Review: Gravity Falls – “Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons”

The episode opens on a lazy Tuesday. As Grunkle Stan notes how nice it is to have a day off, Ford bursts into the room, fighting a weird cyclops octopus. Ford defeats the creature, much to the admiration of Dipper. The boy tries to get his new great-uncle to spend some time with him but Ford refuses. Mabel tries to cheer her brother up with news of the season finale of Duck-tective. It isn’t until his new copy of the “Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons” game arrives that Dipper’s spirits rise. Unfortunately, no one wants to play his geektastic game with him.

Dipper heads outside to play his game with Gompers the goat. Since Gompers is a goat, he tries to eat the 38-sided die. As Dipper wrestles the game piece away from the animal, it rolls under the porch. Dipper crawls under the porch to retrieve the die, when the ground caves in and he falls into the basement. Ford gets upset at the appearance of Dipper in the basement. But his attitude changes when he sees the 38-sided die in Dipper’s hand. Yes, Ford is also a fan of the math-based role playing game. Dipper and Ford decide to play a game.

Mabel, meanwhile, has been preparing for the season finale of Duck-tective. She even built a food ramp so she can eat without having to take her eyes off the television. Unfortunately, when she goes to actually watch her show, she finds Dipper and Ford have taken up the television room with their game! Mabel and Stan try to get Dipper and Ford to move but the gamers claim they need the space. Stan tries to move some of Ford’s graph papers and the two fight. In the melee, a magical infinity-sided die that Ford brought from the other dimension falls out of its case and rolls along the floor. The die brings the bad guy from the game, Probabilator (voiced by “Weird” Al Yankovic!), to life. The evil wizard shrinks Dipper and Ford into game pieces and begins the game anew.

Since Dipper and Ford are inside the game, Mabel and Stan take up the roles of players. They roll the dice and cast the spells in order to give their brothers a chance to beat the wizard. When it comes time to beat the final boss, Stan manages to roll a perfect 38, sending all of the game characters back to their game dimension. (Yeah, Stan cheated.) Mabel and Stan return to watch Duck-tective, while Dipper and Ford put the infinity die away someplace safe.

Surprisingly, I actually found this episode to be a lot more entertaining than some of the previous episodes. I really expected the fighting between Stan and Ford to completely ruin the episode. I’m already a little down on the fact that the writers keep making these parallels between the two sets of twins. I don’t want Dipper and Mabel to turn into Stan and Ford. But it is looking pretty inevitable. Let’s hope the kids can have as much fun as possible before that happens.