Review: The Great North “For Whom the Smell Tolls Adventure: Part One”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Judy and Kima are worried about finding the perfect dates for prom, while the other Tobins investigate the source of a weird smell.

Our Take:

This week sees The Great North going all out to conclude its third successful season. Following in the footsteps of The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers, The Great North becomes the latest series in the FOX animation lineup to get the two-parter treatment. Two-parter episodes are usually effective for delivering specific plots that are too epic to fit into just one episode. The Simpsons is one of the finest examples of providing great two-parter episodes, with last season’s “A Serious Flanders” being one of the best double-length episodes in the show’s recent years.

So now it’s this show’s turn to handle this treatment. The first part serves as a test to see if something as charming and light-hearted as The Great North can deliver more two-parters in future seasons. So, what type of high-stakes situation is urgent enough to garner more than one episode, or in this case, two problems? Well, the first problem involves one of the Tobin kids, Judy, preparing for prom with Kima. Unfortunately, the problem is that they don’t have the dates for this special occasion. Not yet, anyway.

The episode consists of Judy and Kima searching for prom dates based on their looks, or as they would call them, “DERGS”. After struggling to find perfect dates, Kima’s mother set the girls up with two boys, Eli and Laird, who seemed like an excellent match for them. Additionally, the girls hit another snag in their perfect prom plan as the school is forced to move the dance indoors because of a specific phenomenon affecting the town. Meanwhile, we see Ham and Crispin changing the prom king and queen to prom president and vice-president to promote diversity, which took them only a short time, with them winning the poll during the dance.

The other scenario has the rest of the Tobins and the civilians solving the biggest case in Lone Moose history: the mysterious and bizarre smell that’s been bothering the town’s residents. Known as the “Smell from Hell”, the strange odor rose from the ground due to the earthquakes and caused a ruckus around town. Part of the episode is spent on Beef, Mayor Peppers, and the others finding the source of the smell, with the mysterious man, Looney Louie, who witnessed the event, giving them a riddle about where it came from. They found the source of the smell, which is from the dead fish, but that’s not the end of this mystery, according to Beef, Moon, and Louie. It turns out that the smell came from a bunker full of buried spoiled meat waste hidden beneath the school, attracting a group of hybrid creatures known as “Pizzlies”. That should give the kids something to worry about than just their perfect day at the prom.

The first part of “For Whom the Smell Tolls Adventure” provides a first chapter of the epic two-parter that may not match the two-part episodes of The Simpsons but doesn’t stink as much as the smell, either. The scenario involving Judy and Kima has a standard cliche involving looking for the perfect guys to take to prom with. Whether it’ll have a big payoff in part two remains unknown, but I won’t be surprised if their dates turn out to be phonies during the Tobins’ rescue mission. Aside from that, this is an enjoyable start to the show’s first two-parter that’ll likely get a big payoff in next week’s season finale.