Sorry for being a day late with this. I was busy doing fantasy football stuff yesterday and just didn't have the motivation to sit down and write this out. But motivation is easy to come by when you get to watch another round of poisoning and brutal murder. I'm not a sadist, I promise.
"The Hall Monitor and the Lunch Lady" wastes no time getting to the main conflict, as Klaus takes over as the new lunch lady at Steve's school just in time for students to start puking. Suspicious of a conspiracy, Steve and Klaus team up with the returning Detective Turlington to get to the bottom of it. Straight away, it's a very interesting premise, one that could go a number of ways. Steve goes undercover, and it's here that he starts to lose all agency as a character. Steve is just thrown into one situation after another, and his mission keeps progressing, mostly due to luck rather than actual skill. He's quickly accepted into Principal Lewis' troop of hall monitors, getting to glorious lifestyle he desperately wanted at the start of the episode. It seems like a bad decision on the part of Klaus and Turlington to give Steve everything he wanted, and it turns out to be one, as Steve gets in too deep and embraces being a hall monitor. This whole twist was easily predictable from the start and very poorly executed, as Steve just becomes a bully and there's very little reason to sympathize with him or want him to complete this mission. And just when Steve makes a choice that fits his character, Klaus just undos it, smacking him in the head with a telescopic driving cane.
The final act of this storyline goes to some weird places, as Lewis reveals that he poisoned his students to make up for his excess of sawdust, before then deciding to just murder all of Langley, a very odd leap in logic. He basically just becomes a supervillain, and Steve uses his incredibly ripped legs to stop him, before drinking all the poison, which is an odd decision. That leaves Klaus and the lunch ladies to save the day, which is a lot less fun than it sounds. This story started off with a lot of promise, but was quickly bogged down with dumb characters and baffling logic. A simple mystery plot turned into some sort of buddy cop shtick, and most of it didn't work for me. Most of the humor in this episode also didn't work for me, as after just watching the episode a half hour ago, I can't remember a single joke or gag. It's unfortunate, because Klaus and Steve are normally a fun pairing, but this was just a mess. At least we got more Turlington, only for him to go out on a complete whimper.
The B-plot of "The Hall Monitor and the Lunch Lady" is very, very simple in comparison to the main storyline, though it ended up being far more entertaining. This seems to be a common theme with recent episodes, as poor, uninspired writing gives way to delightful and horrifying animation. Stan and Roger witness a grisly death at the mall escalator, and remain in a catatonic state for the rest of the episode. Dr. Ray from the CIA makes his return, and like Turlington, also gets brutally murdered, which puts Francine and Hayley into a similar state. It's very simple and has literally no conclusion, but makes the episode worth watching to see just how sick AD's animators can be.
6/10
I feel like the writers may just have tried to hard this week, adding too many twists and turns into the main story without keeping it a lot simpler and character based. But we got more Turlington, so it can't possibly be a bad episode. In the end, "The Hall Monitor and the Lunch Lady" is a tale of wasted potential, robbed in its youth by a skeezy principal with too many Christmas trees.
"The Hall Monitor and the Lunch Lady" wastes no time getting to the main conflict, as Klaus takes over as the new lunch lady at Steve's school just in time for students to start puking. Suspicious of a conspiracy, Steve and Klaus team up with the returning Detective Turlington to get to the bottom of it. Straight away, it's a very interesting premise, one that could go a number of ways. Steve goes undercover, and it's here that he starts to lose all agency as a character. Steve is just thrown into one situation after another, and his mission keeps progressing, mostly due to luck rather than actual skill. He's quickly accepted into Principal Lewis' troop of hall monitors, getting to glorious lifestyle he desperately wanted at the start of the episode. It seems like a bad decision on the part of Klaus and Turlington to give Steve everything he wanted, and it turns out to be one, as Steve gets in too deep and embraces being a hall monitor. This whole twist was easily predictable from the start and very poorly executed, as Steve just becomes a bully and there's very little reason to sympathize with him or want him to complete this mission. And just when Steve makes a choice that fits his character, Klaus just undos it, smacking him in the head with a telescopic driving cane.
The final act of this storyline goes to some weird places, as Lewis reveals that he poisoned his students to make up for his excess of sawdust, before then deciding to just murder all of Langley, a very odd leap in logic. He basically just becomes a supervillain, and Steve uses his incredibly ripped legs to stop him, before drinking all the poison, which is an odd decision. That leaves Klaus and the lunch ladies to save the day, which is a lot less fun than it sounds. This story started off with a lot of promise, but was quickly bogged down with dumb characters and baffling logic. A simple mystery plot turned into some sort of buddy cop shtick, and most of it didn't work for me. Most of the humor in this episode also didn't work for me, as after just watching the episode a half hour ago, I can't remember a single joke or gag. It's unfortunate, because Klaus and Steve are normally a fun pairing, but this was just a mess. At least we got more Turlington, only for him to go out on a complete whimper.
The B-plot of "The Hall Monitor and the Lunch Lady" is very, very simple in comparison to the main storyline, though it ended up being far more entertaining. This seems to be a common theme with recent episodes, as poor, uninspired writing gives way to delightful and horrifying animation. Stan and Roger witness a grisly death at the mall escalator, and remain in a catatonic state for the rest of the episode. Dr. Ray from the CIA makes his return, and like Turlington, also gets brutally murdered, which puts Francine and Hayley into a similar state. It's very simple and has literally no conclusion, but makes the episode worth watching to see just how sick AD's animators can be.
6/10
I feel like the writers may just have tried to hard this week, adding too many twists and turns into the main story without keeping it a lot simpler and character based. But we got more Turlington, so it can't possibly be a bad episode. In the end, "The Hall Monitor and the Lunch Lady" is a tale of wasted potential, robbed in its youth by a skeezy principal with too many Christmas trees.
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