Review: Victor and Valentino “Get Your Sea Legs”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Victor is eager to win a swimming competition by doing the least amount of possible at training. Luckily he finds a nice girl to help him learn who just so happens to be a mermaid! But when he asks for a training shortcut, he discovers that she can swap her tail out with other peoples’ legs! This leads her to steal multiple legs from everyone, even swap ones around on everyone else, until Victor and Valentino help her to feel better about who she is, so she gives everyone their legs back and helps him out by continuing to coach him.

OUR TAKE

If Val is the caring and intelligent one of the two, Vic is most certainly the sneakier and lazier one. That’s not to say Vic is every portrayed as necessarily bad, just that he definitely represents the less mature aspects of being a kid, which oddly enough makes him more relatable to me at times. I want to believe that was more like Val growing up but really I was looking for shortcuts and ways to goof off like Vic. It’s a big part of what makes their dynamic work and why following either or both of them is often fun to watch. They’re two characters who were made in a way that it would be easy to make that connection. I imagine a lot of kids liking Vic more right now but growing up to understand Val more, which is already a good sign for the show’s longevity with its intended audience.

As for today’s episode, it’s a classic Monkey’s Paw sort of story, with Vic getting into a deal bigger than he initially expected and having to pay a terrible cost, in this case being his legs. And with that in mind, I’d say a really good take on this is how they made the mermaid very convincing in just wanting to help, dangled her motivations of wanting to walk on land out there without making it obvious this was a trap, and then making it so the sense of betrayal that Vic feels hurts us as well. Yet, at the same time, we see that this deal backfires for the mermaid as well, with her constantly having to switch between different pairs of legs until she’s got the whole town after her, needing to switch everyone’s legs and cause chaos before realizing she’s gone too far. With this whole situation resolved, I do hope that they have her back for more recurring appearances, since it would definitely be interesting to have more supporting characters who are directly linked to the supernatural, which looks to be becoming a much more consistent element of the show’s setting. Though it seems we won’t have to wait very long for more creepiness in the show, as the last episode of this week is based around one of the creepier characters in the cast! As well as many references to one of the most famous Latin directors in the world, of course.