Review: Camp Camp: Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected

Entering the second half of this season ideally calls for some progression for whatever development the writers have in mind for these characters. Ideally.

SPOILERS
Anyway, this week is yet another focus episode about one of the less remarkable campers: Preston Goodplay. While Ered’s shtick was her “coolness” and Dolph’s was his less than subtle nazi-ism, Preston’s is being the “theater kid”, highlighted here by producing a sequel to a famous Shakespeare play and riding his cast’s ass to get it right. Guess how well that goes. Naturally, Nikki wants to spice up her role as Zombie-Juliet with more action, Neil is melting in his Robo-Romeo costume and looks for every opportunity to get out of it, and Max could not give less of a shit in his bit part while he steals David’s phone and sabotages his Tinder account. Meanwhile, the Flower Scouts from a few episodes ago wait in the wings because Tamii (the yellow haired one) has a crush on Neil even though he called her a cunt. Which unfortunately means that episode actually happened and wasn’t just a part of my feverish nightmares like I originally thought.

So this leads to the authorities being called, and since Max made some suspect search choices on David’s phone, the feds go for David instead. Surprisingly, Max confesses to his scheme and apologizes for it…but it doesn’t seem to be out of growth or actual regret as much as just to re-establish the status quo. From what we’ve seen of Max so far, he’s made every attempt to get out of the camp and gives not one shit about David’s job security or feelings. Likewise, David hasn’t exactly done anything to change Max’s mind in that regard, so it’s also confusing that he would pass up this chance to be rid of him.

Since they brought back the Flower Scouts for this episode, I’m reminded of what I thought of and expected from Episode 3 when I first saw it. If you remember, that ended with Nikki and Neil making it back to camp after they and Max had escaped, but with Max still trapped with the Woodscouts. I figured this would lead to the next episode being about David finding out that Max was missing, making a trek to the Woodscout base and rescuing him. This would show that David does genuinely care about his campers and have Max start to show some inkling of respect for David after being saved by him. Then, when we got to this episode, Max sparing the chance to get David arrested would feel just a bit more logical and natural to that narrative…but we didn’t get that, so it just feels like they only want to keep the status quo.

Weirdly though, there is a tiny bit of development from the feds noting that Neil is a nerd, and so it’s suspect that he’s in a theater group, thus making them ask if the camp is a scam. Putting aside that theater people are often grouped in with the general idea of nerds, how is THIS the thing that signals the alarms for these guys that the camp might be a scam? Based on what we saw of the place from just the first episode, there are dozens of legitimate reasons they would want to at least suspend it, but Neil being in a play is the thing that alerts them?

Still 5 episodes till the end of the season, and not a single marked improvement in sight. The logic of these characters is walking on eggshells, things that MIGHT grow characters are chucked aside needlessly, and the stuff they choose instead to form something resembling a story arc can’t stand up to even a moment’s thought. Any time they really want to get started would be fine by me.