Review: Gravity Falls – “Scary-oke”

Spoilers Below

After a year-long break, Gravity Falls has finally returned with season 2. No longer do we have to rely on shorts to feed our hunger for mystery and Mabel! But is it still as awesome?

In case you don’t remember, the first season ended with Grunkle Stan joining the three diaries together in his basement lair. Season two opens with him at his not-so-super computer crunching the data from the three books. This results in flashes of bright blue light that take over most of the town. Amazingly, none of the townspeople took notice of the blue light. Of course, the energy from the computations is noticed by the government, who sends some men-in-black to find out what is going on.

The next morning, Stan holds a Grand Re-opening for the Mystery Shack. At the ceremony, Stan and the kids announce a karaoke party that will take place later that night. Mabel announces that the highlight of the party will be a performance by Love Patrol Alpha, a band that consists of Dipper, Stan, and herself.

When the townspeople leave the ceremony, Dipper asks Stan for his diary back. Surprisingly, Stan just hands it over. (Yeah, he made copies.) Dipper is stunned by this turn of events and, when the government agents turn up at the Shack, he is more than willing to share all of the information he has with them. However, this is not something that Stan wants. He takes the agent’s business card from Dipper and puts it in his box of contraband.

Fast forward to the Scary-oke party. Mabel is having an awesome time, as always. Dipper gets Wendy to help him retrieve the business card so he can contact the agents. With Wendy as his (awful) lookout, the card is found and the agents are called. Stan finds out (told you Wendy was an awful lookout) and grounds Dipper once the party is over. Fortunately for Dipper, the agents show up while the party is still in full swing.

The government agents refuse to believe that the diary isn’t just another piece of junk from the Mystery Shack. To prove them wrong, Dipper recites a spell. Unfortunately, the spell he used was to awaken the undead. As a result, zombies crawl out of the ground and start chasing the partygoers.

Mabel and Dipper manage to hold their own for awhile but Soos starts running his mouth and ends up getting bit on the shoulder. Yup, Soos is now a zombie. He helps the other zombies chase the kids into the house. Just when they are about to be cornered, Stan kicks in the door and bashes in some zombie heads with a baseball bat. The family runs up to the attic, where Dipper finds out that there are hidden messages in the book that can only be read with a blacklight. One of the secret messages gives the instructions on how to really beat a zombie.

I’ll let you watch the episode to see what the big secret is. Let me tell you that it is worth it.

I am so happy that Gravity Falls is back. Not only that, I’m super happy that the show hasn’t lost any of its humor or in-show mysteries while it was gone. I loved that the show started exactly where it left off at the end of season one so there aren’t any questions regarding what Stan was doing in the basement. It will be very interesting to see where the show goes from here. Will Dipper spend the season researching the hidden text from his diaries? What will happen when the not-so-super computer finishes the computations? Will the government continue to investigate the town? The second episode of the season (and all of the first-run episodes thereafter) will be shown on Disney XD on Mondays. At least I won’t have to wait an entire week for more Gravity Falls awesomeness!