Review: The Great North “Bots on the Side Adventure”

Overview

Ham gets a singing job at a local pizza place; the rest of the family decide on a name for the new boat.

Our Take

Bots on the Side really refers to Ham having a crush on one of the robots that haunt the pizza place which quickly puts into question whether or not he should see other boys besides Crispin. It’s an interesting area of character development that doesn’t quite get resolved by the end of the episode but that’s why we have more episodes because perhaps this is the start of something that could be a fun, serial element for the series.

It shouldn’t be surprising that an episode all about Ham fronting another band, even if it is animatronic, would work out this week. That said, I couldn’t help but notice that ever since Friday Night at Freddy’s more adult animated sitcoms are starting to lean more and more into the animatronic Chuck E Cheese’s-esque setting which may or may not be a coincidence or a reaction to an underground horror film franchise that has become a sensation for younger YA-audiences that series like this are targeting.

Naming Beef’s boat had some funny gags in it, but I almost think we could’ve done without it to further seep into this major decision that Ham had to make because it’s the kind of thing that other animated series like Rick and Morty and South Park used to do back in the early days of their competition with Netflix in helping viewers stay hooked into their series on a weekly basis. Ham is that big of a character that he could do just that so we’ll see how this shakes out over the next several weeks.