Review: Central Park “A Fish Called Snakehead”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Central Park may have lovely foliage, cute critters, and bright flowers, but it also has a problem: the snakehead. The predatory fish is deadly to the lake ecosystem, and a passing jogger thinks he saw one in the park’s lake. Owen and crew set out to investigate, but when Paige’s boss finds out about it, she’s asked to submit a story about it.

The story goes viral. It gets so popular than even Bitsy finds out about it, and has an idea. She hires Dick Flake to catch the fish and get her name back in the good graces of New Yorkers who have turned on her. And it looks like Dick does just that… until Paige and the kids uncover signs that it’s a fake. Going out on a late night voyage, the Owen catches the real snakehead himself and saves the park — for now, anyway.

Our Take:

Central Park wraps up its first season with a solid episode that ties everything together, but doesn’t actually add much of anything new to the mix. We get some nice moments with the Tillerman family, plenty of Bitsy’s condescending personality, and a few funny scenes with Dick Flake. Overall, A Fish Called Snakehead is a good summation of the first season itself: it’s a mostly fun ride that hasn’t really led anywhere yet.

The conflict of the finale is pretty tried and true for Central Park. Bitsy tries another scheme to sink the park, the Tillermans end up overcoming it with their special blend of grit, endurance, and family singalongs. The meat of the episode is a bit unique in how well it ties everyone together for once. Owen and Bitsy are after the fish, Paige is after the story about the fish, and the kids are just hanging along for the ride. Birdie doesn’t do much in this episode, but he still gets in the way of some news reporters, which is chuckle worthy.

Honestly, I think the best part of this episode were the musical numbers. The show usually includes at least one or two in every episode, but as the season progressed, I couldn’t help but notice the quality of the songs seemed to slip. While I still love singing along to songs from the premiere like Own It, I can barely remember the more recent tunes. Luckily, A Fish Called Snakehead seems to return to the original quality of lyrics and music, which is what I’d expect since more time is generally spent on the first and last episodes of a season. The final song of the finale was especially great, even incorporating a few callbacks to earlier songs from Molly and Cole.

The season finale of Central Park was enjoyable to watch, but I can’t help but wish it had changed a bit of the paradigm of the series. It really feels like these first ten episodes were merely establishing the world and the characters, and while that’s all well and good, it would’ve been nice to see some forward progress on the plot as well, instead of ending the season where we started: with Bitsy determined to buy the park and the Tillerman clan biding their time until she strikes.