User blog:Scrooge200/Season 1 Review

Note: This review is in progress.

I am going to try to review each season of Arthur, starting with Season 1. I remembered this season being terrible, so let's see if that's still the case. I will rate each episode on a scale from Vomitrocious, Bad, Okay, Good, Great. At the end, I'll count up how many of each there are in the season, and give it a rating. I may end up splitting my blog into parts if there are too many episodes to cover in one.

I have currently reviewed 12/60 episodes in Season 1.

Arthur's Eyes
I like this episode's intro. It's funny, particularly the line "you were born with glasses!" Besides some lazy animation, such as when Buster dribbles the basketball and Jenna stares dead-eyed in the background, and when Mr. Marco hands back the tests and all the students just stare with their mouths wide open, the first half is the episode is solid. There's a cool sequence with Arthur trying on different glasses.

But after Arthur returns to school, the episode goes down the drain. He snaps at Binky for commenting "you look different" and asking if he got a haircut. The entire class makes fun of Arthur, but Buster defends him by telling Francine that some people need them to see. In the very next scene, Buster makes fun of Arthur in the cafeteria! He does a complete 180 in ten seconds, and never even apologizes.

Arthur gets home and decides to "lose" his glasses. Couldn't he just leave them at home or bring them to school and not wear them? Anyways, he slingshots them, and they bounce off power lines and land neatly in his bedroom through the window. After a few more contrived attempts to get rid of them, he brings them to school and decides to lose them on the way.

Somehow, the entire school comes to see when he enters the wrong bathroom, and he accepts that he'll need to wear his glasses. He sees Wilbur Rabbit on TV, who wears glasses to read a script. Even though they are most likely reading glasses, Arthur goes to school confident about his glasses, not at all bothered by the teasing. He tells everyone that Wilbur Rabbit wears glasses, and everyone starts to accept that he wears them. Even Francine gets a pair of fake "movie star glasses."

While the first half of Arthur's Eyes, besides the part with Buster, is okay, the second half is badly written. Arthur's glasses always coming back to him is lazy and unrealistic. Then there's the moral: just because a celebrity does something, you're cool for doing it too? And nobody ever apologizes for teasing Arthur, not even Francine.

I give Arthur's Eyes a bad rating. Not a good way to start off the show.

Francine's Bad Hair Day
And the very second episode of the show barely involves Arthur and doesn't include D.W.! I like how this episode shows off Francine's sporty personality right at the start. I think it's kind of weird that all the girls hang out in the bathroom for casual discussion. Francine's daydream of using her hair to play sports is pretty funny, and I like how Francine joins in the kickball game and is still satisfied with her picture.

Arthur and Buster are waaaaay too out-of-character in the middle. This is the first time we see Arthur being a jerk, and acts this way surprisingly often in the first few seasons. I don't like how the episode treats Muffy like a bad person, even though she just wants Francine to look nice. All her effort is wasted and she isn't happy with her picture.

As shown by my Arthur's Eyes review above, it's easier to write about something you do or don't like than something unremarkable and average. And that's how I'd describe Francine's Bad Hair Day: average. Or on my rating scale, okay.

Arthur's Teacher Trouble/Arthur and the Real Mr. Ratburn
Ratburn. Ratburn. Ratburn. Ratburn. Ratburn. Ratburn. Anyways, this episode has two titles. Maybe they thought that Season 1 had too many "Arthur's X Trouble" titles, or maybe they wanted to clear up confusion with Arthur's Substitute Teacher Trouble.

This episode is really funny. There are moments like Francine saying that "boy heads" probably refers to rotten heads of lettuce, "horrifying scary danger," the jokes during the puppet show, Arthur and Buster getting sprayed by water after they enter the wrong tent, and Mr. Ratburn eating nails for breakfast without milk. (I guess he's tough enough to enter the Salty Spitoon.) Even the misunderstanding plot is good because everything makes sense in the end. I really like the moment near the end where Arthur and Buster learn to appreciate Mr. Ratburn and everything he does.

Besides some bad animation with the screaming and the overly long "Ratburn" joke, I can't think of anything bad to say about this episode. I'd consider this episode great. Wow, and this early in the show, too!

Arthur's Spelling Trubble
There's a fun sequence with all the characters studying differently, and it's a great way to show off their different personalities, especially so early in the show. The AARDVARK rap is catchy, but who writes a song that consists of only the word "AARDVARK" spelled out and how would Arthur find it? I like how Mr. Ratburn and Arthur's family, even D.W., are supportive of him. This episode isn't as funny as the previous one, but it does have some moments: "Abbey Road" in Arthur's dictionary is a good one.

This episode would be o-k-a-y okay, but it has just enough nice parts for me to call it g-o-o-d good. This season is turning out better than I remembered.

D.W. All Wet
Well, better up until now. This episode starts with an annoying freak-out from D.W. The aquarium scenes are fine, but they don't do a good job of explaining why D.W. is afraid of octopi. Is it because they're big? Is she afraid of being grabbed by them? I don't entirely understand. Then we get some scenes of Arthur being a jerk. And when D.W. is at the beach, she starts seeing everyone as octopi for some reason. At the beach, Buster is surprisingly grumpy ("I am never coming to the beach with you again!") and he and Arthur get laughed at for playing with D.W... why? D.W. rushes out to save Arthur at the end, but nobody's in any actual danger and we know that there aren't going to be any octopi. And at the end, wow, she actually likes the beach. While this isn't the worst episode to use this ending, it's still a bad one. Not quite vomitrocious, but definitely not good, either.

Buster's Dino Dilemma
Buster gets a one-time dinosaur obsession and is suddenly an expert on the subject. He knows when the different time periods are, screeches at Arthur for misidentifying a fossil, and uses words no third grader would know to describe the process of how fossils are made. He's even called a genius by the park staff... Whatever, I'll accept it for the plot.

The first half of this episode is entirely dinosaur facts. Nothing funny, nothing very interesting, just paleontology lessons. Then Buster decides to take a fossil home, even though he was just explained why they don't let people do that. He does feel guilty about it, even trying to pawn it off on Arthur, but in the end, he gets rewarded for it! What, is he so much of a "genius" that stealing an insanely rare, million year-old fossil is perfectly fine? He gets in more trouble for stealing from a drugstore than a museum!

This episode is boring and the moral of not taking important things and obeying rules is completely broken by the ending. The moral is bad, and the episode in general is as well.

D.W.'s Imaginary Friend
Arthur is a jerk and doesn't want D.W. to go on the ride for fear that she'll embarrass him. Uh, okay. Why would he be responsible for anything she does? And they treat having an imaginary friend like some strange concept that nobody's ever heard of, even though it's perfectly fine and lots of kids do it. And when they get to the amusement park, Arthur whines that D.W. wants to go back and get Nadine, but then he whines even more when she supposedly in there and they don't have to go back home. While Arthur is nice to D.W. near the end, it's only after she does something nice for him. It's not like he realizes that he did anything wrong. This episode has a strange emphasis on gross-out humor with the barf bags constantly being brought up. While Nadine may be imaginary, this episode sadly isn't. It's a bad episode.

Arthur's Lost Library Book
This episode could've been a lot better. I like the pre-title card scene, but the beginning of the episode is long and not very interesting. It takes a while to get to the suspects part, and the three suspects are debunked very quickly. Arthur's nightmare is pretty creepy, but all his stock screams make it more funny than scary. The twist that Binky took the book is interesting, and I liked it. Overall, this episode is okay and there isn't a lot to say about it. I'm just glad that we ended the bad episode chain.

Arthur's Pet Business
I used to not like this episode, but now I think it's just okay. This is the most infamous use of Season 1's exaggeration, with the absurd amount of pets in the Read house. It doesn't bother me as much now, because it does help prove the point that Arthur is being super responsible, taking care of a dozen pets at once plus Perky. And the ending, which implies that Arthur actually will pay D.W. the money she owes, was pretty nice. I don't have a lot to say about episodes as average as these.

D.W. the Copycat
Arthur is really mean to D.W. at the beginning. Then D.W. starts forcing herself to like everything Arthur likes, and there are a few wholesome moments, but still some insults from Arthur. It's episodes like these that make me not like him. The plot of Arthur's friends not including him because they don't want D.W. around goes nowhere. I didn't know if this episode was a high bad or a low okay, but for now, I'll settle with okay.

Locked in the Library!
This episode's humor is a lot more visual and less dialogue-focused. Francine's face after dialing the phone, her and Arthur's faces when they scream "MONDAY!" Arthur falling face-first into a pizza, Arthur eating a page out of a cookbook, the part where they build book staircases... Most of these jokes are funny, though, so it doesn't matter too much. My favorite joke is dialogue, though: Francine asking why anyone would need a book on escaping a library unless they were already in a library.

This episode isn't just funny, either. I love the atmosphere; if you told me that the writers actually did spend the night in an abandoned library to make this episode, I wouldn't question it. Humor, good character interactions, and atmosphere make this episode good. It isn't great because the beginning is long and it has a downer ending: Arthur and Francine have to do their report after all, and Arthur and Buster are mad at Francine.

Arthur Accused!
This entire mystery plot wouldn't have started is Buster hadn't mentioned that he spent all his birthday money playing pinball. I do like the mystery part, although I would've liked it more if Buster investigated the school's students. The episode is very light on humor, having only one joke I can think of, which wasn't very funny. Buster's detective narration is done better in Binky Rules, To Eat or Not to Eat, Binky's 'A' Game, The Case of the Girl with the Long Face... This episode doesn't do much wrong, but it could've done a lot better. And that solves the mystery of why I think this episode is okay, no quarters involved.

Season Notes

 * There's a running gag of bad things happening to Mr. Haney. These jokes are kind of hard to laugh at now that his voice actor is deceased.
 * Voice lines from the intro are used in the episodes. This includes Arthur's "hey!" in Arthur's Spelling Trubble, his gasp after he falls off the letters used in Arthur's Eyes, and many stock screams in Arthur's Lost Library Book.
 * Brain&mdash;sorry, I mean "The Brain," as the show calls him before Season 7, is pretty out of character when compared to later in the series. He expresses desire to do less homework and has a messy room.
 * Bitzi is shown to be ridiculously overprotective of Buster. Surprisingly, she isn't in Buster's Dino Dilemma, but she is starting from Arthur Accused! I'm glad that they toned this down later, because it's really annoying.

Rating Counts

 * Great: 1
 * Good: 2
 * Okay: 5
 * Bad: 4
 * Vomitrocious: 0