{Album 64} Episode reviews with Hannah! | “Sir Buddy’s Snowy Day”

 

 

Sir Buddy’s Snowy Day!

Alright friends. Get ready, because I’ve got some more character ranting to do. This time about Leonard (Buddy) Normand. When I first heard about this character, I was really excited. He sounded a lot like me. However, as his episodes went on, he became a disappointment on multiple levels. Not to say there’s nothing good about him, I just don’t think he was very well developed.

                Based on Buddy’s first episode and what we learned about him, it sounded like he was a socially anxious kid who loved art and Japanese comic books and was pretty smart. I think the elements that made up this character dissolved when the writers confused social anxiety with a general fear of everything. And this happened from the beginning. For example, in his first episode, A Predicament of Biblical Proportions, yes, Buddy was afraid of Mr. Whittaker, but not because he was afraid talking to him, but because he looked like “Willy Wonky.”

                Now, you may be asking, “But Hannah, what’s wrong with a character who struggles with fear?” To which I say,

“Nothing.”

I don’t have a problem with a character that struggles with fear, but I don’t think the writers understand fear enough. They keep mixing different kinds of fears. As I said before, anxiety is a different kind of fear than the fear of tornadoes, and the fear of tornadoes is very different from a fear of the dark. You can’t have a character who, every episode is afraid of something new but completely random. It’s not accurate, it weakens the character, and it doesn’t help kids.

A better direction for Buddy would be to have him struggle with social anxiety, and maybe another bigger, ongoing fear (storms, certain environments, authority figures, etc). This would then make room for his hobbies to show up more, instead of all of his episodes having the theme of fear.

Now, I realize that Sir Buddy’s Snowy Day was an exception to a lot of those things. Except for the fact that Buddy was afraid of snow at one point. Snow? Really?

Alright. So, good things about this episode:

–          The Callbacks to Snow Day were great!

–          JAY SMOUSE AND ALL OF HIS LINES

–          I liked the narration!

–          It was genuinely entertaining.

–          I really like Buddy’s voice actor

–          EVA PARKER

And the bad things:

–          I like the knights and castles theme, but I can’t decide if I like that Buddy likes it. It goes against his character just a bit.

–          I hate Olivia so much. I don’t understand what she is anymore. She should be like 16, but she whines constantly and is just really rude. And I’m not sure if I should blame her VA or the writers.

–          They need to stop trying to make Buddy like Trent. It’s ridiculous. It’s disrespectful to Trent’s character and who he was. It’s done poorly. He’s not a well enough developed character for him to suddenly, out of nowhere, be destined to fall in love with Zoe.

–          Zoe confuses me. They say she’s a writer. But she’s not. She has none of the attributes of a writer. She’s a fangirl. She’s an Instagram expert. She’s Olivia’s best friend- maybe? Actually, is she anymore? It just sounds like Zoe’s 12 and Olivia is 3. There’s just too much of an age gap there.

–          WHY ARE ZOE AND BUDDY GOING TO FALL IN LOVE?! I just don’t understand. They’re so underdeveloped that saying they’re going to end up together is meaningless. See, when they did this with Trent and Mandy, they’d had been on the show for a long time beforehand, so it was exciting to find out they’d get married eventually. With Zoe and Buddy, it just seems really rushed. I’m not against them being together. I just need more from the characters before being able to ship them. I guess my point is that no one thought of shipping Buddy and Zoe before this. They’ve had, what? One episode together? Maybe two?

Okay so it looks like there’s a lot of bad there, but I really did enjoy the episode. The picking negatives aren’t as bad against the bigger positives.

Music – 3.5

Sound Effects – 4

Acting – 4

Moral – 3.5

Plot – 4

Quality – 3

Overall rating – 3.6