LazyTown-The First Day of Summer

Hello, Spongey here.

You may have noticed these TV Reviews have somewhat of a lack of positive reviews. I mean,I’ve done Good episodes of Dog of a Blog and Teen Titans Go before I did one of an actually good show.

The reason for that is that it’s kinda hard to do a positive Scene by Scene TV Review. It’s a lot easier to do in the general way I try to do in my lists, you know? I need either a hook or really positive feelings in order to do a big positive TV Review.

But there’s some I can do. I’ve done a couple already, at least. So let’s celebrate December with a Good TV Episode…about Summer. That makes sense!

With that, let’s discuss something that brings me back…LazyTown.

You might remember that I did a post on the show way back in the day, but it sucked, please don’t read it. It’s a show I had quite the history with but sometime after I did the post, it more or less faded from memory.

But then last year, Stefan Karl, Robbie Rotten himself just had to get Cancer. You all know this story, I brought up before: They started a GoFundMe and it worked thanks to a song inexplicably becoming a meme.

It’s really inspiring in a way, especially in the Dumpster fire that was 2016. Meanwhile in 2017, we can’t even trust a bullied kid anymore!

Anyway, this gave me a new interest and now we’re here. I re-watched the show and now I really wanna talk about a certain episode. But let’s back up a bit. As the memes prove, Robbie Rotten is easily the most beloved part of this show.

There are other good aspects but he stands out the most. He’s both really funny, really interesting and really likable. Over the course of the 4 seasons,, we saw some interesting aspects to him, like how he’s arguably the most active resident.

Today, we look at an episode that really showcases him a lot. Because he’s the main character of it, even more so than in some others. Interestingly enough, this comes from the Post Revival Era of the show.

It had it’s share of problems, but I think the same basic charm was there. And it gave this episode, so it’s not all bad. Let’s see what exactly made me want to dive into this show once again.

This, is The First Day of Summer

After the Sportacus intro and the dumb short intro, the episode starts with Pixel announcing that is the first day of, you guessed it, Winter!

This involves playing happy music on the radio which of course does not please Robbie. And he wakes up with a floaty on. I guess he did some crazy non kid friendly stuff the night before?

The kids, plus the two puppet adults are all going to the bitch that the town got between Seasons, I guess. Robbie is annoyed that Summer will bring more noise, which hates oh so much.

“I wish that everyone in LazyTown would disappear forever!”

Because wishing worked so well last time.

Jokes aside, right away he notices that there is no noise.

“That can’t be…nothing I do ever works”

That sentence is pretty sad when you think about it, but oh boy is not the saddest part.

But of course, everyone is at the beach and we get a few minutes of that, including the obligatory 1^st Act Sportacus Save which makes for an okay excuse to get him away from town too.

Robbie goes outside and confirms that everyone is indeed gone. Now I will say the whole “There’s only 8 people in LazyTown” is a problem in this episode because we only see these characters go to the beach so if others exist, Robbie shouldn’t be fooled into thinking everyone is gone…but it’s a kids show, and there’s plenty of logic flaws all the time.

And yes, that is our premise: Robbie thinks he’s living out a Last man on Earth Sceanrio. I never thought I would see this in a show like this but here it is. It’s very interesting.

Robbie is naturally happy at first so he dances while we get our song: Summer is the Season. It’s fine, not my favorite LazyTown song but still decently enjoyable. I do love how Robbie kind of joins in near the end.

After the song, we get an interesting moment where he goes to town hall and puts a painting of a woman up.

“Look Momma, I’m the mayor now!”

That’s right, we pretty much see his Mom here. She is never mentioned before or after this episode. Yet this one small moment likely created tons of fan fiction.

“And I’m the best mayor ever”

Insert Political Joke here.

Robbie goes around enforcing his new rules even though there is no one to obey them. It’s all pretty funny with him being usual self, especially how they also cut back to the beach to show they are both having fun in different ways.

Then we get the most infamous part of the episode. Robbie sees an Ice Cream stand so he disguises himself as an Ice Cream man …for him to interact with. It’s like Gerri’s Game but somehow even funnier. And then his fake mustache comes off

“Robbie Rotten!”

“Who did you expect, Sportaflop?”

No, he was expecting the Adams Family. Also, the writers clearly thought this show didn’t have enough memes.

After that, Robbie sets his usual trap for Sportacus…before remembering he’s not even here.

“…I’m…all alone”

Awwww. Er, I ,mean, whatever, just a dumb kids show.

Robbie tries to cheer himself up by….drawing the residents faces on Volleyballs. Can’t say I was expecting that. But I love it, just cuz it shows how crazy he is without anyone around. It doesn’t quite work for him, of course.

“I thought I would never say this, but I really really…miss those guys”

Awwww! I’m not taking it back this time. I mean, dang. The music really sells this moment. We’ve had sad Robbie scenes but this is something else.

Thankfully for Robbie, things take a turn as a he befriends a Fly. Yes, really. He’s so desperate that he’s willingly to become friends with a fly. Wow.

So we get an almost sort of romantic montage with him and the Fly hanging out. …Yes. It’s hilarious but certainly…odd. Right after it, they get into a fight over a chess game (yes) and the Fly leaves.

Top 10 Anime Betrayals. ….I feel so dirty.

Robbie chases after the fly but falls into his trap. Whoops. This of course leads to our climax as Sportacus is alerted of the trouble and the kids follow him back to town.

Long story short, Sportacus saves Robbie

“Next time, wall you please leave a note?”

AUIDIENCE LAUGHTER.

“Well Robbie, we kind of missed you”

D’aww. Robbie admits he missed them too and he even wants to do something fun together. Go ahead, it’s not like this episode can get any weirder.

“There’s always the Bing Bang Song!”

“…Can I sing it?”

“Of course you can”!

1. stand corrected. Yes, Robbie sings part of the Bing Bang. It’s amazing. Weird but amazing, like everything else in this episode.

After that, the Fly comes back for a nice reunion. But..

“There’s nothing there!”

That’s right, this whole time the fly wasn’t even real. Robbie got so crazy he imagined himself a friend. Just….dang you do remember what show this is, right?

Robbie goes back to his liar with the Fly who will never appear again, since he doesn’t exist. I guess. Either way, it’s an oddly sweet ending for quite the odd episode.

The End. That went by a lot faster than I remember it. Either way, that was nice.

Final Thoughts:

I noticed a lot of the truly great episodes of this show featured stuff like this. Development that’s surprisingly interesting or stories with an odd/interesting set up. Robbie was always the most interesting character and this episode is basically all his.

The others only get a minor subplot and the whole story is about him being alone. It’s interesting to see a whole episode with almost only him. This really shows how strong he is. His quirks mark him really funny but we see a deeper side to him here.

Here we see that while he is annoyed by the others at times, he secretly really does just want a friend. I mean, we see how far he will go to have a friend when no one is around. It’s really interesting especially for a kids show like this.

Again, there’s other episodes that feature things like this but not quite to this extent. It’s well done and Robbie is really likable being very funny and giving us some sweet moments. Outside of some spotty logic here and there, there’s not much wrong with this one.

It’s a really unique setup for a LazyTown episode and it’s done really well, being very funny and quite sweet. All this makes for what was easily my favorite episode of the show.

Rating: Great

And yes, Stefan Karl plays a big part in why Robbie works. In this episode alone he’s really charming and likable. The worst of the Cancer thing is over but you never know what will happen so here’s the GoFundMeLink:

https://www.gofundme.com/2tm9tqk

There you go, some positvity for the Holidays. I hope to do some other positive TV reviews, but we’ll see what happens. Not sure what the next TV review will be, I have some ideas though.

Either way, I’ll see you in 2018 with that but there’s plenty to look forward to in the last part of this year on the blog. Should be interesting.

(Oh and go take a listen to LazyTown Forever. Trust me, it’s amazing)

See ya.