Review: Phineas and Ferb ”Last Day of Summer”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

It’s the last day of summer and the kids want to go out with their largest and most impressive creation yet. They try one massive deal, but not everyone approves, so they go back to the drawing board.

Candace wants to nab her brothers once and for all, but her first attempt goes awry. That said, she has her own shit to do before school starts so she heads over to Vanessa Doof’s house to return some DVDs. While there, Candace comes across Doof’s ”Do-Over-inator” that allows her to reset the day but with the knowledge of everything that happened up until then. For reference, it’s the plot to Edge of Tomorrow or what happens to The Wolverine in X-Men: Days of Future Past. 

Meanwhile, Perry and Doof engage in battle yet again, but when Candace shows up to Doof’s house, she resets the day for both her AND Doof. Unfortunately, Vanessa feels ignored so she opts to move out of her dad’s house, but Doof doesn’t seem all that concerned because he’s working out the kinks to his latest ”inator” that will allow him to be the governor of the tri-state area.

After a few more runs of the ”Do-Over Inator”, Doof eventually sets up a trap good enough that stops Perry long enough for him to become the governor of the tri-state area. Problem is, his machine kept going for Candace too, and before you know it, all sorts of things start to disappear including both the ”Do-Over Inator” AND Phineas and Ferb. Worse yet, whenever something disappears, everyone forgets about it, so Linda doesn’t even know what a Phineas and Ferb are.

Turns out, changes to the space-time continuum, yep like in the movie Interstellar, are causing holes to suck things into another dimension. As a result, Phineas and Ferb need to figure out when the portals open up on their end so they can go back to Danville. Candace teams up with Baljeet, Buford, and Isabella to try and save Phineas and Ferb because Baljeet’s a genius and he’s the one who came up with the theory of what’s going on. Lord knows, Doof knows what’s going on and after a while of being the mayor he decides he wants to set things back, so when ”Do-Over-Inator” goes off again Doof decides to skip the mayor part and just be a better father AND kick off another ”inator” to stop the ”Do-Over-Inator”.

Doof’s friggin’ machine is still going off and worse yet in smaller time intervals which makes Doof’s new machine difficult to put together. Thankfully, Candace, Baljeet, Buford, and Isabella are able to get into one of the portals and not only find Phineas and Ferb but Doof’s ”’Do-Over-Inator”. The crew needs to get out first before they do anything so together they build a catapult and are able to vault themselves back into Danville right when one of the portals opens up.

Phineas and gang end up at home, but the inator keeps knocking itself to far away for them to hit the self-destruct button, so Candace has to throw a spoon at the red button and it lands perfect. Doof’s machine had a 55% chance at working, but well never know because it wasn’t even plugged in. In any case, everything goes back to normal, and we get a couple of songs as we fade out.

Our Take

I typically don’t like any of the songs on Phineas and Ferb episodes but I liked the last two, and to be honest, I couldn’t help but shed a tear at the thought of no more show. At first I was a little annoyed because we seemed to be getting a rather typical episode of Phineas and Ferb, standard variety, if you will. The best episodes of the last year or so were crossovers, the guest stars, when the kids grew up, that sort of stuff that I thought the producers would put together to see this one off. I really thought the show was going to do something special!

As time went on, something occurred to me. This WAS something special. This is the last episode of Phineas and Ferb, God damn it, isn’t that special enough? At the end of the day, Swampy Marsh and Dan Povenmire wanted to have fun and not really focus on thanking the fair weather fans that stop in on occasion when a guest star or something pops up. No, they wanted to say thank you to the people whom tune in to all of the episodes, and yes that includes the standard variety. This one was for them. This one was for the producers at Disney Television whom worked so hard on this show and for so many years. This one was for guys like me whom have spent the last several years covering Phineas and Ferb’s prime-time proper. This one was a reminder, and an effective one, of how BIG Phineas and Ferb was for Disney. The traveling shows, the boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese, the toys OH THE TOYS. ‘The Last Day of Summer’ was a reminder to the fans of how Phineas and Ferb was built, where it went, and the producers wanted to end it there way.

Before I score out, I’d like to give a big shout out to Dan Povenmire and Swampy Marsh. You guys are straight up cool guys and Phineas and Ferb’s long run is a fantastic achievement and I think was very instrumental in Disney hearing cartoon pitches from people not necessarily coming in trying to pitch Mickey or other Disney movie spin-offs. You guys paved the way on how to make animated comedies on both the Disney Channel, and Disney XD, and as such, you guys deserve all of the accolades you have received over the years, and we thank you for everything you have done. I’m sure we will be crossing paths again in the future.

Stay silly.