Review: The Great North “Beef Mommas House Adventure”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Moon gets left out of his friend’s fun because he doesn’t have a mom to attend their weekly Mom’s Night gathering, so he decides to trick Beef into joining the gang. It works out well, though, and Beef bonds with his three new mom friends—until he learns a secret that threatens to tear the group apart.

Our Take:

The Great North has returned to our shores! It’s only been a couple months since the last episode aired, but a lot has happened since then in the real world, making the hiatus feeling like a lengthy one. Beef Mommas House Adventure chronicles Moon’s complicated relationship with his friends, as well as his father’s single parent social life. It’s not a bad episode—but is it great?

Well, no, not really. But there are definitely plenty of high points and good things to enjoy! My favorite part of the episode was Beef’s storyline, which I didn’t expect going into it. The family patriarch is more at home in the woods than sitting in-between four walls of a stranger’s house, and his growth from robot man to one of the gals is really sweet to see. This emotional arc touched on a number of things, including the hardships single parents face, as well as how tough it is to make friends as adults in general. I was a little worried that they might break up the gang at the end, but thankfully their bond holds. I hope we see more of them going forward for sure.

The rest of the episode is downhill from there, literally when it comes to Moon’s subplot. He’s the one who kind of kicks the episode into motion by bringing his father to the parent group, but after that he kind of gets lost and his storyline really doesn’t end up going anywhere. The show tries to build him up as this killjoy who ends up saving his friends from certain death by puncturing their coats with fishhooks and it just did not land for me. None of Moon’s friends are very memorable, and their dynamic did not feel real.

The final segment of the ep involves Wolf falling for a trick that has him believing an oven mitt is haunted by a ghost, and— it’s fun, but pretty silly. Seeing the mitt show up in the shower and on the front porch is funny, but there’s really not much of a story to it.

Beef Mommas House Adventure is a nice return for the Great North, but I think the show still has a ways to go before I can call it truly great.