Review: Gravity Falls ‘Bottomless Pit’

Spoilers Below

The Mystery Shack gang get sucked into a bottomless pit that Dipper SWORE wouldn’t work, but to help pass the time everyone decides to tell stories starting with Dip’s:

VOICE OVER

Dipper’s voice is cracking and its cracking everyone up at the shop, so he gets a serum from McGucket that actually changes the pitch of his voice to that of a professional voice over dude. However, the serum just makes everyone smash Dip over the head with objects or gets him chased around town, both of which aren’t very conducive to making new friends. That said, when the Old Man tries to remedy the situation with another serum, Dipper opts to revert back to his normal voice.

After a rousing game of I Spy, Sous tells a story:

Soos’ Really Great Pinball Story: Is That A Good Title?

Ever see Tron?? Basically, Soos gets sucked into a pinball game after cheating to get the high score. As a result the machine comes to life and starts terrorizing mini-sized versions of Soos and the Pine twins to no end. Thankfully, Soos finds the switch to turn off the machine, turn everyone from pint-sized to normal sized, and subsequently delete the high score.

Last story up for bid is Stan’s story about winning the football bowl:

Syke! But, actually Stan tells a story about how a winning football team grovels at the old man’s feet.

Really next up is Mabel’s story called:

Trooth Ache!

Mabel finds some magical truth telling teeth to put in Stan’s mouth so that he will stop lying to get out of everything and man up to his mistakes. Unfortunately, Stan’s lies are so big, they are borderline illegal and after flirting with the wrong side of the law, Mabel decides that its better to have a lying uncle than a jail bait one!

Mabel’s story ends as Mabel and the gang come out the other end of the bottomless pit in the same place they jumped down.

 

Every animated series up to this point has done the thing where they get trapped or have some time to kill, so they tell stories to bide the time and as a result you get to see different alterations or wacky stories of your favorite characters that you would not otherwise see. The Simpsons with the Halloween specials, Family Guy did it with Star Wars, and now Gravity Falls. That said, this doesn’t seem to be any sort of running start for a series nor does it infer that we will see more of these, because GF is already so OUT THERE that any kind of alteration to the characters wouldn’t seem that crazy. Like, Dipper drinking a serum that makes his voice change isn’t so far removed from when he would go back in time, or summon fighters to beat up bullies. It was pretty great seeing Soos get some more screen time, as he is one of my favorite ancillary characters. Add in a Mabel story that smartly wraps up the whole kit n kaboodle, and you have yourself a fun collection of adventures that will surely have us yell GET IN THE PIT!!

 

(9.0 out of 10)