Review: The Great North “Fifty Worst Dates Adventure”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Under pressure from their friend group, Beef decides to take Carissa on a full day of dates to make up for the lack of dating they’ve done so far in their relationship. What starts out fun and romantic soon becomes exhausting, not helped by him revealing that the dates were not initially his idea, though he later clarifies that the date plans were all his, he just went overboard since Kathleen never seemed to like dates when they were together. So, relationship saved, just in time to get Dirt to poop out a key after handcuffing herself to a storefront out of protest, as well as see to injuries from the rest of the family during some pool escapades.

OUR TAKE

The Great North wraps up its Great Fourth season with one last check in with the ongoing Beef and Carissa relationship development subplot that had been worked on since the fifth episode. I’ve gone on at length about Beef’s gradual letting down of emotional walls over the course of this season, and I’m most likely going to go on even more about it for the Season Review. But for a season of animation that seemed like it had to do what little it could in terms of finales, it’s nice that The Great North could end on something that felt like it could show progress for these characters, let alone in an interesting way. Of the episodes this season that have focused on Beef being hesitant to let down a guard and easing into more healthy behavior, this episode actually has him overcorrecting with the big cornucopia of dates. As he mentions, he felt he needed to block off the romantic side of himself when he was constantly discouraged by Kathleen, so finally being in an opportunity to actually tap into that romance seemed to let out of the flood gates, which suddenly made things go from fun to frustrating.

I definitely relate to Beef in this kind of conundrum, as a bad relationship can really mess with your perception of how to handle the next one. While I’ve never had to deal with anything remotely close to what Beef did in his first marriage, thank god, I’ve certainly had moments in relationships I’ve had that made me feel like being more vulnerable or enthusiastic at least seemed like it was being discouraged, leading to the mental conditioning that perhaps I needed to be more cautious or hands off on those aspects. But when you’re with the right person, you should feel like you can be comfortable with them in all the ways that matter, so while Beef kinda went a bit overboard with putting so many dates into a single date like a Date Turducken (Tur-Date-En?), we can see it comes from the place of someone who simply wants to express love to the person he’s with in ways that he previously thought he was not allowed or even incapable of doing so. And luckily, The Great North has apparently had a fifth season ordered, so hopefully we’ll get to see further progression of the Beef-rissa Romance sometime next year (since it’s not on the Fall schedule). Onto the Season Review!