Review: Camp Camp “Cloak & Hunt”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

A heatwave leads to a game of Hide and Seek knockoff Cloak and Hunt! Nikki decides to hide in a cave, with David and returned Gwen trapped in with her until they swim out with the platypus. Meanwhile, CJ and Quartermaster go into town to repair the AC, with the eyepatch squirrel stealing their stuff off the bus and Quartermaster getting covered in mud and being mistaken for a sasquatch.

OUR TAKE

SO. Uh. Things have apparently taken a bit of a turn for Rooster Teeth in the past couple days, what with it now closing up shop in t-minus two months. It’s already a shock for a number of reasons, but the release of these new episodes, plus a few of the other announced releases, made it seem like things were actually starting to turn around a bit…but alas. It’s now basically certain that this will be the final season of Camp Camp, meaning that the next two episodes will now be a very unintentional series finale. As mentioned last time, the special they released last year works pretty well as a real send-off, so we can just view this handful of episodes as a nice bonus. Fingers crossed they manage to find a way to do more down the line, but that’s one of the several dozen things that are up in the air about RT at the moment. At the very least, it sounds like RT won’t be going gentle into that good night, with plenty of stuff ready to come out, but it’s still unfortunate that this is how the rooster crows its swan song. In the meantime, we still have three more episodes to review, including this one!

And IT’S…another just okay episode. It’s actually pretty surprising that we haven’t had any episodes involving a heat wave or a busted AC before now. Seems like a no brainer for a show set at a summer camp, but I guess this just goes to show there were still ideas yet to be tried. It’s NOT the first time the kids have been bribed with ice cream in order to participate in an activity, but the last time that happened was in one of my favorite episodes, the one with the Foreign Exchange Campers (who I just realized are also probably not gonna show up, which is a bummer). That episode had a lot more to juggle and did so very well in my opinion, while this feels rather light in terms of plot. Nikki wanders into a cave, which naturally doesn’t really affect her, then David and Gwen go in after her and panic a bit before reassuring their friendship and getting out. It might’ve worked better if this moment was built up more by there being some tension in Gwen’s return somehow, but it ends up feeling rather perfunctory (yes I’m using that word right).

And then CJ with Quartermaster also feels bare minimum, with CJ just doing dudebro stuff and Quartermaster doing actually mild weirdness for him. I’m not sure what exactly to expect from CJ now, frankly. We’ll only get two more episodes with him, but I was hoping there was more dimension to his schtick, like with David’s naive optimism being tested and Gwen’s jadedness being punctuated by her hobbies. Maybe there is and we’ll get to see some more to CJ in the remainder of the season/series, but it wasn’t really apparent here. Still, I guess it’s good they’re giving Gwen’s new voice actor Kaitlin Becker some more episodes to be in (and Krishna Kumar, Max’s new VA, for that matter) and making use of their new main cast member. We had another next episode preview this time, which was about as vague as the last one, but it seems like maybe the kids are going to get some of “the talk”, which should be interesting if it can match a different Season 3 episode I liked: Nikki’s Last Day on Earth. Still, hard to fully swallow we’re almost at the end, not just for this show, but for all of Rooster Teeth. Could all of this have been avoided if they hadn’t changed the logo? One thing’s for sure, you can’t prove it couldn’t!