Review: The Casagrandes “Fails from the Crypt; Bad Cluck”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

“Fails from the Crypt”

Ronnie Anne, Sid, Casey, Sameer, Nikki, and Laird attempt to stay at the Great Lakes Cemetery all night in order to break the record of “The Fearless Four”, the only group to have accomplished the feat in 40 years. They’re chased out by a skeleton, spider, and zombie, but when they tell Maria and Carlos about their frightful night, they discover the monsters may be more familiar than they first thought.

“Bad Cluck”

Talkative family parrot Sergio dresses up in his shades to join/disrupt the family while they’re watching wrestling. Unfortunately the TV is on the fritz, and while Hector performs some, uh, “percussive maintenance”, things start to get a little crazy. The family is haunted by a ghost chicken, and it turns out this spirit’s “unfinished business” has something to do with Sergio’s stylish new look.

Our Take

The Casagrandes is another show that’s long been on my watch list, so I was excited to tune in for the Halloween special to check it out. The art and animation style is of course similar to The Loud House, but these episodes transcend the show’s spin-off status and build out a fascinating look at this fun family.

In “Fails from the Crypt”, we see Ronnie Anne (Izabella Alvarez) joined by her bestie Sid Chang (Leah Mei Gold), Sameer (Nour Jude Assaf), Nikki (Natalie Coughlin, also heard in Star vs. the Forces of Evil), Laird (Sean Kenin, who also voices Pokemon’s Professor Rowan), and Casey (Christian Simon, otherwise known as Darwin from The Amazing World of Gumball, season 6 onwards) as they attempt to stay in the cemetery all night, despite her abuelos warnings that it’s “too scary for kids”. The record breaking attempt starts out easy, but soon things start to go bump in the night. The group does I guess the in-universe version of nose goes, “Dibs Not”, and Casey is tasked with checking out the strange noises. He encounters a skeleton, tosses his night vision goggles at it in fear, and high tails it out of the graveyard. The rest of the group goes to investigate his disappearance, decides to (“don’t say it!”) split up, and are chased out in short order. After the kids have bailed, the monsters peel off their masks to reveal that they’re none other than The Fearless Four themselves: Ronnie Anne’s grandparents, plus Sergio. After relaying the story to her Mom and Tio Carlos (and noticing a familiar logo on a tamale that the spider chasing them dropped) the younger generations figure out the source of their terrifying nights, and hatch a plan for payback. It’s cute, sweet, fun, and made me crave tamales.

A ghost chicken is a genuinely terrifying concept (those things are scary enough when they’re alive!) but “Bad Cluck” goes more for camp than actually horror. Things start to get Poltergeist-y shortly after Sergio dons some shades that he hasn’t worn in a while. As things progress, the Changs attempt to help with Japanese rituals for banishing spirits, but to no avail: this chicken has serious beef with Sergio. As the living bird reveals his slights against his former flight school rival, Alfredo, and attempts to make amends with the ghost, he keeps misleading the family about a terrible event from their past. Things keep getting worse until Alfredo’s spirit is forced to possess Carlos (Carlos Alazraqui, who also plays both Crocker and Juandissimo on The Fairly Oddparents) to make his demands known in person. Frida’s over-the-top crying and assertion that she’ll always love her newly-pollo’d husband is a perfect way for voice actress Roxana Ortega to flex both her sobbing and comedy at the same time.

As my first experience with the show, I’m impressed enough to watch again. The cast is fantastic, the storylines effectively toe the line between silly and sweet, it’s a fun slice of life that doesn’t rely too heavily on wackiness (but includes it where necessary) and the humor is well balanced between visual and written. Looking forward to seeing more of what’s going on in Great Lakes City!