Review: Red vs Blue – Family Shatters “The One With the Escape Room”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shatter Squad finally does an escape room and Ray is unsure about his role in the group.

OUR TAKE

I guess this is going to be the Ray focused episode? Though on the established spectrum of “throwaway gag that goes on too long” to “actually an episode”, this leans more towards the former than the latter. It’s just a scenario to throw the characters into (with Phase and East being merged for once, though with it making literally zero difference in the situation) and it’s hypothetically a funny situation, since real life Escape Rooms force us to be in a room with people while trying to solve puzzles which can be funny, and so if you put characters with clearly defined personalities and roles in there, the comedy should write itself. But the room itself seems to be deliberately made boring and difficult for the joke of calling it boring and difficult, and then works in Ray’s feelings of inadequacy that are just for a few jokes and then…the episode just wraps up without doing anything with that. Like I guess he feels out of place as the tech guy when everyone else is more physical? And he brought them to the Escape Room to…see how he contributes to the team? Or have some friend bonding time? Whatever it was, it gets shoved aside to finish the episode without actually approaching it.

It’s episodes like this that only end up serving to show the weaknesses in this new cast over the Reds and Blues. Their gags might be run into the ground by now, but at least you could easily see what reactions you’d get if you put a certain group together, like chemicals that you know will cause some sort of explosion or foam up or change color or something interesting. I don’t think you can say the same for the characters from RVB Zero, at least not as they have been portrayed thus far. Even the two supposed rivals, One and East, who should have some sort of clearly defined caustic relationship, seem to simply be written as pretty much apathetic roommates here. East has more conflict with her clone/twin Phase than One, or even her dad West who she hated so much in the main season she was willing to almost kill. And maybe that’s all they really need from them here, but it would sure be a lot easier for me to take a liking to them if we escalated or emphasized things even just a bit.