Gravity Falls, S1E10: "Fight Fighters" (Quick Reaction) · 4:46pm Jun 13th, 2023
In which a Dipper is you, all your Shack are belong to us, and in Soviet Russia, game beats you!
Kept you waiting, huh?
SPOILERS
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Y.U. Meen
I've mentioned before that Gravity Falls has some Simpsons DNA spliced in-between its horror and mystery genes. Mostly that's because of its parodic elements, wherein pretty much any and every level of American culture gets a chummy but painful punch to the shoulder. Usually, that's mixed in with an otherwise deadly serious premise.
And then you get episodes like this one, where the parodic element just straight-up geeks out, and any horror present is the kind you don't even notice till you get up to go to the fridge.
"You created a time paradox! Dipper, you can't go changing the future like that!"
(Alternatively: Fission Mailed)
Before we get to that, though, and unfortunately, I do wanna talk briefly about the thematically linked plot. Because we don't just dive into the Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat sendups. We got a "real" world to deal with, and sadly it's the weakest part of the episode.
Bluntly put, the moralized plotting here feels way more muddled and a bit more misguided than it did the last time the show poked fun at the stupid side of masculinity. "Misguided" is easy to spot. Firstly, Robbie - who theoretically we're supposed to care about later in Season Two - completes his descent from sarcastic hanger-on to utter jackass.
You're loser!
It's bad enough he thinks Dipper - a twelve-year-old - is a genuine romantic threat, which says more about Robbie than it does about Dipper. It's worse that he takes such an entitled view to Wendy in the first place. But it hits its nadir when he not only threatens to "out" - read: humiliate - Dipper over a snide comment about listening skills, but straight-up threatens him, putting the fear of Rob in him for most of the episode.
If this is meant to make us hate Robbie as a generic bully jerkwad, mission accomplished. If we're meant to take him seriously as part of the heroic team in the series finale, it's a major handicap, and I'm not convinced it was balanced well enough. The ambiguous hint at the end of the episode - that Robbie was bluffing and wouldn't really go through with beating up a twelve-year-old - is outweighed by the fact that A) he technically got what he wanted by that point anyway, just by proxy, and B) he made the threat to begin with. Whether or not he was bluffing, he certainly convinced Dipper he was willing and able, and that's a black mark on its own.
Just call him Waluigi's emo twin.
This wouldn't be so bad, necessarily, except that the show's comedy picks a bad time to borrow from Simpsons in getting... weirdly cruel around that point. It's one thing for an antagonist like Robbie to bully Dipper: that's at least expected. It's another for the Pines - and even Soos - to behave so nonchalantly about it.
Grunkle Stan's bias against Dipper in particular feels like it's moving from "jerk with a heart of gold" territory to just straight-up negligence and apathy, and this is going to be a problem a couple of times going forward. Mabel's yet again distracted by her own subplot with Grunkle, which gives the (unintentional) impression that she doesn't care very much. Even Soos weirdly feels compelled to frame Dipper's problem as a false dichotomy: face Robbie like a man, or chicken out. What the hell, Soos?
"Dat guy's a maniac! WHAHDEEFIGHTME!?"
"Muddled" is a bit trickier to grasp, and requires us to jump to the end of the episode. Some of these problems could be argued, after all, as being part of the point: Robbie and Dipper's fighting obsession is stupid, and they both agree to another way. Possibly tongue-in-cheek, the episode frames this as the "girl's way" of hating each other: silently. An improvement over fisticuffs, I guess, if stereotypical as hell, but it still feels a bit off to me.
Firstly, it ironically sets up the unfortunate gender implications that masculine is dumb and feminine is better, a pitfall that "Dipper Vs. Manliness" avoided by framing the options as two types of masculinity instead. I mean, Mabel and Wendy aren't exactly sitting pretty.
"It's dangerous to go alone. Take me."
Secondly, Dipper didn't solve his video game problem until he stepped up and fought his real-life avatar by himself, which if anything gives the impression that the episode agrees he should have just taken his punches like a man.
And thirdly, it's a strange time to make fun of the moral. Morals before now largely have been treated somewhat seriously in the show (trust your sibling, don't neglect your family, don't let others get you down, and so on), whereas this one has a definite tongue-in-cheek tone to it.
"Dude, your princess is in another shack. She's cut content!"
Perhaps this was necessary to let the ongoing Dipper-Robbie rivalry continue, but the result is that it treats the symptoms, not the disease: both boys are still motivated to go after each other, so all this anti-fighting angle means is that they find more creative and potentially nastier ways to stretch out their pointless competition. After all, Robbie managed to ruin Dipper's day through fear and intimidation, all without once laying a finger on him. What's to stop him trying to humiliate Dipper again?
"All we had to do was follow the damn game, DP!"
Well, now you know why I can't award this episode full marks, perhaps you'd like to know why I still think it's pretty damn awesome. Two words: Rumble McSkirmish.
To put him into perspective, though, the whole episode is one big affectionate parody of fighting games, and video games generally. The key to any such parody is a deep, encyclopaedic love of the subject, and that's on full display here. (The TV Tropes page for shout outs has subsections for each episode: Fight Fighters is conspicuously one of the longer entries). The staff even went out of their way to design Rumble McSkirmish as a 16-bit video game sprite, complete with idle animation and a perfect "90s dub voice" (as well as hilariously badly localized lines). It's an incredible show of dedication.
"Man o' machines, son!"
Moreover, they exploit it to the hilt. Not only are gaming tropes and references inserted through the creatively giddy logic of seeing how weirdly they translate into the real world, but even the drama is reprogrammed to split the difference. There's a shockingly straight performance late in the episode wherein Rumble soliloquys about how he's been tricked by Dipper and now questions his own honour. It's framed like a video game cutscene and capped with a ridiculously silly finger pointer moment, but it also reveals another trick for making parody work: juggling it with seriousness.
Rumble is a belligerent buffoon who can't have an opponent without insisting on a melodramatic motive (the running gag of him thinking Robbie killed Dipper's father), but what simultaneously makes the joke work is the fact that he treats his preposterous game world logic as The Way It All Works. Part of the comedy comes from the tragedy: he has no idea how blood-and-pain real life differs from his frivolous pocket dimension in a hunk of scrap metal, which means his already-absurd tendency to shout out inane catchphrases is made even more absurd by the realization that yes, this guy really believes what he says, and yes, he will break your spine because "Winners don't lose!" The jumble is exponentially confusing, which just makes it that bit richer for laughs.
"I used to be an acrophobe like you, then I took a Mabel up with me."
None of this would matter, of course, if the episode wasn't so gleeful about it. You can have a laboriously detailed checklist parody with no laughs, you can have an over-serious parody that makes you feel bad rather than glad, but fun is fun. There's no substitute.
Mabel getting Rumble to say random words is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, but minus the random moments, the episode is suffused with fun. Rumble's line readings are just the right combo of played straight and clearly self-aware: he can say pretty much anything in that hammy tone, and it'd land. Dipper being so blase about the dangerous litter in the road shuts down any Doylist wonderings about no, seriously, why are there swords in the road, because the Watsonian side of things just makes fun of it and then swiftly moves on.
"RUUUUUUMBLE JEEEEEEEEENKINS!"
Part of what makes even Mabel's sideplot work is how cheerfully she goes through with it, and how ridiculous Stan is made to look resisting it or going along with her. No matter how dumb Soos is trying to climb into a machine, he's doing it to live out some crazy kiddie fantasy about breaking into the game world - like in the movies! - and how nonchalantly the episode throws him back into the mix later, none the worse for wear but weirdly with a piece of arcade screen stuck around his neck. It's dorky, light-hearted without being completely frivolous, and boy does it move fast! Rapid-fire comedy like this barely leaves you with enough room to stop laughing.
So thank you, Gravity Falls, for an episode we'll never forget. Hold X to pay respects.
Bills here
EDIT: Please note a couple of retrospective corrections to the points raised in the OP here.
That's all for now! Impossible Numbers, out!
<<< Gravity Falls, S1E9: "The Time Traveler's Pig" (Quick Reaction)
I had never put it together until now that they dipped (heh) into this well twice. And I rather liked it both times. The episode where Soos played with a dating sim character was great. Not sure if you've gotten to that one yet.
A fine review! This was definitely a fun one.
5733246
That one was a riot!
5733246
Not yet. That one's early on in Season Two, whereas I've only just reached the halfway mark of Season One. "Soos and the Real Girl" is definitely an ep I look forward to revisiting.
5733272
Rumble makes sporadic reappearances later in the series, and it's safe to say I grinned every time. He's just such a fun character.
Couple of corrections to note down here:
Adjust the force or focus of my topics accordingly.