Review: The Great North “Autumn if You Got Em Adventure”

Overview:

The town of Lone Moose is preparing for its annual Fall Frenzy dance, which always seems to cause the town to collapse into drunken revelry. Judy’s friends discover that Gill plans to make a move on her that night, and they plan to stop whatever Gill has in mind. Meanwhile, Wolf is sexually attracted to a bus, Ham is having relationship troubles, Moon is planning a heist, and Beef accidentally agrees to three dates on the same day.

Our Take:

I have little interest in teenage romance plots normally, and this isn’t going to change my mind. The trend in this episode seems to be promising big payoffs and absolutely not delivering on them. The Fall Frenzy dance itself is the biggest offender. When Judy speaks with her imaginary friend about the Frenzy, she hypes it up as this big thing, wild and unrestrained, even mentioning that one frenzy caused the town to degenerate into one gigantic orgy. Considering what the viewer is told about it, it would be reasonable to expect unrestrained insanity and rampant sexuality. But the Frenzy is not like that at all. It’s a very innocent, wholesome dance. I’m not really upset about the Frenzy being a more family-friendly affair, but I am upset about the obvious bait-and-switch.

The episode definitely stretches itself too thin. It tries to juggle a separate plot thread for every family member and fails to adequately develop any of them. Moon and Wolf’s are easily the most peripheral to the story, and I think this would have been much better had they been axed. They have little if anything to do with the main focus of the episode, so cutting them out would give the episode a lot more time to devote to the characters whose stories are more relevant to the main theme of the episode. Perhaps gutting Beef’s plot would be a good idea too. There are some jokes to be had there, but the scenario gets resolved abruptly and with very little payoff.

It’s a shame that this episode is so bogged down with filler because if it had just fully committed to the teen romance plot, this would be a pretty decent episode. Ham gets a relatable tale of struggling to figure out what he wants out of a relationship, and while I don’t wish to spoil the end of Judy’s plot, it’s surprisingly wholesome once she finally gets to hear Gill’s side of the story. These threads could have and should have had all the time to themselves so the writers could have fully fleshed them out, and while they are good as they are now, they could have done with more room to grow.

From what I know of usual television writing, you’re supposed to have an A Plot, and a B Plot, and usually never a C plot. “Autumn if You Got Em Adventure” has A, B, C, D, and E Plots, and proves exactly why having more than two isn’t a good idea. It can’t provide enough time for any one idea to fully flesh it out, so it just comes out as a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas. I hope the show doesn’t try these “Every family member gets their own separate storyline”, episodes much in the future.