Review: Camp Camp “Nikki’s Last Day on Earth”

Spoiler: No one dies in this episode. Period.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Neil’s at it again with the mad science, using an experimental tonic to turn his high-pitched Yuri Lowenthal-type voice into something manlier, like Ian Sinclair. Throwing off his plans, as usual, is Nikki, who drinks the tonic and instantly doubles over in pain. Neil too young and nasally for jail, so they go to the next best option: Dolph!…whose diagnosis for Nikki is death. Classic Dolph.

The campers cheerily prepare her to properly celebrate her remaining hours in this mortal coil, starting with a feast, which stirs some odd cravings within her. Next is a pre-written LARP by Nerris, though Nikki suddenly starts to suffer anemia. Lastly comes a play by Preston about her tragic death by drink, but Max decides to be Max and poke holes in her seemingly incoming fatality. Nikki responds with a surprisingly vitriolic backlash followed by immediate calm. Max realizes he should’ve at least been more considerate of Nikki’s feelings about all of this and what she wanted. In fact, so was everyone! So, to end things on fun note, Nikki decides to go out Viking funeral style.

Meanwhile, Space Kid tries posing the death question to David and Gwen, leading to a bunch of dancing around the question until they realize they really don’t know anything about the afterlife, and therefore shouldn’t act like they do! Though upon hearing about what’s happening with Nikki, Gwen connects the dots and the young camper is just having her first period.

OUR TAKE

I honestly did not see the resolution to this coming, though about at least half the viewers probably did, which points to a bigger problem than I thought. I’m not going to go up my own ass and act like I know anything about the process of menstruation, but what I do know is it’s a surprisingly unused premise in cartoons, even mature ones, when it could probably be helpful in normalizing this sort of thing for people going through it or even give a reason to learn more for people who aren’t. Aside from shows that were designed to get into this sort of topic like “Big Mouth”, the only example of a show using it for a plot that comes to mind is the King of the Hill episode “Aisle 8A”, and that aired in 1999! And it’s not like it’s impossible to make funny and relatable humor out of that, as this episode of Camp Camp shows. It’s actually one of the kinds of topics only adult shows about children like this, Big Mouth, or South Park could really tackle, so kudos to RT for jumping on it. Perhaps it’s fitting that this is the first episode at least partly written by a female writer, Leigh Lahav, who was brought on with her husband Oren Mendez to write four episodes this season. This is also the couple’s first stab at writing beyond shorts as far as I can tell, and it seems like they’re quick studies of this format. And check out my interview with Lahav about writing for RT and more!

Beyond the puberty talk, there’s also some other noted lessons and themes, namely in how to be considerate of what other people are going through, even if you don’t understand it or think it’s that big a deal. This mainly comes back to bite Max, who has weirdly undergone a karmic backlash after his even more dickish behavior in the first two episodes of the season. The other is more how you should be willing to admit to kids that you don’t know some of the bigger questions, instead of lying and telling them you do, which was centered around the Space Kid side of the story. Both important and understandable lessons we could stand to see more of.

And on the topic of things I did not see coming, I guess Dolph is still a character! After three episodes of no lines, no involvement in the story, and slowly sinking into the background, I’d figured they were trying to quietly phase him out due to his entire character basically being a Hitler joke (which is not exactly kosher in this political climate). Seems they’ve remedied that by just making him the German one. So, now that I’ve stepped out of mine comfort zone with this puberty episode, we can continue to have a gas with the rest of this season. Anne Frankly, I think we could all use more of that.

…that was bad and I should feel bad. But this episode’s not!