In the second, and I thiiiiiiink... final season, Horse (voiced by Kimiko Glenn) and her friends try to recruit a centaur army in order to fight the the Nowhere King (Brian Stokes Mitchell) and his army of minotaurs.
The show returns with its same brand of wacky, weird comedy. Basically for every two funny jokes, there's one that crashes, is too weird, or both. Again, there are parts where the weirdness can be too much. It doesn't feel quite as concentrated (they mostly cut out the talking butt and tail stuff), but there is still a lot of it. Still wished they cut down on Durple (How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnor) being in-your-face simple-minded and Ched (Chris Diamantopoulous) constantly being angry at Horse. Like last season, they get old fast. (No complaints about kleptomaniac Glendale (show creator Megan Dong); she's golden.)
The show keeps its greatest strength: the interesting balance between the Centaurworld and human worlds, comedy and seriousness, and lightheartedness and darkness. To be honest, I was lot more a fan of the saner, more serious stuff. The life blood of this is the friendship between the separated Horse and the human Rider (Jessie Mueller). Kimiko Glenn does a wonderful job of making you feel for a talking horse. The backstory of the villain the Nowhere King is surprisingly really well thought out, original, and dark and dramatic for a children's show.
The seventy minute finale is truly something. It really feels like one of the most substantial and complete finales to a kids' show I've seen.
Parents be forewarned that going back to that whole darkness thing I've been mentioning there are two moments in the last episode that you may feel are too dark for your kids. I'm not trying to be thin-skinned here. That time Disney's postponement of and then adding a warning for that one episode with a scene of violence I thought was overt worrying and overkill on the network's part. Here, however... I know that Netflix is more hands off when it comes to children's programming content when compared to some channels, but I was genuinely shocked with what they allowed here.
Admittedly, there's some pacing issues. The show really pushed the episodic stories and pushed a lot of the important exposition to the very end. The mysterious and simply named Woman (Lea Salonga), who's important to the backstory and had been well woven into the last season, feels completely forgotten until the very end. Even then, it feels like she got scenes cut for time. Something was missing with how she moved from point A to point B.
Songs here aren't as good as last season. A few good ones, but there isn't the consistency in quality that the last season had.
Kinda recommended. This show will frankly be too weird for a lot of people. I liked this, but I preferred the whole more than some of the individual parts and can totally understand why many people wouldn't be able to make it through that. Still, a lot of other people will like the weirdness and story. For those already fans, the finale completely delivers.
No comments:
Post a Comment