Shorts Review: Smosh Babies #20 “The Imaginary Friends”

FINALLY!! It’s over. The terror is finally over. But seriously Season 2 of Smosh Babies has been circling the drain with only one or two episodes being good enough for me to give them a passing grade. They’ve been shoddily animated, and the writing has been atrocious, leaving me to question whether the writer actually has a plan when writing or does he just write whatever comes to mind. Regardless this is episode 20 “The Imaginary Friends,” basically just a Part 2 to last week’s episode.

So the babies are excited for Anthony’s birthday party because he’ll have a sweet ass bounce house but Ian starts to get worried when he sees Anthony hanging out with the demon fly swatter and shoe from last episode. They have Anthony stealing booze and cigs and hot wiring cars. This leaves the rest of the babies to appeal to Anthony’s sense of friendship, but eh says “screw you guys” and drives off with the show and fly swatter. Now the rest of the babies approach the stock bully character asking him to train them in the art of being badass because as Ian says “We’re going to war.”

Hazaah! Yet another Shut Up! cartoon ending a season with a cliff hanger. It really becomes a headache with Smosh babies trying to figure out whether the show wants to be episodic or serial. That right there is just the show’s biggest Achilles’ heel, it really doesn’t have a structure to it. The babies just do stuff and the episodes just encapsulate what happens. In season 1, most of the episodes had a clear focus on each task; get the ice cream, win the race, hit on the girl. Season 2 on the other hand has had really lose focus, more placing the babies into settings to see how they react rather than situations, and it just doesn’t work like that.

Thankfully in this episode we have a focus, try to get Anthony back, and it’s cool that they used continuity from last episode to benefit their comedic writing. That makes this episode not a pain to sit through and definitely rewards it a “meh” rating. But overall, if there is a Season 3 the writer needs to hold back on just placing the kids in various wacky settings and develop a dramatic focus for each episode.