Review: Fish Hooks(aka Friend Hooks) ‘Pool Party Panic’

Spoilers Below

On a new episode of Friend Hooks, Milo wakes up as a human and he keeps on talking a dream where everyone in his class was fish. Ironically enough,  its Milo’s turn to take care of the class fish tank and is assigned to do so over the course of the weekend. Despite the fact that we are in real life, a lot of the same personality traits of the other classmates and crushes hold over including Oscar’s crush on Bea. That said the girls decide to throw a party and Milo/Oscar want to come on over because who doesn’t want to party? Weirdly enough Oscar doesn’t want in on what is now a pool party because he doesn’t want to take his shirt off in front of people and Milo doesn’t know how to swim. Eventually, Milo tells the girls of his issues with swimming, but Bea decides to teach him how and she insists Oscar come as well. However, before he goes on over he drops by class to check in on the fish he is supposed to be taking care of and they seem to be ok…and somewhat familiar-looking!

Bea, Milo, and Oscar are at the pool rec center, but Milo is freaked out! He tells his friends all about visiting class and seeing the normal Fish Hook depictions of Oscar and Bea. As a result, Milo is convinced that he is dreaming and that really he is a fish, so he decides to jump in the deep end of the pool but because he can’t swim Bea has to save him. With Milo slipping in and out of consciousness we see him hallucinating between him being human and him being a fish. When Milo reverts back to the human world his friends send him to a psyche, but Albert and Jumbo have a different course of action. They decide to grab Milo and electrocute his mind and when he wakes up him all of his friends are now PIGS!

Yep, looks like Milo’s on a farm now and everyone is something else be it horses, snails, and even talking apples. One of the talking apples wakes Milo up and he grabs Bea and Oscar to show them the fish tank which is now running away. They run into a room and now everyone is depicted as food, then 8-bit fishy versions of themselves in the next room, and finally as humans again at the pool party where Oscar takes his shirt off long enough for Milo to get into the water and turn himself back into a fish. Milo as a fish ends up getting into his old stomping grounds and we now have Fish Hooks again.

We’ve seen a bunch of animated shows to alternate takes on themselves and Fish Hooks certainly adds to that lore putting in a rather strong episode that probably should have been paired with the Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel line up. In what could pass as an Emmy-nominated effort, seeing the Fish Hooks characters in all of the different depictions was wildly imaginative and synced together beautifully. As a matter of fact, if you had told me Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch wrote this episode, I would 100% believe you. Overall this is one of those episodes of Fish Hooks where I am truly convinced that Disney Channel is going to miss this show when it is gone because episodes like this we won’t forget.