Let's Watch This - An Episode of "Fish Hooks"

Pop quiz: what do the folks that run Disney Channel love? The answer is SHOWS THAT TAKE PLACE IN HIGH SCHOOL. Ever since the way beginning of the 2000s, Disney Channel's programming has been at least ninety-two percent shows that take place in high school or star kids that go to high school. I think the only tweencom of theirs that DIDN'T focus on some kid in high school was The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (I could be wrong, it's been years since I've watched that show). And most of the cartoons that they showed focused on kids in high school, too. Let's see... The Emperor's New School had Kuzco going to a high school, I'm pretty sure Jake Long went to a high school, Kim Possible is a high school student... it's actually kind of incredible that they were willing to greenlight a show that A) starred kids who were obviously not in high school yet and B) took place over summer vacation which means that they couldn't show the school that they went to at all (Phineas and Ferb).

Which brings us to today's cartoon, Fish Hooks.

Fish Hook revolves around one main joke - they're fish. In high school. That's pretty much it. Episodes focus on such subjects as...

- The girl fish wants to get a perfect picture in the yearbook

- Final exams are approaching, and the main male fish's grades are crappy

- The main male fish's brother becomes a goth

- An Equestria Girls knockoff episode where the characters become humans (or something like that)

- An episode about a school musical

Personally, I've never watched an episode of this show because I always thought that it looked kind of lousy. But I know that there are folks who like it, so I figured "What the heck? I'll give it a watch." Who knows, maybe I'll like it. MAYBE.

The episode that we'll be watching is called "Underwater Boy".

One thing that I do like is that they list the voice talents at the beginning of the episode right after the title card. That's pretty neat - I can't think of any other show that does that...

The episode begins - where else? - at Fishwater High School, where the main male fish Milo (voiced by Kyle "Cory of In The House fame" Massey) is dressed like a magician for some reason. Then the football team comes into the building, led by their coach Richard Simmons Fish. Everybody loves the football team, especially their "MVP", Jocktopus (John DiMaggio).

"Make way for the cliched 'football-playing jock who's also the school bully'
character!"

Much of this scene consists of the characters squealing, yelling, or just SHOUTING REALLY LOUD. It's pretty grating.

Eventually, Milo's brother Oscar (voiced by Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland) shows up, and Milo says that he's just had a "major life-changing realization". "Please don't tell me that this has anything to do with joining the football team," Oscar begs. But wouldn't you know it, it DOES. They go to see the girl fish Bea (Chelsea Staub), who as it turns out is ALSO totally into football. Oscar tells her that Milo wants to join the football team, but he doesn't know how to play. "I'm just in it for the GA-LO-REEEEEEEEEEEEEY!" Milo says in a rather annoying fashion.

Bea's all "I'll help. What DO you know about football thus far, Milo?" As it turns out, all Milo knows about football is that it involves getting the football over the goalpost. Then you dance. And then he starts dancing. It should be pretty obvious to you my know that Milo's not exactly the smartest fish in the tank.

Also, I know this might be considered a nitpick, but why do Oscar and Bea have hair?
They're fish. Fish don't have hair.

Bea correctly says that this is likely going to be a lot more work than she initially thought, but Milo's all, "Nah, I'm a quick learner!" Four hours later, Bea's tank looks like this:

Regardless, Milo apparently knows how to play football now. He heads off to the tryouts, and there's a funny gag where he initially thinks that he's not the smallest guy trying out - only for it to turn out that the tiny fish next to him is in fact a pufferfish.

Richard Simmons Fish (no, that's not his name, but it's just Richard Simmons as a fish, so I'm just gonna call him that) tells Milo to show them what he's got. Milo then proceeds to dribble the ball, whack it with a tennis racket, and, um, surf on it. What the heck did Bea teach him?

"I'M A LUNATIC! CAN YOU TELL?!"

"THAT'S NOT HOW YOU PLAY FOOTBALL!" Jocktopus points out, but Richard Simmons Fish doesn't care and just cheers Milo on. Milo gets out a catcher's mitt and catches the football, then hikes it and starts dancing. Richard Simmons Fish likes what he sees, even though Jocktopus says that what Milo did is not football. I hate to agree with the school bully, but what Milo did shows that indeed he does not know how to play football.

Richard Simmons Fish announces that Milo is on the team... as their waterboy. "FINALLY, SOME JOCKTO-JUSTICE!" Jocktopus shouts as he slithers off. "Now wait just a minute!" Milo protests... right before he and Richard Simmons Fish just stand there making blank expressions (I guess that's supposed to be them "waiting a minute"). Then Milo complains, "Waterboy doesn't even have to do with anything! I mean, we're already underwater!" But Richard Simmons Fish claims that being waterboy is Milo's "destiny". Then Milo makes this face:

Yeeeeeeeeeeesh...

Milo says that he's quitting the team, and we cut to him at home playing video games. I don't know how video games work underwater. Anyhow, Milo complains that if he stayed as the waterboy he never would've gotten the attention that he wants. Oscar's all "It's not about the ATTENTION! Even if you're just the waterboy, you're still part of the team!" To demonstrate just how important Milo is to the team, in fact, Oscar made a pie chart. And if you take a piece - Milo's piece - away from the pie, it's not a pie anymore. It's just a Pac-Man shape. Milo realizes that he's right - he must embrace his role as waterboy! And then he eats the pie chart because he's an idiot and he doesn't understand that it's not a real pie.

Milo shows up at the field, only to discover that the team's not there - they're playing at the Gecko tank (insert some sort of GEICO reference here). And it's burning hot in the Gecko tank, which means that Milo and the water that he has with him are going to be very, very important to the team today. The geckos look like this:

They also have accents of some sort. I think they're French accents, but I could
be wrong... and no, I don't know why a gecko would be French.

The team is struggling without Milo and his water, and as a result the geckos are clobbering them. The geckos, as it turns out, have water, but they'll only give it to them if they forfeit the game. Thankfully, Milo makes it there just in time and rehydrates the team. Long story short, they win and the Gecko Coach (Dave Wittenberg) - or rather, the Geckoach (ha ha ha ha ha that's not funny), as the credits call him - shouts, "I WILL INVENT A TIME MACHINE AND MAKE YOU SORRY, FRESHWATER HIGH SCHOOL!"

I like the design of that one fish on the right of Jocktopus.

Milo is a hero, and he says that he couldn't have done it without his team - and Richard Simmons Fish, who he promptly dumps water on. Then Bea points out that the water that Milo just used to soak Richard Simmons Fish was the last of the water. Uh-oh...

And then we cut back to Oscar, who's playing a video game. He tells us that he doesn't do football. The end.

I'll admit, that wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a GOOD show. It suffers from many of the same problems show like My Gym Partner's a Monkey have - throwing things popular in other cartoons at the viewer in the hopes that it'll get a laugh. Randomness, characters shouting near-constantly, characters acting like idiots... Milo in particular can get pretty grating. The only character I honestly kinda liked is Oscar. He was okay. Aside from that, there really isn't much going for Fish Hooks.

My apologies for this not being a very funny review. I'll have to review something REALLY bad next time to really get the funny side of my brain going. Let's see, what can I review next time?

That'll do.