Review: The Loud House “Pressure Cooker”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Clyde and his nana Gayle try making a food truck but can’t get on the same page of the cookbook.

OUR TAKE

Another one down for the The Loud House episodes this week, and this time it’s about Clyde, Lincoln’s black best friend who, more notably, has two gay dads! This is not as significant or noteworthy in television or animation in our current year, where gay representation is…well, BETTER but could still use some work. But when Harold and Howard first appeared eight years ago, it was a pretty big deal to have two adoptive gay parents in a kids’ cartoon. And according to the wikipedia article, it apparently gave the show a big boost in ratings. I guess the old adage is true: Go woke, go…get a big boost in ratings and critical acclaim, followed by seven more seasons, two spin-offs, and three movies. It’s a pretty specific saying but it seems pretty fitting here. Anyway, we haven’t gotten an episode about just Clyde yet in the ones we’ve covered, so I suppose it’s about time we covered him. And this episode isn’t even about his gay dads! And it’s not about his biological parents, who we will likely never see! It’s actually about his cooking relationship with his Nana, who I assume is Harold’s mother because…well, you can probably guess.

It’s actually kinda hard to figure out where this episode is going to go at first glance. LINCOLN, is getting food at some old folks home, so maybe he’s going to do some weird stuff with food again? But no, it turns out it’s about Clyde and his grandmother Gayle getting so much praise for their food that they start a food truck. So, I guess this is a story about how if you take your passion and turn it into a job, especially if you do it with a loved one or family member, you may end up facing challenges between you and them as you try to balance your professionalism with being able to do the thing that was so easy before when it wasn’t a job. Not a bad lesson for kids, although I kinda think it would’ve been better if it were Clyde and LINCOLN to better make that point. Still, we see that even working with your sweet adoptive grandma is going to have its challenges, especially when you don’t coordinate with her like you should. So the solution is clearly to just get a regular nine to five and give up on your passions so you can avoid this scenario altogether. Yeah, that sounds about right.