Line #43 DethroningMoment/GravityFalls


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9	''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' may be one of the greatest cartoons TheNewTens produced, but considering how Disney has been known to release the burning anger inside all of its fanbase every now and then, even the eponymous town can sometimes offer us [[DarthWiki/DethroningMomentOfSuck a few mysteries that are better left unresolved]].
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11	'''Be warned:''' Just like every subpage of this show, this subpage has unmarked spoilers. So beware.
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16	* Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "This entire show," or "This entire series" entries.
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24	* Tropers/{{heartauthor}}: The ending of "The Time Traveler's Pig" has never really sat well with me. Basically, Dipper has been spending the whole episode trying to [[PrecociousCrush impress Wendy]] at a carnival, and using {{Casual Time Travel}} to prevent himself from accidentally hitting her and causing Robbie to ask her out. During Dipper's multiple attempts, Mabel takes the opportunity to repeatedly win Waddles, her pet pig, in a contest. Finally, Dipper creates a plan that will keep him from hurting Wendy, but it requires Mabel's help. As a result, Wendy is impressed with Dipper, but [[AlphaBitch Pacifica]] ends up winning Waddles. A frantic Mabel fights Dipper for the time-traveling device, transporting them to different times until they return to the continutity where Wendy is unhurt and Pacifica won Waddles. Mabel goes into a literal {{Heroic BSOD}}; out of guilt, Dipper returns everything to normal. In the end, Mabel gets Waddles back, but Dipper still ends up hurting Wendy and watching Robbie ask her out. Sometimes I can't help but feel that Mabel [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation uses her status as Dipper's twin sister to manipulate him for her own needs]], and this sequence of events did nothing to disband this theory. Dipper was forced to give up his chance to impress the girl he liked because Mabel literally lost her mind... over a flippin' pig.
25	** Nire - I just wonder why they didn't go back to a point slightly earlier in the day, have Mabel go and win the pig a few minutes ahead of time, then go through with the overly-complicated plan to avoid hitting Wendy. There's no indication as to whether or not the time travel device has limits in how precise it can be, which could have been taken care of in a throwaway line or two, so the fact that they never tried to just shift their time table slightly bugs the hell out of me.
26	** TaylorHyuuga - And is nobody going to mention how Blendin got punished for what Dipper and Mabel did?
27	* Wiresandstuff: Now I find ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' to be a great show, but a worrying trend I'm noticing with some episodes is Mabel being relegated to a weak subplot while Dipper has the real adventure. I felt this was particularly bad in the episode "Fight Fighters"; Dipper brings a video game character to life to help him confront a love rival while Mabel... helps Stan overcome his fear of heights? I know it ties into the theme of facing your fears, but it feels tacked on and uninteresting, with a cliche, predictable resolution. Mabel is a fun character who adds a charming levity to the show's scenarios, and it seems like a waste for her to be used in this way.
28	** Dementedelvis: I definitely agree with you that Gravity Falls is a great show and that this is a weak episode, but my reason is a bit different. Personally, I just don't find Dipper to be a remotely sympathetic character. I mean, Robbie is being a jerk, but breaking his cell phone, which appeared to be some kind of smartphone so we're probably looking at something worth more than a hundred dollars here, just ends my sympathy for Dipper in this episode. And then to bring an overly violent and unpredictable fighting character to life and send him after Robbie, while the fighting character believes he is avenging someone's close relative, is just unbelievable. Let's keep in mind what started all this. Robbie wasn't going to beat dipper up or anything, at least at first. Before his phone was damaged, Robbie was going to tell Wendy about Dipper's crush on her. A jerk move, for sure, but not serious enough to warrant everything that happens to Robbie. Somewhat fixed at the end of the episode, but even so, I tend to skip this episode when I'm watching Gravity Falls.
29	* Tropers/{{MelancholyUtopia}}: There’s just one major DMOS for this troper in “Bottomless Pit”. The majority of the episode was really funny and creative but Mabel’s story was so stupid and offensive on every possible level. I don’t even know what the writers were thinking when they came up with the moral in that short. Sure, we all have different morals regarding lying, but the way they displayed the message made it look like that being honest is all about blurting out all of your opinions to every ear out there and not keeping them to yourself. On top of that, Mabel lying so Stan wouldn’t get arrested for something [[KarmaHoudini he truly deserved]] was apparently a good thing. I mean, what the hell? Alex Hirsch, I won't sympathize with a character who commits vandalism on a regular basis, and I certainly won't be happy for him when he escapes any punishment; it's enough of it happening here in the real world, thanks. Yeah, [[spoiler: he was kicked out of his home at 18 and had to resort to cheap ways to make money]], but that doesn't make it anymore okay! A crime is a crime, whether a good or bad person committed it! What got my blood boil was Dipper saying: "It was for everyone's best." Define 'everyone', Dipper? Do you mean everyone or just you? And how is it best? You're regularly letting your great uncle commit crime, and I can assure you it's not "best" for any victim of such antics or society in general when people like him exist! Don't hide him up just because you're family! I swear, I've never wanted to punch a cartoon character so hard in the face since [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Brian]]. Ever since then, I've disliked Dipper (and also Mabel at the end of the series), stopped liking the show at all due to their mostly crappy morals, unethical characters and the annoying hype it's getting. I'm one of the few who wasn't sad when it ended.
30	** Mudapa: It seems in the show that Dipper always get punished for his shortcomings. Example? The first story, "Voice Over" has characters blatantly make fun of Dipper's voice cracks. [[SarcasmMode Because, no one has gone through that before.]] Even worse, is that they make a song out of it. I would expect this from [[GrumpyOldMan Stan]] or [[CheerfulChild Mabel]] but, [[NiceGuy Soos]] and [[SatelliteLoveInterest Wendy]]?! His Friends?! I love this show, but, it's just too mean at times.
31	** TheSnowSquirrel: What really gets me at the beginning of this episode is that Dipper comes up to the gang in a panic, because he's just been bitten by a poisonous snake and needs to get to a doctor immediately. What do Wendy, Soos, Stan and Mabel do? Laugh because of his voice. That's right. Dipper's friends and even his own family couldn't care less about the poison slowly taking over the poor kid's blood stream, they just continue teasing him. ButtMonkey or not, the characters do not need to be this level of JerkAss to Dipper!
32	** Komatsuzaki - And then there's the episode where Stan admits that he commits large amounts of tax fraud, and Mabel convinces the 2 idiot cops that it's untrue. I suppose if there's one federal crime to make light of, it's tax fraud. And I get that you can't have your funny cartoon if one of the most important characters is in prison. But still, it's tax fraud!
33	* {{Tuol}}: From "Abaconings" in ''Little Gift Shop of Horror.'' In the second story of the episode, Dipper tries to increase his brain power using some typical weirdness found in the woods, but Waddles ends up using it instead, becoming a super genius and gaining the ability to talk using a machine he made. Dipper is really happy about this, because despite not being the smart one anymore, he's found someone that enjoys nerdy things like he does. Essentially, he now finally has a friend that can speak and understand him on an intellectual level. But Mabel becomes upset by this. Mabel considered Waddles--dumb pig Waddles--to be her pet, which he was, but now he's smart and doesn't have time to play and do "dumb things" with her anymore, because he's off figuring out ways to solve world hunger, cure cancer, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking answer why dudes have nipples.]] So far, so good--change is hard to deal with, people change, and children need to learn this, making this an interesting and investing plot. But at the conclusion of the story, Mabel begs Waddles to use a machine he made to return him to his barely-sentient pig mind because she's lonely, which he does because apparently Mabel has proved to him that it was better when he was a dumb pig--because what's the point of being smart if he can't make his best friend happy? At first I thought this was a SpoofAesop it was so bad, but the episode treats this like a good thing, instead of pointing out that 1). Mabel's at fault, not Waddles, if she can't deal with her friends changing, because Waddles is happy being smart and it's her duty as his friend to support him. 2) Mabel completely ignores the fact that Waddles has become Dipper's close friend in a very short time (which is extremely telling) because's she's feeling lonely and she wants to have her pet back. Which makes the next point even more jarring, because 3). Mabel easily makes friends who like and understand her, and Dipper doesn't, and yet she takes away the one friend he seemed to connect to intellectually without fear of rejection because she'd rather Waddles be an unintelligent pig than a complex stranger she'd have to re-evaluate her relationship with. Sure, Dipper has Soos and Wendy, but we've seen that neither really "get" him on an intellectual level like Waddles, so taking away Waddles must have hurt, but the story doesn't even care about that. And while this was technically all a story told by Grunkle Stan (though the stories have hints that they might have been real), this kind of faultlessness treatment is given to Mabel a lot, even in canon episodes. In hindsight, the story (since it was told by Grunkle Stan) may be foreshadowing conflicts later in the season that may well actually deal with the problems listed above, but for now "Abaconings" is still insanely cringe-worthy.
34	* TheMeteorKing: Mine has to be the moment from "Society of the Blind Eye", where Soos insults Susan's makeup. The remark feels extremely out of place for a character who's biggest fault is his absentmindedness and overall feels forced.
35	* toonyloon: Now, I love WesternAnimation/GravityFalls, and The Love God, BrokenAesop of the main plot aside, was still, for the most part, a decent episode with many funny moments (the Stan "I Eat Kids" balloon in particular was hilarious). However, one part that didn't sit well with me was how Thompson's treatment was handled at the end. In the episode, the teens were having a fallout with each other, and what reunited them at the end was Thompson getting (more or less) beaten up by security guards, basically giving it a message of "Thompson being abused keeps the group together". It was probably meant to be the RuleOfFunny, but for a show that's usually very good at handling morals (both [[Recap/GravityFallsS2E8BlendinsGame the episode that came out before this one]] and [[Recap/GravityFallsS2E10NorthwestMansionMystery the episode that came out after this one]], for example, perfectly handled morals about ParentalAbandonment and AbusiveParents, respectively), this "moral" felt really out of place.
36	** @/GreatPikminFan: My problem with the episode was how Robbie and Tambry were kept under the effects of the love potion. To cover an issue with "Love God" as a whole, this episode takes a show that has otherwise been primarily focused on realistic character development in spite of the supernatural setting and suddenly reveals that there are cherubs/love gods that can make people fall in love with magic potions. Something as complicated and personal as love easily being dictated by magic would only sit right with me if it was treated as a villainous action, and it does not work as well with a character-focused story such as this one. To me, the whole thing just feels like creepy fanfiction-level writing where Mabel plays god with pairings, the story acts like it's her decision to decide the couple's fate and not their own (and said decision was mostly based on how their friends were reacting if I remember right), happiness is what matters in the end even if it could very well be a drug-like induced "happiness," [[BrokenAesop Mabel learns not to tamper with relationships by "making everything better" because she tampered with a relationship in the first place,]] and overall it's the first thing that comes to mind when people argue that Mabel's character isn't that well-written and she barely faces real consequences of her actions. Stan's subplot was hilarious as usual, but I'll still give this episode a pass if I ever try to binge the whole series. Between this and "Roadside Attraction," (an episode I did like, although I could see why others wouldn't) I wonder why the show's quality of handling romantic relationship-focused storylines took a nosedive after the excellent "Into the Bunker" and "Soos and the Real Girl." Edit: Since writing this, ''[[Literature/GravityFallsJournal3 Journal 3]]'' has confirmed that the potions only have a three-hour effect. [[AuthorsSavingThrow It alleviates things a little, don't get me wrong,]] but the episode still felt kind of creepy to me. The idea that their relationship started because of spending three hours under the effect of what is basically a love-inducing drug... still gives off bad implications, and calling it "magic" doesn't help matters. Especially considering how, based on the way Mabel's original plan to hit them with the anti-love potion was handled and how the wearing off wasn't mentioned until the Journal's release, it seemed like that was not part of the original idea when the episode was written. But rather than addressing that properly, the show bends over itself to try to paint that as the right option that resulted in "true love" for both parties involved.
37	** @/GelitanOverlord: My main problem with this episode is the twisted moral with Thompson. You see, the ending has Wendy admitting that Thompson and his abuse and general neglect from his friends is the reason the group is even together! now the reason this annoys me is that the moral is a less series version of the one from the Family Guy episode, "Seahorse Seashell Party", in which Meg, the main butt monkey of the show, tells of most of the family, and when they go upstairs to argue, Meg realizes that the reason why the family is even intact, is because of her constant abuse. so the moral seems to be that if you are in an abusive relationship or friendship, stay in it for the benefit of the abusers. WHAT!?
38	** @/HylianHighwind: People have talked about some of the unfortunate implications with the Love Potion being what sets up Robbie and Tambry, but I come with what I think is an underspoken issue with this episode and a microcosm of what people dislike about Mabel. Mabel's goal in the episode is to fix Robbie's miserable loneliness, not necessarily wrong in and of itself, but she immediately jumps to trying to pair him up again with someone. First major issue here is that Robbie's problem is clearly his inability to get over his break up with Wendy, which means if the romance doesn't work out he's just gonna spiral into the same place he was before. What Mabel should be doing is trying to help him get over the break up, since not only would this cheer him up long term but doesn't entail messing up the group dynamic like Dipper was afraid of. Robbie even thanks her for helping him "move on" when he hasn't, he's just replaced one date life for another despite the show's claim. It just feels like Mabel is more concerned with getting a sad to happy Fairy Tale story than actually helping Robbie the way he actually needs. Second is that, quite frankly, Mabel is terrible at romance and reading people. Previous episodes make a point that she doesn't think most of her romantic endeavors through for herself and in several cases was pretty bad at reading people, but more than that, this "match making" trait of hers was fabricated for this episode. The only two pairings she can reference are a joke with Waddles and Soos/Melody, obviously a reference to "Soos and the Real Girl" (one of my favorite episodes so some admitted bias in the reference). The latter pairing though wasn't remotely Mabel's work: her entire role in that episode was trying to help Soos act more sociable and leading to gags in his attempted flirting, while he hits it off with Melody just being himself to the point of barely realizing he'd actually set up a date. At best this couple's example doesn't gel with what Mabel needs for Robbie, and at worst is taking credit for a pairing she really had no effective role in setting up, which would be another instance of the show talking up Mabel beyond what her onscreen accomplishments (or lack thereof in this case) support. There's only so many episodes I can see a conflict instigated by Mabel's "innocent" nature before it sours me on all of them, and this is at its worst for me because it acknowledges that Mabel is in the wrong, but still makes her right by the end, and makes it seem like her problem is the method with the love potion as opposed to her idea/motivation being in the wrong place to begin with.
39	* capthanos: While many people might say that this is one of the best animated shows, the multiple moments like the one I am about to mention often make me feel like ''Gravity Falls'' is really a bad show, maybe an okay show at best. So one of my major problems I had in the series was with "Northwest Mansion Noir." For some reason, just because Grenda was more upfront, bold, and aggressive in her flirting, Marius becomes impressed by her and drawn to her as someone with whom he could enter a relationship. If this were the other way around, with a guy that looked like Grenda, and a woman that looked like Marius,it would not have been received well in this day and age, because of the many vocal watchers today (the trope used to be more common in the past, but now, not so much because of the complaints). Worse, this would have been considered unrealistic and giving guys bad expectations, a sense of entitlement, and things like that. People would have started to look at the show as something lesser, a lesser work of animation (Some people might make the counterargument about Soos and Melody getting together, but they are ultimately closer to the same levels of attractiveness). Yet, very few people seem to complain when it is the other way around with a less attractive girl going for a much more attractive boy and succeeding, which is the case here. To top it all off, there is a bit of a "You go, girl!" moment in Mabel and Candy's reaction to Grenda getting the hot guy. It's very unsettling. For a show that touts itself as being "realistic" in its character relationships and interactions, like being "realistic" with the Dipper and Wendy friendship that doesn't become something more, this is one of the most heavily unrealistic and massively hypocritical moments in the entire series. The hypocrisy is honestly just so disgusting.
40	* mynameisethan: A minor one, but for me it was the ending of "Not What He Seems." Don't get me wrong, NWHS is an incredible episode; it was the very end that got me. So the portal activates, the Author steps out, and WHOA it's Stan's brother! Then... there's the joke: "Is this the part where one of us faints?" "I am so on it dude." faints It just felt really thrown in and wasn't funny, especially after what had been a very serious episode.
41	** Anewman: Agreed. It actually would have been better and funnier to just have dead silence after the brother reveal and then Soos fainting, no dialogue at all.
42	* greensquid22: The 90s were dark times line in Dungeons Dungeons and More Dungeons. The whole little bit there felt like a big shot at 90's kids. Firstly it treats the [=DDaMD=] commercial from the 90's as if is the only decade to try and be YoungerAndHipper. Hey, guess what it's not. Not even close. That concept is as old as fiction itself and not every commercial in the 90's was like that. I can understand getting annoyed at some dorks on the internet telling you their childhood was better than yours' but telling people that their childhoods took place in a dark time on a professionally made tv show is unforgivable. That's something I'd expect a Youtube commenter to say, not a tv show. Hey news flash, not everyone born in that decade thinks they're better than you and don't like having their childhoods insulted just because you got annoyed on a chat forum. I like this show but I am severely turned off by the immaturity of this statement.
43	* DrScarcilier: While I think a lot of people will agree this show is amazingly good, this page demonstrates it does have its flaws and the biggest one for me is the Mabel segment in The Last Mabelcorn. So when Grunkle Ford sends Mabel to get some unicorn hair to protect the shack from Bill Cipher as she is the most pure out of all of them and only the most pure of heart can get it. Okay. When they get there the unicorn says that Mabel is not completely pure of heart (which is kind of valid as she does make fun of Dipper a whole lot and she has done a few bad things in the series such as forcing Dipper to along with her antics of "I must get a summer boyfriend" and putting herself above him) and tells her to come back when she is pure. So Mabel and Candy, Grenda, and Wendy try to get Mabel pure again by doing good deeds all throughout town. Alright. Then at the end it turns out it was all a ruse meant to make humans leave the unicorns alone. What the hell? It just came out of nowhere. Not only that but then they go and pretty much say Mabel is the purest of pure when we all know while she is a nice person, she could definitely use some work in the pure department (in Wendy's words "Mabel's a straight up saint, you judgmental hoofbag!"). It's like the writers were saying to the audience "Screw you, guys! We love Mabel! She's perfect in every way! If you don't like it, you can kiss our butts! We don't need to improve her at all! Nyeh!". Oh and to demonstrate how pure and perfect she is, Mabel and her friends beat all of the unicorns to bloody pulps to get the fur. (Sure they deserved it but come on). If there were any doubts that Mabel gets a lot of CharacterShilling, this episode can put those doubts to rest.
44	** SouvenirBookworm - I agree. It comes off as a [[UsefulNotes/LogicalFallacies Strawman Fallacy]], to be honest--the use of the unicorn seemed like a dig at some viewers' legitimate criticisms of aspects of Mabel's character, deliberately twisting, invalidating, and them throwing back into fans' faces. "She doesn't need to self-reflect on her actions, and anyone who judges her for them is worse than her" seemed to me like a very juvenile message, especially when the majority of Mabel's critics aren't saying she isn't good-hearted, they simply question why Mabel is rarely called out for her lack of self-awareness of the consequences her frequently selfish actions have for others, and suffers from AesopAmnesia when she does. This lack of accountability for her own mistakes (with rare exception) is especially jarring considering her brother is the series' NoRespectGuy who gets his butt handed to him by every mistake or selfish decision, no matter how small. Despite Alex Hirsch's contact with the fandom, this shows a fundamental lack of understanding for the persistent problems with the writing for Mabel's character. Honestly, I'm starting to think that Alex just feels more comfortable addressing the flaws of the character based off himself than the character based off his sister.
45	** bleachpasta: Virtually every moment involving Mabel from Northwest Mansion Mystery on builds up to one massive DTMoS for me, but single moment that absolutely ruins her character for me is the end of the Last Mabelcorn. To start off with, Mabel's plot about her own issues with self perception get the bulk of the episode's run time, while Dipper and Ford are relegated to a B plot, despite the fact that their parts of the episode are about the shared past of two of the most mysterious characters on the show. Still, though, Mabel's personal struggle is given far more weight than this, but that's nowhere near being the worst part of this episode. That, as many others have noted before me, is that Mabel's lesson here is that she's perfect as is and doesn't have any personal failings to speak of. Unsurprisingly, she takes this lesson and runs with it. Not only is she the most selfish person on the show by a country mile (even Pacifica's AbusiveParents are quick to tell their daughter to swallow her pride in order to save the town), but she never really tries to be a better person, and is constantly told that she's perfect as she is. Even though she spent all of Sock Opera treating her brother like crap before stealing his journal (that she knew he was using) for no reason (she could have used any book as a prop) in order to trick a boy into liking her by pretending to share an interest with him (which wouldn't be treated nearly as sympathetically were the genders reversed), then proving that she learned absolutely nothing from it by turning around and doing the exact same thing in Northwest Mansion Mystery to Grenda. A few episodes after The Last Mablecorn, her brother spends three days wandering a hellscape alone trying to find her only to learn that she's been living it up the entire time in a bubble separating her from the horrible reality of the world around her and has "replaced" him with what she calls a "back-up Dipper" (who has absolutely nothing in common with her brother) in what has to be the single most self-centered action ever taken by a cartoon character that was meant to be sympathetic. And, at the very end of the series, she claims that, if she could, she would shrink down all of her friends and take them with her back home, as though they don't have lives of their own. Mabel has no respect for other people's boundaries (using Stan's slippers as a mug in Stanchurian Candidate), casually disregards others' autonomy (tricking Sev'ral Timez into living with her in Boyz Crazy, pitching a fit when Dipper wants to pursue his dreams without her in Dipper and Mabel Vs the Future, trying to force the entire town into a time bubble that would grind all their lives to a screeching halt in the same episode), and endangers other people through her inexplicable belief that she's always right (shoving Dipper and Wendy into a separate part of the bunker and refusing to believe they were in danger despite having no more familiarity with their surroundings than anyone else, and probably less than Dipper, in Into the Bunker). Oftentimes, she won't apologize for these things, or even realize that she had done anything wrong, and the CharacterShilling of The Last Mabelcorn proves to her that all of this is okay and encourages her to keep doing it.
46	* SenorCornholio: I like Gravity Falls a lot, and I can even find some good in the above and below entries. Heck, my entry for this page, "Roadside Attraction", is more weak than anything else. The plot of this episode involves Stan taking Dipper, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda on a road trip to sabotage the other tourist traps in Oregon as a cruel prank which, thankfully, comes back to bite Stan at the end of the episode, so he's not totally free from karma here. Before that though, we see that Dipper still has Wendy issues, and Stan decides to teach him how to talk to girls; at first, his methods seem to work, and he ends up making a few friends. Even Candy begins crushing on him. Now, I can see what they're going for here; "don't be a playboy". I respect the episode for that much, but my problems come in around the second half; they make it to their final destination, Mystery Mountain, and Dipper begins to have doubts about the way he's been talking to girls. Problem is, he didn't really do anything romantic with them yet, and soon he and Candy are put together on a walk into a... Mummy Museum, where they're suddenly confronted by three of the girls that Dipper had talked to. This is where my first problem with this half comes in; one person going to this attraction would have been an alright coincidence, and two would have been slightly pushing it a little, but three? If that isn't contrived, I don't know what is; Dipper could have just been confronted by one of the girls, and that would have been the end of it. He'd have realized that he was wrong, Candy would have been disappointed like normal, and Mabel and Grenda wouldn't hesitate to call Dipper out for his leading Candy on which, at the very least, is somewhat justified as Dipper did pretty much use the act of talking to girls as a way to forget about Wendy, even if he didn't mean to lead any of them on. Meanwhile, we cut to problem 2: Stan tried showing Dipper before the above incident that he knows what he's doing by talking to an employee named Darlene, who as it turns out is a [[BuffySpeak spider-creature-thing]] and the mummies in the Mummy Museum are her prey. She lures in men who have false confidence and wraps them up so she can feed on them. In my opinion at least, the episode really didn't need a monster to escape from. I mean, it's kind of a Gravity Falls Staple, but it just seemed unnecessary and, dare I say it, artificial compared to the other villains like Gideon, Bill, or [=.GIFfany=]. If I can say two positives about this part, it's that Candy pulls an impressive ChekhovsGun with the brochures so everybody could escape, and she and Dipper do amend their friendship at the end. That's about all the good I can say for this one; it felt a little sloppy, and it could have been better placed before the introduction of Ford where everything starts to pick up. Finally, though this only adds to the moment by a little bit, they end up leaving Soos in a corn maze. It provides some good jokes on his part, but it was a little bit too mean-spirited for me.
47	** LegalAssassin: Honestly, my biggest problem with the episode was that it tried to frame Dipper as doing something wrong... but he really wasn't in my opinion. None of his interactions with the girls came off as romantic or flirtatious in any way; he was just having friendly conversations with them (or at least with Emma Sue, but, you know, "show, don't tell") and got their e-mails to keep in contact. So when they confront him in the museum, it seems less like karma and more of them making something out to be another thing. To put it in perspective, imagine if the genders were swapped and f!Dipper was talking with a bunch of guys only for them to get mad at her because they thought she was being a tease. That's how bad it was for me watching this, and the fact that it's a guy with a bunch of girls doesn't make it any better.
48	*** PrinnyRamza: This gets even worse when you really think about the interactions between Dipper and Candy in this episode. Dipper's 'flirting' with the one shot characters already doesn't come off as romantic. His behavior with Candy is even less so. Candy starts liking Dipper because he starts to feel confident in himself not because of anything he did to her. Then when she starts flirting with him, and her actions are the only ones that seem legitimately flirty among the child characters, Dipper can only react with visible discomfort. When the girls come in, he is basically punished for not immediately turning down Candy, which considering we had an episode where Mabel had this exact same dilemma leads to a very problematic lesson.
49	* Guardian Aelita: I'm going to get a lot of hate for even saying this but I cannot ignore Mabel's actions in "Dipper and Mabel vs the Future". So, I've been noticing a huge trend in regards to Mabel never getting called out for her behavior, especially in regards for her teases against Dipper. But things are finally going wrong for Mabel when she realizes that high school won't be fun and almost none of the friends she made there can come to her and Dipper's thirteenth birthday. On top of that, Mabel overhears that Dipper may stay in Gravity Falls to become Ford's apprentice. Sounds like it would be a good opportunity for Mabel to do some self reflection and be happy for her brother, right? Wrong. When Dipper comes home, Mabel proceeds to have a fight with him over his apprenticeship. I can understand that losing a loved one would suck but you can't keep them chained to your side for the rest of their lives. Plus, when Dipper says that this opportunity may be something he needs, Mabel replies with "Well, what about what I need?" Um, excuse you? Dipper has done nothing but think about what's best for you. Remember when he saved you from that vengeful robot of Gideon Gleeful? Remember when he saved you from all those other monsters? Remember all the times he pushed his dreams and his feelings back for you? It felt like all the criticisms I had against Mabel came to a boiling point in that particular moment. Mabel has done nothing but shatter Dipper's dreams for her own personal gain and her running off after Dipper said that summer was coming to an end just made me rage even harder.
50	** Cheedo: I have to agree here. Not only that, but as someone else mentioned, Mabel makes friends or at least finds people who understand her a heck of a lot easier than Dipper has. I get she and he are close, but for someone as popular as she tends to be, does she truly need one person at home with her so much? I would be more sympathetic if she were the kind of loner who has a lot of trouble speaking up and branching out to people but she's the exact opposite of that. On top of that, siblings aren't obliged to be together forever. There's an obvious parallel between the twins and the Grunkles, and while the show doesn't whitewash Stan for feeling resentful towards Ford's wanting to leave for college, it definitely portrays Mabel as more in the right here.
51	** KrisSimsters: Grunkle Ford in this episode. OK, before I continue, I know that he hasn't been there for a long time and he doesn't really know Mabel, but Grunkle Ford doesn't really know Dipper either. Yes, I know they have some things in common, but he doesn't really know Dipper. He should have known that Dipper wasn't going to leave Mabel behind. Just because him and Stan have issues doesn't mean Dipper and Mabel need to have those same issues. Also, why did he tell Dipper to leave Mabel behind? Yes, he didn't know about Mabel's condition, but she is your great niece just like Dipper's your great nephew. My respect for Ford went down a lot afterwards.
52	** PhionixPowers: I left a review here when I was younger and more opinionated, but this episode still rubs me the wrong way. The tone was DarkerAndEdgier than anything the show had gone into before, with [[TooBleakStoppedCaring very little to offset it]] (Wendy doesn't comfort Mabel with the positives of high school), culminating in the flat-out terrifying return of Bill. The final shot isn't anything that [[RayOfHopeEnding gives hope for the safety of the town]]. It's literally a piece of paper on the ground and the sound of screaming. And remember, this was on Disney XD, meaning, even if they shouldn't have been, there were [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids probably young children watching]]. I get that we are officially past the AnimationAgeGhetto, but we got there by [[PeripheralDemographic assessing difficult themes in ways everyone could understand]], not by [[NightmareFuel causing panic attacks to some in their early 20s.]] I still haven't watched many cartoons, let alone this one, since.
53	* Jayalaw: Mabel creating a ReplacementGoldfish of Dipper in "Weirdmageddon, Part Two". Why? Because Dipper already has a bunch of insecurities, and he has just crossed gorges and evaded monsters to rescue her. Revealing a "cooler" Dipper to his face, right when he's worried about her and about Bill Cipher keeping her trapped, is a KickTheDog moment. Not cool! It's a testament to Dipper's love for Mabel that he doesn't call her out on this because he's too worried for her safety and about Bill.
54	** LordofthesStars: If I can be totally honest, way more about this episode pissed me off (though the replacement Dipper was definitely the obnoxious icing on the cake). Not only did I feel everyone had the IdiotBall through the entire episode (Nobody mentions that Mabel's friends and remaining family are in danger or possibly dying out there, even though that could have swiftly gotten her to change her mind about leaving Mabel-land; instead they just talk about how much the outside world sucks. That's not the point, god damn it! The fabric of the universe itself will be destroyed yet somehow all the main characters, Dipper included, are more concerned about bringing up how real life (not what's going on in Weirdmaggedon, which is getting worse by the minute) isn't so bad? [[BigWhat What?]]), I feel like this was a kick in the face to everyone's character development. It got trashed. Dipper's crush with Wendy gets brought up and dangled in his face again, even though we've established over and over that he's finally getting over it. Instead of him ignoring the [[spoiler:fake]] Wendy's advances from the start, he only starts to protest because Wendy's [[spoiler:not real]], not because he doesn't want to be with her anymore. Soos was established as basically telling his DisappearedDad to go to hell because he has real family in the form of the twins and Stan, yet instead of telling his fake dad to screw off, like he should have, he goes and plays catch with him. Finally, Mabel suffers the worst; in the whole 'which twin was right' debate, she usually gets picked as being in the wrong, and I can't say I disagree, but this is just the worst example of it. She doesn't seem to give a crap about any of her friends and family suffering outside, even though she's fought Bill twice and should know what he's capable of, and should want to stop it. Damn it, I love Mabel! She's not this stupid or selfish; she should have been fighting to get out of Mabel-Land the whole damn time because she wanted to be reunited with her family! That's the whole damn key element of nwhs; Mabel saves the day because she loves and trusts her family more than anything, and yet here she basically ignores all the truth everyone who cares about her, and would have no reason to lie to her about, is trying to tell her. But hey, again with the IdiotBall issue: why does nobody think of certain other options? Mabel could stay in Gravity Falls with Dipper! Ford could probably talk her parents into it, she has friends and is happy there, and Dipper and Mabel's parents would probably be well aware that their kids will be happiest together. Dipper has sacrificed so much for Mabel, he deserves to get his dream at least once. And frankly, Mabel giving him a frankenstein Valentine in the past was cute, but it doesn't suddenly make them even. Look, the bottom line is this: if I'm yelling at my screen for the characters to just do something already, and it never even so much as comes up, not even as an option that gets shot down, then that's just poor writing. I love John Stewart, but unfortunately, even he couldn't save this episode for me.
55	** Tropers/{{AllenbysEyes}}: On one level, I love this episode for reconfirming Dipper and Mabel's relationship, which had grown increasingly strained over the second season, and I can look past a lot of flaws in its execution for the emotional impact of their Sincere Sibling Hug. What galls me is that the show never acknowledges Mabel's role in opening the rift; even though it was unintentional, it was a major development that should, at the very least, have made her confront her selfishness and impulsiveness, flaws baked into her character from Day One. There was a rich dramatic vein to mine in exploring that, whether Mabel confessed, Bill told Dipper and Co. to try and drive them apart or they discovered it on their own. However, Hirsch completely ignores it both here and in Part III in favor of resolving Stan and Ford's relationship. Make no mistake, I love Mabel while acknowledging that she's a more flawed and nuanced character than ''Gravity Falls'' fans often think. Even so, [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot it's hard not to view this as a huge missed opportunity]].
56	* Loekman3: For me it's the after-effects of Stanley's mind erasure where in a true tear-jerking moment, Stan sacrificed himself to save the kids by willingly getting erased along with Bill, only for it to be pretty much ruined in the next scene where Stan immediately began remembering no thanks to Mabel's scrapbook. There's not even a scene skip as it happens pretty much immediately. Oh, and by the time the twins celebrate their birthday, Stan is shown to fully regain his memories with no indication that he made the HeroicSacrifice in the first place. So the amnesia might as well not happened at all as this scene pretty much destroyed whatever impact that it could have given from such a selfless sacrifice by Stan. Well played Hirsch, well played.
57	** ErichoTOME: I really resented the fact that everybody got what they wanted except Pacifica. The episode where she saved her manor from the ghost was one of the best, but since this episode features her losing it, it seems like it was all pointless. Gideon got everything he wanted and he did much worse things than Pacifica. Sure, she's still rich, but she's the only character who isn't better off now. I think she's my favorite character and feel as though her CharacterDevelopment should have given her something more. She really worked hard and had something special with Dipper. I can understand that it might have been asking too much for Dipcifica to become canon in the finale, but at least give her the happy ending she deserved.
58	* Tropers/{{Andariel}}: "Weirdmageddon: Part 3" and the failure of a magic circle was this for me. To recap: Bill Cipher, a nightmarishly powerful demon, has turned the entirety of Gravity Falls into his personal playground and has been tormenting its citizens, while our heroes have been trying to stop him. After a daring (and awesome) rescue, they manage to free Ford, who knows a way to stop Bill. Ford draws a magic circle and tells a prophecy that the people associated with the symbols in the circle (e.g. Dipper is the pine tree, Mabel is the shooting star, Soos is the question mark, etc.) have the power to stop Bill. Nine of them stand in the circle and hold hands, but the tenth, Stan, refuses. Why? Because 1) he doesn't believe this will work (even though Ford says that it's already working and the other people in the circle are surrounded by a very visible glow of power) and 2) because Ford still hasn't apologized for his role in causing this entire mess and hasn't thanked Stan for bringing him back. ...Okay, that sounds extremely petty when they are trying to stop a literal demon that has caused a literal (if local) apocalypse, but Stan isn't wrong per se, and to his credit, Ford actually apologizes and thanks him. Stan steps into the circle, everybody holds hands and prepares to banish Bill for good... And then the most idiotic thing imaginable happens: Ford makes some smartass remark nitpicking about Stan's grammar, and Stan physically attacks him! That, of course, breaks the circle, which is when Bill appears and captures them. So let me reiterate: Stan blew the chance to banish Bill because he couldn't tolerate some childish remark! Even Mabel could suck it up and hold hands with Gideon, and for all that I dislike her very flawed character (for reasons other people have already detailed) that moment at least brought back a modicum of respect to her. Now, if I remember correctly, this magic circle wasn't something that Alex Hirsch had ever intended to work. Originally, the symbols didn't actually mean anything, the fans just grabbed them and ran with them. This entire sequence was just a nod to the fans and he had his own plans for the ending. Fair enough. But... couldn't he do it in a less idiotic way?! For example, make the ritual very lengthy and have Bill interrupt it in the middle. Or say that Bill has grown too powerful for the ritual to defeat him. Or something! But no, instead we got this stupidity. This is why Stan's sacrifice to defeat Bill in the true ending didn't affect me in the slightest. I don't consider it heroic or a tearjerker, because if Stan had acted like a reasonable human being for ten seconds, it wouldn't have been necessary in the first place!
59	* Tropers/{{insanefandomgirl}}: For me, it's in 'Boyz Crazy', Wendy's response was vaguely irritating to me. Although whether Robbie was actually trying to mind-control her is left ambiguous, Dipper clearly believed that was Robbie's intention. Whilst Wendy was justified in getting angry that Dipper tried to ask her out immediately after breaking up with Robbie, the fact that she wasn't at all thankful that Dipper intervened, or at least acknowledged that he had a legitimate concern. After all, to him it appeared that Robbie had hypnotised Wendy, before taking her to a secluded location, ''after'' lying to her about whether or not they would be alone. Even if Dipper's motive was less than noble, Wendy should have acknowledged that Dipper had very possible intervened in a dangerous situation.

Context DethroningMoment / GravityFalls