Review: The Great North “A Bear-tiful Find Adventure”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Beef, Wolf, and Honeybee have a surprise encounter when they go for coffee at Maude’s diner. Meanwhile, Ham and Moon go on a mission to reclaim a treasure.

Our Take: 

The first in the show’s remaining season three episodes has the Tobins having a grizzly encounter. If you guessed a bear, give yourself a round of applause because that’s what they discovered during their ordinary coffee trip. But it’s no normal bear. It is the mascot of Ted’s Folly, Teddy, who’s found dead in the diner’s restroom. Even worse is that Wolf’s friend, Cheesecake, stole the bear and the Ted’s Folly Mayor’s motorcycle from under the town’s nose. Fearing that it could start another Beaver War between the two towns, Beef and the others attempt to bring Teddy back to his habitat before Roy and the mayor of Ted’s Folly notice.

The plot involves Beef, Wolf, Honeybee, and Jerry driving a dead Teddy back to Ted’s Folly with Roy on their tails. However, when they reach their destination, they discover that Teddy is just unconscious, resulting in their cover being blown. Luckily, Roy saved the group by exposing the mayor for keeping the bear in a cage without a permit. Along with Honeybee’s humorous dialogue, the episode is an amusing albeit familiar reference to the 1989 black comedy, Weekend at Bernie’s, which features a bear being “dead” instead of their boss.  

The episode’s B-plot consists of the kids attending the school’s Costume Picture Day. However, that’s put on hold when Moon discovers that the trampoline park is being built on a burial ground for his security coconut, Dagma. As a result, Moon and Ham go on a rescue mission to save Dagma from being covered in cement and trampolines. Meanwhile, Judy covers for Moon and Ham by disguising herself as her siblings. This is another humorous B-plot involving the kids solving a predicament while learning an important lesson. Moon saw Dagma as a twin brother to him before Dagma passed on and is disappointed that he failed to rescue Dagma, now covered in cement. However, thanks to Ham, Moon learns to let go and accepts his brother as his new Dagma. I also liked Moon and Ham’s costumes resembling the Phantom of the Opera and Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, respectively.

Overall, “A Bear-tiful Find Adventure” is a decent find that’s also a suitable start to the third season’s final legs. Beef’s storyline involving a dead bear doesn’t do anything new to its formula, but it compensates for it with its deadpan humor, including Honeybee referencing Weekend at Bernie’s. The side-plot involving the Tobin kids was also enjoyable for its message about moving on from losing something precious. It’s far from “bear-tiful”, but it does make me want to watch Weekend at Bernie’s in the future.