Review: The Great North “Beef’s in Toyland Adventure”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Beef gets in a funk when his boat is broken and can’t handle the thought of someone else being the captain. He busies himself with household chores and eventually becomes involved in an imaginative game of pretend with German knick-knack figurines. Meanwhile, Wolf and Honeybee spot a beautiful man in Lone Moose and try to recruit him to the big leagues.

Our Take:

The Great North is back after last week’s brief hiatus with Beef’s in Toyland Adventure, a fun episode that chronicles Beef’s descent into madness and Wolf and Honeybee’s descent into stalker-ish territory. It’s a slight episode in some respects, without much of a message or deeper emotional thread, but it’s just silly enough to be satisfying entertainment.

The main most enjoyable part comes from Beef’s creative escapades. We’ve seen a lot of Beef as the quote unquote man of the house. Without a mom around, he’s had to work extra hard to raise the kids and take care of them, from shuttling them to after school actives to giving them great dad advice when they need it. So it’s nice to have an episode like this one where Beef gets to be much more immature.

His little escape into fantasy land with the strange German children figurines is very cute, especially with all the adorable attempts at accents that Nick Offerman gets to do here. And the sea shanties are just icing on the proverbial cake!

Once Judy and Ham and Moon get involved, things get derailed pretty quickly, and it turns into a much more chaotic wonderland of the imagination—but that doesn’t mean it’s any less enjoyable, for the audience or for Beef. Even if he can’t be captain all the time, it’s good to have the time to hang out with his kids and just play.

Wolf and Honeybee’s half of the episode isn’t quite as entertaining. They come across a super handsome guy in town and dub him the most beautiful man ever to be seen in Lone Moose—so beautiful in fact that he earns a spot on their highly-selective ranking list of hot dudes. The storyline has them gradually making contact with the guy, who turns out to be named Wade, and trying to see if they can guide him to become a Hollywood heartthrob. Things don’t really work out though since Wade has stage fright and is also totally creeped out by them.

Beef’s in Toyland Adventure was an interesting episode for sure. Seeing Beef playing around was a bit of a surprise, and definitely gave me Bob Belcher vibes, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Honeybee and Wolf’s part wasn’t as entertaining to me, but it had a few memorable moments. While I can’t see this episode becoming a staple in the show, it was a creative change of pace that I appreciated.