Review: Camp Camp “The Order of the Sparrow”

Followed by The Half-Blood Dolph and The Deathly Harrisons.

After a grueling, dehydrating, and blister-filled trek, we’ve finally arrived at the Camp Camp season (?) finale. We’ve passed by many eye-catching scenery, from a vicious platypus that turned out to be pretty innocuous, to a senior citizen sex dungeon, and even Travis Willingham doing a more charismatic Stan Pines impression. But unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, we have reached the end of our trail. And after all we’ve endured, braced, and limped solemnly through, I have to say…it’s not as bad as I feared, but that might have made it worse.

SPOILERS

Following up from David’s determination to make the campers care more from the last episode, we begin with the kids getting up earlier than usual. Although, from my experience, wouldn’t going to a camp already require you to get up early for group activities? Though either way, I certainly don’t remember waking up to any adults looking like they were dressing up for a Washington Redskins game, which is exactly what we see David doing just before the theme song. At the end of last week, David recalled something called “The Sparrow”, which he noted might be the reason things feel worse off than during his time camping at Camp Campbell. Turns out, the Order of the Sparrow is a sort of pseudo-secret society that David remembers fondly doing…despite some less than politically correct interpretations of Native American culture. When the kids start to zone out and leave, David entices them with the “ultimate prize” awarded to those accepted into the order by the end of the day.

Thus begins a cavalcade of each camper kissing David’s ass all day, while loosely following the rules of the order, which basically boil down to “be nice, be kind, and respect nature”. Every kid assumes the prize will be their greatest desire, except of course for Max, who couldn’t give less of a shit even if he was awarded with the camp being nuked from orbit. He soon calls David out on none of this is proof that the campers actually care, just that they’ve been bribed into thinking they’ll receive something they want from it, when in fact that prize is a just a bonfire, a sash, and a decorated staff that they will lead future campers with. This possibly explains how David became so enamored with being a counselor…possibly. Regardless, no one else is even remotely as impressed. As if solely to mock him further, a freak rain storm comes in as David tries to light the bonfire.

Max goes in for the kill, taunting David that banking on a pointless tradition was never going to work, laying it on thick that no one cares about the camp, and thrashing David’s idealistic worldview until he’s nearly in tears. Despite all of this, David responds knowingly that Max is right. His charges don’t care, his co-workers don’t care, and the man he looks up to most likely only made the place as a get rich quick scheme. But that’s why, he says defiantly, he’ll never stop trying. Because somebody has to.

More on that in a bit.

After being crushed by the logs and having a fantastical dream, David awakes to a clear evening sky, a lit bonfire, and smiling campers in Indian garb (as in Indians from India, which it’s implied Max’s heritage might be from). Max even fixed the Sparrow Staff that broke in David’s fit of rage, while also holding onto his bleak worldview (at least on the surface). And with that, a warm song, and a possibly fatal gas explosion, Camp Camp’s first season comes to a close. Well, after the glaringly misplaced rap song that, no joke, has “dicks out for Harambe” in the lyrics for no clear reason other than because memes.

Being the end of the season, I have a few things to say about how this story relates and impacts previous episodes, as well as the tone and themes of the season overall, but I’ll cover the majority of them in my review that actually focuses on the season as a single piece. For now, let’s just talk about the merits and detriments of this episode.

First off, FINALLY we have something resembling a plot in two parts, at least in the sense that a single line from the last episode had an impact on events in the following one. I’ve made no secret about how infuriating it’s been seeing this show have two instances where a story had the opportunity to flesh out or even desperately needed to, only to have status quo restored off-screen and any potential development reset. This time, fittingly for a season finale, it cuts to the core of one of the more focused on characters, and calls back to the conflict established between Max and David since the first episode.

The issue is that this conflict has barely come up throughout the twelve episode season, and trigger that brought it about for the finale is executed so nonchalantly that it’s a wonder it took this long at all. Max hates David’s optimism because he is a cynic, so he wants to either break out of camp or demoralize David to a breaking point. He lays into him about how much no one cares about anything, and how everyone’s an asshole, but why does MAX care so much that David cares? What is it about David’s upbeat idealism that irritates him so much? These are things we probably could’ve learned at some point in the past eleven episodes, but never did. And without a proper motivation for his actions, it just makes Max look like the biggest asshole for being this obsessed with someone else’s attitude for no reason.

David doesn’t come out of this smelling like roses either, though. Sure, he wins everyone over and gets his camp bonfire to prove that everyone cares about the camp…but did he really earn it? As I said, his whole ploy to encourage the kids to show some good will about the camp was to bribe them and lie to them about said bribe. My best guess is that they’re trying to portray David’s positivity with him just assuming people will like anything he likes while also portraying Max’s dickishness with grounding in reality, but David’s worked as a counselor for who knows how long, and he’s never considered that kids might actually want…you know, SOMETHING MATERIAL? All this does is make Max look more in the right because at least he has some common sense, while David’s “I’ll never stop trying because someone has to” line(which I assume was meant to sound like a flickering light of optimism in a torrent of negativity) just makes him look like a stubborn idiot. He says he’ll never stop trying, but when your “trying” is empty platitudes and a complete misunderstanding of how to encourage people, have you really been trying at all?

So, we have the asshole who thinks traditions like this are outdated and lame, and the idiot who still believes in their intent and doesn’t think they should change. This could have very well been a story about preserving the heart of old ways into the modern day. Clearly the Native American headdress stuff has to go (and I’m unsure if adding actual Indian clothes to it makes it worse or not), but the idea of the Order of The Sparrow seems like it meant something special to David in his youth. Maybe this episode could have shown some light on both Max and David’s backgrounds, and lead to them finding common ground to show how the Sparrow stuff could be preserved, but changed. Instead, we got this culmination of character arcs that could’ve gotten here by the fourth episode without all the filler.

Next up is the judgment of the entire season. Will the sum of its parts bring it out some unseen gems? Find out next week.