Review: We Bare Bears “Tubin“

What would you trade for paradise?

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

The episode begins when Grizz & Ice Bear play a series of physical forest obstacles juxtaposed to Panda playing a Temple Run inspired phone game called “Adventure Run” with Grizz wondering why Panda doesn’t have a sense of adventure like they do, but when they come across a wild river tube ride hosted by a Cajun speaking fellow, Grizz demands a larger obstacle in which they’re offered a tube riding path called “Angry Panther” with the Cajun guy giving them beef jerky in case they get lost much to Panda’s objections. At first, it starts out slow until the path gets rough to the point that they’re thrown off the tube and are separated but knocked unconscious. The rest of the episode is spent on Grizz & Ice Bear later searching for Panda in the chaotic aftermath while Panda wakes up stranded with his phone untouched yet predictably has no signal.

It’s here where this turns out to be a Panda-focused storyline when Panda encounters a flute playing hippie named Steven who leads him to a nature-loving colony that caters to Panda’s taste in vegetarian food and manga which all sounds like paradise to him at first, until they demand Panda to throw his phone into the bonfire to preserve their secretive way of life which Panda can’t do. Eventually, Grizz & Ice Bear find and later rescue Panda thanks to some beef jerky that was thrown into the fire, and after coming across the same tube they were thrown out off of earlier, they escape from the Hippies with the episode ending on comical note that Panda had more fun than the other two did with Ice Bear suggesting they should come back in “2 years”.

Our Take

This was simply a fun episode that cleverly found a way to make beef jerky a checkov’s gun of sorts for the plot’s proceedings. While the hippie colony seemed well-intentioned, I was left to wonder how long they’ve been living off the grid. It’s clear that in a Gilligan’s Island/Survivor-like scenario, Panda wouldn’t trade the love of this smartphone or his brothers for this kind of paradise but the twist ending was easily where I had a good laugh.