Shorts Review: Smosh Babies #16 – Anthony’s Sister

Muppet Babies, Yo Yogi!, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo!, Baby Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry Kids, and The Flintstone Kids. What do all these shows have in common? They all have some of animation and puppetries’ most famous characters transformed into little kids. It’s a cute way to try and appeal to a younger demographic but rarely does it lead to much success. Now however Little Blackstone Studios brings Smosh back to the playpen in Smosh Babies. Can Smosh make this old idea work?

Saving overall opinions of Season 1 and 2 for later, let’s just talk about the story, and animation of this episode and how it holds up on its own. The episode starts with Ian and the other babies sniffing each other’s dirty diapers (a true classic moment in comedy) until Anthony comes in, after getting pissed on by a fat guy on a Segway (yet another classic moment in comedy), and complains about his mom ignoring him after giving birth to his new sister. The other babies bring about that old baby cliché that now Anthony has a baby sister his mom won’t love him anymore. So, Anthony chooses to fight back in his own way, by running away from home and taking the rest of the baby gang for some reason. Will Anthony learn a moral from his adventure and will these cameos from famous youtubers at least try to weave into the narrative? I will guess no.

Smosh Babies is such a frustrating show to watch for me. Basic thoughts on Season 1, I liked it for what it was doing. There were some awful moments and some annoying moments and some moments that made me want to throw my computer out the window but I liked it overall. Season 2 has not been as good and this episode really spotlights all my issues (so I guess it’s good I started reviewing Smosh Babies with this episode).

Firstly while I like the animation, with its more simplistic and colorful design just like any sort of stereotypical babies’ cartoon, the sound design is complete garbage. It’s not the voice acting however that’s the issue but the sound effects or to better state, thelack of sound effects. All of the action set pieces like Anthony getting run over is done with the most bare bones comedic squishes and etc. Which would be perfectly fine in the more kidified show that this show is parodying BUT Smosh Babies also wants to have scenes of characters with demonic eyes and teeth, broken limbs and eating brains. All of these things can be AMAIZNGLY funny in that mean spirited way, but with just the safe cartoony squishes and the same vocal voice coming out the demonic eyes the show just comes off as really stilted in its comedic delivery. Oh and also Season 2 has had a LOT of animation mess ups but this one is the worst I’ve seen. I mean WOW! 

Not to mention the actual story progression of the episode is so choppy that you get no time to enjoy any of the interactions. Literally once we hit the city we just skip to Harley of Epic Meal Time, then a minute later it’s Jenna Marbles being a psychotic mermaid, and finally EVIL Anthony and Ian babies pop out of nowhere without any sort of coherent through line. This is how most of the episodes play out, just a shooting gallery of scenes without any connection between one another. And you know that joke where somehow the good and bad version of the baby gets switched in the end, the writer and animator both completely screwed that delivery, making it more sad than funny. This is a show that at first I was desperately trying to like because it had a lot of funny ideas but so far 70% of the time the execution has been total crap. Season 2 is halfway over and it has been nothing but a disappointment.