Review: Magical Girl Friendship Squad “realcontent.crap”
Overview
The episode opens with Alex enjoying some relaxing trash TV when Nut barges in and tells her to get ready for her interview at Aggregon so she can act as a mole to disrupt their plans for world domination. While she’s getting dressed in her only blazer, Daisy bursts in panicking about hiding their sinful lifestyle from her parents, who will be stopping by for The Agony Solstice, an important holiday in their religion/cult. Alex heads off to her interview, and immediately nails it, mostly because Corvin wants to get back to his plans of a fish egg facial. As she excels at her new role manufacturing outrage content, Daisy has to prevent her parents from discovering her “totally normal, very sinful, human roommate” as Nut binges on reality TV in the next room. After Daisy’s parents discover her laptop, she explains she only uses it for worship, and they unfortunately click on one of the chum links (“Like realcontent.crap? It’s fun to see what Patrick Swayze’s son looks like now.”) that Alex has written, leading to them getting kidnapped to siphon off their outrage for energy. Daisy and Alex transform and fight off a small army of bots to save them, and despite their displeasure at not being “raptured”, our hero duo lives to fight, work, and still have parents, even if they’re super weird ones, for another day.
Our take
Ok, I’ll say it: the writing in this episode is gold. The jokes seem to flow endlessly, while somehow managing to not feel overly cheesy. The delivery is on point as well, of course. Extra props to Quinta B for managing to get the line “Mitch McConnell turns me on” out of her mouth without gagging (I imagine that took a few takes.) And of course, there’s the sad-funny-relatable lines from various background characters choosing a fate of manufacturing outrage content and/or being used as an “alternative energy source” because they “can’t go back to freelancing”. Same, at least not for full-time employment.
Not to be outshined by the writing though, the animation just keeps getting better. The transformation sequences seem to have gotten an extra-sparkly upgrade, and Nut’s starry-eyed discovery of the magic of trashy reality TV is gorgeously rendered as well. Not to mention the smooth and colorful bacchanalia of Alex enjoying the company’s endless perks— a tidal wave of donuts, free-flowing booze, and a complimentary juice bar (plus 3-ply toilet paper?) would honestly have me running back to a terrible, stressful “marketing” job for an evil company as well, especially if their promo video was animated with even half the care that this montage is. Of course, the action sequences remain impressive as well, with Alex’s latest move “Placebo Pill: LET THERE BE BLOOD” creating an epically metal finale to the fight.
And to top it all off, the cast for this episode is incredible. Matteo Lane explaining Alex’s new role to her along with the answer to her question of “what does this company do, exactly?” is probably the only voice that could make the sentence “little bit of streaming, little bit of, a little resource exploitation” hilarious instead of just sad. But Daisy’s Dad and Mom, er, parent and parent, are the most impressive performance of the episode. Helen Hong shines by playing up the “overbearing parent” schitck. Her nagging mother voice contrasts hilariously with the weird requirements she expects her daughter to adhere to for their religion. Eric Bauza’s rant about the rapture and miserable afterlife awaiting members faithful to their constantly self-flagellating lifestyle fully utilizes the best of his range. It’s reminiscent of his performance as Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, although with considerably more edge and less accent.
While it’s too early to know how it’ll compare to the rest of the series, I feel confident enough to say this is the best episode so far, across the board. My affection for this wacky roommate comedy just keeps growing, and I’m looking forward to next week’s offering!
I hope this turns out to be another Gravity Falls-type show with an overarching storyline.