Review: The Casagrandes “Sidekickin’ Chicken/Silent Fight”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Sidekickin’ Chicken

After hearing about a contest to find El Falcon’s next sidekick, Carl becomes El Pollito and tries to win.

Silent Fight

Once Carlitos falls asleep, Carl and CJ must conduct all their playing and fighting in absolute silence.

Our Take:

The humor in the first episode consists of Carl’s attempts to win a contest to have his character fight alongside his favorite superhero, El Falcon. The contest has him and Sergio making a video about his alter ego, El Pollito. However, Alexis and Adelaide also compete in the contest dressed up as Tuba Boy and Pandalaide. When Alexis and Adelaide get accepted and not Carl, the latter attempts to prove the writers wrong by filming himself committing a heroic deed. By “heroic deed”, I mean faking a rescue with Sergio dressing up as a baby. Alexis and Adelaide eventually rescue Sergio from the hot dog cart (for real), and their characters get to fight alongside El Falcon. Carl’s sidekick ego, on the other hand, was chosen to be the villain’s second in command.  

The second episode focuses on Carl and CJ keeping their fights quiet, so they don’t wake up Carlitos, who came down with a cold. After Carlos and Frida finally get Carlitos to fall asleep, Frida warns the boys not to wake him up, or they’ll be grounded for two months. However, it didn’t last long as the boys accidentally woke up Carlitos due to their noisy action figure, forcing them to work together to put him back to sleep.

The humor consists of Carl and CJ getting each other mad by violating their personal belongings and throwing their stuff out the window. They then have to prevent Carlitos from waking up their parents by making him happy and changing his diaper. This episode resembles the Tom & Jerry cartoons, which provide little to no dialogue while delivering comedy in their actions. It may not have done much else in its dialogue-free scenario, but I found it amusing to see the boys battle each other in absolute silence.

Overall, both episodes are enjoyable for their heroic acts and silent mischief. “Sidekickin’ Chicken” is an entertaining Carl-focused episode with him competing against Alexis and Adelaide to get his character on television with his favorite superhero. “Silent Fight” came close to being a suitable callback to the silent cartoons of yesteryear, mainly Tom & Jerry, but it’s still funny to see Carl and CJ get what they deserve despite them being quiet.