Review: Human Discoveries “And Then They Lost Fire”

The elk is going to kill us all.

 

Overview:

After the rain hits, and an awkward situation for Gary, the camp is left without any fire.  Their only hope is to collect dry wood from the other side of the ‘Dark Forest’.  Thankfully, an adventurer named Donk has returned just in time to lead the expedition.  Gary is adamite to join the travellers to be close to Jane, but he is easily their weakest link.  As an elk decides to hunt them down as a plot of revenge, their adventure becomes all that more tumultuous.

Meanwhile, with no fire, the remainder of the camp are left bored in a cave while it rains.  The tribe’s elder, Marsh, is finally able to convince them to hear his old stories.  He is able to teach them the value of the old ways of doing things.  That is until the fire comes back and everyone ditches him once again.

 

Our Take:

With three episodes dropping in one night it has been great to get to know this show.  After watching the first two shows, it seemed like a specific formula was building.  However, this one came in and shook things up a bit by adding some adventure.  There is even an action story that changes up the animation.  It’s nice to see that this show is not always going to rest on a reliable formula and dares to dive into other formats.  It reminds me of how the Clerks Animated Series brought in a flashback episode in the second show.  It’s valuable to change things up to not bore an audience, and this series seems to recognize that early.

The standout for this episode is absolutely the elk, which I have previously been calling deer in reviews, but I’ll correct that now.  The elk have subtly been having their own ongoing plot in the background.  The previous episodes showed them observing humans and being hurt whenever they interacted with them.  I even guessed that this would be an ongoing gag, but surprised me by making it a subplot.  In this one, the elk have a new leader that is set on revenge for their fallen comrades, and she is easily the freakiest elk you’ve seen yet.  This additional piece to the series adds so much more than you would hope, becoming a standout of the show.  Even as I watch, I can see the comments rolling in on Facebook that these are beloved characters.

Another favourite has to be Ugg, the tribe leader played by Paul Scheer.  His role for the series is vital as the misogynist dominate hero.  That’s why when this episode brought in competition for him; it was great to see his insecurity.  There are not many comedians that could pull this role off in a funny and likable way, making Scheer an excellent choice.  At first, it threw me off to here the subtle voice playing the burly man, but somehow it works and fits the character perfectly.

There wasn’t much social commentary that has been defining what the show is thus far.  Again, this is a nice change of pace, which will help for those that will be binge-watching the entire ten-episode season once it is fully released.  It would be a concern that the show would come off as preachy if every episode was drilling commentary in your head.  So, to allow the plot to breathe a bit and side characters to shine is the ideal way to keep things interesting.

Overall, it was a fun episode that developed the ongoing story further.  It won’t be a standout for the season, but it helps the audience ground themselves.  Hopefully, there are a lot more vibrant stories to play out still, and just a couple of episodes like these to fill it out.  A couple of the other supporting characters were left out in this plot, and that’s a shame as we are still getting to know them and I find them more lovable than the main couple.  This is a fun episode and worth a watch.  But if you were to skip one, this would be the one to miss out of the three that have been released.