Review: High School USA! ‘Sweet 16’

Spoilers Below

Wow, Cassie’s Dad dies…or does he? Thankfully, his life insurance is going to Cassandra and she wants to get a new car anyway so I guess all is well that ends well. Cassandra’s mom meets a new guy named Ollie who coincidentally also has a daughter of his own which means Cassie has a sister. The next day, Mr. Structor is trying to get the class to learn all about death after the passing of Cassie’s Dad, but when Cassandra stops by with her new sister en route to the mall, the gang go with minus Marsh who is just too shy to hang out with Cassie anymore due to the fact that he isn’t comfortable with Cassie’s now broken home. Marsh instead decides to head home and binge eats, so Structor comes over to try and console him. The two decide to dig up Cassie’s dad only to discover an empty casket! Turns out her dad faked his death so that he can steal Cassie’s car and take off with Ollie.

There are some episodes of High School USA! that are just animated rather poorly and this was one of them. If you notice when Marsh is binge eating that the frames are skipping all over the place and it’s totally noticeable. This isn’t the first time this show has seen skipped frames neither, so either Friends Night needs to get their act together or outsource the show to another studio like Starburns or Titmouse to fix, because damn…

In any case, the premise of the episode was a lot of fun, however, with only a 12-minute run time it’s somewhat difficult to do any kind of an ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ routine because, by the time you become invested in the plot, the show is already over. That said, digging up bodies, insurance fraud, and a barely alive paraplegic all help to keep this show rocking in the laughs department. We will get into greater detail about all of the insane story threads in the full season review, but in the meantime, you should check this episode out. Here’s hoping we get another ’16’ episodes.