Review: The Great North “High Expectations Adventure”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Judy and Kima end up eating some gummies that turn out to be weed, leading Kima on a strange journey guided by visions from a talking cottage cheese mascot bucket named Beth. Meanwhile, Wolf fights to get a sandwich named for him after it is removed from the menu.

OUR TAKE

Huh, well that’s unexpected. I actually don’t know when the last time this show had an episode that had an A plot not really centered on a member of the Tobin family. Like yeah, Judy is there and is an active participant alongside Kima on their trippy trip running from their chaperone and vibing off marijuana gummies, but the character work is very much Kima’s to focus on. Specifically, it’s her focusing on an Aunt Jemima-esque food mascot that suddenly begins talking to her as a way to get her to be more active in her activism. The Great North, as we know, takes place in Alaska, but it also takes major steps to represent the indigenous population through its characters, Kima included. Obviously Judy is also very active about causes on her own, as seen most recently in the episode a few weeks back about her discouraging people to take oil money, but it means something different to have an actual native character have a story specifically related to her own thoughts on how her own heritage has been commercialized. And as is confirmed later on, the voice that Kima hears in her weed induced hallucinations is really her own voice telling her work on more dynamic ways of taking direct action.

…shit, that’s only two hundred words. Um, okay, well, the other plot is about Wolf and the rest of the Tobins trying to get a sandwich of his back on a menu, with it later revealed that the reason it was taken off is because no one ever ordered the sandwich, including his own family. It’s a totally serviceable B plot that gets all the other Tobin members out of the way and into their own little story, and I’m sure that the rest of the actors were happy to get an easy paycheck. It also digs in a bit into Wolf’s assumptions about how people view him and getting a bit overconfident in his own perceived importance, when really he’s not that big a person to keep a sandwich on a menu. Also apparently the sandwich was not very good, so there’s that. Yes, we have managed to make a whole paragraph about a subplot focusing on a sandwich, but I guess you could say there’s just enough to discuss on that to fill up this review. We’re closing in on the finale, so continue to stay tuned for the rest of that coverage!