What’s up everyone, long time no see! Bet you missed me and my Godly critiquing skills, because I sure as shit missed you. Apologies on going on hiatus for so long but nothing sucks creative fulfilment out of me faster than school. Fuck school, I’ve been going to school for so long I’d be a doctor if my major was in “snarkology,” to quote Rick Sanchez “school is stupid,” but I digress. So as a nice little warm up of getting back into the swing of things I decided to do a retrospective review of Gravity Falls aka “Disney tv’s Saving Grace.” Now I know what you must be thinking, “Slade you neglectful iron striker, what’s the point of doing a review on Gravity Falls? Everyone knows it’s good, it’s been good since 2012 so what’s the bloody point of doing a review for something that’s as amazing as Gravity Falls?” Well to be perfectly honest I knew Gravity Falls was good but I didn’t see the series to its completion until about a month and a half ago.
See every time I tried to get into it I always got sidetracked by something, whether it was soul crushing personal drama, school, natural disaster, (That last one is way more true than you realize) so I knew it was good, but after a certain point I just kinda pushed it to the wayside and called it a day. Then after “The Battle for Mewni” event I learned that the continuation for season three of Star Vs. The Forces of Evil was being pushed back to November. So after a few weeks of crying and staring at the calendar in some vain hope of time travel by sheer force of will I said to myself “You know, I never did get to finish Gravity Falls and it would be remiss of me to not talk about the main show that made Disney’s TV stations fucking relevant again.” So I decided to grind through to the end and It’s true, Gravity Falls is fucking awesome. It’s funny without derailing itself, it has characters who are more than just background noise for the main characters to pass by, a complex story with a lovely mystery element and has animation as beautiful and fluid as a rainbow-colored river.Of course that’s not to say that this series doesn’t have flaws that drag it down like a ballsack stuffed with horseshoes but more on the later.
Created by Alex Hirsch, Gravity Falls is a tale based on the creator’s childhood. Our protagonists are Dipper and Mabel Pines, twin siblings who are spending their Summer at their Great Uncle Stan’s tourist trap in Gravity Falls Oregon. The Pines twins soon find out that not everything is as it seems in this seemingly quiet town and when Dipper discovers a strange journal, the mystery of Gravity Falls begins to unfold. Along the way the Pines twins encounter gnomes, minotaurs, sentient wax statues, paper clones, ghosts, a psychotic clingy cyber girlfriend, Lil Gideon; a girly boy charlatan and Bill Cipher; a chaos god from another dimension, christ knows how a couple of twelve-year olds can best a god but if Final Fantasy can do it then damn it so can Gravity Falls. I have to say that this is one of the greatest strengths to the show, the constant air of mystery and never really knowing what’s coming next. It follows the rules of us the viewer knowing as much about the mystery as the protagonist from early “Who Done It?” mystery stories, we learn alongside the hero and aren’t given any disadvantages because whenever Dipper opens his journal to find a way to counter the monster of the week we see his thought process and what he’ll do next. It’s like watching Joseph Joestar outsmart his opponent and we share in his glory cause he let us in on his secret techniques.
I say that Dipper and Mabel are the protagonists but I think a more accurate description would be Dipper’s the protagonist and Mabel is the deuteragonist, seeing as how Dipper’s the intellectual that solves the mysteries and puzzles, fights the monsters and saves the day, while Mabel is more or less Dipper’s silly sidekick and occasionally instigate the problems Dipper and the rest of the cast face. I’m not saying Mabel isn’t useful or interesting as a character, she was the key to unlocking the truth to the founding of the town and has saved both herself and Dipper from Lil Gideon and is established as a very artsy, colorful and creative person being able to make a wax statue of Grunkle Stan, throwing together a sock puppet rock opera and was a factor in defeating Gideon and Bill, but ultimately it’s still Dipper cleaning up the messes caused by both monsters and Mabel.
Let’s take some time to explain another strength that Gravity Falls has going for it, the characters. Not including Dipper and Mabel, Gravity Falls has a plethora of side and secondary characters that have personality and actual character to the point that I still remember even the most obscure people, like Toby Determined the answer to the question “what if a muppet was made of flesh and blood?” and Mermondo, Mabel’s mermaid boy crush. But I think the most important out of this batch of side characters would be the supporting cast. Stan Pines, Dipper and Mabel’s great-uncle, con man and greed driven guardian who spends most of his time ripping off gullible tourists and making his grant niece and nephew attractions at his mystery shack. Soos the slow-witted but lovable handy man who has the deepest respect for the Pines family and Wendy the laid back cool girl who works at the Mystery Shack and Dipper’s crush. These three (well Stan and Soos mostly) pull the Pines twins out of danger more often than not like when Soos stopped a rampaging dating sim from reenacting Five Nights at Freddy’s, or when Stan fought off zombies with nothing but brass knuckles, a bat and a grandfather clock and Wendy helping to find a hidden base and defeating a shape shifter.
Did I mention how fucking funny this show is? Well this show is so fucking funny I thought I was going to choke on my own lungs. Only three children’s shows in recent memory have been able to accomplish this task namely Star Vs. The Forces of Evil (duh), Regular Show and Gravity Falls. What makes the humor so amazing in Gravity Falls is that it plays off the characters and not so much the “adult” humor. Don’t get me wrong there are still adult humor jokes like when Stan tells Mabel in Dipper’s body where babies come from but more often than not the jokes’ punchline comes from who they are as a character. For example, Stan’s a jerk so when he gets locked up in a stockade and people throw tomatoes at him we’re laughing at him, not because we hate Stan (God no, he’s like my favorite character) but it’s satisfying to see Stan get a slap on the wrist or when Stan was on a game show and he started undressing to take a cash shower, the fact that he did that and it played off Stan’s greedy nature so fucking well I thought I was going to laugh myself to an early grave.
Now some say that flaws is what makes a series shine like a diamond in the rough, but I’d argue that the three major flaws in Gravity Falls; the mortal sins as it were, is actually what knocks it down from the peak of nirvana where Avatar the Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood dwell. Let’s start with Mabel, I know she’s the fan favorite of the series but I actually find her to be a terrible person driven only by her selfishness with no repercussions for her actions. Maybe I’d have more respect for her if her actions had consequences for her but they don’t. Notice how I chose the words “for her” that’s because it’s other people who suffer backlash from Mabel’s actions. It’s seen more in season two then in season one, mainly because in season one it’s mostly Dipper that fucks up, but he apologizes and makes up for his actions so he redeems himself in my eyes, Mabel doesn’t ever really do that. Instead she costs Dipper a part-time job, alienates her friends over a boy band, brings about the end of the world and forces two people who’d normally hate each other to fall in love to name a few of her fuck ups. That last one is a particular thorn in my catheter because she manipulated their free will to make herself feel better, see Mabel was sad because someone in Wendy’s friend circle was sad so she decides to play matchmaker for him and pairs him up with Tambry, the quiet goth girl and Wendy’s best friend, steals love a potion from a god and forces the two of them to fall in love thus proving to herself that she’s the best matchmaker and has made everyone happy despite Dipper, Wendy AND the God of love telling her “yeah maybe you shouldn’t be fucking around with people’s emotions” and causing a fallout amongst Wendy’s friends. Literally the only reason things resolve is because the writers deemed it so. However this does lead to a hilarious moment when Mabel tries to prove to a unicorn that she’s pure of heart. Bitch you fucked with people’s free will! That’s one of the most evil things you can do to a person aside from cunt punting their grandma or making chili out of their dog, if you’re pure of heart then I’m the Dalai fucking Lama.
As much as I was talking up the show’s characters this is also ironically another sin I have to bring up seeing as that there are two characters in particular that didn’t get nearly as much time in the spot light as I thought they were going to have, namely Wendy and Pacifica Northwest. Starting in season two I thought Wendy was going to be on more adventures, and it’s true that she does do more, but she’s treated more like a character in an RPG that you bring along because she needs to gain EXP and has the one skill to progress you through the game and isn’t really utilized until the finale. Pacifica on the other hand got the shortest end of the stick. When she was first introduced she was a spoiled rich brat who took pleasure in ruining Mabel’s day. But in season two we learn that Pacifica’s home life is actually rather tragic. Her parents view her more like a show dog than a daughter and whenever Pacifica speaks out of turn her father rings a bell to silence her but in one of my top three favorite episodes in the series Pacifica asks Dipper to get rid of a ghost that’s haunting her mansion and in the process we learn that Dipper and Pacifica actually have great chemistry together. Whether its romantic chemistry or not isn’t really important because we see that with Dipper’s help Pacifica can actually break out of her shell and stand up to her parents and be a good team together. I really thought that after this episode Pacifica was going to appear in more episodes, maybe Dipper invites her on an adventure and she starts to pick up on Dipper’s rough and tumble personality. But that dream never came to pass and she stayed on the back burner till the finale, where she was made relevent and obsolete in the same fucking scene.
Now while Mabel is the most egregious sin and Wendy and Pacifica are more of a missed opportunity this sin I’d say is one born out of sheer disappointment. I’m of course referring to the character of Bill Cipher; the illuminati mascot and big baddie of the series. Which is a shame because Bill’s one of the coolest characters in the series and has a special place in my heart for favorite villains. See I get why he was revealed in the end of season one, Gideon was the primary antagonist after all and Dipper only just began his journey into the weirdness of Gravity Falls. So when Bill first appears he’s doing Gideon’s dirty work but only because Bill can gain access to Stanford Pines’ brain (later discovered to be the wrong “Stanford” Pines) and after Dipper, Mabel and Soos best Bill he disappears to plan his next move and keeps an eye on Dipper. By all definitions I’d call Bill a Lovecraftian horror. An all-powerful God of chaos that has untold knowledge of the forbidden secrets of the universe, a being of pure energy that is always looming overhead but isn’t always there. But unfortunately the “isn’t always there” part is more prominent than anything else. Not counting the flash back where Ford (Stan’s twin brother and author of the journals) made a deal with him, Bill doesn’t really do anything in the main storyline. He appears in the season one finale, appears to steal Dippers body and then he just sort of fucks off until the series finale, granted he probably had a few hundred crossword puzzles to get through before he could be bothered to do anything truely sinister, but it would’ve been nice to see him cause some form of havoc in the town, he says he’s “been making deals” but we never see them and as far as we know he’s just pulling words out of his ass. It would’ve been nice to see these “deals” being made and the outcomes they have on the town. Like someone makes a deal and starts causing an uproar and when Dipper fixes things we learn that this person made a deal with Bill that caused him to go crazy, that would make Bill a more credible threat. Now I’m not going to compare Bill and Gravity Falls to Star Vs. The Forces of Evil. I’m not going to say how Toffee, Ms. Heinous and Eclipsa Queen of Darkness all appear and play a central role in the plot, all of which are credible threats, especially Toffee who’s been pulling strings for years and is a looming dread and saboteur from season one to three. Instead I’ll talk about the villain in another series with a mystery element I like quite a lot, The Beast from Over the Garden Wall. While not nearly as long as Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall does more work with The Beast in its allotted time than what I saw being done with Bill Cipher. From the beginning our protagonists Wert and Greg are warned of The Beast, the creature that waits for you to lose all hope of ever returning home and turns you into a tree of oil to fuel his lantern. Much like his name, The Beast is a predator, his presence is felt all throughout the series like a wolf stalking a lamb separated from the herd. It’s quite spooky and builds up anticipation to the final confrontation a sort of payoff that I never really felt at the end of Gravity Falls.
But all my complaints aside Gravity Falls is still one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life and if you can forgive the fuck ups you’ll find a show like no other. Do I like it more than Star? HAHAHAHAHA!! No, but it’s still more worthy of your time than most other shows today and is one of those things where if you haven’t seen it yet the question of “why the fuck not?” is completely appropriate. Watch it for fucks sake.
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