StuGo: An Absurd Cartoon
StuGo Isn’t Trying To Be Much More Than Amusing
I don’t have that much to say about StuGo. Some cartoons are made with an adult audience as possible viewers, weaving in more intense plots for fandoms to form. You know them by name, if not by experience. Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Owl House. Gravity Falls. This show is not that, at least not within the first three episodes. It reminds me more of a Phineas and Ferb-style show, though without nearly the same level of writing.
The main draw of StuGo ends up being its greatest weakness: a wonderfully silly setting with a lot of possibilities baked in. A cast of six extremely eccentric kids is brought to an island by an equally eccentric, if not more so, supervillain and tricked into helping her do something villainous. The island is covered in mutants, weird technology, random traps, and confusing buildings, so there’s always something to do. But with so much possibility comes the temptation to do whatever—and StuGo does that.
StuGo Quickly Turns Into Random Sci-Fi Plotlines
I can easily imagine a series where each episode the kids are tricked into helping with some vaguely evil plot, but aren’t aware of it, and slowly become more skilled or knowledgeable of the island. But that’s not StuGo at all. They know she’s a villain almost right away. She has some compassion for helping them sometimes but mostly wants them off the island. So, the premise becomes background noise. The episodes are each broken into two smaller stories, and there’s no way to know what you’ll get. Not even the opening moments of an episode make it clear what to expect. Episode 3’s second part, entitled “Goat Racket” is heavily about irradiated magic beans and crimes involving beans, but it’s mostly a child-level exploration of lying (where the lesson is actually somewhat contradicted by the story) and—more on theme—features children fighting goats.
It Starts To Feel like StuGo Does Not Plan Stuff Out
StuGo’s also got other problems. The one that baffled me was that it’s sloppy at least once with the animation. In episode 2’s second part, “Dog Eat Dog,” the main character of the ensemble loses her boots to a mutant. She’s very upset about this. She also is still wearing them for a few seconds after we see them get taken away. And no, it’s not a random joke. It’s never acknowledged and appears to be a genuine error.
Really, the only reason to watch StuGo is because it’s funny. And it is pretty dang funny. The comedy is unabashedly absurd, but it’s so varied with it. Deadpan dialogue, visual gags, overdramatic faces, running jokes, moments of shocking bleakness, sudden escalations, and much, much more. The show is clearly banking on you liking characters that—at least not yet—have very few personality traits each and being along for whatever ride (in one case a literal rollercoaster-style ride) StuGo wants to send them on. And if, by the end of the first episode, you’re in that headspace, it’s a very amusing show. But that really is about it.
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