Review: Crash & Bernstein “Duck, Duck, Crash”

Spoilers Below

As a mother, I have watched my fair share of live action Disney television series. I remember being intrigued when Crash & Bernstein premiered. I was so hopeful that it would be a cool, witty show, akin to the 2011 movie, The Muppets, which also featured puppets interacting with humans. Sadly, that first season was not good. The second season is drawing to a close so I gave the last few episodes a second chance. Has it gotten better?

“Duck, Duck, Crash” opens with Crash performing an gravitational experiment. He built a huge ramp and is about to drive a small kart down it. Despite Wyatt’s objections, Crash hurls himself down the ramp, crashing through the front door of a nearby store. Just then, Wyatt’s mom, Mel, walks past, catching the boys in the midst of their trouble. Needless to say, the boys get grounded. Mel is about to take Wyatt’s sisters to a local amusement park so the boys are left with Wyatt’s father, Karl.

The owner of the trashed store has agreed to not press charges if the boys inexplicably make some fruit arrangements for him. (Apparently, the writers think that creating fruit arrangements is just “putting fruit on sticks.”) Since the elevator is conveniently broken, the menfolk need to figure out a way to get the fruit upstairs. Crash decides to use his earlier ramp to toss the fruit up to their balcony. Of course, this ends up destroying the apartment.

One of the broken items is an urn holding the ashes of Mel’s beloved childhood pet. Karl resolves to “fix” the situation by gluing the urn together then filling it with salt and pepper. This is when Wyatt’s youngest sister, Jasmine, appears. Mel forgot to take the little girl with her. Jasmine promises to not tell Mel what happened if they perform a magic show for her.

Crash turns into a Criss Angel knock-off with Wyatt as his assistant. First, he performs a fiery card trick, which burns the couch. After that, he tries to make Wyatt disappear by cutting a hole in the floor, which makes Wyatt fall into the apartment below. Finally, Crash tries to hypnotize Jasmine but only manages to hypnotize Karl. Poor Karl goes through a couple of transformations, including a duck, which results in way too many Duck Dynasty references. In the end, the boys use Karl’s hypnosis to force him to make all of the fruit arrangements and clean up the apartment before Mel comes home.

While this show isn’t quite as awful as it was in the beginning, it still isn’t particularly good. Things happen for absolutely no reason. Why in the world would any shopkeeper trust a couple of young boys (OK, I’m pretending that Crash is considered a person in the show’s universe) to make a difficult product like a fruit arrangement? Kids in the real world aren’t stupid. Even they know that it is much more difficult than just sticking fruit pieces on sticks. Also, Disney really needs to get rid of the “stupid irresponsible father” trope. Why in the world would Karl let the boys shoot fruit onto the balcony? At best, all of the fruit they are supposed to be using will be bruised and unusable. I think the writers just made a list of things they thought would be funny and tried to stuff them all into an episode. Sorry, guys. Not funny. Go back to the basics. Watch early The Muppet Show episodes to see how to handle puppet/human humor. If you want to keep the unbelievable circumstances going, watch some Phineas & Ferb. Just stop writing like your audience is stupid. It is kinda offensive.