Review: Amphibia “Lost in Newtopia; Sprig Gets Schooled”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Anne and Polly break off from a boring tour experience Newtopia among the locals, trying out street food, checking out the local clothing stores, getting in trouble with the local police, ya know, the fun stuff. Things come to a head when they anger the crowd at a parade for a local hero, leading to a mob attacking the tour bus, though they ward the mob off with some spicy fire breath. Meanwhile, Marcy and King Andrias continue studying the music box when they find a secret cavern in the castle!

Later, the Plantars wander over to Newtopia University, which Hop Pop hopes one of his kids will attend one day. Sprig ends up proving himself to be a good candidate when the headmaster recruits him to try out some classes. Things are fun at first, but the classes end up being overwhelming for him. Plus, as much as Hop Pop is happy for this opportunity, he realizes he isn’t ready for Sprig to grow up. Unfortunately, the headmaster thinks the solution is giving him MORE work and classes, which forces him to try and escape. Luckily, once things are explained, the headmaster tells him that he can come back when he’s ready. Also, the frog-bot has reached Newtopia!

OUR TAKE
We’re still in a bit of a downtime period between important plot points, though that doesn’t mean we don’t get a few sprinkled throughout the episode. As mentioned, Marcy and the king are making progress on their research and found that secret tunnel, though one has to wonder how THE KING didn’t know about that ahead of time, but I’m sure they’ll explain that later. I’m still waiting on him turning out to be a bad guy, but maybe I’m just used to big betrayals in shows, since I’ve been wrong before. And the frogbot has reached the city, though its appearances have been so sporadic that I don’t know what will happen when it actually enters the plot. I mean, it’s crazy mysteries in a magic frog castle and a giant frog robot from an ancient civilization, so whatever they do with either of those, it’s at least going to be super interesting, but that’s as much as I can really expect.

As for the segments themselves, the Plantar family all get their bits this week, with the first half pairing off Anne and Polly while the latter does so with Hop Pop and Sprig. The first half isn’t really much a character development deal, more just Team P’Anne doing a fun romp all over town and letting the show’s comedy really stretch its legs, so there isn’t a ton to really discuss there, other than that it did accomplish being a really fun watch. The other also doesn’t SEEM to be doing much to set up future plots, but it does discuss things like higher education, how much of a transition it can be for someone, how practical knowledge is important, and how, as the singing voice puts it “college ain’t for everyone”. Again, not things I really expected to see covered in a show made for younger audiences, but certainly welcome.

We’re probably going to be in this waiting period for the next big development for at least another week, but it’s nice to know that we’re at least getting solid and entertaining episodes so that we’re not bored to tears waiting for things to pick up. How things will start to get going again is unclear at this time, but it’s clear things are moving behind the scenes so it’s not like they’re just spinning their wheels. And really, that’s probably all we could ask for right now.