Review: Monster High “Out of Step; Pyramid Scheme”

Overview

“Out of Step”

Afraid to be embarrassed at a dance-off, Draculaura secretly gives her dance partner, Clawd, enchanted shoes…
“Pyramid Scheme”

Cleo wants the lead role in the school play and raids her family’s ancient tomb for a perfect, superior costume…

Our Take

For the first half, in what seems like a very Draculaura episode, the heart of the story was about her helping a clumsy and awkward werewolf student named “Clawd”(completely unrelated to Clawdeen) learn how to dance. Predictably, things start bad, but the story doesn’t start to pick up until Draculaura offers the shoes to Clawd as a solution resulting in a cliche yet predictable ending that ends a bit on a wacky note.

As for the other episode, much of the focus was on Cleo with the help of her friends and older sister in their attempt to get a rare piece of Egyptian jewelry that involves some form of sacrifice which puts Cleo in an unusual position that during a chaotic series of Indiana Jones-style death traps, forces her to decide on what matters most…

Overall, while both episodes were passable and sometimes wacky in the proceedings, at their core they properly conveyed an attempt at embracing the insecurities of youth in different ways. Draculara’s storyline which involved helping the awkward Clawd was well-intentioned, but it took a while for her to find a solution that ended up making everyone happy in a very unusual way, while the latter was mostly focused on the value of family in a not-so-subtle way. It seems to be a step in the right direction in introducing new characters while finding ways to give them new storylines to help them integrate into this show’s universe.