Review: Star vs. The Forces of Evil “Game of Flags/Girls’ Day Out”

We throw a flag at this week’s episodes.

Spoilers Below

It is that time of year again! Time for the Butterfly/Johansen family reunion! That’s right – the families of Star’s parents get together every year. I’m not sure why though. They don’t really get along. The Butterfly family is a little more uptight and royal, while the Johansens are rather crude and caveman-like. Of course, this means they fight. A lot. The only way to solve their dispute is through the Game of Flags! (That’s basically a fancy name for King of the Hill.) The goal of the game is to get your flag to the top of the mountain before everyone else. Easy, right?

Not so fast. In order to get to the top of the mountain, you have to fight off every other family member plus the natural landscape traps. It’s more difficult than you think. But Star’s mother doesn’t want her competing anyway. After all, Star is still at the children’s table with the little kids. She’s not old enough to participate in such a dangerous game. That doesn’t stop Star. She grabs her flag and Marco and races up the mountain, throwing family members aside left and right. (Much to the horror of Marco.)

Eventually, Marco points out that this game is changing Star. She isn’t the type of person who is only in it for herself. She thinks of others. When Star finally comes to that realization for herself, she grabs everyone’s flags and races up the mountain again. Thinking she’s up to something awful, all of the terrible family members attack Star. Thankfully, her mother uses her butterfly power to rescue the teen. Star confesses that she was trying to get everyone’s flag to the peak so everyone would be a winner. But Marco sneaks up and puts his flag at the top first. Silly Marco.

In the second episode, Star gets thrown into detention for freeing the class hamster from Miss Skullnick’s boring math class. Somehow, Star gets elected Mayor of Detention. That means she has to grant wishes for everyone in detention. Everything is all good until she comes to the last wish. The remote control for the television across the hall is out of batteries. How will the terrible detention kids watch wrestling during their incarceration? Star sees Oskar playing his keytar in the parking lot and decides that is where the new batteries are.

She sneaks her way through the obstacles at the school, only to get tongue tied when she gets to Oskar. Janna, the girl who elected Star mayor, helps out by talking to Oskar for her. He does have extra batteries but they are in one of the many keytars in the trunk of his car. The girls pick through all of them until they find the functional batteries. They race back to detention, barely beating Miss Skullnick to the room. On the way, Star manages to snag Marisol the hamster. (No thanks to Marco getting his arm stuck in a downspout!) Happy that she got her hamster back, Miss Skullnick once again leaves the detention room. Star decides to stay in detention to watch wrestling with the rest of the kids instead of leaving to have fun elsewhere.

Of the two episodes, I preferred the first one. It was fun to see both sides of Star’s family duke it out. We already knew that her parents were very different people. Seeing their family dynamics was hysterical. Wouldn’t every kid love to throw their dad off a mountainside at some point in their life? The second episode, however, was a little more typical for the series. Star gets into a jam and has to figure her way out. Granted, she wasn’t in a huge jam this time. She could have just magicked her way out of detention like she planned. But she chose to help the other kids instead. Sure, it was fun but it was nothing new.