Review: Red vs Blue – Family Shatters “Walk and Talk”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shatter Squad and Viper talk while walking.

OUR TAKE

Aaaaaaand we’re back to them being mediocre. I mean, this one is barely three minutes long with a premise that is pretty simple, so maybe this is as much as they could think of to throw into it, but that feels more like a lack of imagination, especially compared to last week’s pleasant surprise. Instead of the climax of the joke being just a switcharoo between Phase and East, I could see the walking and talking escalating further into, for example, a light jog that turns into a run and then escalating further to going on vehicles and eventually lightspeed travel…at least that’s off the top of my head. As I said last time, leaning into the intense action from the Zero season could easily be used to compliment the comedy and make it feel even more comically absurd, much like Nichijou or the more insane episodes of Regular Show. But I guess they just wanted something simpler to animate and throw out there for this one. Which, hey, it’s their show and they can do what they want, but I am really going to be bummed if last week’s episode turns out to just be a fluke and everything else is just a bunch of blah moments.

However, I still feel at least some optimism simply from the fact that this format is a much better fit for the Shatter Squad and Viper characters. This is probably damning this with faint praise, but much like with RWBY Chibi, these characters have such shallow…well, CHARACTER that they work far better with simple comedy shorts than being thrown into this big serious plot like they tried with Zero. And I feel much more confident in this statement after listening to the commentary track for RVB Zero, where the main takeaway from the cast and crew is that they mainly just wanted to have cool fight scenes with jokes. And considering the original seasons of Red vs Blue also began as short and simple comedy bits that slowly formed into a more complex story that felt like a natural evolution. Meanwhile, Zero started with basically that same passionate energy and concise plans with surface level characters, but ended up feeling like a lackluster follow up instead of the start of something new. But I don’t want to make these reviews all about beating on Zero, so hopefully Family Shatters actually gives me something to talk about next time.