When did WHAT happen? The episode, or the scene with Jackie Khones and Fluffer Nutter?
I’m a major Foster’s fan, so needless to say I look forward to new episodes like a little kid looking forward to a birthday, but I was SERIOUSLY disappointed with “The Little Peas”. First of all, it was basically just a re-telling of another episode that I’d found rather weak, “The Big Cheese”. I didn’t hate the latter; it just didn’t do anything for me. The one real saving grace of “The Big Cheese”, though, was Frankie’s clever way of turning the “dirty laundry”-style news segment on Foster’s to her-and to the home’s-advantage, by making it into a plea for donations. She turned the negative report around and basically pwned that reporter, big-time, when the reporter, Erin Peterson, was trying just to make Foster’s look bad by doing more of an “expose”" segment than anything else. And then, we get “The Little Peas”, which more or less now will have viewers to believe that Frankie was not so clever and resourceful after all, but a quitter and a loser, who would not have pulled that off if it had not been for this tiny little pea Imaginary Friend with a Mickey Mouse voice dictating in her ear what she should do. I’m not a fanatic about Frankie the way many male fans are(Wilt-fanatic, yes, though), but I still admire the girl and can relate to her, so to see her basically rendered obsolete here was a big downer. It makes you wonder what other characters’ successes or bright ideas or determination they will want to credit to Peas, whom we’d never even heard of before this episode. It certainly made it seem as though Peas is the only character on the show who has ever offered to help Frankie in any way, completely disregarding both Wilt and Mac in that respect. Peas himself I didn’t find amusing or interesting. He was far too “preachy” and too much like early Disney cartoons, both in looks and demeanor, and that message about achieving success in spite of odds and obstacles was this time, just too much, too in-your-face. Wilt has always, in my mind, been the best spokesperson for overcoming the odds, and he’s never once mentioned HIS handicaps in the context of achievement, nor has he ever bemoaned them, either. He just quietly does what has to be done, unlike Peas who was constantly going on about how no one ever noticed him or payed attention to him because of his size, and how he had to do this and that to help Frankie because no one else ever did.
Season Five has been rather “iffy” for me, anyway, with two episodes that I really disliked, this being one of them, and “Ticket To Rod” being the other. It’s had some really good episodes, like “Nightmare On Wilson Way” and “Bloo Superdude and the Potato of Power”, but for the most part, many of the episodes have been a tad luke-warm, with way too much emphasis on Bloo and none whatsoever on that core group of friends whose adventures made for such interesting and fun episodes in earlier seasons. Two of the main characters, Wilt and Coco, have been almost non-existent, while Bloo has been the focus of nearly every episode. In the one in which he wasn’t, we get Peas instead. I have enjoyed seeing some of the minor, background characters in the spotlight a bit, though, like in “Schlock Star”, but I wish that their moments to shine wasn’t at the expense of pushing favorite established characters into the background, or out of the picture completely. I do like the references to prior episodes, something that one of the show’s main writers once said would not happen because Cartoon Network didn’t want episodes to seem “dated” to the point where a timeline of events on the show could be established, and I also like the fact that they did show that there IS romantic interest between at least some of the characters, even if they are minor ones. That’s something else that originally CN would not allow, but it certainly answers the question as to whether Imaginary Friends are capable of having feelings of shall we say, physical attraction, for one another, or indulging in more intimate relationships. The brief, “off-camera” making-out session between Jackie and Fluffer Nutter, though, was about the only positive thing I can find in “The Little Peas”.
pitbulllady