18. Gravity Falls
Picking my favourite animated shows was tough, and honestly could have been a list in itself, but even if it's not my number one (at least not today), there's something that just keeps me coming back to Gravity Falls year after year. The last decade has had no shortage of great cartoons made by creators who wear their love of animation on their sleeve- Steven Universe, Craig of the Creek, Adventure Time and especially Regular Show are all wonderful- but there's something about Alex Hirsch's style that just hits the spot for me. I'm not just talking about the look of the show, although that's great too, but the approach to worldbuilding and driving the plot that Hirsch and company built up over the show's run. I also just love the really specific tone of Gravity Falls as it teeters between heart-on-sleeve sweetness and some genuinely dark and somber imagery that constantly pushes its Y7 rating
Following twins Dipper and Mabel Pines over one summer in the bizarre town of Gravity Falls, the show wastes no time in creating a world that's constantly expanding and deepening with every episode. I love how no character feels wasted or throwaway either, and even the ones that largely exist for comedy get a fair amount of time to make their personalities felt. It's all about that main cast though, a really loveable lineup of characters (for the most part, but this isn't the time or place to go into that) that ensure that the audience is invested from the start, and Hirsch is great at keeping all of the balls in the air even as the narrative starts to become denser and less episodic
The central mystery is fascinating, and watching the episodes as they aired was a great experience, made even better by how careful and playful Hirsch is as a storyteller. From the cryptograms and hidden messages in every episode to the way the show acknowledges its audiences' expectations at every turn, there's a real sense of engagement in Gravity Falls, where the show is encouraging its audience to fully take part in the experience of watching it. It's an exciting thing when a show has a handle on its fandom like this and fully leans into what the audience is getting out of it. That goes beyond the mystery and right into the show's sense of humour, too. The gags are genre savvy without being tedious, fully paying homage to the movies, shows, music and games that the writers clearly worship and perfectly offsetting the story beats that make Gravity Falls a worthy successor to its influences
The show excels at telling an ongoing story but it's just as exciting when its tackling the episodic, monster-of-the-week stuff too. Again, every story told bleeds with a real love for pop culture, and even when the show is subverting its subjects, there's so much passion for everything from retro fighting games to old-school claymation creature effects, and it's just infectious. The conceptually loose nature of the happenings in Gravity Falls gives the writers a wider scope of beasties and weirdos to draw from, and what's really exciting is that everyone's going to have different favourites. Personally I'm a sucker for the darker monsters that terrorize the Pines family, like Giffany, the Northwest Mansion ghost or the Summerween Trickster, but the show is able to strike gold with a whole range of seriously strange threats that consistently feel like genre-riffing perfection
It's also got a threat unlike anything I've ever seen in a show like this: the truly unhinged and infinitely memeable Bill Cipher. It's rare that a character manages to be so consistently hilarious while also posing a genuine threat but Bill nails both sheerly out of how much chaos he brings to the narrative. Whether he's using Dipper as a puppet or bringing about the end of days, everything Bill does comes from a place of convention-upending madness. And that's the thing: he doesn't want to take over the world, or even harm the protagonists directly, at least not at first. His only aim is to break the world down to its most deranged and bizarre components and turn it into his own personal playground of strange. And that's it. He's never redeemed, we never find out any sort of backstory, he's just pure chaotic evil and the show is smart enough to know exactly how to use that for both seriously dark laughs and surprisingly weighty storytelling
But what really makes Gravity Falls work is the level of heart on display in every single moment of he show. It's is so sweet and so pure, and I think that backs up everything else that works about it. The show manages to create a really specific tone that could really appeal to audiences of all ages, and there's really something here for everyone. It's bright, breezy and fun, but takes its younger viewers seriously, treating them with respect and trusting them to understand the story's darker beats. It plays just as well to an older audience, leaning on its charm without ever tipping into reliable but cheap nostalgia, and the lessons it teaches are explored so smartly that I think anyone could take the right things away from the show. There's not an awful lot of shows that I would say have an entirely universal appeal, but Gravity Falls is definitely one of them
It's a love letter to youth and curiousity with a clear reverence for obscure anime, B-horror movies and the dodgy exploits of amateur scam artists. Its sense of humour runs the gamut from light and silly to how-the-hell-did-this-air-on-the-Disney-Channel levels of slipping under the radar. But my favourite thing about Gravity Falls is by far the world that Alex Hirsch has created here. The mysteries don't feel like cheap excuses to keep the show going, but actual rabbitholes that make the world feel so much bigger every time they're explored. The town is lived in and real, with a history that feels organic and rewarding to explore. It's nothing short of a joy to watch it develop for the first time, and an essential comfort to return to time and again. Weird, wise, creepy, hilarious and ultimately beautiful, it's one summer trip that I'll never tire of going on
No comments:
Post a Comment