Review: Duncanville “Gamer vs. Gamer”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Duncan and his friends are fed up with other kids stealing the spotlight during pro gamer Slayer’s streams, so they decide to do something that will get them a shoutout of their own. But when Duncan’s $10 donation accidentally turns into a $10,000 one, they’re invited to Slayer’s private island to celebrate—but Slayer knew about the mistake the entire time.

Our Take:

Duncanville returns with a slightly underwhelming premiere for season three. Gamer vs. Gamer has some fun moments and does a fairly good job integrating all the characters into the plot, but it never quite comes together into an entertaining storyline.

The main thrust of the plot finds Duncan and his squad idolizing a pro gamer and making a fraudulent donation in order to receive a shout out. The shout out turns into something much bigger because the gang’s sticky keyboard (don’t ask) adds some zeroes to Duncan’s emergency bullying credit card donation. Everyone is pumped when Slayer invites them out to his private island, but it turns out he knew about it the charge the whole time and was just staging it as a way to teach Duncan a lesson.

These scenes had their moments, like the whole ‘erec-tail dysfunction for dogs’ thing, but as a whole it wasn’t really that funny. I find jokes about streaming gamers to be a little passé in the year of our lord 2022, and Slayer felt more like a weak caricature than an actual character. Plus, I’m a little confused about why Slayer would even bother inviting them to the island in the first place when he could’ve just reached out and asked about recharging the card. All in all, this was definitely one of the more ‘out there’ plots that the show sometimes does, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

The other thing going on in the episode involves the rest of the Harris family. Jack and Annie teach Kimberly and Jing about the magic of old photos, but wind up uncovering a minor scandal about the two of them going to jail for a weekend—except Annie never went. It takes a bit too long to get going, but once it does it’s a fairly interesting turn of events and I liked the comedy happening with the girls trying to zoom into the photos, even if it was completely unbelievable. Polaroid cameras are still a trendy thing!

When I reviewed the show’s last season, I thought it was an improvement over the first season and looked forward to how season three would continue the trend. I’m not going to say that the S3 premiere was a disappointment in this regard, but the show is definitely going to have to work harder  and show me it has more up its sleeves than just a tired gamer plot going forward.