Hopefully I manage to get this done in one night! My last review took like five hours, and I’m intending to do this one in two, since my body physically cannot handle getting less than eight hours of sleep.

But now for the first segment, “Matchmaker”

The opening song is growing on me. I bet by the end of the season I’ll really enjoy it, but I think it’s because of association with the show, rather than its quality as a standalone song.



I believe “Best Gag of the Episode” goes to the little scene above, right at the start of the episode. Put your best foot forward, as they say. And I enjoyed these two! They’re weird, but not annoyingly/embarrassingly weird, a balance that I won’t even pretend to understand.



I’m curious who this spooky boy Tom is. We see a very similar exchange in the opening sequence, when he tries to give Star that flaming flower. Is he an old friend? An ex-boyfriend? A wannabe-boyfriend? From just the few seconds we’re given, we see he wants to (re?)connect with Star, and she’s not interested. Did they have a falling out? If so, why?



Even with all these unknowns, he gives me a bad feeling. The way he changed from saccharine to literally flaming has me wary that he may be psychopathic, but that could just be cartoon exaggeration. Still, a character I’m going to watch closely.



Hang on a second



Just what in tarnation do you think you’re doing, show? This can’t be coincidence. You don’t have a character wear horns in her daily outfit when there are characters with actual horns, unless there’s something going on. What is Star’s connection to Tom? Or to his home dimension/kingdom? Was I too hasty in throwing out my theory that Star is actually Satan?? I thought I’d have to make up theories, but here I am with a real mystery on my hands. I have so little to go on, though. For now, I’ll leave it at questions.

This was a clever introduction. I see what the writers did, making Star call her mom for help, when their real intention was to introduce Tom as early as possible, so early that we can only ask questions and wait for the next bit of info. That’s smart writing.

On the other hand, am I seeing things, or is Ludo just in the show for some action scenes at the end of the episode? So far, he poses less of a threat to Star than Star does to herself. His gang put up a bit more fight this time, but it’s clear that Star and Marco can handle them with ease under normal circumstances. Maybe he’ll get his shit together later, but I suspect he’s a red herring as a villain, and if (probably when) the show gets more serious, someone else will be introduced as a real antagonist.

Hm

Of course, Tom could be another surprise, like how Ponyhead turned out to be much less dastardly than I thought. Maybe he’s just frustrated that Star won’t talk to him, and he’s actually a pretty cool dude otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

Still. There’s a lot more mystery here than I expected.

The only real problem I noticed was that even though Ms. Skullnick meets this bull man during the fight, Star introduces them again shortly after, and from the looks of it, it seems like they completely forgot about each other in the thirty seconds since they were talking. It was confusing, and felt like one of those scenes wasn’t supposed to be there (my bet is the one where Star introduces them with the classic “he thinks you’re cute” line, since it was less natural than them just bumping into each other in the chaos). So it’s basically an in-episode continuity error, not that big of an issue for the series, but still odd that it made it into the finished product.



Like last time, I barely touched on the actual plot of the episode and focused on random details. The Tom Question has taken up most of my attention. I’ll list out some interesting points I noticed, though.

Star offers to do matchmaking for both Ferguson and Marco, and she’s quickly shot down in one-off jokes. The show basically displayed two more common, much worse plots, and threw them in the trash for everyone to see. Is the show using a simple formula in these early episodes so it can show how it’s different from other cartoons? Really different, beyond just the plot? By subtly subverting and poking fun at cartoon tropes, casually inserting huge mysteries, and giving a consistently positive vibe, is the show letting us know, even before the plot kicks off, that it’s a bit smarter than it lets on? I’m going to go out on a limb and say these questions are rhetorical.

There’s lots of little subversions as usual. Like the end, where Star gives Marco the credit for getting rid of Ms. Skullnick, only for her to come back, angry as ever, and make Marco look like a dope. It could have ended with the joke being on Marco, but we’ve already been shown the show is more positive than that, so instead Marco brushes off the disappointment and is excited that Jackie talked to him.

I mean, the joke was still on Marco in the end, but a much sillier, less malicious joke.

this is silly and not horrific

Part two will be up tomorrow, because this took three hours!

