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Every episode of Fairly OddParents rated


Steel Sponge

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Because blogs have been removed from SBC, I have no other option than to migrate this review series from my blog to a thread of its own. It begins with the Oh! Yeah Cartoons era before I work my way all down to Season 10. While I post the rest of what I've made, I am making plans to complete my Season 4 review before the end of the month (although I can't guarantee).

 

Originally posted: December 10th, 2017

You've read the title and now you're all probably asking yourselves, "why? Why are you going to watch every single episode of a show that plummeted in quality since Season 7/8/9/10?" See, no matter how awful the current state of FOP is in these days, I still consider myself a fan of this show. The show that I loved ever since holds so much nostalgic value for me and FOP is a part of why I've wanted to get into the animation industry myself, much like SpongeBob. I'm also going to give all my respect to Butch Hartman when it's due. Like I've already said once, forget all that I've said when I blamed the show's decline on him when all my blame goes to his current writing team. Speaking of which, I'm not going to say names during my reviews, even when I get to the later seasons like seasons 9 and 10, because I'm not the kind of guy who curses out the people who wrote my least favorite episodes. Some of my criticisms for certain episodes will sound harsh, but I'm still going to make myself sound fair towards them. Unrelated to this post, don't worry about my Top 10 Phineas & Ferb episodes list, I'm going to get back to it after this. I was planning to get it out by August but something bad came up during the timeframe I was going to write it up, which is why I put it on hold for such a while.

And yes, I'm technically ripping off PieGuy's Every SpongeBob Episode Reviewed format, but I felt like someone was gonna have to do this kind of thing with The Fairly OddParents. No one has done it yet, so why not that I do it right now? Hoping that you guys won't pull a Vailskibum on me and call this review series a rip-off on point, I'm going to start up my reviews with the short series of episodes that started it all: a series of shorts that some fans have collectively called "Season 0," otherwise known as the Oh Yeah! Cartoons years.

Before I begin, here's the ranking system:

"Excellent" = Solid 10/10. I absolutely enjoyed and appreciated this episode.

"Great" = Ranges from 8 or a 9 out of 10. I really liked this episode.

"Good" = A 7/10. Not quite up there, but I found this episode pleasant enough.

"Okay" = A strong 6/10. This already speaks for itself.

"Meh" = Ranges from a strong 5 to a light 6 out of 10. I found this episode mediocre at best, but not too detestable either.

"Scum" = Or should I say..."Fairly ScumParents episode." Hahaha no. "Scum" is only up my alley. Operates at a 2-4/10. I loathed this episode.

"Irredeemable" = A solid 1/10. Not only have I really despised this episode, but I would treat it as a cautionary tale and convince fellow viewers to avoid it at all costs.

 

"The Fairly OddParents" - For those who don't know, The Fairly OddParents had its start as a series of 10 short episodes for Oh Yeah! Cartoons. This was the series that clicked with Nickelodeon right away before it officially premiered in 2001. The show first debuted from the variety series on September 4, 1998, which makes the show slightly older than SpongeBob SquarePants by that technicality. This short in question is exactly how the main story of FOP starts. Timmy is left at home with Vicky babysitting him one day. He wants Vicky to stop pushing him around and for his parents to return home from the movies soon enough before he unexpectedly meets his fairy godparents to help grant his wishes whenever he feels miserable. So, the main question about this episode is: what do I think about? Is it such a classic start? It would definitely be a classic if I give this an "Excellent" rating, but re-watching this episode, I feel weirded out towards some bits. One thing you'll all tell me right away is Cosmo's voice, which sounds deep in comparison to what Cosmo's voice has sounded like since such a long time, or Timmy's voice originally being provided by the late Mary Kay Bergman. Those two things considered, the weirdest thing, however, is that FOP's Oh Yeah Cartoons' art style feels very simple in comparison to the successful show. This style that Butch went for makes me feel like the show is taking place during the 60's or 70's because the short feels like it was made during that time period, not that I'm saying it's a bad thing, but it's what gives 1998's FOP that unique feel. When it comes to the story, the first half is great. As for the latter half, it's basically nothing more than Timmy's fairies giving Vicky a taste of her own medicine. Some of the slapstick from those scenes are pretty creative, but I wouldn't really consider this a classic introduction to the then-show. So, I feel this short is deserving of this ranking: Great.

 

"Too Many Timmys!" - In this episode, Vicky lies to Timmy's parents that her back is not feeling very well and they leave Timmy alone with her and to take care of her while they go to the plunger festival. Of course, this means that Timmy has to do everything that Vicky asks for him to do. Already knowing that he doesn't want to handle it, Timmy wishes up 44 1/2 clones of himself. Likewise with the past short episode, it's a simple concept with a simple story, but I really got some entertainment from this one. I liked the tiny Timmy clone, and I also really liked the scene with the barbershop quartet of Timmys, and the one bit where Vicky sees another Timmy clone while holding onto another. It's a simple yet entertaining comedic episode that warrants this ranking: Great.

 

"Where's the Wand?" - Want to know a little something funny about this episode? When Nickelodeon used to re-aired these older episodes to promote the Crimson Chin and Cleft webtoons, this particular episode never re-aired and so I never heard of this episode until I discovered on the Internet that there was another Oh Yeah! Cartoons short of FOP that I never saw. Anyways, this episode starts off with Timmy's parents coming home after Vicky babysits Timmy. Vicky was getting ready for a costume party at her school. In the meantime, Timmy is playing pirates with his fairies until Timmy knocks Wanda's wand out of the window, eventually landing in the emergency costume supplies that Vicky was carrying over to the party. This prompts for Timmy and his fairies to try and get the wand back as they fear what Vicky could do with the wand's magic. The final result is a  pretty typical episode where hilarity ensues, but there was a lot of funny moments here and there, like Timmy and his fairies heading to the dance in form of a pumpkin coach, the dull-sounding German band, and the parents' continuing involvement with mundane stuff (i.e. going to a sprinkler foundation meeting), likewise in the last episode I talked about. Great.

 

"Party of Three!" - Once again we have another episode dealing with Vicky coming over to babysit Timmy, but in this short, Timmy tries to prove his parents that he can take care of himself at home. Timmy's parents trust him and tell Vicky otherwise that she doesn't need to babysit him now, and so Timmy decides to poof up a party in the Turner household for that occasion. Vicky then decides to spy on Timmy to see if he really is doing good by himself and instantly notices that Timmy is having a party in his house. Candace- I mean, Vicky sees this as an opportunity to bust Timmy and convince his parents to come home to prove that Timmy is reckless by himself, only for them to come to Timmy acting well-behaved and all and for Vicky to end up wasting their time. The episode doesn't have a happy end, as it ends with Timmy's parents noticing Timmy's poor dental hygiene, prompting for his parents to depend on Vicky to continue taking care of him. Despite that, I think this episode cemented FOP as a soon-to-be hit for Nickelodeon, because there was a lot of good jokes in the short, and for the most part, it was really fun to watch, even at this time. The ending can feel a bit like a cop-out, but it was an unusual and reasonable way to stick to the status quo. As for the jokes, I really like the emergencies gag. One joke that struck me the most was this line: "What is this fascination with my fanny?" In short, it's a charming and mostly entertaining episode that I think moves beyond the "Great" rating. In other words... Excellent.

"The Fairy Flu!" - Timmy gets invited to Tootie's birthday party, but he's not all happy about it because Tootie has a massive crush on him and she's Vicky's little sister. In the meantime, Cosmo has been sneezing a lot, creating a discharge of unusual fairy magic in the process. As it turns out, Cosmo has the Fairy Flu. Eventually, regardless of what kind of trouble Cosmo may cause while he's sick, Timmy goes to Tootie's party before Wanda eventually catches the same flu and Timmy has to cure his two fairies in the guise of balloons. In the end, Timmy gives Cosmo and Wanda sauerkraut in order to cure the flu before they manage to turn Vicky back to normal. Unfortunately, Timmy gets sick due to his sauerkraut allergy, thus allowing for Vicky to watch him and for Tootie to take care of him. Again, it's not a very sweet ending, but regardless, the episode was still very entertaining. Some of the jokes I found pretty funny was Timmy's house being sent to space, Tootie opening up the door to see Timmy having a toilet for a head, the gag with the distressed clown at the party, and the one bit with Vicky explaining the party rules only to turn into a frog. It's a funny, well-written episode, if not one of the absolute best due to the ending. Great.

 

"The Temp!" - Halfway through the shorts and we get an episode that focuses more on Timmy and his fairies and a lot less on Vicky. In "The Temp!", Timmy is assigned a temporary fairy godparent while Cosmo and Wanda renew their godparent licenses at the Godparent Academy with Jorgen. Timmy's temp eventually arrives, who happens to be an elf whose only kind of magic is the ability to make toys. Eventually, the elf, Jeff, proves more to be a lousy replacement when he can't meet most of Timmy's demands. The two subplots with the academy and the temp go on until Timmy's room catches on fire. Before Cosmo and Wanda could wish the fire to be put out, Santa Claus arrives to find Jeff, who happened to have had stowed away from the North Pole before the episode ends with Timmy's room back to normal and Cosmo doing an impression of Jorgen. Yeah...you can tell by my need to summarize that I didn't remember this episode so well, let alone enjoy it. It's still an alright episode, but it has its flaws, like the two subplots that just don't add as much interesting. I did like the concept though and I feel there could've been more ground to cover for it. Okay.

 

"The Zappys!" - In this short episode, Timmy's fairies get nominated for a Zappy award and so the trio attends the ceremony hosted by a fairy version of Billy Crystal. Meanwhile, Timmy's buck tooth becomes loose and fears that he'll lose it for good. At the awards ceremony, Jorgen constantly forces Billy Crystal Ball to give him every Zappy that he's nominated for due to every fairy in Fairy World being afraid of him. In the last award presented, Timmy tells the audience why he loves his godparents so much, that it makes Billy Crystal Ball refuse giving the award to Jorgen and to give it to Cosmo and Wanda. Jorgen tries to take the Zappy from Timmy, but when that happens, Timmy's buck tooth falls out after getting hit by the Zappy, causing the Tooth Fairy, one of the most famed fairies in Fairy World, to appear at the awards show. Because Jorgen is in a relationship with the Tooth Fairy, he gets nervous and ends up trying to make up to Timmy after angering the Tooth Fairy for knocking his teeth out by giving him his own pair of teeth. Final thoughts, there were some very good moments in this episode. Some of the jokes that really got me was the one scene with Jorgen threatening Billy Crystal Ball to start the ceremony without skimming through his jokes, and the little freakout from the Tooth Fairy about showing up in public without her makeup. However, the best moment in this short episode was Timmy explaining why he loves his fairies so much. It's also one of those moments that strongly defined FOP for what it was, but other than that, there was also the bit where Cosmo and Wanda tell Timmy that they didn't care about winning their award and care more about spending time with their godchild, that moment in which is equally as heartwarming. So yeah, it's very pleasant and enjoyable for a short episode. Excellent.

 

"Scout's Honor" - Here's a little interesting fact coming from me, this particular short episode was my first exposure to The Fairly OddParents in general. I was interested in the concept that this pitch for a show was going on and thought it could catch on at some point. I don't remember exactly when I came across this, but I was right. FOP would eventually be greenlit and become one of Nickelodeon's most successful shows. Anyways, "Scout's Honor" deals with Timmy trying to earn a Squirrel Scouts badge for capturing a mythical creature. Pretty interesting to note, Timmy denies help from use of fairy magic through his Squirrel Scouts knowledge by citing a passage from his handbook. Meanwhile, Vicky, camp counselor of the Cream Puffs scouts, attempts to scare Timmy by pretending to be Bigfoot. As for some of my other thoughts on the episode, I thought it was good, there was a sizeable amount of good jokes like the spiritual Bigfoot joke, and Vicky blackmailing the Cream Puffs with their report cards. (the scene in particular that shows that someone apparently failed in Lunch.) I also liked just how knowledge and dedicated Timmy is as a Squirrel Scout, as it serves as an unintentional way of proving that Timmy is very talented in something whereas the later show would write Timmy's character as someone who's good at such things like perfect attendance and what else. Because of these moments, this short episode barely attains an 8/10 rating for me. Great.

 

"The Really Bad Day!" - I'm going to make this one brief since I barely remember much from this short episode. In this episode, it's Cosmo's turn to be "bad," due to a tradition where a certain fairy has to be bad for a certain amount of time. However, Cosmo is not very good at being bad, and so Timmy uses fairy magic to enlist Genghis Khan to help Cosmo to be bad before he becomes bad enough to devise a plan to blow up the Earth. I think there could've been more done with the main concept, but in retrospect, I found this episode slightly more enjoyable than "The Temp!" The episode also ends in a fairly light note, which is decent enough, but at the end of the day, it's still alright in my eyes. Okay.

 

"Super Humor" - Last episode from Oh Yeah! Cartoons, and interestingly enough, it premiered at the same time that the official show did. I really like the main concept with Timmy trying a variety of superpowers only to notice that they have their own pitfalls. What really got to me was when Timmy becomes Turbo Timmy and wishes up a villain before wishing for super vision to find its weak spots, and the wish ends up being parental supervision. I have to admit, this was one joke that really flew past me when I was younger. When it comes to the other jokes, there isn't much I can say. Otherwise, "Super Humor" is decent at best. Good.

 

And that's all of them. For an EP-sized season - a series of shorts from Oh Yeah! Cartoons, no less, my final thoughts on this unofficial seasons is that it's a really great one. Great. It's filled with some really good charm, wit, and some of the shorts are forgotten gems when it comes to the series in general.

Now, because this is a short season, I'm going to break them down to my top three, with my third favorite being "The Fairy Flu!": an interesting premise with a good amount of wit that barely missed the excellent tier. Second place is "Party of Three!": an episode I remember enjoying during my youth and still enjoy to this day. Lastly, my choice for the best Oh Yeah! Cartoons short for FOP is undoubtedly "The Zappys!" Humorous and heartwarming all the same. As for my worst...I don't have a bottom three, and there isn't even a short that I could consider as such. However, just to pick one that I've enjoyed the least, that honor would go to "The Temp!"

That's 10 down and...283 episodes/segments from the main show to go. It's a long road ahead for me, and it's also going to be a long road before I touch down on the first episode that I gave a "Scum" rating.

Edited by Steel Sponge
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EVERY EPISODE OF FAIRLY ODDPARENTS REVIEWED: SEASON 1

 

Originally posted: January 9th, 2018

 

Hey all and welcome to another segment of every Fairly OddParents episode reviewed. This time, we're getting into the real meat of the series, starting with its official debut season. Before I do that, here's some more info about my review series:

 

-Each season will be broken down into my top 5 and my bottom 5; However, there a couple seasons such as S1 for example where I have to break down my bottom 5 into one. Also, if an episode appears in my bottom 5 and it had a "meh" and/or "okay" ranking, that doesn't mean I'm establishing them as bad episodes.

-When all's said and done, all these reviews will be broken down to a top 10, a bottom 10, and a ranking of all the seasons from worst to best.

-Each episode will be introduced or wrapped up with a quirky running joke/quote/etc. or rather any repeated line from the episode itself. I warn you folks that it will become annoying, yet I will have no regrets about it whatsoever if it means reviewing the show by keeping within the spirit of the show's humor that defines FOP as it is.

 

 

1a. The Big Problem!: After being pushed around in school and by Vicky, Timmy decides he's tired of being little and wishes to be older - and once he gets his wish, he immediately realizes that being an adult is not as peachy as he had imagined. such moments like his hair growing out of his head and into his back, and for the most part, he looks just plain creepy. To make matters worse, Timmy has a few hours to try and fix the wish as his fairies are threatened to be reassigned due to the fact that Da Rules can't allow fairies to grant wishes to adults.

"Relatable" doesn't even begin to describe the episode. When the episode illustrates the pitfalls of adult life, the writers go hard on it. And granted that this is one of many of the first episodes of the series, this episode is provided with a chunk of good jokes, such as when Timmy goes to see an adult movie and gets sickened by a scene with adults kissing, that of course answers the question on why his parents couldn't bring little Timmy to the movie. Aside from that, there's also the small bit with older Timmy shaving. (Speaking from my own experience, I do it every week and i hate it most of the time.) The ending is also pretty satisfying as Timmy and his fairies see a loophole in Da Rules and he tries whatever to act 10 so he could be able to fix the wish, and the moment where Timmy ends up in jail and gets on the verge of losing his fairies before bursting into an emotional breakdown does he manage to fix the wish. What's also neat about the episode is that we get to see a side of Vicky in which we get know that she does care about Timmy, but of course in the case in which something bad could've happened to Timmy and if it came down to that fact, it would've affected her job as a babysitter too.

And so, the moral is: being an adult....SCREW THAT. What's also important to note that starting with this episode, Tara Strong voices Timmy Turner, we get to see the faces of Timmy's parents, and we see Chester, AJ, and Francis for the first time, all of which will becoming recurring characters immediately so, so it's not just Vicky (*SBC crashes*) that we're going to see pretty often. In other words, the episode is not perfect, but it's a near-excellent start to the series. Great.

 

1b. Power Mad!: Timmy doesn't want to play a video game filled with fuzzy bunnies so he wishes for Cosmo and Wanda to conjure a video game that's deliberately challenging, and so challenging that it's also a life-threatening nightmare that "you can't wish yourself out of." After Chester and AJ put the virtual reality helmets on, it's up to Timmy to save them from game over, but he also has to help beat the game. Cosmo and Wanda meanwhile also have to keep Vicky from killing the power in the house as it would also threaten the lives of Timmy and his two friends.

If "The Big Problem!" is not the definition of an instant classic episode in my eyes, then this episode surely is, especially when I grew up on video games at the same time as growing up on cartoons such as this particular show. Suffice to say, the episode works as a solid combination of the two. The episode plot to "Power Mad!" is very engaging, and it's got a lot of good jokes to boot. The segment with Cosmo and Wanda distracting Vicky with their own improvised television programs is what really got me. The episode also has an intriguing moment whereas Timmy sacrifices himself to keep Chester and AJ from losing a life from the Vicky robot in the game, which results in Timmy having a surplus of points, giving him an additional life because of his good deed.

What else can say besides that there's no boring moment in this episode? It's so much fun to watch that it warrants the "excellent" ranking. Yes, two episodes in and I already touched down on an episode that I absolutely loved. What am I, four? Excellent.

 

2a. Spaced Out: After enjoying the latest segment of Crash Nebula, Timmy decides to spice up the fun reenacting the show by wishing up a real alien to play with. As it turns out, the alien that Cosmo and Wanda poofed up is a prince from the planet Yugopotamia and his parents are heading towards Earth to find him. Meanwhile, Mark falls in love with Vicky, mistaken for a kid in an alien costume. This prompts for Timmy to try and talk to the king and queen of Yugopotamia to convince Mark to come home.

The episode has a good variety of memorable moments, but sometimes...not so memorable. Some of the highlights of the episode are Cosmo and his girl nickel, Phillip, and the three perils that Timmy had to face in order to have permission to talk to the king and queen. The storyline and characters are also pretty neat and creative, especially when it comes to the Yugopotamians. Anyways, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that I really liked this episode. The bad news is that there isn't much else for me to say about it. Great.

 

2b. Transparents!: During show and tell, Timmy shows a dinosaur to his class. His teacher believes that Timmy somehow used FAIRY! GOD! PARENTS! to genetically engineer an extinct creature. His teacher then asks Timmy for a parent to teacher conference. In the meantime, Timmy's dinosaur ends up wandering around the school and asks Chester and AJ to get back his "uncle's dog" for him during the meeting. Timmy doesn't want to have to explain his show and tell with his real parents being involved, so he wishes for Cosmo and Wanda to pose as his parents. However, because they have to pretend to be human, they can't use magic. Timmy's teacher, who is obsessed with FAIRY! GOD! PARENTS!, attempts to exposes Timmy's fake parents as FAIRIES! and he won't be seen as a nutcase anymore if he manages to prove the existence of them.

So, this episode is a pretty big deal. This is the episode that introduces to us one of the most iconic characters in the entire series, and it's none other than....wait for it, Mr. Denzel Crocker. I don't really need to explain most of the jokes that Crocker covers in this episode, because simply put, he makes this episode. One of the most iconic characters on the show with a solid introduction to the character to boot. Besides Mr. Crocker, the rest of the episode's jokes also work very well. Other moments include the many attempts with Cosmo and Wanda trying to act human, and the coffee scene. Without a doubt, one of the funniest episodes in the series. Must be the work of FAIRY! GOD! PARENTS! And yes, I'll stop now. Excellent.

 

3a. A Wish Too Far!: Timmy has a crush on the most popular girl in school: Trixie Tang. Unfortunately, Timmy is one of the most unpopular kids in school alongside Chester, AJ, and Elmer, and Trixie's way too out of his league to the point where she refuses to talk to him. Timmy wants to be popular so he wishes to be dressed like them to get Trixie's attention. Eventually, he lies to the popular kids about a party at his mansion, so Timmy decides to wish up a party in his house...at least until Timmy and his fairies are taken to fairy court by force, 'cause as it turns out, Timmy wasn't treating his fairies with respect, and that trying be the rich, popular kids has turned him into a bit of a jerk.

This was a pretty enjoyable episode, but the biggest highlight of the episode is the moral and what leads up to it. Not that honesty's the best policy and such, but that being someone that you aren't isn't really worth it. At the end, Timmy ends up sacrificing his chance of still being popular by telling the popular kids that he was never had the things the popular kids had in the first place and he'd rather be appreciated for the way he was. Of course, because the rich kids are so stuck up, they leave Timmy for Chad and Tad's party at their yacht. Trixie, however, tells Timmy that she appreciates his honesty before she leaves.

Yeah, it must be boring that I'm still summarizing the episode to get my points across, but don't worry, I'm going to leave that by also mentioning that Timmy gets his fairies back by declaring a friendship with Elmer, calling him his "back up Timmy" and all. For the most part, the episode is also filled with other heartwarming moments like when Timmy admits his selfishness towards Cosmo and Wanda and tells them that he was sorry during the fairy court scene. This is also pretty minor, but the one bit with Cosmo and Wanda showing Timmy their chart (exemplifying how much they care about them) also gets to me. It's not an episode that I would always come back to, but it's still a very well-written episode. Need I explain the chart? Great.

 

3b. Tiny Timmy!: Timmy is trying to do a school report on the human body, most preferably towards microscopic organisms. While Vicky is over at the Turners' to watch Timmy again, his parents warn her not to break the $50,000 vase. For Timmy's school project, his fairies poof him up a shrink suit that will allow him to see microscopic organisms. Eventually, the shrunken Cosmo and Wanda end up getting eaten by Vicky. After finding out about this, and because he can't return to normal size with the shrink suit, Timmy has no other option than to go inside Vicky's body and find his fairies.

Not one of my favorite episodes, but it's still a enjoyable one. Some jokes that I liked were the gags centering around Timmy''s short attention span, and the one scene where Timmy ends up making Vicky ridiculous nice while inside Vicky's sub-conscious. The episode also has a weird where the fixed vase ends up getting smashed due to Timmy's short attention span, only to reveal that the vase was bought on the internet for a single dollar, despite being worth and insured for $50,000. There's also the end scene with Timmy getting an F on his report and telling his fairies that he now needs to research the wonders of the universe...so bored, can't focus... Still a good episode, though. Good.

 

4a. Father Time!: Timmy wishes that he has heat vision so he wouldn't have to be stuck inside his house doing chores. Momentarily, Timmy accidentally melts his dad's racing trophy, which angers him. He's so upset about getting punished that he wishes that he could go back in time to prevent his dad from ever winning the "dumb trophy." And so, Cosmo and Wanda poof him up a time scooter as Timmy and his fairies goes back to the 70s to meet the younger version of dad. However, preventing dad from winning the trophy has only caused for history to change significantly as Timmy then finds himself in the present where his dad has taken over the world (with smiles!).

This is a very creative episode that was also dangerously close to the "excellent" ranking. I liked the whole idea about Timmy trying to stop his dad from winning the trophy, 'cause this is the kind of anecdote that will easily give us the impression that Timmy will realize that he has made a mistake trying to change the course of history, but the rest of the episode's story makes it work. I really like the intentional hilarity of a dystopian Dimmsdale with Timmy's dad as its dictator. And of course, how can I even mention the episode without bringing up one of the most frequently quoted lines: "And this is where I'd keep my trophy. IF I HAD ONE!" Although, I think the best joke from the episode is part of the end where it's revealed that the Internet is now called the "Timmy" and Timmy's name ends up becoming "Internet." I brought it down a bit because of the weird ending with future Timmy melting dad's trophy, that in which only raises some questions for me. It's still a very solid episode, and you all better feel the same way. Or else! Great.

 

4b. Apartnership!: While Timmy is planning his parents' anniversary dinner, Cosmo shows Timmy what he's done for Wanda to celebrate their anniversary. However, Wanda comes home in a bad mood and storms off to the fishbowl. Cosmo thinks Wanda forget about their anniversary and decides to go back to Mama Cosma in Fairy World. Wanda eventually comes back and ensures Timmy that their anniversary was the "False Anger Anniversary," but Timmy tells Wanda that Cosmo was really upset and went back to his mother. Cosmo and Wanda eventually get in a magic fight until Timmy wishes for it to stop. Mama Cosma then decides whether her son should stay with Wanda or be with one of two of her bachelorette robots Star and Twinkle by putting him in a game show hosted by Cupid.

The episode has some pretty good jokes, but it mostly had some alright jokes. I do appreciate the episode's plot, however. It's a fairly simple episode that justifies Cosmo and Wanda's love for each other. The best bits about the episode are the small scene with Timmy's parents waiting for Timmy's anniversary dinner and the set-up nature of the game show, Cosmo's question cards being a given. There's no particular running joke in this episode, so I'll just leave it here: I liked it, but not strongly. Good.

 

5a. Chin Up!: Timmy goes to a costume convention and ends up feeling disappointed in seeing the fake Crimson Chin, his favorite superhero. Timmy then wishes to see the real deal, thus the Crimson Chin comes to life from his comic book. However, Crimson Chin mistakes people in costumes as his arch-enemies, and so Timmy wishes that the Chin was powerless so that they don't get hurt. As Chin returns to the comic book world, the comics end up in the wastebin as Chin lost the will to fight, filling the pages up with him in a fetal position. This causes Timmy to appear inside the comic book world to try and bring back C.C.'s fighting spirit.

This is a pretty solid introduction to the Crimson Chin. While I can say that most of the jokes from this episode were funny, I'll admit that some of the moments with the Chin's depressive state kinda annoyed me. Don't get the wrong idea, though. I absolutely love Jay Leno's performance as the Chin. The Bronze Kneecap, however, was the best character in this episode, in my eyes. The episode also has a solid end and climax too, by bringing back the Chin's senses when Timmy ends up in danger (by telling him what his imaginary friend would do), before they team up to defeat the Bronze Kneecap. For a remarkable episode, this certainly calls for a celebratory snack. *shakes ketchup bottle* Stupid ketchup! Great.

 

5b. Dog's Day Afternoon: Timmy is annoyed with how Vicky spoils her dog Doidle. Thinking life as a dog would be neat, Timmy wishes that he and Doidle's brains would be swapped. Doidle ends up enjoying life as a human boy while Timmy finds some downsides to being in Doidle's body as Vicky made an appointment to get Doidle "fixed" just like her other pets. Timmy tries to wish himself back inside his own body, but he's unable to communicate normally due to being in a dog's body, which means Doidle has to make the wish. In the meantime, Cosmo and Wanda go separately to keep watch of either Timmy or Doidle.

This is a decent episode, to put it bluntly. There wasn't anything too special from this segment for me to talk about. One thing I'll at least add is the conversation between the mind-swapped Doidle and Timmy that boggled my mind as a child. Being older now, I get what happened. Anyways, some of the jokes that I liked included the bit with AJ and his feeling of a "massive violation of his personal space," that of course was a kinda sly adult joke that I just noticed recently, and of course there's also the end scene with Spunky the hamster. To sum up my thoughts, all I need to say is this: Oh boy! A decent episode! Good.

 

6a. Dream Goat!: Timmy, taking a tour of City Hall, feels disheartened to see the mayor's faithful goat caged up, after wishing to read Chompy's mind, he then wishes that he was freed. However, it doesn't take a while for the mayor to notice that the goat is missing. Vicky and Timmy are caught standing around the empty cage. Vicky is accused of being a goat-napper while Timmy, with his underwear on his head, is seen as a hero. Timmy feels guilty about being called a hero as he wished Chompy out of his cage and eventually starts making wishes in his sleep. Timmy then wishes for Cosmo and Wanda to poof him to where Chompy has gone off to so that he could convince him to return to Dimmsdale and eventually tell Dimmsdale the truth about Chompy, despite that he has a family now.

This the episode where the "honesty is the best policy" moral could apply here, but when it comes to the climax where the crowd forms an angry mob, I question if it's safe to consider the episode as moral-driven. In the end, it's still a decent episode with a pretty good ending. The highlight of the episode is pretty much the gag where Timmy's dad screams like a girl. Sadly though, that's not the recurring joke that I'm sending off my thoughts on this episode with. *Spit take* Good.

 

6b. The Same Game: Timmy's game of Timmy Ball gets cut short when it ends up in the yard of a scary dentist. Timmy goes back home, not worried about not getting the ball back, but he's annoyed about Dr. Bender and Wendell being full of themselves for their perfect teeth in comparison to Timmy's. And so, Timmy wishes that everyone in Dimmsdale looked exactly alike. Everyone turns into dull grey blobs, but it eventually becomes a problem when the fairies are unable to recognize their godkid. Under the threat of magical buildup, Cosmo and Wanda need to find Timmy before they explode. Meanwhile, Timmy tries to find a way to get Cosmo and Wanda to recognize him.

This is a great episode with a creative plot. In fact, I have more to say on the plot than towards the episode's humor. The whole bit with the outsides being changed and not the insides was a creative way to move past the episode's concept of a dull, grey world filled with dull, grey blobs, as well as towards the humor built around everything in Dimmsdale being dull and grey. I also liked the small moment where despite Bender and Wendell looking the same, they still see themselves as "greyer and blobbier" than all the rest, which is an unusual example of foreshadowing. The end is pretty solid too with Timmy fixing the wish, but wait...this isn't the end of the episode when we still got the plot between Timmy and Bender unresolved, at least before the episode actually ends with Timmy's mom stepping in to get Bender to return the ball which results into her knocking Bender's dentures out of his mouth with the ball. Now that's satisfying. Simply put, this episode is very amusing...and grey! Great.

 

7. Christmas Everyday!: Everyone loves Christmas. No school, no evil babysitter, just playing with your gifts and spending time with your parents. Timmy loves it so much that he wishes that it would be Christmas each day. This wish ends up being a major problem when the elves go on strike from making more toys, places like banks and supermarkets still being closed down, and people all around Dimmsdale are trying to stop Santa from coming. Things only get worse when Cosmo and Wanda are unable to fix the wish since all the fairy magic had been transferred to Santa Claus, and when the other magical creatures that represent their respective holidays plot vengeance against Santa and plan to banish him to a non-existent date because, due to the wish, the other holidays cannot come. Timmy then has to travel all the way to the North Pole (with the help of other kids) to stop the other holiday mascots from taking his magic.

I've already considered this as an instant classic animated Christmas special in the modern era, but on top of that, this episode is one of my absolute favorite modern Christmas specials. The main reason for that is because The Fairly OddParents takes on a completely different kind of story and make it work so significantly well. At these times, most modern Christmas specials usually drag out the Dickens or get inspiration from any other Christmas special and skip rope with it (NOT that I'm saying that "The Fright Before Christmas" is not a good episode that doesn't do anything different with its source of inspiration. That was also a really enjoyable episode IMO).

"Christmas Everyday!" is a special kind of a holiday special as it provides a lot of creative depth in an idea of corrupting a simple and lighthearted wish like Christmas being everyday, let alone prove the downsides of Christmas being everyday. I also really enjoyed the idea of creating a cast of characters comprised of holiday mascots and have them play a role against Christmas, especially when the story develops these characters into those that give us the impression that, while they feel overshadowed by the spirit of Christmas, they want to spread joy and make children happy with the holidays that they represent, just like Santa Claus. Even a lot of the jokes are solid too, with lines like some of the ones during the respective song, ("I got pudding, I got slacks; I got all my backhair waxed!" and "Cuz Timmy just can't get a girlfriend.") as well the one line with Timmy lampshading how he got to Greenland with no problems before he loses his snowmobile. (Following the line: "Well, that's inconvenient.")

This episode is so good that I'd wish that every episode could be "Christmas Everyday!" but I have my reasons against that. Fantastic as always, just like you Noggy - I mean, SBC. Excellent.

 

And that's all of them. Like Season 0, this season was pretty short, but despite being comprised of only 13 episodes, this feels deserving of a good ranking. However, because every single episode in this season was good, this makes for an excellent season. Excellent. What a wonderful start to a great cartoon series. There's mostly likely never going to be another season of FOP that will be able to top Season 1 as well after I analyze the rest. It'll probably be funny if I end up ranking S1 as the highest and S10 as the lowest.

 

Now then, let's break down this entire season to my top 5:

5. The Same Game: a creatively written episode with a well-executed story.

4. A Wish Too Far!: an interesting story with a very well thought out moral.

3. Power Mad!: an interesting plot with some entertaining jokes. In other words, it's an all-around fun episode to watch.

2. TransParents!: A hilarious episode that's otherwise a solid introduction to Mr. Crocker

1. Christmas Everyday!: No contest. No questions asked.

 

That should wrap up my review for Season 1 for right now. Next time, and sometime this month, I'll be covering Season 2, with its extended variety of episodes. 13 down, 270 to go.

 

The rankings so far:

"Excellent:" 3 (5 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 6 (11 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 4 (5 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 0 (2 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 0

"Scum:" 0

"Irredeemable:" 0

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EVERY EPISODE OF FAIRLY ODDPARENTS REVIEWED: SEASON 2

 

Originally posted: January 30th, 2018

 

Welcome back to another segment of every Fairly OddParents episode reviewed. I am going to cover Season 2, but you all can already tell from the title. …And I don’t have anything else to say at this point, so let’s get the ball rolling with…

 

8a. Boys in the Band: Timmy wakes up to his supposed birthday, but wakes up to an announcement of the Chip Skylark concert that is taking place in that very day. As the day goes on, Timmy feels upset since everyone apparently forget about his birthday because Chip Skylark is taking all the limelight away from him. This prompts for Timmy to wish for the most unfortunate, non-lethal thing to happen to Chip Skylark…in which he then ends up coming to Timmy’s house. Vicky is ecstatic to meet Skylark in person and eventually attempts to get him to marry her by force. Meanwhile, Chip’s rabid fans are demanding the return of him.

This was an odd episode… (“Yes, because Cosmo’s voice got higher – and more annoying later on!”) Putting aside that small detail about Cosmo, what can I say on how I felt about the episode? It’s got some decently good jokes, particularly the scenes with Cosmo trying to distract the crowd with his old band as an opening act. I also liked the moments where Timmy eventually realizes that Chip Skylark is a great guy and is not trying to ruin his birthday. Everything else I thought kinda fell flat. The Vicky subplot was starting to feel boring to me, and while I can take the whole twist with Timmy’s parents convincing their son that they’d never forget his birthday and it turns out to be the day after, I’m just not a big fan of the “Everyone forgot about my birthday!” episode archetype, since it usually always results into an “Oh wait, they didn’t forget after all.” type of episode. First episode of the season, and for the most part it was…alright! *Tomato gets thrown at me* Okay.

                                                                                                                                                                      

8b. Hex Games: One day at the skate park, Vicky spoils the fun of every kid in the park. And as queen of the skate park, she threatens to banish every kid there under her age if Timmy fails to beat her in three of the ramps – including the death-defying big ramp. Unfortunately, Da Rules disallows the use of magic during a competition, so while Timmy has to beat Vicky without magic, he otherwise goes through some skateboarding practice with the help of his fairies, alongside Chester and A.J. who designed a custom trick for him before Vicky momentarily steals it.

If “Boys in the Band” didn’t partly help keep the show’s feet on the ground, then this did. This episode had a pretty cool plot and a satisfying end. It had some pretty amusing gags too. Now, what I liked the most was the very climax with Timmy against Vicky in the skate park. The scene with Timmy doing the “Timmy Tuck” trick (while drawing parallels to his skateboarding practice) and succeeding is one of the most delighting moments from the show in general. All’s said and done, so I’ll leave it here: this is another great episode- I mean… (*checks skating lingo book*) This rad episode had me all stoked up, man! Great.

 

9a. Boy Toy: While Timmy, Chester, and A.J. are demolishing their old toys with a slingshot, Timmy finds his old Crimson Chin action toy and begins to reconnect with it. Shortly after, Tootie comes to Timmy’s backyard before he and his friends soak her with water balloons to run her off. Before Chester and A.J. could put the Chin toy with more water balloons, Timmy wishes he could play with it for one last time. With the wish granted, Timmy becomes toy sized and the Chin action figure comes to life. Once as Tootie returns to the treehouse, however, Cosmo and Wanda turn themselves into dolls and Tootie takes them to her room to play with.

So, we go from an alright episode, to a remarkable one, to a very well-written one. The main storyline doesn’t really begin to be as interesting until the plot between Timmy and his Crimson Chin toy develop more until we get a well-thought out moral about being nicer to someone or something despite certain aspects. Also, when it comes to the group of well-loved episodes centering on Tootie, including “Kung Timmy” and “Birthday Wish!,” I think “Boy Toy” is worth some more recognition, as it contains some of the best character development from Timmy, apologizing to Tootie for acting like a stupid 10 year-old boy, as well as telling her sooner or later that he’ll start getting into girls. I also liked the moment where Timmy gives the Chin toy to Tootie and prevents it from being destroyed by Vicky by wishing for it to be indestructible and for it to come packed with anti-Vicky action phrases. It’s a very good way to establish the moment of Timmy paying something forward after he decides that he should treat his Chin toy better. This episode is also supplied with a fair share of funny moments in the form of Chin’s action phrases, and a lot of lines from Cosmo.

To put it bluntly, this episode is a definite gem from the series. …And because there’s no particular running joke for me to send this off with, I’m just going to leave it here. Also, just for the record, not every episode review will have a particular running joke in place of it. In other words, there are some exceptions I have to make. If I end a review like normal, then you’ll all know that there’s an absence of reoccurring lines or jokes in an episode, just a reminder. Excellent.

 

9b. Inspection Detection: Timmy is making a grand number of wishes for Cosmo and Wanda’s fairy inspection. However, when a news report warns about a Wall 2 Wall Mart shoplifter, Timmy’s parents accuse him as the shoplifter. Timmy doesn’t want his parents to think of him as a thief, so he wishes all the stuff away. With the inspection starting right now, Timmy is on the brink of losing his fairies but he also has to prove his parents that he’s not a shoplifter, as well as prove Francis as the shoplifter after finding this out himself.

My main focus towards the episode is usually on the humor than the main plot, which sometimes gets tedious the more that Timmy is falsely branded as the shoplifter. It does get better near the end with Timmy proving that he’s innocent, though. Now, on the humor, I can talk about some of the best jokes, preferably with Cosmo and Wanda distracting Jorgen with a couple of picture slideshows and the one gag with Mr. Turner complaining about not having nice things. And did I mention that this is a very nice episode? Now why don’t I have a nice episode? Great.

 

10a. Action Packed: After a dull boring day in Dimmsdale takes a turn when Timmy watches an action movie, he wishes that his life would be like one. However, things take a turn for the worse with Jorgen Von Strangle as the action movie villain.

This episode uses exaggeration as a factor towards the humor of this episode, and it works pretty significantly well with the random explosions, the mundane, action-filled scene with Timmy having breakfast to exemplify. Granted that this episode takes notes from action movies in general, the episode is also full of thrills. What I really liked though was the sharp turn into an emotional and horrifying scene with Jorgen taking away the magic from Cosmo and Wanda and other fairies. And then we get the tip of the iceberg where Jorgen uses the stored magic to make his own self ridiculously ripped and mad with fairy magic. Afterwards, Timmy manages to defeat Jorgen and Timmy returns to his normal boring life before he then catches his parents getting hooked on the Loose Cannon Cop movie. Nothing else to say besides that this is another great episode, on to the next one. *Explodes* Great.

 

10b. Smarty Pants: Tired of getting F’s and A.J. rubbing his intelligence in his face, Timmy wishes that he knew everything. Eventually, Timmy gets himself a chair at the Academic Brainathon alongside A.J., but due to Da Rules disallowing magic to be used in a competition, the magic is cancelled out and now Timmy has to use his fast button-buzzing reflexes to help A.J. win the Brainathon.

What I can say right away is that my thoughts on this episode aren’t as strong. I give all my credit to the well-written plot, along with some character establishment for A.J., but there aren’t many jokes I can compliment on besides the bit where Timmy outsmarts his parents about proving himself as a smarty pants, and the not-study game. Speaking of which…I’m doing the not-review game right now. It’s a decent episode, bye! *video game sounds* Good.

 

11a. Super Bike: Okay, so I can’t weasel myself out of these reviews. But hey, this is another remarkable episode. Anyways, Timmy and his dad are competing for the father/son bike race, but Timmy doesn’t like the bike that his dad made for him, so he wishes for a much cooler and indestructible bike. This upsets Timmy’s dad as Timmy is not using the bike he made him, so Timmy then feels bad and then realizes that he doesn’t want to ride Super Bike any longer, but the talking bike is so overly attached to Timmy that he’ll never let him leave his side.

When it comes to memorable episode storyline, this episode is one of those examples. Super Bike is a very interesting character and his role as an obsessive-type of villain is very well thought out. The episode also has a pretty solid moral about how spending time with your loved ones and the things they made for you is better than being around with a cool-looking, obsessive, talking bike….yeah, if you put it that way, it’s a weird moral, but it still works. I don’t know if anyone else sees this as an incredibly solid episode like I do, but if you don’t…haha- Super Toilet. Excellent.

 

11b. A Mile In My Shoes: Timmy has another bad day of his life, same for Cosmo and Wanda, who both came back from a tune-up in Fairy World, as both didn’t enjoy their day either. Timmy thinks it’s easier to be a fairy than it is to be a normal 10-year old kid, so he wishes he would be a fairy and that his fairies would be him. However, Timmy doesn’t know how to use fairy magic and his fairies have to deal with Vicky babysitting and giving them some hard labor.

It’s a very interesting concept for an episode and an interesting character expansion for Timmy, Cosmo, and Wanda to boot, but it’s got some moments that tend to drag, likewise Timmy’s inability to use fairy magic, morphing into the wrong thing and such. As for some of the jokes in the episode, I’ll give it credit for the episode being the debut of Mr. Turner’s utterly ridiculous rivalry with Mr. Dinkleberg, and the “steamed broccoli” bit. Overall, it’s your typical “the grass isn’t always greener on the other side” kind of episode, but with how the show was continuing to build its dynamics at the time, it still works well. I don’t know if this is the kind of gag that I should send this episode off with, but… *magical floating cow appears* “Finally! Dairy World!” Good.

 

12a. Timvisible: On the last day of school, it’s the day that Timmy gets his award for perfect attendance, but it’s also the day that Francis celebrates by pounding on all the guys. Timmy then tries to avoid getting beaten by Francis when it soon becomes his turn, but after realizing that Francis can’t beat him if he can’t see him, Timmy wishes that we was invisible. This works, but after Timmy uses his invisibility to his advantage by playing jokes all across the school, everyone thinks the school is being haunted by a ghost. This allows for Mr. Crocker to step in and try hunting down the invisible boy that is Danny Phantom- I mean, Timmy with his exclusive ghost hunting gear in order to prove the existence of fairies, and perhaps also ghosts.

First thing’s first, the episode gives us the welcome return of Mr. Crocker. On top of that, this is the first episode that gives Francis a larger role. But it’s mostly pleasant to see Mr. Crocker in this kind of fashion where he’s not only obsessed with fairies but also towards magical beings and the supernatural in general. On the plus side, his antagonistic role in the episode is very well-written. The story in this episode is also pretty solid and creative. Some other highlights include the moment where we know how important the perfect attendance award is to Timmy, considering the fact that Timmy is at least good at something, even if it’s merely showing up to school everyday. Then there’s also the moment that comes afterwards with Timmy becoming visible, earning his award, and tells Francis that he’s willing to face up against him…only for Francis to pound himself after hitting Timmy’s medal.

It’s not one of the absolute strongest episodes of the show, I’ll admit, but it’s still entertaining enough that it might be one of Season 2’s best segments. Strange thing is, I’m not typing all this up, which could mean…it’s the haunted blog entry! …Probably not. Great.

 

12b. That Old Black Magic: The Turners are on a family trip to Adrenalland, and Timmy can’t really wait. Unfortunately, it’s Friday the 13th. Timmy is not superstitious, but Cosmo and Wanda warn him that it’s the day that the fairies’ evil counterparts, the anti-fairies, run amok by causing bad luck. After a few rides fall apart due to Timmy’s bad luck, Timmy wants to try and have a talk with the anti-fairies himself, which only causes for them to escape from their Fairy World prison and engulf the Earth with bad luck.

I’ll have to admit, the episode’s means towards representing bad luck and the show’s character expansion towards anti-fairies is very subtle here. One of the downsides I have with the episode is that given its narrative on bad luck, there are some moments that can feel predictable, but I feel that the episode makes up for it with some of its jokes, including the gag with Mr. Turner lifting and arguing with his two feet, and some of the bits with Mr. President that might as well be a sly jab at George W. Bush. One other moment worth noting is when Timmy wishes that the anti-fairies were freed, and by then you can tell the outcome, and you make out the wish as a pretty foolish one, but even the episode makes up for that by making Anti-Cosmo acknowledge Timmy as a big, stupid hero. In other words, it’s an example of an understandably stupid wish/mistake from Timmy. When it comes to genuinely stupid mistakes or wishes made by Timmy…well, that’s for another time, as well as for a few different seasons, just to remind you readers.

Anyways, “That Old Black Magic” is an example of a well-written episode that overcomes some of its unlucky moments. *Black cat appears in front of me* Aaaand now my document crashed, that’s just great. Speaking of which… Great.

 

13a. Foul Balled: Timmy has a hard time dealing with not only being on the worst team, but being on the team with the worst player: Chester. Apparently so, Chester’s poor baseball playing runs in the family, alongside his dad Bucky McBadbat, who is considered the worst baseball player ever. Chester wants to redeem his family name and Timmy decides to help by wishing that his friend was the best baseball player ever. Eventually, Chester’s fame starts to go over his head which begins to annoy Timmy and soon enough, it begins to wreck the friendship before the wish ends up being cancelled out and stripping Chester of his baseball skills.

We go from a character establishment episode for A.J. to one with Chester, and between the two, “Foul Balled” is definitely the better episode in my opinion. In fact, the strongest point of the episode was the character storyline between Timmy and Chester. It starts off with a pleasant wish for Chester to be great at baseball, it proceeds into a dramatic moment between the two before then proceeding into a moment where Timmy has to help Chester win the game, and like so, we get a satisfying end with the Losers team winning and making Chester’s dad proud. Aside from all those plot elements, another highlight includes the inspiration speech from Timmy that he and Chester can still at least stink at baseball with pride…which also pretty much doubles as a funny moment. Overall, it’s an endearing episode and it’s most certainly not for pack-mules. Great.

 

13b. The Boy Who Would be Queen: Timmy gets invited to Trixie’s birthday party, but Timmy can’t think of a perfect gift for her. He could wish to be a girl, but Timmy doesn’t think otherwise…Wanda does however and grants Timmy’s inadvertent wish to be a girl. This wish turns out to be useful for Timmy as he can now think like a girl and find Trixie a perfect gift that way. Sooner than later, Timmy, as Timantha, runs into Trixie and ends up forming a friendship with her.

This episode is a fairly big topic, and that’s because the episode is usually considered one of the absolute best from the series. How so? “Oh, that’s because Mr. Enter talks about it so much!” Yes, that...but anyways, as we all know, the episode starts off with Timmy watching a soap opera, which he actually likes. This becomes foreshadowing later on once as the episode proceeds right into the particular scene with Trixie trying to buy a boys’ comic and when Timantha discovers this, Trixie tells her that she wants to keep it a secret that she enjoys stereotypically boyish things. Then, while at a salon, Trixie goes in-depth that she’d like a friend who likes her for who she was than for what everyone wants her to be, and that Timantha gave her that exact gift for her birthday, before Timmy admits to Trixie himself that he’s not afraid to admit liking stereotypically girlish and boyish things and that he likes Trixie for who she is – which of course, is the exact gift Timmy gave to Trixie for her birthday. Of course, it ends with Timmy getting catapulted from her mansion, but it also ended with Trixie remembering Timmy’s name.

So, what else can I really say beyond the episode’s summary? It’s a solid character establishment episode for Trixie, which shows that she’s not just a part of the snobby rich kid archetype. The episode also has one of the most though-provoking messages from the show in general, in which it deconstruct typical gender roles. Even some of the jokes are hilarious, with some of the funniest moments coming from Chester and A.J., in addition to one joke where Trixie rips up a picture of Veronica. This episode is so good, that no other Season 2 episode had managed to top this. Before I move on, I have one question to ask: dead frog? No one? Fine, let’s move on… Excellent.

 

14a. Totally Spaced Out: Timmy’s parents are going away for a business trip, which means Vicky has to babysit. Not wanting to deal with this, Timmy wishes that someone or something can take her miles and miles away from Dimmsdale. This gets Mark the alien’s attention as he then takes Vicky to his home planet. However, Timmy’s parents have a Plan B and so they put Timmy at Peppy Happy Learnatorium daycare, which turns out to be so overbearing for Timmy that he wishes himself to Yugopotamia in order to get Vicky back from Mark.

This episode is probably what I would call “Boys in the Band” with more of a pulse and “Spaced Out” but with less of a pulse. It’s nice enough to have the return of Mark Chang, but the one problem that I have with the episode is that there’s barely new ground to cover outside of giving Mark some more background and the introduction to the Peppy Happy Learnatorium that we’re not going to see again much later. The ending isn’t all that great while Timmy trying to make up for ruining Mark’s birthday by sparing his life…and eventually torturing him with Gary and Betty from the Learnatorium, like he did when he choose it as his arena. Some jokes make up for it, or just otherwise the scenes with Timmy at the Learnatorium. For an apparent sequel to “Spaced Out,” this episode was close to the standards of a sophomore slump, but it at least has more flavor than a batch of fat-free soy cubes. (And the fact that Mark can’t seem to stand it for being too healthy wouldn’t make sense anymore when it’s eventually revealed that healthy food is Yugopotamian delights.) Okay.

 

14b. The Switch Glitch: Today’s Saturday, which means Vicky wouldn’t be around to babysit. But, speak of the devil: Vicky is babysitting Timmy today due to his parents going to a parents-only cook out. Timmy reminds his parents of their promise before they literally use his legal document as fish wrap. After having to do Vicky’s chores and being humiliated by Vicky once more, Timmy wishes that he was the babysitter as payback. With Timmy in-charge of 5 year-old Vicky, life becomes sweet for Timmy until he really starts acting like Vicky and his fairies would then end up being reassigned to her.

To me, this is a more interesting role reversal episode. And really, the main highlight of the episode is the story. Timmy uses his wish to have payback against Vicky, which only ends up making him a mean babysitter just like Vicky when he uses Cosmo and Wanda’s magic to make 5 year-old Vicky cry – a scene that’s actually genuinely heart-wrenching. As the episode goes on, because 5 year-old Vicky is more miserable than Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda are assigned to her, which gives her the chance to give Timmy some of her own payback. The tape recorders that Vicky used to blackmail Timmy is the most unusual way to foreshadow Timmy’s plan to get his fairies back by making her say “I’m happy and I don’t need my godparents anymore.” It can feel like a bit of a cop-out, but the episode then makes up for it in the end by making Timmy do something nice for 5 year-old Vicky before wishing that she was 16 again, ensuring that he’s learned a lesson from all this.

It’s a great episode but almost lightly so if I might add. If there’s one nitpick I’ve had, it’s the out of place closer with Cosmo doing the conga. And just so I’m absolutely clear…*clicks tape recorder* Hi, I’m Steel Sponge and I- *click* liked this episode. Great.

 

15a. Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad: Timmy’s parents are so overworked to the point where they don’t have enough time to spend with Timmy. Timmy is upset about this so he wishes that they were superheroes so then they would spare enough time to spend with their son, but due to having superhero responsibilities, they end up as busy as they were before. So then Timmy wishes that he was an invincible supervillain in order for his parents to give up their powers.

This is a very endearing episode. I liked the idea of making Timmy’s parents superheroes. What sells it though is the bit with Mr. and Mrs. Turner’s first superhero responsibility being protecting their identities to protect their son, Timmy. There isn’t a particular joke that I can go back to or always make a reference to, but the episode still has its fair of share of thrills. In the end, this episode is just great. On to the next one! *transition screen* Great.

 

15b. Knighty Knight: After being disappointed by the cheap Camelot Fair in Dimmsdale, Timmy wishes to be in the real deal. However, Timmy’s parents, inside of a cow suit, have also ended up in the Middle Ages, and so Timmy now has to prevent his parents from being eaten and help King Arthur slay the dragon.

It’s a fun enough episode, it’s certainly one of FOP’s tamer episodes, but there are a fair amount of jokes that I liked. I enjoyed the bit with the wizard salesman, I enjoyed almost every moment with Sir Finkleberg hurting his arm, alongside the fact that there’s a game show dedicated to pulling a sword from the stone, and any scene that portrays the obliviousness of Timmy’s parents. The episode’s plot isn’t something to write home about, but it’s still an entertaining segment. I claim that this episode is- *hurts arm* AGHAHAGH! Great.

 

16a. Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary: A rich kid named Remy Buxaplenty has been wandering around Dimmsdale and trudging Timmy down in places including the comic book world. This eventually leads to Timmy figuring out that Remy is also a godkid like him and that his godparent is Wanda’s ex-boyfriend Juandissimo Magnifico. Remy shortly after figures out about Timmy’s parents and grows envious that he has two compared to his one godparent. After meeting face to face, Remy challenges Timmy to a magical duel, which will determine who will keep or lose their fairies.

This episode…I’m not even finished explaining it, and I’m probably going to have to explain every important detail that I didn’t acknowledge. So, what’s the deal with Remy? His snobby rich kid character archetype is already deconstructed when he’s revealed halfway into the episode that he has a godparent, as well as giving us the indication that he is miserable in some way despite being rich and having otherwise rich parents. Now, what’s the deal with Juandissimo? He’s a direct send-up of the typical attractive, Mexican dreamboat character archetype that likes to rip his shirt off more often than not, and it’s not long until it’s revealed that he’s Wanda’s ex-boyfriend. In other words, Remy and Juandissimo both play very interesting roles in this episode.

The episode establishes Remy’s character very significantly. The episode starts off with Timmy having run-ins with Remy and eventually growing jealous of the fact that he can do stuff better than he can since he’s loaded. On the other hand, Remy is jealous of Timmy because of his fairies before Remy then reveals that he’s miserable because his parents are so busy and attached to their money to the point where they not only never have time to spend with him, but they’re never usually around, before he then reveals that he’s jealous of Timmy since he has godparents and real parents that love him and he doesn’t. And that’s the point where Remy goes from your typical snobby rich kid type of character to one of the most interesting, and relatable recurring characters on the show.

So, what do I have to say about Juandissimo if he doesn’t really top Remy’s character establishment? Some of the episode’s funniest moments come from him, as well as from Cosmo. And speaking of Cosmo…he also has some of the best moments in the episode. Just about every scene where Cosmo tries to get Juandissimo to back off from Wanda since she’s already married is just absolutely satisfying and proves that Cosmo can have his moments where he doesn’t act like a moron most of the time. Of course, you do have the one scene with Cosmo trying to make a fist, but regardless, that’s one of the most humorous moments in the episode. However, the one joke that really sells it for me is during the magical duel where Cosmo mocks Juandissimo to distract him.

Then you’ve got the very end of the episode where Timmy feels bad about Remy losing Juandissimo, so he wishes for Remy’s parent to be able to spend time with him to make up for Remy’s loss in the duel. This results in Remy and his parents being marooned on an island, and while Remy’s parents are still attached to their money, they pay a little more attention to Remy, which is a bit of a start. I also like the last moment where Remy picks up Juandissimo as a turtle, if you take note of the particular scenes with Juandissimo turning Cosmo into a turtle. In short, the episode is so full of depth and memorable moments that it might as well be one of my absolute favorite episodes from the show, and let’s not forget to mention how sexy it is. *Rips shirt and magically appears back on* Okay, maybe not in that way, but you get my point. Excellent.

 

16b. Nectar of the Odds: Timmy wants tickets for him and his friends to see Crash Nebula (on ice?) Timmy goes with the best possible option in earning money by selling lemonade. Timmy tries to make the best-tasting lemonade after his first pitcher tasted foul. Cosmo then dips his sweaty socks in the lemonade, which not only makes the lemonade taste good, but it also allows customers to grant wishes…that in which eventually takes a turn for the worst.

This is the type of episode that doesn’t really become as interesting until after halfway. The premise of Cosmo’s sweaty socks making better tasting lemonade would seem off-putting, but the point where the episode starts getting as interesting is when the wishing starts to become chaotic, which then leads to Timmy using the lemonade to reverse all the wishes, as well as having to make the sacrifice of wishing that none of it ever happened and no one remembered it, leaving Timmy with no money to see Crash Nebula. (on ice?) The biggest highlight of the episode, however, is none other than- DOUG DIMMADOME OWNER OF THE DIMMSDALE DIMMADOME MAKING HIS DIMMSDALE DIMMA-DEBUT in the episode who repays Timmy’s kindness for reuniting him with his son Dale Dimmadome, (the kid who was forced to make Vicky’s lemonade) by getting Timmy, Chester, and A.J. to see the show by giving them jobs at the Dimmadome.

I think one particular flaw some people will tend to have with the episode is the scene with Cosmo having to exercise himself to death in order to make the secret ingredient and the lemonade, but I don’t mind it as much. It’s still a pretty well-written episode in my books. Great.

 

17a. Hail to the Chief: Timmy decides to run against Tad and Chad as student body president due to the way they’re treating the non-popular kids. Timmy ends up winning the election when every other kid in school caught food poisoning from Tad and Chad’s cake. Timmy doesn’t seem to be enjoying it, however.

This episode could’ve used some more work. It doesn’t really seem to get any sort of message across since the main conflict of the episode is Timmy turning out not to enjoy his job as student president because of his secret service following him everywhere, preventing him from talking to Trixie, and such. Also, the fact that Timmy manages to become student president by his one vote because of everyone else getting sick felt like a cop-out. And the plot point where Timmy attempts to resign by making his own self look like a nerd (which one scene being the debut of Sanjay’s character for when Timmy joins the Library Assistance Club) felt kinda forced. I didn’t even feel anything much from the ending, where the episode closes with Timmy being surrounded by a group of kids with runny noses…now look, I haven’t seen the episode since a while. Granted, it’s pulled from broadcast, not because of something from this episode, but because of something from its partner episode. Anyways, the episode is alright. There are some jokes here and there, but not one I can always come back to.

In the end, the plot is just nothing special to me and so it results into a very average episode. It’s not good, but there aren’t any moments that get me on my bad side either. Meh.

 

17b. Twistory: Timmy is doing a school report on the Founding Fathers, so he wishes that they would be brought from the past for his talk show taking place in his treehouse. However, bringing them back from the past has brought a side-effect to the present in which the U.S.A. turns into a British colony. After Cosmo and Wanda lose their wands for taxation, Timmy uses his Time Scooter to go back to the time where Benedict Arnold is tricking the U.S. into surrendering to the British in order to fix the time stream.

So, this is the episode that turned out to be so controversial that it got pulled from broadcast alongside its partner episode, and that reason being the episode’s portrayal of British stereotypes and the thought of the U.S. never being a successful and advanced society if we lost the American Revolution. It was banned…at least until Nicktoons started reairing it since 2017. Seriously, I’ve checked the Nicktoons schedule very often and found the episode being put in rotation at least a couple times. I can probably see why because the episode’s premise is so off the wall that I can’t really take it so seriously. In fact, I think “Twistory” is a better episode than “Hail to the Chief,” because you’re at least learning some things and getting something from watching it. On top of that, there are some pretty good jokes in the episode, with some of the memorable moments coming from the Founding Fathers and Timmy’s parents.

For some people, this episode can be a bit of a stickywicket, but I liked it. Now’s the time that I…mustchop wood! Good.

 

18a. Fool’s Day Out: It’s April Fools Day and Timmy is tired of being pranked by everyone, so he enlists the April Fool himself to pull some pranks for him. However, the April Fool doesn’t seem to want to stop until it results him into trying to destroy the Earth.

You can tell by this fairly short summary that there isn’t much that I remember about this episode and I’ve had to rely on Alpha Jay Show’s review of the episode in order to talk about this episode at some points. Alpha Jay’s review in particular defends the episode to death. I agree with a few of his points, but it certainly doesn’t change my mind about the episode, looking back. Think of this episode as the series’ equivalent to “I’m with Stupid” or “Fools In April” if you will, because the reactions for “Fool’s Day Out” kinda depends on who you ask. I can imagine some folks hating this episode because of the Timmy abuse, but then again, I barely catch anyone talking about this episode, not only because it airs once in a blue moon like any other holiday specials. If you ask me, it’s also because the main issue that I have with the episode, which has some sort of message that contrasts between what’s funny and what isn’t funny, is that it’s ironically not funny. In other words, a lot of the jokes don’t come off as memorable.

To be fair though, Jorgen does delivers some funny lines, (i.e. “I fear we will never know who was knocking, but I will make it my mission in life to find out!”) but otherwise, the rest of the humor falls flat for me. Like, what if I send off this episode by getting attacked by a groundhog? *Gets mauled by groundhog.* It’s not so funny, right? I’d say the same when it comes to this fairly average episode. Meh.

 

18b. Déjà Vu: After yet another rough day, Timmy wishes for Cosmo to become a watch that’ll allow for him to re-do moments where he screws up. Timmy then goes back to where his day begins in order to fix those stressful moments. Unfortunately, Vicky then gets her hands on the watch and uses it against Timmy, so now Timmy wishes for Wanda to be his spare re-do watch…and that it’ll only work him.

While I barely caught anybody talking about “Fool’s Day Out,” I’ve caught people talking about this episode more, and I can pretty much see why. It’s not only hilarious, but its’ hilarity is strangely genius. The episode relies on one particular joke, that being Timmy and Vicky resetting a particular moment in time, and what makes the repetitive joke work is that the episode finds ways to still make it funny with scenes including the bit where Timmy launches a water balloon to France, the scenes with Timmy and Vicky dueling it out with their watches, as well as the end with Timmy being taken back to where he met his fairies. Aside from those, I also liked Mr. Turner’s line on The Little Dolphin Who Cried *dolphin chirps.*

The highlight of the episode is mainly its humor, unsurprisingly. Some moments can feel repetitive, but it’s still one of Season 2’s greatest. Too bad it only airs during April Fools’ Day alongside its partner episode. *RE-DO!* Too bad it only airs during April Fools’ Day alongside its partner episode…nope. I guess we’ll still have to deal with that. Great.

 

19. Information Stupor Highway: Timmy writes an e-mail to Trixie, asking her out to the school dance. After his parents turn it into a romantic and threatening e-mail and send it, Timmy wishes to be inside the internet to get it back. He’s branded as a pink hat computer virus and eventually gets downloaded into Mr. Crocker’s computer, who then traces back the data from Timmy’s computer and records proof of the existence of fairies in the process. Now Timmy has to stop Mr. Crocker from uploading the footage of Cosmo and Wanda to every TV and computer in the world.

Again, the bulk of the episode’s charm is some of the jokes. Some highlights include Mr. Crocker’s slow computer and its otherwise slow downloading speed, a couple scenes that reveal Veronica’s apparent jealousy of Trixie to the point where she wants to be Trixie, the scene with Cosmo “turning off” the computer, the bits with the super-intelligent gorillas, and the gag with the parents of the characters coming into their rooms with a battering ram. Really, I could mention some more jokes from the episode, but anyways, my point is that it’s just a very entertaining episode. Aside from that, I really like the concept, it’s very well-written, and- hey, is that the pink hat computer virus? Great.

 

20. Scary GodParents: It’s Halloween and Timmy wants to be dressed as one of the Jack-o-Bots from the Crash Nebula Halloween special. Unfortunately, there were only four Jack-o-Bot costumes, which were made for a contest, and they were taken by the popular kids. To make matters worse, every house across Dimmsdale is spoiling the Jack-o-Bot costumes while Timmy, his friends, and his fairies in costume are supervised by Vicky and have to give most of their candy to her. Given how the popular kids are getting treats because their costumes look real, and Vicky is getting treats as well because, well…she is an evil babysitter, Timmy wishes that everyone’s costumes were real and scary. However, this wish causes the popular kids to turn evil and form the Pumpkinator, creating a doomsday device to destroy Earth in the process. Meanwhile, Mark, Jeff, and Erik invade Earth to convince Vicky to escape the doomed planet.

It’s a fairly decent Halloween special. You can tell by my description that there’s a hefty amount of plot elements going on, and that’s what keeps me invested in the episode. Story-wise, the highlight of the episode is the mish-mashed costume Timmy facing off against the Pumpkinator. That’s not the only thing I can give this episode credit for, but I’ll get to everything else later. One issue that some folks will tend to have is the mean-spirited nature of the episode, at least during the first half. I find it understandable since I feel as though that the popular kids are designed to be unlikeable. (Unless in the case of which you are a fan of Trixie and/or Veronica) Granted, the episode starts to get more interesting halfway.

The end of the episode is very pleasant as it ends with Wanda being able to grant Timmy’s wish that everything would be “fake and safe,” the Pumpkinator being un-wished, and the Yugopotamians bomb the Earth…with a piñata full of candy, thus giving every kid in Dimmsdale a batch of candy. It may not be a top-tier animated Halloween special, but it still offers a pretty good treat. Good.

 

And that’s all of them. Overall, Season 2 was another great season. Great. It doesn’t have tight competition with Season 1, but it’s still got a lot of top-notch gems. Once again, I’m rounding this all up into my Top 5 and the one episode that I recommend the least:

 

5. Timvisible: A very entertaining and creatively plotted episode in general.

4. Boy Toy: An episode with a well-written plot and a very good moral, in addition to the character establishment with Timmy.

3. Super Bike: A funny, memorable, and charming episode all the way through.

2. The Boy Who Would Be Queen: A very well-written episode that gives Timmy and Trixie some more background and deconstructs gender roles pretty subtly.

1. Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary: Okay, I lied when I said that no other S2 episode could top the aforementioned episode. If you’re looking for an episode with a very well-fleshed out recurring character, moments where Cosmo is at his best and a well-conceived plot in general, then I suggest you’ll really like this episode.

 

And then there’s the one episode that I enjoyed the least from all the rest. That honor will go to “Hail to the Chief.” There was just barely anything to gain out of that episode, at least in my eyes. A couple of not-so honorable mentions include “Fool’s Day Out” and “Totally Spaced Out.” Expect my Season 3 review to arrive either next month or the month after. And maybe later, I'll do some tweaks with these blog entries.

 

The rankings so far:

"Excellent:" 7 (9 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 16 (21 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 9 (10 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 2 (4 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 2

"Scum:" 0

"Irredeemable:" 0

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EVERY EPISODE OF FAIRLY ODDPARENTS REVIEWED: SEASON 3

 

Originally posted: April 21st, 2018

 

It’s been nearly two months, and we should all be aware that FOP has officially stopped its run since the news of Butch Hartman leaving Nickelodeon came around not too long ago. I still think it’s a pity that it would end right on Season 10, but it’s also a breath of fresh air for the future of the show since it ended before it could get much, much worse. Of course, I am going to continue my reviewing series and this month’s topic is Season 3. Anyways, welcome to another segment of every Fairly OddParents episode reviewed and I’m going judge on whether S3’s standards are higher or lower than Season 2’s as we start off with…

 

21a. Ruled Out: Timmy is tired of his parents being so protective of him so he wishes that they would care less. However, they become so totally carefree that not only does it affect the Turners’ living conditions, but Timmy’s godparents eventually start to become careless as well.

What I really like about this episode…is that there’s this something that really hits me. In fact, the episode has this really frank moral that just hits you when you didn’t expect it first thing. I wasn’t actually so big on this episode until I did some re-evaluation, which was when I realized how subtle its message turned out to be in hindsight. Imagine if you were all the way back in the 2000s (or otherwise, a child if you were much older at that time) watching this episode, knowing how overbearing your parents can be, much like Timmy’s parents. When Timmy makes his wish, it turns out to be reasonable enough as it makes his parents happy even when they’re acting so carless about their lives, which really feels like the point of view that a child would’ve wanted to live in. Then, midway into the episode, Timmy realizes that his parents had every reason to care too much when his parents turn into complete filthy slackers.

Likewike with “Christmas Everyday!,” the episode has the kind of wish with a drawback that sneaks past. Now let’s focus on the episode’s main message: Timmy’s parents tend to be overprotective of their son because they love him and they don’t want him in any danger that would eventually lead him face to face with a sewer gator, which so happens to part of the climax. As for the rest of the climax, Timmy doesn’t try to get Cosmo and Wanda’s help to fix the wish as putting himself at risk in order to snap his parents back into reality, because they love their son so much, was cancelling out the magic. That in particular really supports the episode’s message, because when you think about it for a moment, just to reiterate, while the wish did transform the behaviors of Timmy’s parents, it didn’t change the fact that they love their son.

Of course, the episode ends with Timmy being grounded, in form of being caged up with colon-cleaning food and educational television, but that’s the most that we can expect for the episode to end off with. So far, we’re off to a very good start. This episode was pretty close to the excellent ranking, but in the end, the episode was entertaining and well-written, but mostly entertaining, yay entertainment! Great.

 

21b. That’s Life!: Timmy’s mom wants to grow an award-winning garden, (In Mr. Turner’s case, he wants her to beat the Dinklebergs, who are also participating in the contest), so Timmy wishes that his mom’s garden was full of life. It’s so full of life that it brings back Timmy’s dead pet gerbil, Eddie, who was believed to have run away during summer camp…camp….camp…

It’s another charming episode, but it doesn’t hit close too home as “Ruled Out” has. It has a pretty clear message about taking better care of anyone and anything. And as we eventually learn from this episode, it’s not just Timmy who can’t seem to take care of his pets as his parents were supposed to take care of Eddie while he was at summer camp…camp….camp. There are also some weird moments here and there, like with Mrs. Turner using canned yams for the judging, and the end where it reveals that Timmy’s other pets had the same fate as Eddie and got buried in the same garden. As for some of the jokes, the one dark joke with Mr. Turner offering the Dinklebergs to give Mrs. Turner a “congratulatory hand touch” was pretty funny, as well as the whole “summer camp…camp…camp” gag.

It’s usually a tradition for me to send it off with the episode’s recurring gag, but I already mentioned it three times. It’s a great episode that’s not quite close to one of the greatest in the series. With that said, let’s move on to the next segment. Great.

 

22a. Shiny Teeth: Chip Skylark is going to be in a video for his big hit “My Shiny Teeth and Me” and just about every kid in Dimmsdale wants to have good enough teeth to be in the video with him. However, after Dr. Bender and Wendell learn about Chip and his perfect teeth, it ends up getting stolen. With help from the Tooth Fairy, Timmy now has to take Chip’s teeth back from the evil dentist so Chip could be in the music video.

This is yet another entertaining effort from the series’ first-half run. What I really liked about it was how Timmy and Chip’s friendship really developed. There was “Boys in the Band” which first featured Chip Skylark and had the type of episode plot centering about the misunderstanding about Timmy’s birthday, but at most, the episode was leading up to the character development in this episode, and it was handled very well. Sad for me to say, there aren’t as many memorable lines (maybe except for the bit with Chet Ubetcha thinking that there’s a boy trapped in a well), but I’ve enjoyed everything else from this episode. Word! …That means there isn’t much more I can say about the episode and so I have to cut this short. Good.

 

22b. Odd, Odd West: Timmy’s dad takes the Squirrely Scouts on a trip to an Old West themed attraction that was part of his childhood. Not long after, Doug Dimmadome and his construction company appear to be trying to tear down Dimmsdale Flats so that they could build a mini mall over it. In order to save his dad’s childhood memories, Timmy and his fairies travel back to the Old West to get the lost deed. When the deed is in the hands of Vicky the Kid, Timmy must face off against her in a duel as the Masked Stranger to get it back.

I’ll admit that I got something more about this than from “Shiny Teeth,” which is usually because this episode had some more memorable scenes, like the duel between Timmy and Vicky the Kid being a straightforward game of rock-paper-scissors, and you also got memorable jokes like the bit with the Squirrely Scouts doing first aid on Timmy’s dad, the “nobody reads the manual” gag, and this particular line: “It took being attacked by coyotes and being thrown in jail to realize my childhood stunk.” Despite that line, however, I thought the end was pretty bizarre with Timmy revealing the lost deed, before Mr. Turner ultimately decides to accept Dimmadome’s offer of $8 to tear down Dimmsdale Flats and the final scene that reveals that Chester left himself alone with a coyote so he could give it a “Beaten by Chester” badge.

It has its weird moments, but I can pass them up, because this is still a nearly great and entertaining episode at the end of the day. I could send off this review like normal, but going against my silly tradition is for yellow-bellies. Good.

 

23a. Microphony: It is summer break and Timmy can’t wait to spend it all with his family and without Vicky having to babysit…that is until the radio sponsors Vicky’s babysitting service, complete with a catchy jingle that compels the adults to let Vicky babysit their kids. As payback, Timmy wishes his treehouse was a radio station and for a microphone that would disguise his voice. As Double T, Timmy drives out Vicky out of business and promotes a summer full of family fun. However, when Vicky notices Cosmo, as the traffic copter, flying over to Timmy’s treehouse, she finds about his accountability and then uses the magical microphone to pretend that she’s Timmy behind the microphone to reveal the truth and call parents morons, which can’t be said on the radio, and it’s enough to make them form an angry mob right towards Timmy’s treehouse.

As you guys can tell by this rather lengthy summary, this episode has a good amount of plot details, which result into a very enjoyable segment overall. The beginning isn’t quite enjoyable, but the rest of the episode was pleasant enough. I also liked the kind of plot it was going for, preferably near the end where Timmy admits that he is Double T and he was using his radio broadcast to have families spend the rest of the summer together, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. Of course, Timmy still needs to prove that he didn’t call parents morons, on the radio, before the kids across Dimmsdale unquestionably point the blame to Vicky as she then gets arrested by the FCC. Yep, if you say moron on the radio and not on TV, it’ll definitely land you in jail. It’s a cartoon, so I don’t have to question that logic.

What adds to why I liked this episode a lot, other than the fairly catchy “Vicky Free Summer” song, is usually because the plot doesn’t lead to the kind where Timmy reveals he was lying, but to the kind of plot where Timmy reveals the truth that he needed to hide and Vicky getting karma for hijacking the magic microphone, as she was the one who said “all parents are morons” on the radio. Yeah, I’m mentioning that plot point quite a lot, and that’s because that’s the subject of what I’m sending off the review with. So, remember, you can only say moron on TV. Okay, I’m done, next segment. Great.

 

23b. So Totally Spaced Out: Mark comes to Earth and asks for Timmy’s help to come to Yugopotamia and defeat the planet’s greatest enemy that is the “special surprise inside.” The lifeforms, know as the Gigglepies, use their cuteness to brainwash other lifeforms by commercializing themselves in order to enslave a planet until they blow it up and move on to the next one.

If “Totally Spaced Out” was a step back from the first episode with Mark and his character reflection, then this third installment is a step back into a more interesting direction. The Gigglepies result into a group of very interesting villains you see, their distinct blend between cute and evil is foreshadowed before Timmy and his fairies are taken to Overlord Glee. Obviously so, it’s granted that Yugopotamians can’t stand anything cute and sweet, and not only do the Gigglepies make formidable enemies, they make the episode feel complete at the same time as their ridiculous cuteness making us want to take methamphetamines.

The subplot between Mark and Vicky doesn’t have much to write home about, but the central plot is still just as stout. However, the way the episode ends with the Gigglepies’ defeat is strange, I can assure, with the specific climax being when the Gigglepies are discovered to taste like manure. Because manure is a Yugopotamian delicacy, the Gigglepies are defeated by getting eaten alive. Then again, why should I acknowledge this so penitently? There are indeed a lot of people who are into something like that, one would jive.

A good amount of the episode’s humor is accomplished by the Gigglepies, because they are just so good enough to buy. Oh, and if you’re wondering if my tendency to rhyme for this review doesn’t make as much sense for me to do, need I remind you all of Mr. Enter’s Cramp Twins review? After all, who else would be writing all this up besides Steel the chemist Gigglepie with nerve? Now your mind is mine to serve. Batteries not included, nor is Steel’s sense of humor, each Steel Gigglepie accessory is sold separately, the buy two; get one free deal is available for purchase now, no strings attached, do not pass go, do not collect $200, buy us all or die. Great.

 

24. Love Struck!: After Trixie refuses to be Timmy’s valentine, and after being humiliated by just about every other girl (except Tootie) in Dimmsdale, Timmy wishes that they were put somewhere else. The two genders are now divided by a wall between two worlds known as Himmsdale and Hersdale. Because of the wish, Cupid’s magic is getting sucked completely dry and Timmy, who has full responsibility, must side with Cupid to restore the world to its former, loving glory.

Well, after perplexing you all with my review of the previous segment, here’s where I get completely back on-topic, because this episode, “Love Struck!...” is not good *explosion effect.* This is the very first episode to withstand a “Scum” ranking and it’s not so hard to figure out why. I didn’t want to have to use some of Mr. Enter’s words as my own, but he’s really on-point when he points out that one of the flaws that the episode suffers from is that it just flat out contradicts the message that “The Boy Who Would Be Queen” had produced. According to this episode, all boys like sports, greasy food, and poor hygiene while all girls like shopping and all things pretty – and that’s a load of bullocks.

Besides the fact that the episode assigns these gender roles, the 22-minute special is filled with other problems. This episode also has a couple of songs, and the most of what I can say about them is that they’re just so…forgettable and they feel so phoned in as well. The episode’s jokes don’t even work as well, given that the episode’s humor focuses on the cliché gender roles that are being portrayed, but that’s not all I have to say against the episode’s jokes. The whole “nothing fills the void” recurring gag, barely results into anything funny, and then there’s one joke near the end where Trixie, apparently, sarcastically proclaims how impressed she is about Timmy ignoring her and that she’s going to send him a bunch of messages on his answering machine. And yet, during the “The End” card, she does exactly that. It’s just a joke that really baffles me.

The end of the episode is pretty fine and dandy with Timmy sacrificing his arrow to decline Trixie’s offer to be her valentine so he can make Tootie happy, but almost of the episode was nowhere near as pleasant. As a first for one of FOP’s worst offerings, I suggest that you skip this, ‘cuz nothing about this episode fills in any sort of void. Scum.

 

25a. Cosmo Con: After Cosmo gets picked to host a super, special, and secret fairy convention and hosts it in Timmy’s bathroom. Much to Timmy’s dismay, Mr. Crocker is invited for a meal at the Turners’ household due to Timmy’s short attention span giving him an A.

This episode easily falls under the “fairly decent” category. This episode doesn’t provide anything much of value, but it still has its moments, like the bit with Timmy’s classmate freaking out over Timmy getting an A like it was against the natural order. Then there are some jokes that fall flat like the many bits with Mr. Turner thinking that Crocker is trying to hook up with his wife (including the recurring “mine!” gag), the wacky hijinks with Mr. Crocker during one scene at the convention, and the pretty obvious parody of Britney Spears: Britney Britney. It was a fine enough episode overall, but in the words of Mr. Turner, not mine! Okay.

 

25b. Wanda’s Day Off!: Wanda feels she deserves a break after one too many times where she has to save Timmy and Cosmo’s lives. Wanda takes a spa day while Cosmo is left to help with Timmy’s biology report. When Timmy wishes that he could tell what a cockroach is thinking about, he and Cosmo already realize that they can’t fix their own problems without Wanda, especially when the colony of cockroaches plot world domination.

Judging by how I wrote the summary, I consider this is as the kind of episode that knows that something is going to go wrong even in the case of something like when a particular character, Wanda, decides that she’s had enough of having to save Timmy and Cosmo’s lives for one day and just relax. Then again, it was already made easy to predict that Timmy’s wish would cause a colony of cockroaches to commit world domination. In retrospect, while it was also easy to predict that Wanda would eventually come back to clean the mess that Timmy and Cosmo have made, I liked how the episode didn’t go into the easy route of cutting Wanda’s spa day short or that she would end up seeing the dystopian Dimmsdale ruled by cockroaches right away.

Even if I wasn’t a big fan of the episode’s plot, some of the jokes really make up for it, like these particular dialogue quotes: “Oh, for the love of Pete!” “Who’s Pete, someone I should know about?” and “I love you two, but you are idiots!” “But we’re yours idiots!” And lastly, there’s the joke leading up to the reveal of the mess made by Timmy’s wish, whereas Timmy and Cosmo were hiding inside a replica of Timmy’s room, I thought that was pretty subtle. Overall, this episode has its solid moments, despite a plot that’s nearly standard in my eyes. Good.

 

26a. Odd Jobs: Timmy wishes that his dad would have a cool job in order to make him happy and not get laughed at by kids. Two disasters result into Mr. Turner getting a job as an astronaut, which actually succeeded, but now Timmy fears that he’ll never be able to see his dad again.

When it comes to dad-centric episodes in general, I would consider this as one of the best that I know of. Of course, it’s second-best, only behind “Super Bike,” but still, I found this episode to be really entertaining and charming all the same. The most of what I can say about this episode though is the climax where Mr. Turner tells his son that he’s on a mission to Uranus. Then, before Mr. Turner gets launched into space, Timmy convinces him that he doesn’t need a cool job to be a cool dad, which is an easily heartwarming moment.

On the subject of the episode’s humor, I thought some slapstick moments with Mr. Turner’s cool job options were amusing, as were the Cooljobs.wand scenes with Mr. Turner clicking on Cosmo only to injure him in some way. After all’s said and done, I can conclude that this is one of S3’s greatest. It may or may not make my top 5, but what’s important is that Uranus is a planet, who knew? Great.

 

26b. Movie Magic: Timmy decides to become an award-winning filmmaker so that Trixie can actually talk to him. After the first film ends up being a disaster except for his friends, Timmy decides to make another movie with the help of his fairies and Sylvester Calzone. Sadly, Timmy’s friends feel left out with the old movie being left in the cutting room floor.

It’s a yet another episode centered around Timmy trying to impress Trixie, and the episode should feel tedious because of that distinction…but I’d be darned if I didn’t say that this episode was still hilarious regardless. The movie that Timmy made with his pals was hilarious, Tad and Chad’s film that put an Arnold Schwarzenegger parody into the story of Hamlet was hilarious, the mock-up of Sylvester Stallone was not only hilarious, but he also very much made the episode. The episode even delivers a pretty good message when Timmy decides to submit his old film for the Dimmadance Film Festival when he realizes that nothing really beats the time that he spent with his friends.

The episode ends with Timmy winning the Dimmy for the film’s sheer hilarity, but Trixie still ignores him since he won for comedy, which is, according to her, one of the lowest forms of entertainment next to animation (that in particular is a joke that I thought was pretty funny), before she, Tad, and Chad decide to become devoted to rock stars. Despite that though, I still enjoyed the episode a lot so don’t think I’m being such a critic. And yet considering that I am a critic… *starts punching self* Great.

 

27-29. Abra-Catastrophe!: One day, Timmy wakes up to an anniversary party by Cosmo, Wanda, and his fairy friends, celebrating a year’s worth of Timmy keeping his godparents a secret. One gift Timmy receives is a magic anniversary muffin that can grant even a rule-free wish when bitten into it. After a rousing flashback detailing how Timmy got his fairies, Timmy wishes that his parents were more honest with him before heading to school, whereas the magic muffin already falls out of his hands. However, it isn’t until Bippy, a caged monkey, takes a bite out of the muffin and wishes for the entire Earth to be made into his vision. Due to this wish, apes rule the Earth, Jorgen reassigns fairies to monkey children, and humans are on the run from being dissected by the apes. Timmy now has to travel to Chimpsdale to get back the magic muffin and restore the Earth to its original glory before something else happens. (which I’m going to talk about for the rest of the review…)

I already got myself a big one to cover for this season, and I really mean it when I say it’s one of the big ones. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to express my thoughts on this TV movie piece by piece. Just about half of this episode is centered on Bippy’s wish turning the entire world into a jungle and causing apes to enslave it while the other half mostly revolves around Mr. Crocker getting his hands on the muffin and then becoming ruler of the Earth with Wanda and Cosmo’s magic until Timmy dukes out against him. The rest of the episode focuses on the central theme of when you should or shouldn’t hide the truth, as this is a character reflection episode on Timmy as it centers on his thoughts about having to keep his fairies a secret, and we also got a subplot on Timmy’s parents reevaluating all the times that they’ve told their son a series of white lies.

Anyways, the episode starts off with Timmy having a nightmare while in an environment filled with film referential humor. In that dream, Cosmo and Wanda are demanding for Timmy to tell them his secret until he wakes up, revealing that Cosmo and Wanda were stalling him before they can surprise him with his fairy-versary celebration. During the after-party, Cosmo and Wanda give Timmy a little trip back to the past by showing him a moment in time that resulted into Timmy having his godparents. And suffice to say, I thought the backstory really cemented the main show’s premise very well, as we learn of something else besides the common knowledge that Vicky was the main reason why Timmy become so miserable, but the events corresponding to Vicky walking all over Timmy’s life stemmed from a lie that his parents told him. We all know where it goes from there, as Timmy realizes it now that his parents lying to him contributed to him having his fairies and he indirectly wishes that his parents didn’t lie to him. And because he said “I wish…"

I don’t need to repeat myself about the Earth turning into a world ruled by apes, so what I can say at that point that this where the special starts to get interesting, with well-established ideas about the world being taken over by apes, humans being hunted down for dissection, and fairies being assigned to monkey children. There are also the cheap monkey-related puns throughout this portion that got a bit of a kick out of me. This portion of the special also comes to a suitable end with Bippy wishing for Cosmo and Wanda to undo his wish, restoring the balance of Earth in the process, as gratitude for Timmy releasing him from his cage. It’s an endearing moment, and it’s no surprise given how much heart FOP had early on.

Shortly after, we get to the other main storyline with Mr. Crocker attaining the magic muffin, and this is the part where the special starts to get really interesting. In short, he traps Wanda with a butterfly net, uses her magic to turn Dimmsdale into Slavesdale, and has her concealed inside of a scepter. Due to the events corresponding to Mr. Crocker capturing a fairy, Jorgen breaks the rainbow bridge and scrambles the fairies (In addition, “I like to scramble the fairies!” and “I like to destroy the bridge!” are a couple of the funniest lines from the entire special). After Mr. Crocker transforms the world into that of his image AND turns the residents of Dimmsdales into slaves (Timmy and Cosmo get unaffected by hiding in Santa’s magic bag, which Timmy received as a fairy-versary gift). Timmy’s parents attempt to take Timmy in to bow down to Crocker until to touch the magical doorknob that was around lure them away during the fairy-versary, which brings me into talking about how I really liked that this special had some of these plot device hanging around and reuse them moments where we’d forget about them. Yeah, it’s an example of Chekhov’s Gun, but still, I have to give this special some credit for how it uses this trope.

Aside from that little detail, the gifts that Timmy received for his fairy-versary are also put to use halfway into the special, and I especially liked the idea of Timmy disguising himself with Santa’s bag and the April Fool’s Groucho Marx glasses once he begins to face Mr. Crocker alone…that is before Cosmo gets himself ripped and beats the stuffing out of Crocker… (the scene also includes a funny freeze-frame joke, just to add) that is until Crocker captures Cosmo into his scepter. For the rest of the episode, Timmy faces off against Mr. Crocker with whatever’s left of his utility while also dimension hopping. Eventually, Timmy’s identity gets unveiled and from there, Timmy uses his jetpack to return to his house before ending up in a situation where he has to tell the truth about his fairies.

Remember when I said that the whole bit about whether one should or shouldn’t hide the truth plays a central role within the episode’s plot? The flashback with Timmy’s parents telling him a white lie and the little subplot between them looking back at all the other times they’ve lied to their son, that’s may or may not be a given, but then there’s this line right here that really cements my point: “The truth will set you free!” Afterwards, Timmy watches his fairies getting sucked into Da Rules book, leaving Mr. Crocker without his magic and Timmy’s parents to beat them down. And then Timmy uses the last of the magic muffin to wish for his fairies back, and then wish everything back to the way it was before he had the magic muffin. Jorgen arrives to tell Timmy that he still broke Da Rules despite saving the world, Timmy hits him with the forget-me-knob, Jorgen forgets what he was going to do before going back to scramble the fairies, courtesy of the good old status quo, and Mr. Crocker is taken to a mental hospital.

Even despite the way that the TV movie ends with a typical press of the reset button, that doesn’t change the fact that it left us with a lot of interesting details about the nature of the series and about its characters. This special was interesting and entertaining all the way through, we get to see some excellent character establishment for Timmy, Mr. Crocker played a fantastic role as a villain as the special proves how much of a threat he can really be, the humor was solid was usual, and all in all, this special just served a really great plot. While not perfect, this TV movie still served as the epitome for just about everything we could ever ask for in a television special as big as this. Oh wow, I’ve spend a large amount of time talking about this TV movie, so I better congratulate myself with this magic muffin- ack! It’s still got that awful taste. Wait a minute…yes, I can feel the magic pulsing right through me! I wish….I wish I can finally move on to the next episode! Excellent.

 

30a. Sleepover and Over: After a heated argument between Chester and A.J. over Crash Nebula and the Crimson Chin, they start their own sleepover and if Timmy doesn’t show up to both, they won’t consider him as his friend anyone. And so this leaves Timmy to use Cosmo and Wanda’s help in order to be at two places at once. Because both Chester and A.J.’s sleepovers fell flat, Timmy devises a plan to fix their friendship.

I can say right away that I really like the concept of this episode with Timmy having to go back and forth to keep his two friends satisfied. However, the real kicker is when Timmy starts to set up his plan to get his two friends to reconcile…only for him to wind up in deal danger. Shortly after, Chester and A.J. are left with no option than to work together in order to save their friend in a cat suit. Like so, the three friends are reunited and continue the sleepover at Timmy’s treehouse. Besides that though, the episode ends on a bit of a haphazard note when Timmy shows off a feature of his cat suit that causes the junkyard dogs to come back while Cosmo and Wanda witness Jimmy the cat losing 3 of his lives before he scratches up Cosmo.

I still think it’s a great episode with some very decent jokes like the parental block bit, and the gag with Cosmo losing his friends named after Jimmy Neutron characters (except Jimmy) in such little time. Hopefully the rest of you really liked this segment, ‘cuz I’d be insulted if you didn’t. Great.

 

30b. Mother Nature: Mrs. Turner becomes Dimmsdale’s new weather forecaster. However, any weather forecaster who gets it wrong is run out of town by an angry mob, so Timmy wishes that his mom was always right about the weather. Unfortunately, Mrs. Turner becomes a celebrity and doesn’t have enough time to spend at home with Timmy and his dad, so Timmy decides to convince her to quit, but the only way for Mrs. Turner to cut her contract is to get herself fired or run out by an angry mob, so she then predicts a series of natural disasters that end up being true in due to Timmy’s wish.

It’s a charming enough episode while it has some hit or miss jokes. Some moments that got a kick out of me was the one line from Mr. Turner, where he tells Timmy that he had a 15 second period of not knowing where he was, and then there was the reactions Timmy had towards his dad’s mom puppet. The episode ends on a bittersweet note as Timmy and his mom are enjoying a fishing trip while Timmy’s dad is being chased by an angry mob, due to his mom puppet. There isn’t much else for me to say, but just to reiterate, I found this a simple and charming enough episode. Good.

 

31a. The Crimson Chin Meets Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad!: Timmy returns to his messy room after fighting crime in the comic book world. However, the Nega-Chin escaped from the other world and starts wreaking havoc in Dimmsdale alongside the Chin’s other arch-enemies (of course, not before having Cosmo and Wanda set some certain conditions). Timmy wishes that his parents were once again Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad in order to defeat the Nega-Chin, his cronies, and send him back to the comic book world.

For starters, I liked how the series introduces us to Nega-Chin. Nega-Chin himself served as an interesting villain, let alone an interesting character much like the Crimson Chin. The fight scenes in the episode also had me sold even after Nega-Chin gets rid of MM&DD’s powers with nega-vision. Of course, from there, Timmy wishes for a deus ex machina, but I can even pass that up because the different generational versions of the Crimson Chin were interesting, and the fight scenes with them were just as amusing to watch. If there’s one good joke I can acknowledge from this episode, it’s this particular dialogue quote: “You can’t swear, only the super-edgy 1985 Crimson Chin can swear!” “Yeah, and I got cancelled for it!” In the end, this is a pretty good episode, but it isn’t too good, so you don’t need to shield your eyes. Good.

 

31b. Engine Blocked: Mr. Turner is experiencing a mid-life crisis and so he and his son set out to find something to make him feel young again. Mr. Turner eventually takes notice of a real Striker Z being put up for sale by Vicky. Unfortunately for Timmy, his dad has become obsessive over his new car that he’s not giving himself any time to spend with Timmy. This prompts for Timmy to then wish that he was the Striker Z, in addition to being able to talk, drive himself, and come assisted with his two fairies in the form of two fuzzy dice. Meanwhile, Vicky sets out to steal back the car so that she can strike it rich with Doug Dimmadome.

This is yet another very dimma-decent episode in my eyes. There are some moments where I find myself appreciating Mr. Turner’s character and other times where I dimma-don’t. For the majority of the episode, Timmy wants to spend some time with his dimma-dad, only for him to dimma-do whatever chores he needs to dimma-do, and only for him to obsess over his Striker Z as he couldn’t let Timmy ride in it. The plot was fairly tedious at first, but the rest of the episode really makes up for that, preferably near the end where Mr. Turner comes to rescue his Striker Z as he’s only concerned about the thought of Timmy being in the trunk. Shortly after, Mr. Turner tells Timmy that he couldn’t let him ride in it because it’s a dimma-dangerous, screaming metal death-trap.

The episode ends pleasantly so with Timmy playing catch with Mr. Turner like he wanted to since the start of the episode. Some other dimma-delights from this episode include Doug Dimmadome, of course, along with the wacky chase scene at the climax in general. That should sum up all my thoughts on the segment pretty nicely. Well, now my work here is dimma-done. Good.

 

32a. Most Wanted Wish: Timmy is tired of being completely left out at school and at home, so he wishes that everyone would want him. However, when every other fairy in Fairy World want Timmy to be their godchild and are willing to fight over him in a Butt-Kicking Fairy Texas Cage Match, courtesy of Jorgen’s rules. Cosmo and Wanda have to win the match in order to keep Timmy as their godchild.

…Oh, was I supposed to review this episode? I wanted Timmy to review this one! This is one of few of those past episodes from the first half of the series that I didn’t think has aged so well. The main premise is a bit of a spirit-breaker when it comes down to the fact that Timmy feels so unwanted in his life, even by his parents. Although, this isn’t dreadful compared to…that one episode I won’t cover until two more seasons. And then there’s the end in which Timmy decides that after facing the risk of losing his fairies in a Texas cage match, he now feels that he’s better off being ignored. …I mean, the moral that this episode is going for is that being wanted all the time has its quirks and its setbacks as the wish didn’t fall apart until Timmy appeared to be at the top of FBI’s most wanted and the whole predicament with Jorgen setting up himself, Cosmo, Wanda, and every other fairy in a Texas cage match.

There’s more to the end with Timmy wishing that was ignored, which causes for Cosmo and Wanda to be distanced away from him all the way in France, where they end up being served as a meal. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. And even after all that Timmy has gone through to make himself realize that he’s tired of being wanted all the time and would rather be ignored most of the time, I can’t help but shake the feeling about the way the episode starts by establishing how unwanted Timmy is, alongside with the tasteless running gag of the characters obsessing over a single rock.

A small amount of the jokes did work for me, like Timmy and Cosmo scoffing about how Wanda thought an escape pod to Texas and back to Timmy’s room was a dumb wish, and the “you shot me in the ear!” line. This episode is definitely not so contemptible, but I still dont this to be a very enjoyable episode. Meh.

 

32b. This Is Your Wish: Mama Cosma invites his son Cosmo, including Timmy and Wanda, to a fancy dinner. As it turns out, Cosmo is put in a game show hosted by Billy Crystal Ball and it reflects on Cosmo’s dumbest and reckless moments from his past. These past disasters even put Cosmo’s job as Timmy’s godparent in jeopardy as the live audience have to vote either to let Timmy keep his godparent or for Cosmo to move back with Mama Cosma.

From my experience in watching this episode, it gets more interesting the more that the plot progresses. It’s hard to find Cosmo’s past moments as funny, from Cosmo’s childhood to Cosmo’s time in the Fairy Academy with Jorgen’s turmoil from losing all his 5 stars worth of honor. One moment I did enjoy though, was when Wanda tries to show the audience a clip of Cosmo being a good fairy by trying to save Timmy’s life, and hers. That moment in particular involved Wanda and Mama Cosma fighting over the footage, pausing it and un-pausing it until the end of the clip reveals that one small section of the train tracks is separate from the rest of the tracks because it’s in quicksand – that in which I thought was a fairly subtle joke. Other than, I also liked this particular line: “See? Cosmo actually saved us from a horrible, cliché death.”

The rest of the episode was enough to be savored with an acceptable enough ranking from me, as Timmy then wishes that he had some clips to show the audience, specifically those that show why Cosmo does a good job as a godparent: he makes him laugh, and he’s always around to put him in high spirits despite whatever misfortunes he causes. The audience ultimately decides to let Timmy keep his fairy when they realize that Cosmo would be so much more of a nuisance if he stayed in Fairy World for the rest of his life. Even Mama Cosma voted to allow Cosmo to stay with Timmy and Wanda, if it means that Cosmo would continue to inadvertently torture Wanda. Then, of course, the episode ends with Cosmo flunking Timmy’s wish to return home by conjuring back his three-headed, fire-breathing dragon, Snowball.

At the end of the day, this was a very charming episode, but there were just so many other endearing episodes that stroke more of a chord on me, so I’m feeling a strong 7 out of 10 for this episode. And before I move on to the next episode, I’m feeling like wrapping it up with a three-headed, fire-breathing hydra, because I’m weird like that. *Snowball appears out of thin-air* Good.

 

33a. Beddy Bye: Because Timmy is tired of missing out on all the cool stuff that happens late at night, he wishes that everyone didn’t have to sleep. Timmy eventually learns the hard way about how important sleep is when Cosmo and Wanda start acting all cranky. Timmy must come to the help of the Sandman, a.k.a. the Mattress King, in order to fix the wish.

This is the type of episode in which you know almost everything that happens all the way through. The presence of the Sandman’s character and the entire sequence with Timmy seeing what the world’s like late at night prevented the plot from feeling any thinner while still being seriously predictable. The moral is just really straightforward: we all need sleep or the world would be imbalanced. There are some moments from Cosmo and Wanda that I liked, but some moments from them were also pretty obnoxious, even if understandably so. This episode is just a hard “meh.” What especially doesn’t help in bringing up my rank is that Nickelodeon would use to play this episode to death. There’s nothing else for me to add to this, so blah, blah, blah, your needs. …Wait; was that joke already been used? Meh.

 

33b. The Grass is Greener: Mr. Turner is upset that the Dinklebergs have nicer things than they do, but he and Mrs. Turner admit that they wouldn’t ever trade their son for the things that the Dinklebergs have. Timmy overhears their conversation and mishears it, thinking that they’re better off without him. Timmy tells his fairies that he’s running away from home, and so they poof him to a carnival. Later on, Timmy wishes to be a carnie, a good one at that. Afterwards, Timmy appears to enjoy the life of a carnie…that is until the other carnies want to give him a piece of their mind.

And now I’ve come across a segment that’s far, FAR better than the last one. Timmy thinks his parents are better off without him so he decides to run away from home before landing himself at a carnival, before he learns the hard way that he shouldn’t have run away. The plot is very simple but it’s also very efficient once you delve into it more. What makes this episode feel so important to me is that there aren’t any particularly dumb moments, not even from Timmy’s parents, who are often cited to have some of the most moronic moments in the show in general. This episode carries out the notion that no matter how moronic Timmy’s parents can be at times, they’ll always love their son. I’ll go a little more into that in a moment, so how about I talk about the central plot with Timmy being a carnie?

Like I’ve already pointed out, part of the episode focuses on Timmy realizing on how good he is being a carnie to the point where he feels that he should stay with the carnival. This gives Cosmo and Wanda the impression that Timmy doesn’t need them. Afterwards, Timmy ends up in a huge pickle when the other carnies (one of which looks somewhat like Illumi’s Gittarackur disguise from Hunter x Hunter) chase him around, trying to take him out. That’s where the episode’s message starts beginning to get its point across when Timmy finds himself in danger. As the chase scene goes on, Timmy gets in a pink and green hot balloon until it crash lands all the way back to the Turners’ household. As Timmy sees himself back home, he also sees his parents from the window, crying. From there, Timmy realizes that his parents don’t think they’re better off without him, they really miss him.

Right on cue, the carnies appear right in front of Timmy, telling him his parents do miss him, before Cosmo and Wanda reappear to tell Timmy that the entire carnival stint was, of course, a setup to teach him an important lesson and that Timmy was never really in any danger as they were disguised as pink and green objects the whole time they were gone. On top of that, all the carnies turned out to be fairies (except the alligator) and that other godkids with their godparents have turned up to their domain, whenever they felt like running away from home. So afterwards, Timmy comes back inside his house to face his parents, both are really happy to see him again, safe and all. Of course, he’s grounded for running away, but Timmy is happy enough to be with his parents again and that Mr. Turner gets to rub it in Mr. Dinkleberg’s face that the Dinklebergs don’t have a son like he does…and that brings me to address one noteworthy line from the show in general…                                                                                           

“We have something that the Dinklebergs don’t have – and that’s you.” It was something along the lines of that, but anyhow, that’s hands down of the best lines from the series in a general sense, as it not only cements the point that I made about Timmy’s parents a few lines ago, but the fact that the message was leading up to that really makes up for how predictable the plot can be. It’s predictable, and the moral is really straightforward too, but unlike “Beddy Bye,” the message manages to really hit hard. Overall, I loved this episode because of the sentiments that I can attain from it. This episode is so good to the point where it doesn’t need rabies to taste any better. Excellent.

 

34a. The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker!: It’s March 15th, which is the day where Mr. Crocker is usually at his worst. After a day’s worth of hard discipline from Crocker, Timmy wonders what made Mr. Crocker feel so upset, so he uses his Time Scooter to go back to a single decade until he lands at Crocker’s childhood, which was the last time that he ever felt happy in his life. Timmy aims to undo the events culminating into the worst day of Crocker’s life…but not before he eventually learns that Crocker not only used to have fairy godparents, but Cosmo and Wanda used to be Crocker’s fairies.

This episode is a guaranteed classic, just to say it right off the bat. A major part of why I really appreciated this episode has to do with the fact that this is more than just a character establishment episode for Crocker. This is a major developmental episode for the world and characters of the series itself. While Crocker is the central focus of this episode, this episode does a really fine job establishing his character. Take note of when I talked about “Abra Catastrophe!” with Crocker proving himself to be a legitimate threat as a villain. While this 22-minute special aired before the television movie, pretend that you were watching these episodes by production order. You’d be wondering exactly why Crocker is so obsessed with fairies in the first place, why he wants to prove the existence of fairies, and why he would want to harness the fairies’ magic for pure evil. This episode has that answer to all those questions…except maybe that last one.

Given the nature of this episode, you do not just end up feeling sympathetic for Crocker, you find yourself feeling really, really, really bad for Crocker near the end of the episode, when it comes right down to exactly why March 15th was the worst day of his life: he ends up losing his fairies and getting his memories erased about fairies (that is until he finds the tracking device that Timmy left in that timeframe) when Cosmo foolishly reveals himself as a fairy, and he ends up getting humiliated in front of a crowd of Dimmsdale citizens ridden with amnesia. It’s harsh especially considering that Crocker was to be honored for saving another kid’s life the day before (Timmy’s dad as a kid, to specify).

I also just really appreciate the whole concept about Timmy trying to go back in time to see what went wrong with Crocker’s life, not just because of his character establishment, but also because we get to see some backstory from every other character, including Cosmo and Wanda, who appear to have not remembered so much of what happened on March 15th 1972: a foreshadowing moment that leads up to the reveal of Cosmo and Wanda being Crocker’s fairies that long ago, and the reveal that they don’t remember having been Crocker’s fairies at all or anything much about the worst day of Crocker’s life due to using the forgeticine on their own selves. Then we also get some more background on Timmy’s parents, who become madly in love with each other after Mrs. Turner got dumped by Sheldon Dinkleberg. We get to learn how and why Chet Ubetcha is so short, and we learn that Principal Waxelplax used to have a crush on Crocker. And mind you, this all took place during the 80’s.

There is a lot of interesting ground to cover from this very well-fleshed-out special. There’s not one worthless moment from it, and you know what else? This is the kind of episode that is perfect in so many ways that it is currently my biggest contender for the best of the season. Excellent.

 

35a. Kung Timmy: Timmy wishes that he had the powers of kung-fu in order to take back everything that he and his parents lost to Francis (including their house). After Timmy tells Francis that he’s ready for a challenge, Francis reveals that he is an expert at martial arts.

We have now come across an episode with Francis as the central antagonist (compared to his side-role as an antagonist in “Timvisible”), and while I consider this a very good example of those type of FOP episodes, “Kung Timmy” also happens to be a notoriously well-loved episode from most fans across the board. I’d say it’s usually due to Tootie’s presence, but this one of many episodes where its heart really shows. I wouldn’t say that this is a huge favorite, but it’s still definitely one of S3’s finest efforts.

The episode starts off simple with Francis pounding Timmy for his lunch money, until Timmy’s dad decides to intervene and ends up losing his car and the deed to the house, resulting in Timmy and his parents to live inside the treehouse. The next day, Timmy’s dad talks his son into fighting his own battles and gives him a kung fu book, which contains a very important detail regarding the episode’s moral with the number one rule in kung fu being that it must be used as means of defense and never for vengeance. My appreciation for this episode doesn’t really kick in until the scene with Timmy fighting Francis, in which Francis threatens to pound Tootie. Timmy’s kung fu powers now start working again when he vows that he won’t let Francis hurt Tootie, as he’s fighting Francis defensively.

That scene right there can easily be considered as one of the series’ boldest moments. Afterwards, Timmy defeats Francis and gets everything back and returns his kindness to Tootie by telling her that his restraining order has expired. The episode’s strongest point is its characters, but I’ll admit that I can’t rank this episode any higher than I can because there are few memorable lines and jokes. Still though, it’s a charming episode and a darn solid one too. Great.

 

35b. Which Witch is Which?: Timmy goes back in time in order to figure out who exactly founded Dimmsdale after a dispute with A.J. Timmy seeks to prove that Dale Dimm founded the city, but gets sidetracked by Not-Mr. Crocker, Alden Bitterroot, who is on a crazy witch hunt.

Before I say anything about the episode, I thought I’d give you guys a solid reminder that there’s still a lot more time travel-centered episodes where that came from. To me, this is just a pretty standard yet entertaining episode. There’s not much I can write home to besides the creative plot and the satire of the Salems witch hunt period. This episode also features an unusual plot twist with Alden Bitterroot being a witch the whole time. As for the episode’s jokes, one that I thought was pretty funny was this line: “If he drowns, he be’th human, if he survives, HE IS A WITCH!” Dale Dimm was pretty annoying, but his character doesn’t do so much to bring down my final ranking.

This is the type of episode that just passes you by, but hey, I can assure you that you’ll get something more from this than, say “Hail to the Chief” or “Beddy Bye.” Good.

 

36a. Pipe Down!: After several times that Timmy has to reconstruct his Lego model of the Eiffel Tower, AND after blowing it in a game of charades that resulted into the Dinklebergs taking Mr. Turner’s prized charades trophies and a series of tirades, Timmy decides that he’s had enough noise and wishes for the world to be completely silent. Unfortunately, a meteor is heading right towards Earth, and Timmy must do a game of charades with his fairies to wish for the sound to come back and wish for the meteor to be gone.

This episode is a pretty well-thought-out homage to silent era cartoons. What I really liked about the entire concept of the FOP world being silent is the instrumentation and it coincides with the episode’s humor and atmosphere very well. I also really liked the concept of playing charades to save the world from impeding doom. Undeniably one of the most humorous moments from the episode was Crocker’s silent spasm, as well as this line from Mr. Turner: “This is not a bulldozer! This is not a fudgesicle! And how are these Ghostbusters II!?”

The episode did have some flaws, I’ll admit it. I’m particularily talking about the end where Mr. Turner apologizes for snapping at Timmy, but still seems to care a lot about his trophies after Mr. Dinkleberg melted them down into a golden toilet seat, and when Timmy thinks that he won’t have to be involved in a game of charades again, Mr. Turner pressures him into playing “red light, green light” with him for the golden toilet seat before slamming his bedroom door shut and causing the finished Eiffel Tower model to collapse. It ends with Timmy yelling so loud that his clothes fly off (a running gag from the episode). To say the least, it’s not so satisfying to see that Timmy still can’t have what he’s always wanted from the start of the episode. It’s still an enjoyable episode regardless, so don’t think I’m making it out like if a meteor’s hurdling towards us, and speaking of which…(*spits out coffee in panic*) Good.

 

36b. The Big Scoop!: Chester and A.J. need to send in a fresh and intriguing story for the school newspaper, ‘cause if they don’t, they’re off the paper. Chester and A.J. find the opportunity to write a story about Timmy and how he got unexpectedly popular. However, after snooping into his permanent record, Chester and A.J. believe that Timmy somehow replaced his real parents with two other parents with pink and green hair and used his parents’ insurance money to own the internet and get all the cool kid stuff from the internet. The two friends are left to take pictures of Timmy setting up his party in his “mansion” before they could pitch their story to Mr. Birkenbake.

What’s this? Clearly, this isn’t your typical, ordinary episode of the Fairly OddParents where Timmy makes a wish that eventually backfires and all that jazz. I really must say that I like this change of pace by focusing on the perspective of a different character, or otherwise, A.J. and Chester. What’s also interesting is that this episode takes place during “A Wish Too Far.” For the most part though, Chester and A.J.’s storyline is the central focus of the episode, which I really appreciate. Of course, due to being the central focus of the episode, Chester and A.J. also provide some of the best jokes in the episode, with lines like “We will not silenced!” and “Chester McBadbat, ace photographer, is not part flying squirrel.”

The episode ends off with Chester and A.J. refusing to write a story about Timmy after accepting his honesty and apology about pretending to be popular. However, they decide to write a story about how they were trying to get a story out of Timmy, and because they let it slip that they snuck into Timmy’s permanent record, they land in detention. This is a very solid episode that takes on a different turn, and it’s such a shame that the series hasn’t done more episodes like this after a while where Timmy isn’t the central focus of an episode (Another episode that I know of that has the similar format is “Back to Norm,” and it’s all the way into Season 5). I stand by that this episode is one of the greats of this season that isn’t too far behind from my top 5. I will not be silenced! Great.

 

37a. Crime Wave: After having to take a bath, Timmy gives himself the time to read the latest Crimson Chin comic book…only to notice that it’s last month’s issue, so he wishes that he was at the comic store. Unfortunately, Timmy forgot to wish that he was fully dressed at the comic book store and he now has to return home without anyone seeing him naked. At the time, Chin has to face one of his arch-enemies, H2Olga, while caring for Beverly Boulevard’s baby niece. However, to the Chin’s dismay, the comic book is slipping into the bath water, which is making H2Olga’s powers stronger.

This is an episode that is…indeed interesting to say the least. One half of the episode’s jokes revolve around Timmy’s dilemma of being nude in public. The other half is reliant on toilet humor, and if you couldn’t tell by how the Chin’s subplot ends with H20lga inside of the baby niece’s diaper on top of being covered in defecation after her defeat…yeah, the juvenile nature of this episode really shows. That also happens to the biggest problem that I have with the episode as it can be too juvenile for its own good, whether it be the nudity jokes or the toilet humor. Regardless, there were some tidbits that I did enjoy, like the joke about Timmy being mistaken for Naked Lad, and the bit with Timmy’s parents getting into a water drinking contest, which also involved prune juice and high fiber O’s (sprinkled with chocolate laxatives).

While the little jokes save the episode from being awful in my eyes (aside from the fact that weren’t any particular moments from the episode that got on my bad side), I wouldn’t call this episode enjoyable, with some of the jokes being a little too childish beyond my years. Meh.

 

37b. Odd Ball: After his V-Cube suddenly gets blown to bits, Timmy has to get himself a job so he could buy a new one after his dad tells him that he can’t just wish it fixed. Timmy lands himself a job as a ball boy for the Dimmsdale Ballhogs after accidentally hitting the past one with a dart. Much to Timmy’s dismay, the Dimmsdale Ballhogs are the most selfish team of basketball players and refuse to share anything, including the ball. So Timmy then wishes that he was extremely tall and talented at basketball…until he gets enough money for a V-Cube. After the wish gets cancelled out, Timmy must convince the Ballhogs to work together as a team before they’re sent to Alaska.

Now this episode is more of a breath of fresh air. Once again, it has a very straightforward, yet clear moral about generosity. Of course, the selling point of the episode is its jokes, with the Ballhogs providing most of those memorable moments. I also really liked recurring blubber nuggets joke and some of the gags with freakishly tall Timmy. The end of the episode is satisfying episode to warrant a good enough ranking with the Ballhogs playing like a team and managing to win the game and Timmy learning his lesson about selflessness by giving his dad his brand-new V-Cube. In short, I really enjoyed this episode, but I don’t know if I enjoy these blubber nuggets more. …Hey! They’re chewy! Great.

 

38a. Where’s Wanda?: In this homage to the noir detective genre, Timmy and Cosmo must figure out who took Wanda, who suddenly disappeared during Dimmsdale Elementary’s parent-student night. With Francis, A.J., Trixie, and not Timmy’s dad as the main suspects, Timmy must solve the crime before Cosmo and Wanda’s fairy probation hearing.

When it comes to satirizing and making a homage to the noir detective genre, this episode really does its homework, and it provides us with a very solid plot and a good amount of solid jokes, including the Casablanca bit, Timmy’s dad really wanting to be a suspect, and the zany metaphors (i.e. “lost as Cosmo at a smart guy convention”), something you would normally expect from the nature of this episode. On the topic of the rest of the episode, one thing I can say is that I thought the reveal of Cosmo taking Wanda away (to her favorite place imaginable) felt pretty genuine, and I especially liked how it’s due to the fact that Cosmo was afraid that he was going to do something stupid that Wanda would end up serving level 13 probation.

The episode ends on a bittersweet note with Wanda having to serve level 14 probation with Mama Cosma while Timmy and Cosmo do some fishing inside of their black and white world. Overall, this is a very enjoyable episode, but if you think I’m giving it so much credit, just you wait until you see what thoughts I have to share about the next episode. …However, I can’t seem to remember it, so now I have to let my imagination run wild…and then it hit me like…like…when I finally thought of a good enough metaphor to compare my thoughts with. Imaginary Gary… Great.

 

38b. Imaginary Gary: Needing someone to play Surgeon General with, Timmy wishes for his imaginary friend Gary, from when he was five years old, to be real. It may seem cool at first, but after a single day whereas Gary wins over his family and his friends, all while making Timmy look lame in front of everyone, Timmy ultimately decides that he’s had enough and tries to wish him back into his mind. As it turns out, after Timmy ends up inside his own mind Gary, his imaginary friend appears to hold a grudge against Timmy for being kept inside a box with all of Timmy’s other 5 year old stuff and for being thrown aside after therapy.

I didn’t imagine that this would be one of the most beloved episodes of the series in my eyes. I can understand exactly why now looking back on this episode, because the episode made the concept of wishing for an imaginary friend to be real a lot more interesting than one would normally bargain for it to be. Imaginary Gary was a very memorable and entertaining character, whilst having some unusually interesting depth that involved his bitterness towards Timmy for leaving him behind for five years. On top of that, I thought that a lot of the good jokes came from Gary, such the “not cool” recurring gag, and the one bit with Cosmo joining in on Gary’s slow motion walk. However, the one joke that really got me the most was when Timmy blurted out his fantasy of a lifelong relationship with Trixie.

Story-wise, the episode follows a really creative and well-written plot. Gary provided a very interesting antagonist role, and to sum it all up, this episode is just…cool. Wrapping up my review as simple and short as this? Definitely not cool. Excellent.

 

39a. Chip Off the Old Chip: Timmy wants the leading role to Mr. Bickles’ musical production of Loose Cannon Cop to impress the leading lady, Trixie. Unfortunately, Timmy’s singing voice is awful, but thanks to television, Timmy gets the opportunity to wish for Chip Skylark’s voice. However, Timmy’s own voice is traded over to Chip, who ends up with a new job as a pizza delivery boy due to his new, awful voice.

Uuugh, considering that this episode is yet another type of plot in which Timmy tries to impress Trixie, you folks would already have the feeling that this episode would not bode well with me. Honestly, I’ve been feeling torn on whether I thought this was a legitimately bad episode from the series, or just an incredibly mediocre one. While doing these reviews, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really did not like this episode. Sure, it’s got a clear-cut moral about finding your own voice, or whatever it’s supposed to mean, but after so many times that Chip Skylark says it in his song, the point just feels so lost on me. As for the episode’s jokes, I don’t remember getting a kick out of one of them. I especially didn’t like the line where one of Timmy’s parents was like “Why couldn’t our son be Chip Skylark?” that just put a bad taste in my mouth.

As for some other scattered thoughts I have towards the episode, I can start by saying that I thought Chip’s subplot was seriously boring. The scene with the pledge of allegiance where Timmy, having Chip’s voice, getting Chip with Timmy’s voice to say “I wish I had Timmy Turner’s voice” before having their own voices re-exchanged while not raising any suspicions left me with a few questions. The end of the episode didn’t really make my thoughts any better as it just ends with Mr. Turner’s singing voice (with a jar of peanut butter on his head) proving to be so bad that Timmy’s hair and the disguised Cosmo and Wanda’s fur fall out.

This is such a worthless episode with little to no charm to make me change my mind about it. If any of you did like this episode, good for you, but is it really worth watching? Not on my watch. Scum.

 

39b. Snow Bound: Mr. Turner takes Timmy and Vicky to a ski resort, due to reports of an abominable snowman sighting. Timmy’s dad seeks to protect his wife and her “sick aunt,” while Timmy and Vicky are left alone to do some snowboarding (with Timmy being the snowboard) until they end up getting trapped inside a cave.

After suffering through another bad episode from S3, we move onto an episode that is a whole lot better. In fact, this ranks up as one of the best episodes of the season. I really appreciated Mr. Turner’s subplot, in which he tries to hunt down the abominable snowman to keep his wife and her sick, fake aunt safe. Mr. Turner also provides most of the episode’s funniest moments, namely the scene where he believes that the abominable snowman ate the entire 24th floor and the scene near the end where he tries to fend off the abdominal snowman.

But then you have the main plot between Timmy and Vicky where they end up trapped inside a cold cavern. That’s what really solidified my thoughts on the episode of being one of the best of the season. During their scenes, Timmy gets to see a different side of Vicky, where she feels so cold to the point where her fury fizzles out. Thereafter, we also get a scene where Timmy and Vicky have to hug each other for warmth, and there are only a few more heartwarming moments between Timmy and Vicky to go from there. I really found myself appreciated their character plot since it establishes that Timmy and Vicky can turn out to be good enough friends when they find themselves in a dangerous situation. Aside from the repeatedly mentioned moment in which Timmy and Vicky hugged, I also really liked the scene where Timmy drills back into the cold cave to rescue Vicky, and the scene with Timmy and Vicky snowboarding together.

The end of the episode also turned out to be pretty great. Granted, it didn’t result into any consequences, but still, I thought it was pleasant how Mr. Turner believes that his wife being surrounded with the other moms and boxes of pizzas meant that their “sick aunts” are cured and they are celebrating. The episode does end with Vicky being mad at Timmy for rescuing her from a hunk, causing another avalanche, and being mistaken as the abominable snowman by Mr. Turner. That particular moment is pretty funny when you reconsider a past joke about Mr. Turner believing that he can speak woman. Overall, this is an excellent episode, and it was a very good segment to cap off Season 3 with. Excellent.

 

And at last, that is every single Season 3 episode that I’ve had to cover. This episode had quite a lot of gems, but it also had a couple of duds, so I am torn on whether this season is better than the last, or if it ends up outmatched by it. My only way of knowing is if I do my finalized rankings for each season. Staying on-topic of Season 3, I can definitely say that it was a great like the past two seasons. Great.

 

Onward to my top 5, these aren’t episodes that are just good, as all these entries have garnered the “Excellent” rating:

5. Imaginary Gary: My merits towards the episode mostly go out to how very interesting of a villain that the episode made in Gary.

4. The Grass is Greener: For a basic plot outline, the writing makes it feel more distinct to a special degree.

3. Snow Bound: A lot of its jokes were on-point, but I most especially enjoyed the character development between Timmy and Vicky and how it establishes them without ruining anything about their respective characters.

2. Abra-Catastrophe!: For a television movie this long, I kinda felt surprised just how much justice this one managed to do in keeping itself entertaining while also providing some good, interesting depth.

1. The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker!: A compelling and entertaining character establishment episode all the way through. Enough said true believers.

 

And for the first time, I’m going to unveil a bottom 5. While there were two that I seriously loathed, the rest rank up as “Meh” episodes from my perspective:

5. Most Wanted Wish: it has a very muddled moral and while it has its moments, it still has its jokes that I'm not fond of, like the recurring joke where a rock is apparently more wanted and significant than Timmy.

4. Crime Wave: Nude humor and diaper humor are two things that just aren't for me.

3. Beddy Bye: While not an awful episode like the other two, I still thought this episode was really bland.

2. Love Struck!: When it's not simply a forgettable 22 minute segment, it's still a wishy-washy episode for undercutting the series' previous message about gender roles by way of generalizing the roles of each character.

1. Chip Off the Old Chip: There's little about this episode that I've enjoyed. Some of the jokes are painfully unfunny and a good chunk of the plot doesn't keep me invested, especially considering that it's another episode of the kind where Timmy tries to impress Trixie.

 

The rankings so far:

"Excellent:" 12 (14 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 28 (33 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 18 (19 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 3 (5 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 5

"Scum:" 2

"Irredeemable:" 0

 

It's been way too long since my last season analysis, so my review for Season 4 should come pretty soon.

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EVERY FAIRLY ODDPARENTS EPISODE REVIEWED: CHANNEL CHASERS

 

Originally posted: March 30th, 2019

 

I am so sorry that I’ve gone almost a whole year without posting a new review for the Fairly OddParents. I have several excuses for it and you guys can take either one: real life priorities, I’ve already felt burned out on them, my interest in writing reviews being cannibalized by trying to gain back my interest in writing for spin-offs, the OAXIS controversy during the summer of 2018, planning on another review series, or just flat out laziness. With the series entering its 18th anniversary (and of course, add that the past year has technically been the 20th anniversary of the franchise. Yeah, it’s hard to believe that FOP has been around for that long.), I say right now is definitely a good time to revitalize my FOP reviews. This is not my next long overdue review of a whole season, but this review will be on a particular special that speaks plenty of words. So, without further ado, I’m going to talk of my thoughts, piece by piece, on the dearly beloved series special: Channel Chasers…

 

It only feels suitable enough to give Channel Chasers a separate review from the rest of S4’s catalogue because there’s so much about it to cover and so that my long overdue Season 4 review wouldn’t be so much of a chore for me to write and for everyone else to read through. I don’t even need to ask if Channel Chasers is worth watching. If it isn’t already telling, this episode is considered to be an untouchable masterpiece for the whole franchise from fans including myself. Anyways, let’s start off this review of this made-for TV film from where it all begins, shall we?

It begins with a perspective that is set 20 years into the future – a dystopian-turned outlook of Dimmsdale, of course. The future versions of Timmy’s two best friends Chester and A.J. are on the run from a mysterious man dressed in all black (most of us know who that person turns out to be, but we’ll get to that later). They try to hold him up long enough until they can freely use the time belt to go back to the past, but both end up detained by him. Vicky, the leader of the bad future, retrieves the time travel belt and plans to use it for her own means, that in which being to prevent someone in the past from interfering with her reign before the scene cuts to Vicky in the present, preparing for another day worth of torturing Timmy. It’s a solid start to an otherwise solid TV movie. CC paints a very interesting picture of a bad future for Dimmsdale and it already delivers its jokes pretty well, like with the one small moment where Chester and A.J. blatantly destroy the Dimmsdale Elementary school building while being hunted down the masked man.

Anyways, as the plot folds into the present era, we are eventually presented with a news bulletin where Chet Ubetcha acknowledges the most recent trend in which kids are dangerously mimicking snippets from the popular Japanese-animated series Maho Mushi. Expected for an average kid with fairies like Timmy Turner, he has gotten so addicted to Maho Mushi to the point where he has his fairies help him wreak havoc downtown, like one of the characters of the show. It isn’t long until Timmy realizes one of the consequences of imitating things that he sees on TV in real life when his ship is about to crash. That is until he wishes to be inside a “Banzai Bubble,” but he unfortunately bounces out of control. His recklessness ruins his dad’s formerly clean office and destroys a fragile glass house that his mom was about to sell to Billy Joel (yes, THAT Billy Joel). After Timmy’s parents find out that Timmy was the source of their troubles and that he was imitating things from Maho Mushi, they discipline him from watching any more TV and have Vicky babysit him to make sure that he’s not watching any TV.

This is the point where Channel Chasers really starts to get interesting as Timmy, desperate to find a way out of his loophole, wishes for a magical remote control so that he can be inside the television world. While Timmy was goofing off in his adventures through the television world consisting of Jetsons, Rugrats, Fat Albert, and Johnny Quest sendups, Vicky lands Timmy into more trouble when Cosmo fails to cover for him, letting it slip that Timmy has his television on before she would then lie to Timmy’s parents that he has been displaying destructive behavior while they were gone to gloat to the Dinklebergs about the gifts that Vicky got for them. However, before Timmy’s parents would come back to discipline him once more, Timmy is given a talk from Cosmo and Wanda about growing up after he comes back from the television world with a weapon in the form of a giant bazooka.

Likewise with Abra-Catastrophe!, Channel Chasers had its own central theme to establish it. While Abra-Catastrophe! dealt with the concept of confidentially: when to or when not to give away the truth that you’ve been hiding (at least that’s what I assume). The central theme of Channel Chasers is, of course, growing up. It does a good job with its theme too, but I’ll get to that much later. After realizing that he will soon lose his fairies when he gets older and after being misunderstood by his parents and being belittled by Vicky one too many times, Timmy ultimately decides to run away into the television world by wishing for another magic remote, where people can stay the same age forever, so he won’t ever have to worry about losing his fairies. However, while trekking through the television world to find a place to stay in, a masked man, who has followed him after using the time belt to transport the present (the moment after Timmy caused collateral damage in Dimmsdale), goes into the television world to come after him, as he wants to talk with him.

For the rest of the way, the main plot of the special focuses on Timmy exploring the television world to find himself someplace that he could adjust himself in for the first half, while the second half of that plot would eventually focus on Timmy trying to stop Vicky from making her way to the Biographical Channel to become a dictator and…you guessed it, take over the world. What I like about the first half of the main event is that Timmy finds the downsides in living in a particular show, and that it involves more than just the thin line between childhood and adulthood. The Walnuts Chanukah special becomes unfit for Timmy when he realizes that adults can ruin things for kids there as well, the Meatflints becomes unfit for him too when he realizes how boring it would be to live in a world with little backgrounds, and Go-Go-Racer-doesn’t-become-fit-for-him-as-Timmy-would-be-scolded-by-an-adult-for-partaking-in-a-dangerous-race-despite-being-a-racer-in-a-world-of-dangerous-races, OOH! AHH! UH! Then there are a select few where Timmy had escape from due to the masked man chasing him around.

Outside of the main plot, Mr. and Mrs. Turner have a subplot where they confront Chester, A.J., and Vicky’s parents about how they feel about Vicky with no viable answers until Tootie secretly lets them in on her evidence of Vicky’s nasty behavior. While Timmy’s parents are written to be very gullible, the series likes to remind us every once in a while that they do care about their son deeply. The fact that their plot revolves around their suspicions being raised about Vicky and that they go around trying to figure out about what happened to Timmy by first trying to understand the many times he tried to convince them that Vicky is an evil babysitter really makes their character establishment and subplot stand out. However, that is not the best kind of characterization that Channel Chasers has to offer…

What I really liked was the character dynamic between Timmy and the masked man who would eventually be revealed as his future adult self. If you remember that Timmy spends most of his character arc feeling disillusioned by adulthood, you’ll find his actions from when meeting future Timmy face to face as justifiable. As they continue to trek through the television world to try and stop Vicky, you’ll easily notice them bonding with each other not too long after as Timmy would realize that they are the same person no matter if he’s all grown up.

Continuing on with explaining the details of Channel Chasers’ plot, after Timmy makes his way into the world of Blackbird and Sparrow, he meets up with his future self again before he reveals himself and explains to him why he’s been chasing after him. Future Timmy tells Timmy that Vicky took over the world after she got her hands on a magic remote and made her way to the Dictator Week showing on the Biographical Channel. He endured Vicky’s tyranny by earning her trust so that he can get his hands on the time belt and travel back to the past without raising suspicions from her. After Vicky’s confrontation with Timmy and after telling him that she’s going to Dictator Week, Timmy decides to joins forces with his future self to stop the evil babysitter and save the future.

However, before Timmy’s group could reach Vicky at Maho Mushi, she destroys future Timmy’s time travel belt, ushering into a genuinely sad moment between him and present Timmy where Timmy’s future self is forced to leave the past and will exist as something new after he changes the future. Afterwards, the television film reaches its ultimatum where Timmy and Vicky have to fight each other in the world of Maho Mushi, which is easily one of the most exciting segments from the whole film. Things get more intense when Timmy, finding himself at an impasse, ultimately decides that he needs to remove the magic from the remotes in order to defeat Vicky. Do to that though, he has to, of course…grow up until he no longer recognizes Cosmo and Wanda. As a result of this, the fairy cab comes to slowly and forcibly drag the two fairies into the cab. With enough force to change Timmy back to his original age, Timmy ejects Vicky out of the television world before using the two magic remotes to stop the fairy cab from taking his fairies and reassuring the driver that he isn’t “all grown up.”

After Timmy has pummeled Vicky for good, he is left wandering around the nexus of the television world, as there was one more loose end that the television film needed to tie up. In Doug Dimmadome’s broadcasting station, Timmy’s parents deliver him a message broadcast on every single channel to tell him that they are sorry for their huge misunderstanding and they love him. This transcends into an incredibly heartwarming moment where Timmy exits the TV dimension to reunite with his parents. However…the special doesn’t end there as Vicky is in hot water now that the Turners have found out about her true behavior, thus transcending into one of the most satisfying moments from the whole franchise. After Timmy returns to the real world, his parents lash out at Vicky for how he has treated their son all that time before firing her as his babysitter. Feeling like he has seen it all, however, Timmy decides to use the magic remotes one last time to pause the very moment to tell Cosmo and Wanda that while Vicky is the main reason why he has fairy godparents, he wouldn’t be miserable and would then give them up if she hadn’t stuck around. Afterwards, Timmy has Cosmo and Wanda undo his magic remote wish and also wishes that everyone besides him and his fairies had forgotten everything leading up to the events of Channel Chasers had ever happened.

Likewise with Abra-Catastrophe!, the television film ends with the press of a reset button, but it does so in a very subtle way: it wrote a hypothetical ending for the entire series. I will go more into detail on that, but before I do, let’s talk about the very end of the television film. Timmy, coming into terms with having to grow up, buries a time capsule, with a photograph that Vicky took of him before running away to the television world (and given that almost all the events of Channel Chasers had been erased by Timmy’s wish, this is an apparent plot hole that I thought I’d point out), in his backyard for his future self to eventually rediscover before vowing that he will not make the same mistakes that his parents made. However, after Timmy’s kids Tommy and Tammy unearthed his time capsule years later, his adult self appears to have forgotten completely about his former godparents and everything that had happened over the course of the television film to boot. On top of that, and on cue with one of the TV film’s jokes, future Timmy appears to also have made some of the same mistakes that his parents made by leaving his kids with an evil, robot babysitter that looks all too familiar to Vicky. In the consequence of having an evil babysitter, Cosmo and Wanda are revealed to now be Tommy and Tammy’s godparents, signaling the end of the whole television film.

So overall, Channel Chasers sets as one of the best examples of writing a made-for television movie. Even though Fairly OddParents kept going for much longer, Channel Chasers really felt like a natural ending for the whole series, and what really sucks about the series’ continuity is that it resulted in the live action films and certain episodes rewriting some key figures about the show that were made logical by the events of Channel Chasers. By the end of the television film, we see Timmy coming into terms with the fact that he will grow up and that he will have to let go of his godparents later on while yet things will turn out better for him then because when he gets older, he won’t have to deal with Vicky anymore and he won’t be miserable anymore as well. When the show continued on, Timmy became more and more attached to his fairies and its team of writers, as it changed overtime, created loopholes around the concept of Timmy having to give up his fairies when he grows up, cutting loose of the already-effective message about growing up that Channel Chasers did so much to establish in the process.

Enough of that, now let’s move on to one of the central features of the television movie: the pop culture references. Channel Chasers essentially feels like a love letter to television as a whole and it really shows. Each segment of the television universe has their own distinct identity to make them so memorable and enjoyable. Maho Mushi, for instance, has a fight scene between Timmy and Vicky so intriguing that it keeps your attention to the screen. What really makes these pop culture choices stand out is that, while they are enough to be seen as clever nods from adult viewers, a lot of the references are also recognizable enough for the target audience to get. Granted, a major chunk of these sendups are based on other animated television shows.

While the humor is on-point like every other well-written episode of the show, the most humorous moments come from the television worlds. Among those highlights include particular, general anime tropes being played in an over-the-top fashion in the Go Go Racer segment, Cosmo and Wanda acknowledging the cartoon violence in the Ted & Jimmy segment, and the Scooby-Doo clone in the Snooper Dog and the Clue Crew segment just basically being an impersonation of Snoop Dogg. Also, while I’m still on-topic with the established television universe, call me weird when I say that I would’ve liked to see how the Dictator Week universe would’ve panned out. Like, what if the final showdown didn’t entirely take place in Maho Mushi? What kind of story would Dictator Week tell outside of serving as the catalyst to Vicky’s world domination? I mean, I’m not complaining about how it is buried beneath everything else in the television film’s plot. Channel Chasers is already perfect as it is.

In fact, perfect is the best way to define Channel Chasers. I should have said everything that I needed to say about this TV movie, so I’ll end my thoughts right here. No matter how many times that the franchise has dug itself out of its grave, Channel Chasers will always hold a special place for me as the true ending to the series. There’s nothing else that I need to say to justify why this episode is the most cherished by fans. Excellent

 

That is it for my commentary on Channel Chasers. With that out of the way, I can now focus on writing up my thoughts on every other S4 episode, which I guarantee will be out in June.

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After leaving this project on a fence for such a long while, and thinking about what I should do with it now, I've ultimately decided what I should do. Due to my lack of motivation to continue it, which had especially transpired from Butch's recent attitude, which involves a combination of his inflated ego, his poor communication with his critics, & his own fans, his detestable Christian beliefs (specifically his and his wife's claims that autism is a curable disease that God can cure, on top of neurological disorders like bipolar and PTSD) and as well as his poor handling with his debacle with an artist named Kuro, all while blocking people on Twitter left and right, refusing to admit he has made mistakes and to hold himself accountable for them...it pains for me to say that that it's best that I put Old Yeller down for now.

Butch's recent attitude has been hitting me hard, not because I feel offended by his views or his behavior in general, but because I don't see much of a point now to give him any ounce of support when he advocates for "curing autism" and therefore doesn't support a community of people that want to be understood for their neurological difference, and not a neurological illness - a community of people that I, myself, am part of. It makes me feel sick to my stomach that the guy who created two animated shows I grew up watching and loving (FOP and DP), would be like this.

It should also be telling that I haven't made a new season review since April of 2018, aside from a full-fledged review of Channel Chasers last year. With the discontinuation of this project, I can at least focus on other, more important things than have to worry about finishing the next review. Now, don't think of this project discontinuation as a way of me saying like I hate FOP now. I still hold FOP close to me as I tend to separate the art from the artist, but when my moral compass tells me that I wouldn't feel comfortable continuing this review project like normal even during Butch's current disposition, as I'd feel like it would be giving Butch some means of support, I knew what what would be best for this project.

Also, for those who were wondering what would become of my other reviewing project that I was keeping secret, if I continued my FOP review project, I would've also originally started doing one for Butch's other series, Danny Phantom. For reasons already made clear, I now can't make plans for that anymore.

However, I at least have a compromise in mind to make up for this project's discontinuation. Once a month, I'll at least share my ratings for every episode per season, along with my rating for the particular season. There will be no commentary whatsoever when I post the ratings/rankings, but I'll be open to questions on certain episodes if anyone has some. But for now, my original plans for this project are officially done.

Peace out, and Chemist Bob says autism rights.

Edited by Steel Sponge
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Every episode of Fairly OddParents Season 4 reviewed rated:

Spoiler

 

40a: Miss Dimmsdale - Great
40b: Mind Over Magic - Good
41: Shelf Life - Great
42a: Hard Copy - Great
42b: Parent Hoods - Great
43a: Lights...Camera...Adam! - Okay
43b: A Bad Case of Diary-Uh! - Scum
44a: Baby Face - Meh
44b: Mr. Right! - Meh
45a: Vicky Loses Her Icky - Good
45b: Pixies Inc. - Great
46a: The Odd Couple - Meh
46b: Class Clown - Okay
47: The Big Superhero Wish! - Great
48a: Power Pals! - Good
48b: Emotion Commotion! - Great
49a: Fairy Friends & Neighbors! - Meh
49b: Just the Two of Us! - Okay
50a: Who's Your Daddy? - Great 
50b: Homewrecker - Good
51a: New Squid In Town! - Great
51b: Wish Fixers - Good
52a: Truth or Cosmoquences - Great
52b: Beach Bummed! - Good
53-55: Channel Chasers - Excellent
56a: Catman Meets the Crimson Chin - Okay
56b: Genie Meanie Minie Mo - Great
57-58: School's Out!: The Musical - Excellent
Special: The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour - Excellent

Top 5:

5. Parent Hoods
4. Shelf Life
3. The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour
2. School's Out!: The Musical
1. Channel Chasers

Bottom 5:

5. Fairy Friends & Neighbors!
4. The Odd Couple
3. Baby Face
2. Mr. Right!
1. A Bad Case of Diary-Uh!

Full season rating: Great season
 

Rankings up to this point:

"Excellent:" 15 (17 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 39 (44 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 24 (25 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 7 (9 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 9

"Scum:" 3

"Irredeemable:" 0

 

Edited by Steel Sponge
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Every episode of The Fairly OddParents Season 5 rated:

Spoiler

 

59a. Nega-Timmy - Great
59b. Love at First Height - Great
60a. You Doo - Meh
60b. Just Desserts - Okay
61a. Go West, Young Man! - Good
61b. Birthday Wish! - Great
62a. Blondas Have More Fun! - Good
62b. Five Days of F.L.A.R.G. - Great
63a. Timmy's 2-D House of Horror - Scum
63b. It's a Wishful Life - Irredeemable
64a. Escape from Unwish Island - Great
64b. The Gland Plan - Good
65a. Back to Norm - Excellent
65b. Teeth for Two - Meh
66a. Hassle in the Castle - Great 
66b. Remy Rides Again - Great
67a. Talkin' Trash - Good
67b. Timmy TV - Great
68a. The Masked Magician - Great
68b. The Big Bash - Meh
69. Crash Nebula - Okay
70a. Mooooving Day - Okay
70b. Big Wanda - Great
71a. Oh, Brother! - Okay
71b. What's the Difference? - Great
72a. Smart Attack! - Great
72b. Operation F.U.N. - Great
73a. Something's Fishy! - Good
73b. Presto Change-O - Good
74a. The Good Old Days! - Great
74b. Future Lost! - Great
75-76. Fairy Idol - Great
77a. Timmy the Barbarian! - Great
77b. No Substitute for Crazy! - Great
SP1. The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 2: When Nerds Collide! - Great
SP2. The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3: The Jerkinators! - Scum


Top 5:
5. Escape from Unwish Island
4. Fairy Idol
3. The Good Old Days!
2. Love at First Height
1. Back to Norm

Bottom 5:
5. You Doo
4. The Big Bash
3. Timmy's 2-D House of Horror
2. The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3: The Jerkinators!
1. It's a Wishful Life

Full season rating: Great season

 

Rankings up to this point:

"Excellent:" 16 (18 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 58 (63 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 30 (31 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 11 (13 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 12

"Scum:" 5

"Irredeemable:" 1

 

I've made it up to the halfway point. Season 6 ratings will be revealed later next month. Meanwhile, my charts for my season rankings will be revealed shortly in the next post.

Edited by Steel Sponge
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pq9M8G2fZXoWOcdU8e_PhE-ATHa21toj/view?usp=sharing

For those who'd like to see a statistical look on how I've rated the seasons as a whole, I've got a spreadsheet for it. Apologies for some of the formatting issues within the preview (I'd also very much suggest using the zoom in feature to look at each sheet better). They aren't present on my original Excel doc. Google Drive's fault, not mine.

Edited by Steel Sponge
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Every episode of The Fairly OddParents season 6 rated:

Spoiler

 

81-82. Fairly Odd Baby - Great
83a. Mission Responsible - Good
83b. Hairicane - Meh
84a. Open Wide and Say Aaagh! - Meh
84b. Odd Pirates - Okay
85. The Fairly Oddlympics - Okay
86a. Odd Squad - Okay
86b. For Emergencies Only - Great
87a. Cheese & Crockers - Okay
87b. Land Before Timmy - Okay
88a. King Chang - Good
88b. The End of the Universe-ity - Good
89a. Sooper Poof - Great
89b. Wishing Well - Good
90a. Wishy Washy - Scum
90b. Poof's Playdate - Great
91. Merry Wishmas - Meh
92a. Vicky Gets Fired - Scum
92b. Chindred Spirits - Scum
93a. 9 Lives! - Meh
93b. Dread 'N' Breakfast - Meh
94a. Birthday Bashed! - Okay
94b. Momnipresent - Good
95-96. Wishology! - The Big Beginning - Great
97-98. Wishology! - The Exciting Middle Part - Great
99-100. Wishology! - The Final Ending - Okay

 

Top 5:
5. Fairly Odd Baby
4. Poof's Playdate
3. For Emergencies Only
2. Wishology! - The Exciting Middle Part
1. Wishology! - The Big Beginning

Bottom 5:
5. Merry Wishmas
4. 9 Lives!
3. Wishy Washy
2. Chindred Spirits
1. Vicky Gets Fired

Full season rating: Okay season

 

Rankings up to this point:

"Excellent:" 16 (18 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 64 (69 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 35 (36 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 18 (20 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 17

"Scum:" 8

"Irredeemable:" 1

 

Updated chart: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nM5dyT0IP5ThhT0PPs3KKsXl_OeFKF1G/view?usp=sharing

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Every episode of Fairly OddParents season 7 rated:

Spoiler

 

101. Anti-Poof - Scum
102a. Add-a-Dad - Good
102b. Squirrely Puffs - Meh
103a. Micecapades - Okay
103b. Formula for Disaster - Meh
104a. Bad Heir Day - Great
104b. Freaks & Geeks - Scum
105a. Fly Boy - Okay
105b. Temporary Fairy - Okay
106a. Crocker Shocker - Scum
106b. Super Zero - Good
107a. Dadbra-Cadabra - Okay
107b. Timmy Turnip - Meh
108a. One Man Banned - Irredeemable
108b. Frenemy Mine - Good
109a. Chicken Poofs - Great
109b. Stupid Cupid - Meh
110a. Double-Oh Schnozmo! - Okay
110b. Planet Poof - Scum
111a. The Boss of Me - Okay
111b. He Poofs He Scores - Okay
112a. Playdate of Doom - Meh
112b. Teacher's Pet - Okay
113a. Take and Fake - Scum
113b. Crocker of Gold - Meh
114a. Beach Blanket Bozos - Okay
114b. Poltergeeks - Excellent
115a. Old Man and the C- - Okay
115b. Balance of Flour - Great
116a. Food Fight - Great
116b. Please Don't Feed the Turners - Great
117a. Manic Mom-Day - Great
117b. Cosmo Rules - Okay
118a. Lights Out - Scum
118b. Dad Overboard - Meh
119a. Farm Pit - Irredeemable
119b. Crock Talk - Scum
120a. Spellementary School - Scum
120b. Operation: Dinkleberg - Great
 

Top 5:
5. Food Fight
4. Chicken Poofs
3. Balance of Flour
2. Bad Heir Day
1. Poltergeeks

Bottom 5:
5. Take and Fake
4. Crocker Shocker
3. Lights Out
2. Farm Pit
1. One Man Banned

Full season rating: Scum season

 

Rankings up to this point:

"Excellent:" 17 (19 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 71 (76 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 38 (39 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 29 (31 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 24

"Scum:" 16

"Irredeemable:" 3

 

Updated spreadsheet with pie charts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PFdcT2-ZdkQ7qZrR5Aq3-bsN5e4wNA3u/view?usp=sharing

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Every episode of Fairly OddParents season 8 rated:

Spoiler

121. Love Triangle - Good
122-123. Timmy's Secret Wish! - Scum
124. Invasion of the Dads - Great
125. When Losers Attack - Okay
126. Meet the OddParents - Great
 

Best episode: Meet the OddParents

Worst episode: Timmy's Secret Wish!

Full season rating: Okay season*

*Even though Timmy's Secret Wish! is one episode altogether, it has a double production code due to it being an hour-long special, so I've based my calculation mostly on that technicality to finalize the score. This was also due to S8's such short length. With both production codes judged as one, the score would've amounted S8 to be considered as a good season. 

 

Rankings up to this point:

"Excellent:" 17 (19 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 73 (78 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 39 (40 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 30 (32 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 24

"Scum:" 17

"Irredeemable:" 3


Updated spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FKgK5Fh_0nstQ1WGEMSvOv3Q5C4Dy1pV/view?usp=sharing

Edited by The Patient
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Every episode of Fairly OddParents season 9 rated:

Spoiler

 

127. Fairly OddPet - Meh
128a. Dinklescouts - Good
128b. I Dream of Cosmo - Meh
129a. Turner & Pooch - Scum
129b. Dumbbell Curve - Irredeemable
130a. The Terrible Twosome - Okay
130b. App Trap - Meh
131a. Force of Nature - Meh
131b. Viral Vidiots - Good
132. Scary GodCouple - Good
133a. Two and a Half Babies - Scum
133b. Anchors Away - Scum
134a. Finding Emo - Great
134b. Dust Busters - Great
135a. The Bored Identity - Great
135b. Country Clubbed - Scum
136a. Dog Gone - Okay (NOTE: I have yet to see this episode as I couldn't find a way to watch it online, so this episode is rated 'Okay' by default)
136b. Turner Back Time - Scum
137a. Cosmonopoly - Good
137b. Hero Hound - Meh
138a. A Boy and His Dog-Boy - Okay
138b. Crock Blocked - Good
139a. Weirdos on a Train - Okay
139b. Tons of TImmys - Good
140a. Let Sleeper Dogs Lie - Scum
140b. Cat-Astrophe - Meh
141a. Lame Ducks - Scum
141b. A Perfect Nightmare - Good
142a. Love at First Bark - Scum
142b. Desperate Without Housewives - Irredeemable
143a. Jerk of All Trades - Scum
143b. Snack Attack - Okay
144a. Turning Into Turner - Meh
144b. The Wand That Got Away - Good
145a. Stage Fright - Great
145b. Gone Flushin' - Scum
146. Fairly Old Parent - IRREDEEMABLE
147. School of Crock - Okay
148. Dimmsdale Tales - Good
149. The Past and the Furious - Scum
150. The Fairy Beginning - Okay
151. Fairly Odd Fairy Tales - Great
152. Man's Worst Friend - Okay

 

Top 5:
5. Stage Fright
4. The Bored Identity
3. Dust Busters
2. Finding Emo
1. Fairly Odd Fairy Tales

Bottom 5:
5. Love at First Bark
4. The Past and the Furious
3. Dumbbell Curve
2. Desperate Without Housewives
1. Fairly Old Parent

Full season ratingScum season

 

Rankings up to this point:

"Excellent:" 17 (19 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 78 (83 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 48 (49 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 38 (40 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 31

"Scum:" 28

"Irredeemable:" 6

 

Updated spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E2xPuyIhppbm_Ph0BjoHZ398wkLbpfLI/view?usp=sharing

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Every episode of Fairly OddParents season 10 rated:

Spoiler

 

153. The Big Fairy Share Scare! - Irredeemable
154a. Whittle Me This! - Good
154b. Mayor or May Not - Okay
155a. Girly Squirrely - Scum
155b. Birthday Battle - Scum
156a. The Fair Bears - Okay
156b. Return of the L.O.S.E.R.S. - Scum
157a. A Sash and a Rash - Meh
157b. Fish Out of Water - Okay
158a. Animal Crockers - Okay
158b. One Flu Over the Crocker's Nest - Good
159. Booby Trapped - Meh
160a. Blue Angel - Okay
160b. Marked Man - Great
161a. Clark Laser - Good
161b. Married to the Mom - Good
162a. Which is Wish - Great
162b. Nuts and Dangerous - Scum
163a. Fairy Con - Meh
163b. The Hungry Games - Great
164a. Spring Break-Up - Scum
164b. Dimmsdale Daze - Scum
165a. Cat 'n' Mouse - Okay
165b. Chip Off the Old Crock! - Good
166a. Space Ca-Dad - Scum
166b. Summer Bummer - Okay
167a. Hare Raiser - Scum
167b. The Kale Patch Caper - Meh
168a. Dadlantis - Scum
168b. Chloe Rules! - Scum
169a. Crockin' the House - Okay
169b. Tardy Sauce - Meh
170a. Knitwits - Scum
170b. Dimmsdale's Got Talent? - Meh
171. Certifiable Super Sitter - Irredeemable
172a. Goldie-Crocks and the Three Fairs - Scum
172b. Fancy Schmancy - Scum

 

Top 5 (a.k.a. the saving graces of this season):
5. Whittle Me This!
4. Clark Laser
3. Marked Man
2. Which is Wish
1. The Hungry Games

Bottom 5:
5. Chloe Rules!
4. Dadlantis
3. Dimmsdale Daze
2. The Big Fairy Share Scare!
1. Super Certifiable Sitter

Full season ratingScum season

 

Complete rankings:

"Excellent:" 17 (19 counting Season 0)

"Great:" 81 (86 counting Season 0)

"Good:" 53 (54 counting Season 0)

"Okay:" 46 (48 counting Season 0)

"Meh:" 37

"Scum:" 41

"Irredeemable:" 8

 

Overall series score: Good series (see spreadsheet below for more info)

 

Completed spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O_370BxsIaoo5JlDonpgvJhb_VrJtZym/view?usp=sharing

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Well…it was about time that I got around to writing this, wouldn’t you all think so? After my original plans for these rankings went under because of series creator Butch Hartman escalating his online persona to unpleasant degrees, I’ve come to feel like he and his work weren’t worth any more attention. So, I haven’t been feeling dedicated this side project as I used to at the start, when I formed this so I can not only gauge my proper opinions on the show’s entire painstaking 16-year run, I’ve also done this as a way to ease my mind about the series in its current form and take myself back to when I cherished it for a while.

My absolute apathy towards FOP as of recent has gotten to the point where I forgot that it turned 20 years old last year, and had I remembered then, this would’ve been my way of celebrating FOP’s 20 year milestone, but when what used to be such a formidable animated series for Nickelodeon had sunk so low in quality whereas it has no bright future to look forward to in sight, with a brand spanking new live-action FOP series premiering with practically no fanfare…I’m better off sending off this project with a eulogy of some kind. Of course, there is no better way to start than with my own take on what are truly the ten worst episodes from the entire series. As sad it is for me to say, I felt like I had stronger contenders for the bottom ten than I had for my ten favorite episodes, and that is thanks to its infamous back half.

 

First thing’s first, here’s ten dishonorable mentions, each with at least a brief description detailing why I’ve hated them so:

Season 10, #166a.: Space Ca-Dad – It’s a Season 10 episode starring Timmy’s Dad, and if you knew me well, I’ve had lower tolerance with the character’s flanderization than I did with the season’s inclusion of Chloe, who ends up taking a lot of the blame for this season’s problems. This episode is an absolute nuisance to sit through, and it’s not even the worst of the S10 episodes that focuses on Timmy’s Dad.

Season 10, #168b.: Chloe Rules! – This episode ended up very low in the rankings for primarily having what I feel is the show’s worst joke in general, in form of Berry Rosenbell the Hip Hop Hedgehog, an incredibly random one-off joke character that gets heckled by the episode’s main cast, saying to him “You’re terrible!” when he just barely even does anything and serves very little relevance to the episode’s plot, as if the writing team believed that they had such a good grasp on what an intentionally terrible character is like. As for the main plot itself…it’s an episode where the usually goody-goody Chloe turns into a jerk after becoming a hall monitor and the execution doesn’t make for something compelling. Jimmy Neutron did this kind of plot better. To paraphrase Timmy’s Dad from the same episode, this deserves to go back to Redondo Beach.

Season 6, #92a.: Vicky Gets Fired – To me, this episode is the first true sign of the series throwing its sense of continuity down the drain, while not being too heinous. It’s a predictable Status Quo is God type of episode, and it gets convoluted with its approach. What really annoys me about this episode is that it’s just so pointless when Channel Chasers did explain why Timmy chose to hit the reset button and have Vicky continue to be his babysitter – otherwise, he wouldn’t keep his fairies.

Season 7, #113a.: Take and Fake – This episode doesn’t treat Timmy the cruelest, but it’s still a rather cruel episode regardless. Its jokes fall flat, especially the whole running joke of literally anyone unzipping their costume in a “just kidding, you’ve been trolled lol” kind of fashion that gets tiring fast. Coupled with a predictable outcome for only an episode centered on Timmy trying to get Trixie to fall in love with him, it’s a worthy contender from S7. Also, there’s the whole bit about Crocker apparently not recognizing Cosmo and Wanda as fairies despite the episode going with the whole “everyone is in costume so they’re safe from being exposed” excuse, but that’s not the most excruciating thing about the episode unlike most have said.

Season 9, #142a.: Love at First Bark – People tend to give “Love Triangle” a lot of flak for being a typical love triangle plot stretched to 22 minutes, but when the other love triangle plot revolves around Sparky and Timmy’s Dad fighting for the affection of Dinkleberg’s dog because of Timmy wishing the latter liked Dinkleberg’s dog enough so that he wouldn’t forbid Sparky from being close to her, it’s clear which is worse when you think about the implications more. Also, “Love Triangle” at least didn’t have the line “So you like poop with pee on it, eh?” attached to it. Sorry Mythix, I know you seem to be a fan of this, but I find this close to unbearable.

Season 5, SP2: The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3: The Jerkinators! – A major disappointment from the otherwise competent fifth season. The more that this special drags on, the more it feels like the creative teams for FOP and Jimmy Neutron combined made this because they were obligated to by Nickelodeon and not because they wanted to. This really feels like the folks involved in the episode’s writing process were scrambling for ideas, and while it has jokes to tell, most of them felt immature than clever. If this is the type of episode you can’t handle for 22 minutes, imagine dealing with it when it’s double the length.

Season 9, #149: The Past and the Furious – This is definitely an odd choice for a bottom ten contender. In fact, this was close to being somewhere at the bottom of the barrel before I decided that this was a little too stupid to hate as much. The main problem with the episode is its predictable first half, which feels structured like a typical GoAnimate grounded video: Timmy wants to take part in something with his fairies, but they don’t trust him not to do something stupid while he’s around. Timmy, however, does the stupid things he’s told not to do and becomes responsible for the episode’s main conflict where he alters the timeline, as if he didn’t learn that lesson before from a particular S1 episode. The episode’s second half is spent on Timmy fixing the timeline, but he then encounters an obstacle by way of a villainous, grown-up ex-godchild with a nefarious plot. Because of how bland it is, however, the second half doesn’t really help salvage the episode much. This could’ve been more tolerable as an 11 minute segment, but no, this had to be a two-parter.

Season 10, #168a.: Dadlantis! – Or…as I’d liked to call it: OH GOD, ANOTHER DAD EPISODE!- Ahem, If you thought Space Ca-Dad’s immature humor and off-the-walls pacing was a nuisance to sit through, you’ve been warned, as this episode takes it up a notch with the annoyance factor.

Season 7, #106a.: Crocker Shocker – There’s just one word that best describes my feelings towards this episode: BULLSH-[BUY SOME APPLES]. This is just the Crocker equivalent to Vicky Gets Fired, except the Status Quo is God setup is played up to an even more convoluted degree. This episode tries (with the main buzzword here being ‘tries’) to convince us that if Crocker stops believing in fairies since after the events of The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker!, Fairy World collapses into a post-dystopian nightmare and then it dies after falling into a bucket of acid below it and…yeah, this is what I meant when I said that this episode is a bunch of baloney. Besides the whole status quo, I don’t remember how exactly this episode ends, but I’m certain that it’s just as forced as the rest of the segment’s plot. Also, rather than trying to add up to the series lore, this episode ends up giving me some questions like “What if Crocker died? What will happen to Fairy World then? Or is he an immortal being somehow, which is why he doesn’t age a bit fifty years after Timmy made the secret wish that everything and everyone stays the same forever?”

Season 8, #122-123.: Timmy’s Secret Wish! - Speaking of which…here’s the last close contender for my bottom ten, on top of being a fitting choice for my #11. The B.S. factor in this special manages to outmatch the previous by trying to explain something that didn’t really need an explanation, and once again, it only ends up raising more questions about the series continuity and gives viewers the impression that the creative team doesn’t have any care towards it anymore. This special is built around the revelation of Timmy having caused the passage of time in the whole universe to be stagnant since fifty years ago…and that’s not the most mind-boggling thing about this special. Crocker, apparently didn’t age after Father Time undid the secret wish, Timmy apparently didn’t completely lose all of his memories of Cosmo and Wanda or most of his wishes either as a consequence, and of all characters that is made the villain of this special, it’s Foop, who, considering that he is an evil baby genius, would be smart enough to know that making Timmy lose his fairies would also mean that he, alongside Poof, would be unwished and he STILL tries to paint Timmy as a bad godkid after he gets saved.

This episode could also been seen as notorious for establishing just how very reliant Timmy is towards his fairies, and it becomes a key characteristic for the first live-action film to showcase that Timmy is too reliant on his fairy godparents because they’re like family to him. You’d think Timmy deserves not to keep his fairies too if you realize that he made the secret wish and subsequently made Cosmo forget about the wish just so that he would never lose them. And yeah, the overlong special does end on a satisfying note, but I don’t feel like it amounted to much in redeeming Timmy for the wish he made as he should’ve learned something from that, and instead he gets off the hook for doing the simple goodwill of risking his life inside of Hocus Poconos for his wishes and for his fairies. This is also notorious for being the point where the series starts relying on making certain loopholes to ensure that Timmy doesn’t lose his fairies, like refusing to make Timmy grow up mentally, or having the Fairy Council administer Timmy’s fairy ownership as a couple more examples from the first live-action film. Moments like these give the impression that the pre-established rules and limits set by the FOP universe don’t matter anymore in the process

Other than the episode’s inconsistencies, it’s just very dull in general. One portion is spent on a forgettable trial, and then on a forgettable quest to for Timmy to go back to Fairy World from the fixed timeline, and while the last third is more interesting, it still doesn’t make it feel any less like a copout. Sorry, my commentary for this is supposed to be brief, but this one has given me a lot of material to cover.

 

Now that I’ve weeded out the strong contenders that we’re not able to make the list proper, let’s go ahead and reveal my ten contenders for the absolute worst from the main series:

 

STEEL’S TOP 10 WORST EPISODES OF THE FAIRLY ODDPARENTS

 

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10. Dimmsdale Daze (Season 10; #164b)

 

While forming this list, I came to the conclusion that I had to make room for one more S10 episode, and I was able to find one that I would consider close to irredeemable – a rank that is shared by a total of eight episodes on the list. So of course, there are only two episodes on this list that were close to the lowest possible rating. Dimmsdale Daze is a bad episode for its execution, while almost being just as bad by design. The main plot of this episode involves Chloe wishing to be a mom so that she and Timmy could both have fun at the Dimmsdale Daze Carnival, which gives off some unsettling implications and well as some questions regarding the logic surrounding fairy godparents and godkids, as a wish like this would be consequential to Chloe’s fairy sharing.

However, the episode does give us a logical compromise by aging down Chloe’s parents into kids and leaving Cosmo and Wanda to Timmy alone as a consequence from the wish. So this episode results into Chloe facing the responsibility of being a parent to the kid versions of her own two parents. Now, while it does recycle elements from The Switch Glitch and The Big Problem!, I do feel like the episode could’ve been able to strike up the opportunity to provide a compelling enough episode with a moral on adult responsibilities. Since this is S10 we’re talking about, it’s no surprise that any chance of it panning out just fine is thrown out of the window.

The first problem to point out is that the child versions of Chloe’s parents don’t act like kids, and rather display exaggerated child characters tropes as if the writing team forgot how to write child characters for a moment. Second of all, after the episode proceeds with the main plot of Chloe seeing her wish pan out, the episode goes nuts with its humor and pacing, and because there’s more focus put into that aspect, the episode barely gives itself time to establish a proper conflict, where Cosmo and Wanda are bestowed to the child versions of Chloe’s parents after Chloe snapped at them. We could’ve gotten a bigger perspective on Chloe’s parents forming somewhat of a relationship with Cosmo and Wanda while they’re still kids, while Chloe herself could realize her mistakes and the lesson she needed to learn, but since it’s clear that the writing team doesn’t care for subtlety, the episode’s conflict comes and goes as quick along with its resolution, which lets Chloe off easy and therefore leaves no proper redemption for a character who ends up acting like a jerk for one moment without the episode directly pointing out that while she is written to be sweet, friendly, and having no bad bone in her body, she can also have her limits.

Some of the little things that bring this episode down for me are the inclusion of Mr. Crocker and Mr. Turner in this episode, given that the season has been treating them like a crutch for comedy when the plot isn’t doing enough favors, and as well as the one moment where Timmy uses his fairies as barf bags when he could’ve wished for some, which is not only gross, it also doesn’t help in making Timmy come off as likeable, just like how this episode failed to keep Chloe likeable. What made The Switch Glitch and The Big Problem! work was that each were able to establish the repercussions of the wish and give us a different perspective on the characters affected by it, and this episode failed to capture that same charm.

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 9. Lights Out (Season 7; #118a)

 

This episode was dangerously close to being in the unsalvageable tier, and it would’ve been lower if it weren’t for the episode trying to make up for the mean-spiritedness with Cosmo and Wanda telling Timmy that they’ve meant to teach him a lesson. So what did Timmy do to deserve the punishment that he faced throughout the episode, which involves him wishing that, for twelve hours, Dimmsdale would go completely dark? It’s because of nothing more than Timmy scaring his baby godbrother Poof with a scary story. If you haven’t noticed one of the main problems with this episode yet, then allow me to restate the plot: Timmy wishes that the world around him is pitch black for twelve hours and his fairies put him in danger and scare him throughout….so he could be taught a lesson for scaring Poof and nothing else beyond that. Let that sink in before I get to the other problems with the episode…

If a bottle episode is best defined as being cheaply produced to save a show’s budget, then this episode is a clear-cut example of one. The vast majority of this episode is shown in pitch black with one pair of eyes, and more pairs on occasion. There is some variety added to these scenes of nothingness where we get some brief moments of illumination. Other times though…we get cheap jump scares. The scenes with Cosmo and Wanda becoming scarier are so predictable and don’t help in giving the episode the thrills and scares it tries to achieve in having. It comes off as disturbing instead, especially when you reconsider why they’re scaring the wits out of their own godchild (that and it’s easy to conclude that most of the budget for the episode was spent on the “Scary Fairy” designs for Cosmo and Wanda).

It’s an unsatisfying and disturbing viewing experience all the way through, and when it does end on somewhat of a light note, it doesn’t help redeem the episode so much for its mistakes. No matter how you feel about Timmy Turner as a character, it’s easy to come to the agreement that this episode doesn’t do a good job in justifying this punishment for the character as every bit of deserving. As an episode that tries to come off as thematically dark, it provides cheap scares and falls flat due to its gimmicky setup. As for the jokes…they’re just not funny. Some of them are inappropriate, and then there are some that just fall flat.

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 8. Farm Pit (Season 7; #119a)

 

Here is the first of the 1/10 episode being revealed on this list. I’ve considered putting this a little bit higher, but I’ve forgotten a lot about the episode. That could be a good sign, but nonetheless, I still remember loathing this episode the first time I saw this, and I can always rely on wikis to recollect my viewing experience and form my analysis on the episode.

There isn’t so much to say about “Farm Pit.” I can sum it up by saying that it exhibits the definitive formula for a terrible FOP episode: an uninspired plot that is recycled from a much better episode (in Farm Pit’s case, “That’s Life”), giving the spotlight to one of the usual spotlight stealing characters, Mr. Turner, a worthless subplot where Timmy’s fairies need to get back their wands, forced Cosmo stupidity, pacing that’s all over the place, unfunny recurring gags, and unfunny slapstick. One thing that’s missing is a continuity snarl. There’s just little to nothing that I feel salvages this episode. It is just a tedious mess, plain and simple.

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 7. Dumbbell Curve (Season 9; #129b)

 

In a nutshell, “Dumbbell Curve” is what happens when you try to be “Salsa Imbecilicus” but instead end up being “The Nitwitting.” (Although, this FOP episode came out before both SB episodes I’ve mentioned, so why am I making this analogy?) This episode revolves around Timmy wishing everyone was dumber than him because of Crocker pulling a bell curve on him in his scheme of continuing to give him F’s. What follows is not where Timmy views a world where everyone around him is at least less smart than Timmy, but rather an episode that’s filled with forced stupidity, so forced that I felt like I lost brain cells from watching it.

In aptness to the episode’s brand of humor, which relies so much on the “LOL so random” type of jokes, it’s best to describe this episode as…pee-pee, gaga, goo-goo, potty, caca poo-poo. Okay, so the humor is not THAT immature, but it’s still inexcusably bad. With this episode being based on the concept of Timmy turning the dummy switch on everyone except himself, the comedy should be the highlight of the episode, and yet it feels like no effort was put into that aspect. A lot of the jokes are executed as if the writers just went along with whatever they came up with while assuming that they’re funny and that we will find it funny. There’s even a recurring joke AND plot element based on…hot dogs. Why? Just…why? Also, when you’re writing an episode where Timmy wishes that everyone was dumber than him, that doesn’t mean that you should literally make the other characters as dumb as bricks.

This episode was just plain stupid, while having little to nothing to feel compelled about it. I didn’t even learn much from it except that this provides a good example as to what you end up with when you don’t try in writing good jokes. But hey, there’s no denying that there are people out there who did like this episode enough to give it an award for sound & music editing, and no, I’m not making this up.

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 6. The Big Fairy Share Scare! (Season 10; #153)

 

Even though I did give this episode the “Irredeemable” ranking, I should point out that I don’t think that this is as abysmal as most others made it out to be. I thought Chloe could’ve been an interesting new addition to the cast to play off of Timmy’s character had the main writing team for this season had the capability to provide a good introduction to a new series regular. Of course, there were a ton of obstacles that got in the way of that. This could’ve worked based on the concept alone and it failed based on execution. In other words, this was not a good episode to introduce its new and already-reviled main character that no one was clamoring for except Nickelodeon’s board of executives at the time.

So, what’s the main problem with this episode besides the obvious? This episode doesn’t do a good job in establishing Chloe as a character that we can sympathize with. She is miserable by some standards, so why wouldn’t she have to share Cosmo and Wanda with Timmy? I can understand that the episode did try to provide an excuse to establish why Chloe not only needs fairies, but also Timmy’s fairies. Are they good excuses, though? The obvious answer to that question is no. Chloe’s reasoning for being miserable doesn’t feel so much like a flaw if it’s because she feels does more harm than good whenever she tries to help others. Then we got “Uh-oh, fairy shortage!” as our reasoning behind Timmy suddenly having to share Cosmo and Wanda with Chloe. Yeah, there’s no other way for me to sum it up than with that.

Now, before I get to this next point, I want to make one thing very clear: a Mary Sue is not, I repeat not, a character that you hate. It does not define a poorly written female character in general. It is a stereotype towards certain characters who are too idealistic, has no discernible flaws and too many positive qualities, whilst also lacking personality and character. I should also point out that I HATE the term ‘Mary Sue,’ because of how much it has been abused to the point where it lost its meaning and I think anyone who still uses the term on a regular basis should reconsider how they’re using it. Because it’s such a disputed term, I can’t argue much about what I think the term means and should mean, so let’s get this question out of the way right now: do I think Chloe is a Mary Sue? When the episode even acknowledges that she’s little miss perfect, I can see why her traits are comparable to those of your typical Sue character. I wouldn’t describe her as a bland, boring, thoughtless, and uninteresting character, however, judging by her notoriety and as well as for the writing team’s clear intent to make her come across as interesting, despite not trying enough.

The point I’m trying to make here is that Chloe could’ve been written so much better than she was for her introduction. The narrative tries to convince us that Chloe is miserable, yet it also gives her all these qualities that feel unnatural for someone who’s Timmy’s age, and the majority of the characters besides Timmy take a liking to her, complimenting how she’s the most perfect girl they ever met, especially when they are just introduced to her, like she’s established as if she’s this happy young girl who has everything she needs. This all contradicts the purpose that Chloe’s character is supposed to serve, which can be due to the writing team also wanting to make Chloe as likeable as possible. Even in the later episodes, the series does a better job in establishing flaws for Chloe, like how she tends to be a perfectionist because of her little miss perfect disposition.

Now that I’ve said everything that I needed to say regarding Chloe’s character…does the plot do it any favors? When it’s not busy failing to make selfie-related jokes work, it falls apart in the last third, where it shows that the writing team may have been scrambling to form the episode’s conflict, taking into consideration how it handled how the episode’s newly-established recurring hook where Cosmo and Wanda lose their wands for the sake of the plot, and how they’ve handled Chloe and Timmy’s interactions in the midst of it.

With yet another bad introduction to justify a new character’s existence after Sparky’s negative reception failed to justify his place in the main cast to the point of removal, it’s inevitable that the fans would continue to point the blame towards the character when the real problem lies elsewhere, because, of course, some people feel the need for a scapegoat.

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 5. It’s a Wishful Life (Season 5; #63b)

 

This is the only episode from the series’ first half that made my bottom 10, to the shock of nobody. It’s the man, the myth, the legend, and the only thing to ever come out of FOP that series creator Butch Hartman has ever admitted to being ashamed of. That makes sense though, ‘cuz when your most controversial episode is structured around tackling somewhat of a serious topic whilst slapping in a two-faced moral and giving unnecessary cruelty towards the character being focused here, the ever-so miserable Timmy Turner, I would’ve also tried to erase such an episode from existence.

I’ll start off by saying that the episode playing around with the whole It’s a Wonderful Life premise does seem like it could show some promise. FOP has a fair share of moments that show that its cast of characters have either been established or changed because of Timmy and the wishes he’s made over the course of the series. Showing how rather empty their lives would’ve been without Timmy existing would’ve made for at least an interesting character-driven storyline. Therefore, it would’ve led up to something great, right? Ehhh, not exactly. (Oh hey look, I said the line that Jorgen constantly said in the episode!) Anyways, as you can already tell, this wasn’t the route that the creative team chose to take with the concept. The episode centers on Timmy wishing he was never born after not feeling appreciated enough for the good deeds he’s done, specifically for Mr. Bickles, A.J., and his parents. You even have his fairies acting like ungrateful twits towards Timmy to drive the plot, so you can’t blame Timmy at all for making such a wish. However, unlike in It’s a Wonderful Life, where it is shown that the lives of the characters are empty without the main character, It’s a Wishful Life plays the “clever twist” that everyone is better off without Timmy. Oh, and instead of a guardian angel, we have Jorgen embodying Death himself, threatening to send Timmy to hell for the wish he made unless he finds someone who turns out to be miserable without him. I’m not making this up, because those are the implications that the episode itself expects you to take a hint at.

So if the lesson here isn’t that you’ll earn appreciation from your peers for the good deeds that you do for them, then what is? Don’t do good things just for the sake of appreciation, but you should do them anyway for the sake of your folks, which…isn’t a bad concept for a moral, but when you have Timmy legitimately making an effort to do his good deeds for Bickles, A.J., and his parents from the beginning, the message ends up feeling rather contradictory and that rest of the cast could’ve learned something from how they’ve treated Timmy with little respect instead.

As for the turnaround with the whole It’s a Wonderful Life narrative…the episode certainly does something different, but that doesn’t make it good. For one thing, a lot of the character reinventions in this hypothetical universe where Timmy doesn’t exist just don’t make sense. Vicky was evil by her own accord, so how would Timmy’s non-existence lead up to her working for Dr. Bender, let alone without inflicting pain like she tends to do? Francis was always a grey bully before Timmy, so how did he become a gentle jock in a life without him? Chester was the type of character who accepts the little things that he has in his life, so it doesn’t make sense to me that Cosmo and Wanda would be his fairies in a life without Timmy. A.J. having a full head of hair…okay, even Timmy lampshades how this doesn’t make sense, and you something’s up when the writers have the audacity to acknowledge their own character-based illogicalities. At the very least, Timmy’s parents being rich and spoiled with a daughter makes sense, as does Crocker becoming a successful professor, in the circumstance that he does willingly see a psych to get rid of his fairy obsession in that life.

Overall, it’s not hard to see why most people tend to hate this one so much. It’s mean-spirited without feeling just about it whatsoever, the alternate character scenarios make little to no sense, and the episode ends with such a copout where after making Timmy feel so worthless due to the lives of those he knows all being better without him, Jorgen reveals it was all part of a test in order to make him learn a lesson, and a poorly executed one at that. And even the series creator wishes this episode never existed. How’s that for irony?

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 4. One Man Banned (Season 7; #108a)

 

So, compared to my previous long rambling for It’s a Wishful Life, I don’t have a big paragraph to share for this particular episode. Before you ask how an episode worth so much commentary could be no worse than this one episode, then let me just say that this is the very point of the list where I start talking about the episodes that I consider to be every bit of disposable – the episodes that I’ve gained and learned nothing from, and my #4 is no exception to that. It’s a Wishful Life and The Big Fairy Share Scare! are both notoriously infamous episodes for their own special reasons and the fact that you could say anything interesting about how bad they were should tell you why I haven’t ranked them lower. One Man Banned is an example of an episode that is not only bad. It leaves me with nothing of interest to say in regards to it

The episode also has the sentiment of being my most hated FOP episode besides the low-hanging fruit I’ve discussed previously, and for a while too. Perhaps it was me being at the point where I felt that I was too old to enjoy FOP now, but even younger me at the certain age when the episode came out thought the episode was so predictable, trite, and contrived. The episode centers on Timmy feeling worthless because he’s the only person in Dimmsdale without any music talent (whilst reinforcing the typical “I’m a nobody” fish out of water character one-liner cliché) and so wishes that everyone liked his triangle playing. Sounds like a very simple enough episode that doesn’t do too much harm…but if you hadn’t already noticed how I said that the episode is so predictable and flat due to its sheer simplicity, you’ll begin to know why it’s such a serious problem to me.

This episode is the type of story you’ve seen on other shows plenty upon plenty of times before. Timmy has no musical talent and feels left out, he is granted it and becomes world-renown, but then he becomes obsessed with fame to the point where he becomes an Elvis mock-up (and this is unrelated to the point I’m making. Still though, WHY? What does this have to do with anything?), Timmy Triangle upsets his fairies after being a jerk to them and he is then taught a lesson after he embarrasses himself in front of the entire world when his successful triangle playing wish is undone. So, what have we learned? Fame makes you crazy, and also if you don’t have a gift in music, you’re worthless. Good freaking lesson. The former, however, would’ve mattered had it not been established so many times before and if the writing team tried to do something subtle with the moral. In the end, you just have an episode that is a chore and a nuisance to sit through.

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 3. Desperate Without Housewives (Season 9, #142b)

 

Okay, so imagine Love Struck! from Season 3, but condense it into an 11-minute segment and just make it even stupider. That’s Desperate Without Housewives in a nutshell for you. The episode revolves around Timmy, his dad, and Cosmo being fed up and Timmy’s mom and Wanda’s constant nagging so they wish away women for 24 hours so they can enjoy themselves. Also, Crocker is in this episode, and then the Turners house is invaded by aliens. Yep, seems quite like a setup for a Dhar Mann video. Just title it “Average 10 Year Old Boy Wishes Away Adult Women Population! What Follows is an Alien Invasion!,” and no one would know the difference. As a setup for FOP episode, yeah…what kind of drugs was the creative team on when they materialized this?

What makes this episode even worse is when you realize that this is basically just an excuse for the creative team to continue milking Crocker, Timmy’s dad, and to a smaller extent, Cosmo, as if there wasn’t enough mileage out of these already over-focused characters. Jjs, if you’re reading this and still think Dad Overboard is the worst of example of this, let this episode prove you wrong if you so choose to watch it

Did I also mention that this episode is stupid? Okay, so I did. It’s still worth pointing out though that the episode feels like random ideas strewn together in a rough draft, not for a legit final draft for an episode, so you’d all be surprised that I don’t think the worst aspect of this episode isn’t Timmy, his dad, and Cosmo deciding to be sexist for 24 hours and commit temporary genocide on the world’s adult women population.

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 2. Certifiable Super Sitter (Season 10, #171)

 

I vented about this particular episode 6 years back that sums up everything about how I felt about it, and though it’s no longer fresh, that still gives me the opportunity to cut my commentary shorter. Now this episode is a prime example of a bunch of ideas being crammed into one episode. While it centers on the plot of Chloe being a babysitter for Poof, Foop, Sammy Sweetsparkle, and Mr. Turner (because it’s not a S10 episode without him being ham-fisted into an episode’s plot by any means), it also tries to put Cosmo and Wanda’s pointless French dinner subplot, Crocker’s antics, Mr. Turner’s antics, Foop’s antics, and Vicky’s return (and we were already treated to Chloe meeting Poof for the first time. She even hasn’t gotten the chance to know who exactly Vicky is at that point) all in-between. The results are chaotic, and it’s not a good kind of chaos, and so what we’re treated to is an episode that is just all over the place.

When it’s not too busy being an incoherent, directionless mess, the episode’s other lowest point is its humor. People have been quick to point out that this is the sole episode where Poof does an unfunny Donald Trump impression, among other impersonations as the episode continues on, and then you also have the recurring joke with the boxing kangaroo who says “Shrimp on the barbie!” that forces itself to get fully ingrained your brain so much that you’d want to get that memory surgically removed from your brain afterwards. Since this episode plays around with the loophole that Mr. Turner is too stupid to know what fairies are, you’ve not only got Mr. Turner acting like a literal toddler for all of this episode, you have his brand of humor being reduced to “peepee poopoo” type of humor, which just adds to how bad the episode is from a comedic standpoint.

Certifiable Super Sitter is a prime indication of how much the creative team for FOP during its last legs just stopped caring and trying to justify the show’s prevalence. However, I could make the argument that it’s been long since FOP just stopped trying to be as good as it was back then. Besides, you all want to know what episode I put below even this one. Yes? Then let’s get to the big reveal…

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 1. Fairly Old Parent (Season 9; #146)

 

When it comes to FOP, anyone’s definition of their breaking point is bound to be different. This episode was my breaking point. This was what fully convinced me that The Fairly OddParents was dead and that it was never going to get better beyond that point. I may have tried to keep myself open-minded towards the series’ future after a couple of disappointing live-action films no one asked for, and for continuity snarls like Timmy’s Secret Wish!, Vicky Gets Fired, and Crocker Shocker, and yet Fairly Old Parent was the episode that convinced me that FOP was done. I can start my rambling with the rather fitting title, like it knows that the series has gotten so stale that it’s begging to be put down like Old Yeller.

For an episode I consider this bad, what could it be about? Well, it’s about Poof becoming an official fairy godparent to someone…and that’s where the problems start. First of all, isn’t Poof too young to be able to have a job in being a godparent? Even worse, of all characters that get chosen to fill in the role as a godchild, this episode lands on Crocker’s mom being that candidate. Second of all, isn’t Crocker’s mom too old to be a godchild? Well, let’s hear this episode’s excuse for this inconsistency, shall we? As Jorgen states, the Fairy Council has decided to appeal to a different demographic despite bestowing godparents only to miserable kids. Yeah, sure, let’s go with that lazy excuse. At that point though, why not just age up Poof and age down Mrs. Crocker for the sake of consistency? But nope, this is the latter half of FOP, where subtlety is not in the show’s dictionary. But hey, Mrs. Crocker is miserable about something, so that’s what matters, doesn’t it? Let’s move right onto the Mrs. Crocker as a godchild aspect of the episode and why that falls apart.

Upon introducing Mrs. Crocker to Poof, Jorgen lays down everything that she needs to know about being a godparent: 1. No cheating, 2. No telling anyone you have a fairy, okay bye. Look, I know Jorgen may have condensed the number of rules for her to follow because she’s old and therefore has to go easy on her, but Jorgen is the biggest enforcer of Da Rules, and this particular moment comes off as “We have a huge list of rules for godkids to know and not to break if they don’t want to lose their fairy godparent, so I’ll just let you off with the only two rules that matter now,” which in turn feels like a huge middle finger to anyone who’s grown to like FOP for the way it handles its own guidelines to its non-existent logic. Mrs. Crocker, for all Jorgen could care, could use magic to cause a famine, erase polar bears from existence, bring back Adolf Hitler from the dead, or commit other such felonies, but she can keep her fairy godparent as long as she either doesn’t use magic to cheat, or expose the fairy. Makes perfect fu[BUY SOME APPLES]ing sense.

As for the central plot with Poof being Mrs. Crocker’s fairy, it runs itself dry midway. You’d think that the episode could establish a dynamic between the two characters, but no, the dynamic is non-existent, and all that the episode could do is have Mrs. Crocker abuse her power as a “godchild” to drive the plot where Timmy and Wanda try to get Mrs. Crocker to lose Poof as a fairy “godparent” (which should be something that would catch the attention of Jorgen to determine if she’s deserving of a fairy godparent, but no, just those two rules.). However, there’s also this important plot point where we learn why Mrs. Crocker was permitted to be a godchild in the first place, given that she felt miserable about something in particular, and not even the episode’s explanation for that is great either. You see, Mr. Crocker never said that he loves his mother and he was just being a jerk to her like he usually does, although as the end of the episode itself indicates, it was just some sort of misunderstanding. A conflict like that could be resolved in less time than the episode’s own runtime had Crocker himself said the words Mrs. Crocker wanted to hear earlier, which brings me to my next point…

This episode has absolutely no business being a full-length episode. Like the vast majority of the episode is just complete, utter filler and you could zoom past all of the middle portions and you wouldn’t feel like you’ve missed anything much.  The episode does try to keep its viewers entertained by way of the recurring gag of Cosmo turning himself into food and being chased by Sparky (bet you forgot he’s in this episode, albeit to only be used for the same joke), or when the episode seems to be so proud of its joke where Poof wishes award-winning actor Denzel Washington into the Crocker house due to his exhaustion, that they just HAD to make a few more nods to him afterwards. It’s just no wonder we get a joke that involves Jorgen writing an apology to Denzel Washington because he sure doesn’t deserve to have his name attached to this.

Do you really want to know what I think sucks about this episode, though? At the time of its airing, Nickelodeon was airing the last of the S9 episodes that they haven’t aired yet, and they seemed to hype this one a bit as somewhat of a grand finale before giving the show one last chance shortly after. AND, of course, I’ve had to have the dissatisfaction of dealing with this particular episode airing on the day of my own birthday, right before the scheduled annual KCA’s that year in 2015, no less. In other words, I “celebrated” my 20th birthday being disappointed by FOP. A new SpongeBob episode was scheduled to air around that time too, but it was scheduled for the day after, so because of Nick’s scheduling, I’ve missed the chance to have an episode from my own personal flagship series that I could claim to have aired on my birthday, further rubbing salt into my wound. Sure Yeti Krabs wasn’t anything special, but it would’ve been something more to brag out for a birthday episode than the worst thing that FOP has ever wrought (The Fairy Beginning did also air the same day, but that’s not the topic of this rant).

Putting aside my self-indulgent bitterness, if there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching Fairly Old Parent, it’s this: Mrs. Crocker can be just as bad as her own son if an episode compels her to, and the Fairy Council are useless when it comes to godbaby abuse. Other than that, the episode is just a big insult towards the original FOP that I’ve known and loved, it makes a lot of the FOP’s best episodes feel like they never really mattered and that this was what the show was truly leading up to, and so I consider it to be the ultimate indicator of FOP being a dead franchise. On top of all that, the story is terrible and dull, the jokes are drier than Death Valley, it has a sheer absence of good, significant, or funny moments, it sucks balls simply because it does, AND…I don’t like it.

 

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