User blog:Scrooge200/Season 1 Review

Note: This is under construction.

Season 1 is one of my least favorite seasons of the show, but just how bad is it? Let's see! I will rate each episode on a scale from Vomitrocious, Bad, Okay, Good, Great. At the end, I'll count up how many of each there are in the season, and give it a rating. I may end up splitting my blog into parts if there are too many episodes to cover in one.

I have currently covered 6/60 episodes in Season 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Season Notes

 * There's a running gag of bad things happening to Mr. Haney. These jokes are kind of hard to laugh at now that his voice actor is deceased.
 * This season has a lot of overexaggeration. This is mostly used for important plot moments and not just jokes, so it's a little distracting. In my opinion, a slice-of-life show like Arthur should not be this wacky and crazy.
 * Voice lines from the intro are used in the episodes. This includes Arthur's "hey!" in Arthur's Spelling Trouble and his gasp after he falls off the letters in Arthur's Eyes.
 * Brain&mdash;sorry, I mean "The Brain," as the show calls him before Season 7, is pretty out of character when compared to later in the series. He expresses desire to do less homework and has a messy room.
 * Bitzi is shown to be ridiculously overprotective of Buster. Surprisingly, she isn't in Buster's Dino Dilemma, but she is starting from Arthur Accused! I'm glad that they toned this down later, because it's really annoying.

Rating Counts

 * Great: 1
 * Good: 1
 * Okay: 1
 * Bad: 3
 * Vomitrocious: 0