Review: The Jellies “My Brother’s Keeper; Jellystripper”

Hold onto your gummies and/or panties; Season 2 of The Jellies is here.

Overview

The season kicks off with “My Brother’s Keeper,” where the Jelly family gets a visit from Uncle Charlie (Wilson), who seems to have a penchant for trouble-making. He seeks out Cornell to bring him on some uncle-nephew adventures in town, thus making Barry look uncool in comparison. Slowly, Uncle Charlie’s activities start getting more and more dangerous — he takes Cornell on a trip to steal from his ex-girlfriend, mug a knock-off Chuck E. Cheese worker, and generally be a bad influence in front of him. When Russians hold their family hostage, Uncle Charlie pathetically reveals he just wanted to look like a cool uncle and has to buck up behind Cornell as he guns down the Russians to save Gummie (and his family.) Everyone Uncle Charlie has slighted tries to also kill them, but they die in the process (and so does Gummie.)

In “Jellystripper,” Barry learns that KY has taken up stripping. When he sees that her skill can be exploited for fame and money, he enters her in the Walla Walla Pole Dancing Competition, where she must train to be the greatest stripper of all. He gets too controlling, causing KY to pull away from stripping in order to hook up with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Barry attempts to take her place in an egregious way — getting arrested in the process. Cornell never gets to show his dad his report card (full of straight A’s.)

Our Take

Augenblick Studios + Tyler the Creator? That’s a recipe for something good in itself. The Jellies has managed to come back for another season after a handful of episodes, and — as with all animated shows making a comeback after surviving a premiere — the bar has been raised in order to see what new and improved features the second season will bring.

With “My Brother’s Keeper,” it seemed as though there was going to be more of a setup where Cornell would have an eye-to-eye moment with his father, after seeing how lame his Uncle Charlie (Wilson) turned out to be. Instead, there was just a silly shootout — which wasn’t a bad thing, but it seemed a bit directionless. The shootout scene was definitely the best part of the episode, though, featuring the league of uncles as the best bit (we see you, Uncle Scar.)

Undebatably, “Jellystripper” beat out “My Brother’s Keeper” as a comedy. Cornell dejectedly jacking it when his parents decided to make out was a great opener. Aside from the fact that Barry’s moobs were practically identical to any drawn boobs (#FreeTheNipple), a few of his lines, in particular, were chuckle-worthy. The “black lives matter” quote he makes is especially funny, considering he’s an anthropomorphic jellyfish. The “Flint, Michigan still doesn’t have clean water” reference came from out of nowhere, humorously reminding the audience that we are in the timeline that God forgot.

All in all, The Jellies appears to have some laughs in store, but nothing has “amazed” as of yet. While the animation is sort of plain, the voice acting brings most of the entertainment to the table — establishing each character in the classic “dysfunctional family” trope. However, with so many of these cartoons out there, is there anything The Jellies can do that will bring something new to the table? Anthropomorphic jellyfish is a pretty original idea, but it might not be enough to prevent the show from being lost in a sea of similar family-based plots. Perhaps if the writing gets a firmer grip on it’s jokes/story ideas (or if the animation steps up its game) that might be enough. One thing’s for sure, though: the topical takes are definitely a comedic win so far.