Review: The Great North “Cillian Me Softly Adventure”

Overview:

The town of Lone Moose is currently undergoing it’s bi-annual disaster preparedness day, as the town goes through a mock disaster so that they’ll be prepared when a real one comes up. The disaster in question is a “Jurassic park-style dinosaur attack”, and everyone in the town has their own part to play. Meanwhile, Wolf and Honeybee get in a petty fight, Wolf being incredibly nervous because he’s never been in a fight before, and worries about his relationship, with him fighting through the city to apologize to Honeybee.

Our Take:

The exact choice of simulated disaster is something I love. Despite the ridiculousness of the scenario, all of the characters take it completely seriously, something I always find funny to see. The nature of taking an inherently silly situation and playing it straight is something that they get a lot of mileage out of, taking the piss out of the usual tropes of a disaster movie. People are cast in the role of paramedics, strategists, hostile dinosaurs, and even dead bodies, and they take their roles seriously while still managing to casually laugh and joke throughout the day.

All of the family members get something important to do, and all get their own little subplot, Beef is a dinosaur, Judy plays a corpse, Honeybee is a paramedic, and Moon, the one who suggested the dinosaur outbreak idea in the first place, gets taken to the war room, where rather than plan strategies and do war things, he just ends up filing paperwork. But he loves it, so much that he even sings a song about it. Beef needs to ride a bike to play his role, but he never learned how to ride one, so the episode pivots to him learning about bike safety. Again, seeing the show’s big strong man in such a weak and compromising position is a good source of laughs.

All of the dinosaur parts are shoddily made out of arts and crafts, cardboard and styrofoam, and whatever else they can find. The stylistic suckage of all the costumes and setpieces was nice to see. In a mock disaster, all of this stuff would be thrown together out of garbage and made like crap, with the characters’ adherence to their roles really selling it. There is one subplot not related to the dinosaurs that absolutely falls flat on the other hand. It’s introduced abruptly and resolved with just as little payoff. Somewhat disappointing in an episode that otherwise manages to juggle and resolve so many disparate storylines.

“Cillian Me Softly Adventure” is an absurd episode that manages to tell a story where all of the family members are truly important, which the show doesn’t always achieve. Some of them have bigger roles than others, and the episode introduces many disparate plotlines while nailing most, but not all of them. The dinosaur invasion angle was something I wasn’t expecting, and it’s a very fun one for them to take. I’m very curious to see what sort of thing they’ll parody next.