Review: The Stanley Dynamic “The Stanley Games”

SPOILERS BELOW

We live in hectic times. It’s becoming more and more difficult to get the family together to enjoy some quality time with one another, in that sense it appears the idea of family is changing. In Ontario, Canada (where I live), the government introduced a new statutory holiday in February called “Family Day”. It’s sort of sad how something that should be recognized and appreciated every day of the year is now just a holiday, but like I mentioned, we live in hectic times. Making time for family is the theme of last night’s Stanley Dynamic. So without further ado, let’s get into this review.

In “The Stanley Games”, Dad organizes a family game night, but other last minute obligations arise for the rest of the family, throwing doubt on their promise to attend.

The Stanley Games was an interesting episode to watch. It came packed with the silly humor all of the other episodes had, but it’s story is a good reflection of modern times. The average person has so much going on in their individual life that sometimes they lose track of what’s really important and start to take people for granted. On the story front, this episode shines for that reason. This is the first episode of the series that really made me believe I was watching a family. They all shared a common conflict, and it was resolved as a family. I think this episode would have made a much better pilot if it were revamped with introductions to all of the characters.

Lane, the father, was probably the best part of this episode. A few episodes back I said that I found him too cartoonish and out there. This time around he was the humility for the episode. I found that I emphasized with him the most. He didn’t come across as another one of the kids in this episode, he really struck me as a father figure, but he still didn’t have to sacrifice the silly charm that he had brought to the series so far.

Where this episode fell short was everybody outside of the family. This episode was very family focused, and it was important for all of the outside distractions from the family game night to be present, but I found that they became too chaotic by the final act of the episode. They are all at the Stanley household, and craziness is happening in the backyard and kitchen. It makes sense that it would happen, but we were never really given context as to why it got that way. Essentially, things went from zero to one-hundred in a matter of a minute and it threw the tone of the episode out of the window.

Overall, it was a pretty decent episode. It touched on an issue many real families face, and it still maintained it’s humor. Things got a little crazy towards the end, but throughout the episode we saw some good performances from the Stanley family and we got a good message along with it. The animation of Luke in the episode was pretty good. He had to hug a live action character, and it seemed a little off. Perhaps if the hug didn’t last as long, the flaws would be less noticeable, but we were left to look at it for a good seven seconds, so that’s a lot of time for things to stand out. Ultimately, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the episode, just something I hope they look out for in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

How did you guys like “The Stanley Games”? If you’ve been watching, what do you think of the series so far? Let us know!