Review: Tangled: The Series “Great Expotations”

Was this week’s episode great?

Spoilers Below

Unable to come up with a full storyline for main character Rapunzel, “Great Expotations” sees the return of an incredibly minor character, Varian. He’s the guy who invented the machine that was supposed to chop Rapunzel’s hair off again in the beginning of the season. Varian is entering his newest invention into the kingdom’s expo. He particularly wants to show off his skills to Cassandra, but she’s distracted. It’s her first big chance to prove herself as part of her father’s Guard, which is low on staff for the expo.

Meanwhile, Rapunzel is enthralled by all the inventions. She immediately runs off to invent something herself.

Varian has his heart set on Cassandra and getting her to be his expo assistant. After seeing how well his inventions could benefit her in her responsibilities, she agrees. He’s a little clumsy, but he gets the job done. When Cassandra sees how hard Varian is willing to work for her, she eases up on him a little. They launch into one of Tangled: The Series shoehorned but undeniable heart to hearts. Turns out they both have demanding dads and are quick to be open about it.

Despite sharing a moment, Cassandra takes a higher position at the expo and bails on Varian. Rapunzel eagerly shows off her giant fan invention to an enraptured audience. Varian’s presentation doesn’t go so well. His “elemental remogrifier” does turn sand into a new element called “Cassandrium”, but his sleepy (probably drunken) assistant manages to fling a knife at the judge. It’s really Cassandra’s fault.

A glorified street magician wins over the judge, and ultimately, first place. Cassandra consoles a downtrodden Varian, who immediately pours out his heart and spills his guts again. All these characters with next-level communication skills are really getting out of hand. It’s efficient, but nowhere near realistic, and not too interesting either. Varian admits he didn’t want to win, he just wanted to impress Cassandra. Turns out, she was impressed.

Then, the pompous judge thinks he knows science and messes with Varian’s machine. But he sets off a reaction that causes a supercharged vortex that can only be saved by a team. Varian gives the instructions for Rapunzel to run her giant fan backwards while Cassandra happily assists. Then she apologizes.

Clearly, Tangled: The Series has a formula. The conflicts never go too deep and are always solved by a good conversation that everyone is immediately open to having. Then they get a few minutes to show off what they’ve learned. Also, Rapunzel gets as little to do with the plot as possible. Not only can it be pretty boring, but it also has nothing to do with the world of Tangled. These plots could belong to any other kids’ show if one of the characters happened to have long hair. But in the final minute of the episode, the show remembers it set up a proper story arc way back when. The mysterious black rocks that caused Rapunzel’s hair to grow back have popped up near Varian’s cabin.

Other than that final development, “Great Expotations” didn’t add much to the Tangled canon. Although the series started out strongly, this seems to be the trend. Zachary Levi’s voice acting saved the barrage of invention scenes with Rapunzel and continues to save the series. All of the voice acting is dynamic, but Zachary Levi could carry a half-hour all on his own. Maybe things will start to pick up now that the only thing resembling an antagonist is back in the picture.