Recap / Central Park S2E03 "Fista Puffs Mets Out Justice"

RECAP:
Index
Season One: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Season Two: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
Season Three: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

Original release date: June 25, 2021

Written by: Chuck Tatham
Directed by: Mario D'anna

♫ So we try to be more than enough
Trying to be strong and tough
Try to be something we're not
Try to fit a different plot
Proving we're bold without causing a fuss
We're trying so hard to be us
Will it ever be enough? ♫

—Molly, "Trying Too Hard"

After Molly had a bad time during her field trip, she draws her experiences in her comic starring Fista Puffs. In the comic, Fista Puff is trying to pass a test to see if she's worthy of joining the Pow Pow Boom Booms.

Songs

• The Fista Puffs Theme Song
  Written by: Brent Knopf
  Performed by: Jessica Childress & Emmy Raver–Lampman
  Additional Vocals: Kelly Pratt, Moorea Masa, Emily Goldstein, & Angelica Cox
• Pow Pow Boom Booms - Shauna, Hazel, & Molly
  Written by: Josh Gad and Ben Romans
  Performed by: Amber Ruffin, Ester Dean, & Emmy Raver–Lampman
  Additional Vocals: Keiko Agena & Angelica Cox
• No One's Home - Owen, Paige, Molly, & Cole
  Written by: Brent Knopf
  Performed by: Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn, Emmy Raver–Lampman, & Tituss Burgess
• Trying Too Hard - Molly & Monster
  Written by: Kate Anderson & Elyssa Samsel
  Performed by: Emmy Raver–Lampman & Michael James Scott

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Tropes:

• Art Shift: A majority of this episode is done in the style of Molly's drawings.
• Be Yourself: The song Trying Too Hard is Molly taking a serious look at how she tries to suppress or modify her behavior to impress others, when really she should embrace her uniqueness and quirks.
• Buffy Speak: In the song "Pow Pow Boom Booms", Sha-Boom refers to a giant octopus monster as an "octopus thingy".
• Call-Back: At the start of the Fista-Puffs credits, the scenes initially consist of comic panels from the first season.
• Chromatic Arrangement: In "Trying Too Hard" and the meta-confrontation leading up to it, Fista-Puffs is colored in red, Drawing!Molly is colored in blue, and Feetsa-Puffs is colored in green.
• Fear Song: "No One's Home" is about the drawing!Tillermans singing about how when you feel something bad is happening to you it's better to avoid your problems by hiding away and pretending it doesn't exist. Drawing!Molly and the real Molly realizes this feels wrong.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Molly gets jealous on her museum trip when a friend of Hazel's, Shauna, joins them and she's able to make Hazel laugh while Molly just makes herself look awkward for trying to join in. She even makes Shauna a villain in her comic and blames her for Fista Puff losing her powers.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Fista-Puffs keeps getting defeated by the monster over and over again in the simulation.
• "I Am Great!" Song: Shauna and Hazel sings "Pow Pow Boom Booms" to explain how great their group is.
• Let Me Tell You a Story: After Molly tells her family about her problem, Paige tells her a story when she was her age, despite the fact the family already knows about it. When she was young, she wanted to be friends with Stacey Blankeship and her friends so she rode on a roller coaster with them despite knowing she always throws up on them. While she sat next to Stacey, the ride operator lets them go twice and on the second ride Paige accidentally threw up in Stacey's mouth. After that they never became friends and Stacey never came back to school because she moved; Paige doesn't think that's why she moved but she feels like it might've been. The point of her story was to tell Molly she shouldn't try too hard to impress others.
• Medium Awareness: While Fista Puffs and her supporting cast have always made meta-commentary, when Molly's drawn family starts to ask about her comic, they realize they are also in a comic drawn by the actual Molly, and the conversation gets... very convoluted.
• Me's a Crowd: "Trying Too Hard" is sung by a multitude of Mollys, Fista-Puffses, and Feetsa-Puffses. It serves as a metaphor for her conflict of how she struggles with how she wants to see herself, how she expects others to see her, and how she really is.
• Mind Screw: The climax has the Drawing!Tillermans arguing with Real!Molly and Drawing!Molly who, in turn, is arguing with Drawing!Fista Puffs. Even Fista Puffs starts making her own comic superhero alter-ego. It gets very meta.
• Nested Story: Real!Molly is drawing a story about herself, while Drawing!Molly is drawing a story about Fista-Puffs, who eventually draws her own superhero Feetsa-Puffs, mostly to call out Real!Molly for using drawing as an escape for avoiding her emotions.
• Shout-Out:
  • During "Pow Pow Boom Booms", Sha-Boom suggests doing a plot similar to the storyline of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is lampshaded by Fista-Puffs.
  • The former leader of the Pow Pow Boom Booms looks a lot like She-Ra.
  • Sha-Boom mentions they have more dough than Lex Luthor.
  • The last monster at the end during "Pow Pow Boom Booms" resembles Thanos.
  • At the end of "No One's Home", Owen, Paige, and Cole dress up like the Tethered from Us with them holding scissors, Paige sings they can "move your family underground and live off rabbits that you found", with Cole holding up a paper people chain and crawling like Pluto.
  • Drawing!Paige says she saw that movie with Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson, in reference to Stranger Than Fiction.
• Special Edition Title: Sort of. While the show rarely has a dedicated opening credit, this episode has Fista-Puffs be the star of her own opening credits.
• Special Guest: "Pow Pow Boom Booms" is written by Josh Gad and Ben Romans.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: Fista Puffs keeps failing to defeat the Minotaur in the simulation when they fight. After Molly reflects on her experience and realize she was trying too hard to try to impress Hazel and Shauna, Fista Puff realize the Minotaur is in an area where the walls are thick and has solid steel doors and all she has to do is just trap it inside after rescuing the old man inside.

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♫ Get dirty with the Pow Pow Boom Boom
Pow Pow Boom Boom
When we walk into the room
All you monsters gonna feel some pain soon
The world may seem all doom and gloom
Till you open up a can of Pow Pow Boom Boom ♫

—"Pow Pow Boom Booms (End Credits)"