#Emma has learned a lot about obscure topics

[emmagail-brainrot]

She’s been infodumping about an obscure period of art history that “really should be talked about more because of the significance it’s had that people don’t even know about……” and Emma hasn’t said a word in 15 minutes but god she loves this weirdo

[popculturebuffet]

Arthur: Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone Review: Arthur and Co Try to Ruin A Teacher’s Life (Comisison by Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people! I”m Jake, I review comics and cartoons, and we are gathered here today for the first of three weddings this month for Valentine’s Day. Two are poll winners and this one was a comission by my good friend Emma. Why.. she just wanted this valentine’s day to have some gay in it and I agree. Everything can use gay in it. That’s a fact.. sadly not a Disney fact because Disney is still struggling to accept gay characters over profit but a fact nonetheless. 

As such i’m doing my second ever review of a preschool show. I thought it was the first but I forgot I reviewed two episodes of mickey and the roadster racers for my three cabs retrospective. So it’s the first preschool show i’ve reviewed that dosen’t make he feel like this

Arthur is a long running kids show that’s only ending NOW after 23 seasons, going since 1996. You watched it as a kid, I watched it as a kid, it crosses generations and gets into the blood, going from a succesful book series to almost 30 years of cartooning, even getting a spinoff at one point. I may not watch the show anymore and only watched this for the review.. but I still respect it for being a decent children’s show that teaches kids good morals without talking down to them despite being for a younger audience. So I was happy to review this one both because I geninely respect the show for staying quality with only a few slipups over 20 some years, and because I love queer represntation in children’s media. For too long it was felt “oh well being gay is an adult topic for adults” but it isn’t and while Arthur took i’ts sweet time getting there, being this long a runner and making the queer character a long standing member of the main cast no less.. that takes some guts. People are scarily protective of fictional characters on a normal day, add in querrness and you’ve summoned a horde of orcs to your doorstep screaming “Kill wokeness!”. So it was a balsy move and I appricate them for making it. 

So to start us off we have the opening which is just.... pure joy. It makes me happy, it’s beauitfully animated, has only been slightly changed in the shows LONNNNG run and the song itself is just so damn sweet and catchy you can’t help but love it or sing along. It’s currently living in my head rent free since watching this review and despite not having heard it in years, the second it hit again I remembered every lyric. A true national treasure that needs to be bronzed.. once we can bronze sound. Can you bronze sound? How have we not bronzed sound?

Anyways Mr. Ratburn comes in and grills the class on their assignment to read up on lycans and liverwurst. Damn I wish I had a teacher who cared about teaching me about allterations and obscure werewolf weaknesses in third grade instead of not teaching me cursive right because she thinks me being learning disabled was an “attitude problem”. Suddenly i’m depressed for some reason. 

Anyways before he can “gotcha” them with a pop quiz, he gets an important call on his cell phone about flowers baffling everybody. Like a true gentleman he apologizes while Buster wonders if flowers are on the test. 

As for why it was important Mr. Ratburn is getting married! Horay! So after school the kids head down to the old school diner that lets third graders all eat there alone for narritive convience and talk over their shock. Fracinine processes it as teachers having normal lives. Buster dosen’t think so as he thinks all teachers do is eat kale and think up new homework. Which let’s be fair here IT is mr. ratburn. He probably does do that. Dosen’t mean he can’t date guys while doing that buster or find a guy who supports him doing that. 

Anyways Mr. Ratburn comes in with his sister, whose played by Jane Lynch

As you can probably guess I love her. As much of a talented actress as she is a gay icon and from what I can tell an extremley nice woman. She carried Glee a lot of the time as it slowly got more and more up it’s own ass, and in general is just a delight. And it’s really no suprise Arthur would want a promitnent gay actress to be in this episode. 

Patty, said Jane Lynch character, turns out to be a bit demanding about the wedding she’s helping plan. I”m not hiding it because A) the person who requested this and likely every person reading this knows Mr. Ratburn’s marrying a dude so this is a fake out and B) Even if I didn’t know he was marrying a man, Patty is a very obvious red herring, as it’s clear to any adult ears their planning a wedding. But given the target audience for Arthur is children young an old most kids wouldn’t think that unless they happen to have a relative who is one or have been around a wedding planning recently. So it’s a well played misdirect. I can only sense it because i’m old and i’ve seen this kind of WACKY MISUNDERSTANDING PLOT before. 

What I haven’t seen before is what comes next. Brace yoruself. okay so first off the kids worry about him marrying someone like this, as they worry she’ll make Mr. Ratburn even more strict. Arthur, being the only one in his friend group with an active braincell since Brain and Pinky are absent this week, probably snuck off to hold hands those scamps, points out they don’t KNOW this woman and seeing some bossy actions one time dosen’t mean she’s that bad. Francine gets him to stop thinking so hard by pointing out just how bad a stricter Mr. Ratburn could be. So we get an imagination sequence where Arthur accidently missed a Comma.. and that causes Mr. Ratburn.. to turn into this

Reviews I’ve Had This Year that Somehow Involve A Hulk Count: 1

Trust me.. i’m going to need this. I just didn’t think i’d need it for Hulk Ratburn but here we are and god bless the writers for this. Thank you. You had 20 some years to do this but i’m glad you choose the gay marriage episode everyone would be watching for it so I could see it. Thank you. 

Anyways here’s where the episode gets kinda nuts... yes just after Mr. Ratburn became the Immortal Ratburn, it gets crazy. So the kids decide to derail the wedding. And not for the obvious reasons of “He’ll be unhappy”.. but because they fear he’ll give them more homework. Which is a very kid thing to do, and I can get behind that.. i’ts still kinda nuts there’s an episode where just to avoid getting more homework arthur and friends.. how do I put this best...

Oh yes that’ll do. Seriously that’s most of the episode. Wacky schemes to try and ruin their teachers life.. because they think it’ll make their lives better.  It only works because being third graders and not having TJ or Stan to Cordinate their plans aren’t the best. Their first is to make Mr. Ratburn look like a hippie, a look Buster not only digs but wears later to the wedding. God bless this show.  And then having him read an embarassing book and add audio to it.  Pam gets this is a meme of some sort and laughs. Plan B is to set him up with someone else, and gets choclates from a bakery who seem oddly helpful.  But it’s a set up with the librarian.. that dosen’t work because Mr. Ratburn ducks out of the attempted setup, likely because his fiance works at the bakery and tipped him off, hence how he knows any of this, if not Pam certainly did as she knows at the wedding, and cleverly the librarian spots the spelling errors and buster also mispelled ratburns name

So they get nowhere and decide to go with the classic I Object.. not knowing that’s been removed from most cermony’s to avoid obnoxious exes or general douchebaggery because most obnoxious exes and douchebags know of the tradition. So our heroes rehearse using it since they get invited because Mr. Ratburn is a damn good man. Like this episode goes out of the way to showcase it: He gives a pop quiz but rather than just to be cruel it’s because the kids clearly didn’t do the reading and lied about it, so he’s simply trying to teach a lesson, he falls into the first breakup attempt because Arthur claims he needs to read the book for his baby sister and dosen’t bust his kids or anything after learning their scam, likely getting the misunderstanding. He dosen’t explain that to them.. but given their trying to ruin his wedding via a complex scheme he really dosen’t owe them that and plus honestly.. he seems like kind of a troll anyway. Not enough to effect their grades or anything but enough to keep them form pulling this shit when they actually are old enough to possibly effect a wedding. 

Pam also gets in on it guilttripping Francine by saying thier all his children, something she did to all of them getting them to realize “holy shit we’re trying to ruin a man’s life” and they stop.. and Pam loudly admits she’s ratburns teacher just for the kids benefit. So he and his husband to be george walk down, george winks and they knew the whole time. Again the man took time out of his day to fuck with some of his students head and did so effortlessly WHILE getting ready to be married, and did it all for good reason.. and his sister helped. It’s amazing it took several decades for him to find a partner, Mr. Ratburn is a bonfied stud. 

Anyways there’s a joke about teacher dancing, the kids accept the marriage and one last things noteable: One is that.. the gender of the groom never comes up. THey just casually accept a gay wedding and their teacher being gay and I think that’s neat. I like when shows don’t call attention to characters being gay. They just.. are. Loud House and Craig of the Creek have also done that to great effect and the times they have dealt into diffuclty being queer, it’s been warranted; Fear or rejection or struggles coming to terms with your sexuality. It’s not done through some aseop about bigotry, though those are also necessary they don’t need to be the only stories. Sometimes the best way to have represntation.. is to just show queerness as the normal thing it is. 

Final Thoughts: This is a decent episode. While again the kids TRYING TO RUIN MR RATBURNS ENGAGMENT stuck out a bit over time I realized it’s just a bit weird and in a fun enough and harmless enough way. THey don’t know i’ts a man, their just kids trying to do something stupid that has no chance of working, like when I greased myself up with pam to try and fit under a bed. It’s just goofy harmless fun with the lesson to both not try and intefere where you don’t know the situation and that it’s perfectly normal to be gay. It’s a solid episode and a solid welcome back.

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