, Marco and all of Echo Creek and Mewni (along with other dimensions) will return in another three weeks (two weeks as of posting this) on July 20 with two more episodes (as far as the Wikia can provide). And oh boy, I’m so excited!!! See you right here on Friday, July 24 for the review.
7 reviews down, 6 more to go. Can't be hard to deal with...if Season 1 isn't this long. *sigh* :(
As always, my thanks to to SVTFOE Wikia page for all I can gleam on for this and the other Reviews. Couldn't do it without the people who put so much work and info into it every day. Thanks again, kids!
And thank you all as always for checking in once again. Happy and Grateful as always.
Tune in next week when I ask: "what will Star's outfit be like?" and "what fortune will Starco crack open that may come true?" That's in two weeks, but for this week,
I'm Andrew saying "Reach for the Star, and Keep Looking Up!...at your TV screen."
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