Review: The Stanley Dynamic “The Stanley Feud”

Posted on March 27, 2015August 31, 2019 by Tommy North

SPOILERS BELOW

Following up the series premiere of “The Stanley Dynamic” is one of the most important episodes for the show or any show. You’ll always have a large audience on your premiere episode, but it’s that second episode everybody looks at because it tells you if you’ve made something worth coming back for. Much of my thoughts about the premiere carry over into this second episode, so without further ado, let’s hop into this review!

In “The Stanley Feud”, Luke begins to feel ignored and unappreciated by Larry when he notices that he’s been blowing him off to hang out with his new football buddy, Darnell. Meanwhile, Lori needs help with her math homework, and when Lisa is unable to help her, she hires a tutor, Mr.Blount (Scott Thompson) to help teach Lane and herself everything they need to help Lori. Things get messy when Lori questions the identity of the tutor, making Lane and Lisa go with the classic lie of saying he’s an uncle.

Much like the premiere, I’m once again impressed with how well the animation works with the live-action. While it’s something that can easily come across bad, there is enough attention to detail to make it pretty much seamless. There are a few instances where it didn’t work, but for the most part, I think it worked better this week than last week. Everybody seems to be interacting with Luke more organically.

The supporting cast was a little weak this week, particularly Lane. He’s in a show with an animated character, and he somehow seemed the most cartoonish this week. Michael Barbuto, who plays the father, Lane, is a really funny and charming actor. I enjoy him when he’s on-screen, it just seems at the time they give him the corniest lines. This is a problem I have with a lot of family-friendly sitcoms, the father is usually painted as a ditz. It can be entertaining in small doses, but I found it was over the top this week. He made me laugh a few times, but by the end of the episode, I was exhausted. Everybody else was great. Scott Thompson from “Kids in the Hall” and “Hannibal” guest-starred as the tutor, Mr. Blount. He was pretty entertaining, he always brings energy and charisma is to any project he is part of, so he was a welcomed sight.

The characters developed a little bit this week. During the premiere of the show, Larry had been invited to join the football team, and as awesome as that it, Luke was still left alone. This week it appears he made friends with a kid at school, Ronnie. He is sort of the school nerd/geek. By modern standards, he would actually be a pretty cool guy to hang around. He’d probably be well known at the local Comic-Con, but he still comes off as sort of a dork. Writing that made me realize that the school they go to doesn’t really reflect what schools are like anymore. In the first episode, the intimidating bully was a jock with a letterman’s jacket. He turned out to be a cool guy, so I guess they defeated that stereotype.

Overall, it was a pretty fun episode. It’s still a fun watch for the kids, there isn’t much about it that could be appealing for adult audiences, but if you’re immature like me, you’ll probably find yourself laughing at least a couple of times. The subplots of the episode played out as expected. Luke and Larry made up. A little too quickly if you ask me, and they even joke about it in the show. They dragged out the conflict so long that there wasn’t enough time to give a satisfying resolution. The tutor story became pretty funny when he tried to move in with the Stanley Family, but he got the boot as well. Not a great episode, but still a fun watch.