May 14, 2015

Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil again. For my next TV review, I will be reviewing a show that I just can't stop thinking about- Disney's Gravity Falls. It first aired on the Disney Channel in August 2012, with reruns airing on sister channel Disney XD frequently. Season 1 ended in August 2013, and Season 2 did not start until August 2014. In November 2014, the show moved exclusively to Disney XD, which I find to be much more fitting. Disney XD tries to be "Disney for boys," (even though I don't believe in gender rules of any kind in any media, if you like something, you like it, whatever) with its large amount of action, sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero shows compared to the normal Disney Channel's large amount of family and teen sitcoms, and airs more animation in general. I feel that Disney XD is the best channel for modern kids' animated programming, far better than Nickelodeon and even Cartoon Network, which has so many critically acclaimed programs currently on the air, like Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Steven Universe (which, while acknowledging its good qualities, I feel is underwritten). I first started to want to watch it more regularly after a peer in drama frequently talked about it with me. He did suffer from much social immaturity, but his tastes seemed otherwise good, so I decided to give him and the show a shot. Created by young animator and voice actor Alex Hirsch and based off of a CalArts graduation project he produced, Gravity Falls follows twelve-year-old Dipper Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter), a character based on himself, and his twin sister Mabel (voiced by famous comedy actress Kristen Schall) a character based on Hirsch's real-life twin sister Ariel. The two of them travel from their hometown of Piedmont, California, to the fictional town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, for the summer. They live with their great-uncle Stan Pines (voiced by Alex Hirsch himself), or as they call him, Grunkle Stan, the owner of a gift shop and skilled conman, and regularly hang out with Soos Ramirez (also voiced by Hirsch), Stan's friendly but fairly unintelligent handyman, and Wendy Corduroy (Linda Cardenelli), a fifteen-year-old levelheaded tomboy that works at the Mystery Shack and Dipper has a crush on. Dipper likes mystery solving and wants to solve as many mysteries behind the bizarre occurrences that go on in Gravity Falls as possible. Mabel is eccentric and girly, and lives for her stuffed animals, her pet pig Waddles, her scratch-and-sniff sweaters, and vampire romances. There are plenty of antagonists that the gang frequently comes into conflict with, such as L'il Gideon Gleeful (voiced by creator and star of old Cartoon Network show The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack Thurop Van Orman), a psychotic nine-year-old boy that wants to rule the town, Bill Cipher (also voiced by Hirsch) a transdimensional reality-defying psychic triangle that takes advantage of Dipper and Mabel's fears, and Pacifica Northwest (voiced by Jackie Buscarino), Mabel's vain and pretentious rival. Through all of the bizarre things that happen to them, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Soos, and Wendy stay together as family does and try to solve the town's mysteries, the biggest one currently being what Stan's past is and what happened to his twin brother. There are certain word and picture codes at the end of each episode that fans have discovered have special meanings, and Hirsch even allegedly designed the theme song to say a special phrase when played backwards. I take things like that with a grain of salt, even when the creator confirms them, because people say that about a lot of songs and just overthink things in general. While I think the mystery angle is fairly clever, I'm more attracted to the show for its humor, much of which is a lot edgier than you'd expect from anything made at Disney Television Animation and even makes me question the show's TV-Y7 rating at times (and I mean that in the best way possible), likable characters, deep storytelling that doesn't sugarcoat many harsh realities of life even for a children's audience, strong relationships between its characters, subtle references to real-life internet memes, and frequent guest stars, such as comedian Patton Oswalt as a golf ball man in "The Golf War," Lonely Island comedy rapper Jorma Taccione as Mabel's sock-puppet fanboy crush Gabe in "Sock Opera," and acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as Waddles when he gains supergenius-level intellect and the ability to speak in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors." The animation is some of the best traditional animation I've seen put to a cartoon produced in the 2010s, rivaling the animation quality of Steven Universe, and only slightly inferior to Star vs. The Forces of Evil. And the most recent episode, "Not What He Seems," may very well be the best thing to have ever aired on Disney XD. Being Part 1 of the two-part Season 2 finale, with Part 2 to air sometime this summer, it creates a rift between Dipper, Mabel, and Stan, with it not being truly certain if Stan can or should be trusted for anything ever again, Mabel losing much of her innocence, Dipper losing faith in his entire family, and the mystery of Stan's past and the identity of his brother to finally be described in detail. I've seen more of Season 2 than Season 1, but I can assume that Season 1 is pretty good, even though Season 2 feels better. In conclusion, Gravity Falls is a rare piece of comedic family animation that I hope future cartoonists take inspiration from. I certainly will, though I find a way to take at least a little inspiration from every animated program I see. Maybe one of the different versions of "Geekz" that I have in mind will take more inspiration from Gravity Falls than the rest, but for now, I'll focus on making "Geekz" the best series it can and let the influence from other sources come naturally rather than trying too hard to make sure it's influenced by something else. Another word for trying to make sure that something is influenced by something else is "plagiarism" (OK, not really, but it can come close). I give Gravity Falls a 9/10. This has been Neil Rush, telling you that you can watch Gravity Falls almost every day on Disney XD, during late-night hours on Disney Channel, Comcast Xfinity On Demand, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu, and find it available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play TV.