YMMV / Camp Lazlo

• Adorkable: The Jelly Beans and Samson are pretty endearing for how socially awkward they are. Dave also carries shades of this. On the Squirrel Scout side, there’s Almondine especially in her spotlight episode.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: The events of the finale (namely, his nonchalance when finding out that his scoutmaster is actually a deranged lunatic) has made some see Lazlo as a massive Stepford Smiler with an "I Reject Your Reality" kind of mindset.
• Ass Pull: The finale "Lumpus' Last Stand" revealing that Lumpus was an imposter who locked up the real scoutmaster of Camp Kidney and stole his job for the whole summer. It has nothing to do with the rest of the episode and contradicts many of Lumpus's actions throughout the show (mainly his attempts to leave Camp Kidney and explicit refusals to do his job) and his established history with the camp.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • The final episode itself, "Lumpus' Last Stand." Lumpus discovers how to turn paint into a cheap alternative for clothes, making him a hero of society. Two green moose travel back in time to see him be honored for his wonderful invention, bringing a statue made of all the world's dirty laundry. Then... it rains... washing off everyone's painted clothes. The future changes- the moose lose their antlers and body fat, and the Lumpus statue reverts back to a mountain of filthy clothes. Prickly Pines's people scramble to cover up in said clothes, then form an angry mob to attack Lumpus. However... a policeman shows up with a cow... and it's an older Heffer (or at least a steer that resembles him)! Heffer says he's the actual Camp Kidney scoutmaster and Lumpus is an impersonator who locked him up from the very start of the show. Lumpus gets put in a straightjacket and hauled off to prison. Despite this, Lazlo somehow sees a bright side, though Edward immediately calls him out for it. Finally, the campers, stuck in the buff, all walk offscreen, while Samson gets the last line of the show, where he lampshades the whole ordeal and pretty much sums up why this is the last episode:
  Samson: Okay. I think it's just officially got to the point where it can't get any weirder.
  • "Wedding Bell Blues" involves Lumpus' wedding ring to Jane Doe getting stuck in Raj's trunk, with Jane's hand getting stuck in there when she tries to retrieve it. Later in the episode Jane gets stuck inside Raj's trunk, as do Lumpus and Slinkman at the episode's end. It's a very bizarre episode.
• Crack Ship: Lazlo/Edward. Well, maybe not THAT crack...
• Crazy Is Cool: Clam. It's like The Ace and a Cloudcuckoolander combined. When Clam attempts anything, it tends to be very weird, but always successful. He does not swim; he runs on water.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In "Dungs in Candyland", Slinkman sends two giant candies (who Samson believes are Chip and Skip transformed into candies) on a Conveyor Belt o' Doom that completely and utterly destroys the candies in cartoonishly over-the-top ways. Samson's distraught reaction to what he thinks is Chip and Skip dying is even better.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Many of the minor Squirrel Scouts, most notably Amber the bunny scout, Suzie the poodle scout, and Almondine the owl scout. A number of the Bean Scout extras also count.
  • Pothole McPucker, the hideous mayor of Prickly Pines is pretty popular as well.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A lot of fans don't like the series finale (and to a lesser extent, the entire last season) and don't consider it to be canon, due to how it heavily contradicts the show's history (even for a show like this that isn't very continuity heavy.)
• Harsher in Hindsight: The comic book story "Vote Lazlo" features Scoutmaster Lumpus' disappearance and it's eventually revealed that he rolled himself under the bed and nobody noticed. It no longer sounds so funny after it happened for real to a nine-year-old boy. Or it may be funnier, depending on who you're talking to.
• He Really Can Act: "Hot Spring Fever" can best be described as Jeff Bennett hamming it up as Samson and Raj for 10 minutes. There's a reason Joe Murray said he should've won an award for his work in this episode.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "The Big Cheese", a police officer describes Scoutmaster Lumpus, who's driven off in Commander Hoo-Ha's jeep, as "A bloated escapee from some asylum". Cue Grand Finale.
• Ho Yay:
  • "Irreconcilable Dungferences", to the point that the "friendship ceremony" was set like a wedding.
  • In one episode, the scouts are going camping, and Edward had his sleeping bag destroyed by a beaver, so he tries sharing a sleeping bag with every other camper. Not enough? When he tries Lazlo's, Edward feels Lazlo's PJs and asks what they're made of. Lazlo replies that he sleeps in the nude.
  • One of the things on Lazlo's to-do list is to tell Dave he loves him.
  • In "Squirrel Seats", Raj panics when Lazlo agrees to sit next to Patsy on the camp bus. His insistence that Lazlo should sit with him instead of Patsy comes across as overprotective jealousy more than anything.
• Jerkass Woobie: Edward is this at times, especially given how badly he's treated by his older brothers. In "O Brother Who Art Thou" he gets punched by a boxing glove on a spring, then turned into a tether ball and sent flying way out into the woods.
• Moe: This show provides one of the few furry examples of this trope due to the adorkable nature of many of the characters.
• Older Than They Think: In the finale Heffer from Rocko's Modern Life, or at least another steer who resembled him, appears as the real scoutmaster. However, he was not the first Rocko's Modern Life character to appear in the show. Filburt and Rachel (as Ralph) appear as members of the Legume Council in the episode "Sweet Dreams Baby".^*In case you're wondering, "Static Cling" the Rocko's Modern Life episode that revealed Ralph was now Rachel, aired in 2019...whereas "Sweet Dreams Baby" aired in 2006, a full 13 years before "Static Cling" and 10 years after the original run of Rocko's Modern Life had concluded.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Thurop Van Orman and J.G. Quintel, who would go on to create The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Regular Show, respectively, previously worked on this show.
  • In the Japanese dub, this is one the earlier roles for many of the voice actors of the leads, mainly for Kunihiro Kawamoto (Lazlo), Ken'ichirou Matsuda (Clam), Sachiko Kojima (Patsy) and Kentaro Tone (Lumpus).
• So Okay, It's Average:
  • Although it's not as funny as most of its contemporary Cartoon Network shows, and doesn't have as much adult humour as much as Joe Murray's previous show, it's still an altogether decent show with more than a few Funny Moments. It did win an Emmy after all.
  • It doesn't help that the show aired around the time Cartoon Network went into Network Decay by airing live-action shows and movies and the few cartoons it had were initially brushed off as anywhere from awful to fairly mediocre (this show, My Gym Partner's a Monkey, Squirrel Boy, Class of 3000, Chowder, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack), but now are considered cult classics (or are now regarded as the only good things that aired when Cartoon Network went into Network Decay).
• Spiritual Successor: To Joe Murray’s Rocko's Modern Life, in it’s style of humor.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Aside from the state that CN was going through at the time this show was airing, a lot of the criticism it receives is a result of the show's subtle, but still noticeable, similarities to SpongeBob SquarePants (mostly the pre-movie episodes), if it were to take place at a summer camp and use nature animals as its cast: Lazlo bears some similarities to SpongeBob in terms of being an optimistic, cheerful, free-spirited, eccentric, happy-go-lucky, naïve but good-hearted All-Loving Hero who has a similar high-pitched and somewhat nasally voice, unintentionally causes annoyance towards others (sans his friends) with his goody-goody personality, and is oblivious to others hatred of him. Raj and Clam are similar to Patrick in terms of being the protagonist's best friend(s) and being seemingly idiotic but with Hidden Depths. Edward and Scoutmaster Lumpus' personalities are reminiscent of Squidward in that they are both cynical, assholish grumps who are frequently annoyed by the Bean Scouts' enthusiasm and happy-go-lucky attitude while trying to mind their own business (though, Lumpus' Flanderization as a Psychopathic Manchild made him a little less of a Squidward resemblance). Lastly, the show often uses the same background music as SpongeBob (despite the fact that it comes from APM Library), and Tom Kenny—SpongeBob's voice actor—does the voices for Scoutmaster Lumpus and Slinkman.
• Toy Ship: Anything between the Squirrel Scout and Bean Scouts.
• Ugly Cute: The Dung Beetles, Gretchen, and Scoutmaster Lumpus.
• Unexpected Character: Heffer from Murray's previous cartoon, or at least a steer who resembled him, turned out to be the real scoutmaster in the series finale. Honestly, who saw that coming?
• Vanilla Protagonist: Lazlo, with his nonchalant and chipper attitude, is much less interesting than his supporting cast, like Raj, Clam, and Scoutmaster Lumpus. Joe Murray noted in his book that the writers loved coming up with crazy scenarios involving the side characters, but when he'd remind them to think about what Lazlo would be doing, they'd reply "Can't we just lock Lazlo in a closet for this episode?" Indeed, the later episodes would often put Lazlo Out of Focus to focus more on exploring the side characters.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Scoutmaster Lumpus's name is supposed to be pronounced "Loom-pus", not "Luhm-pis". Even fans often get this wrong, as pretty much anyone who isn't Raj, Edward, or Slinkman pronounces it like "Luhm-pis".
• The Woobie:
  • Samson constantly suffers misfortunes and gets mocked by everyone in camp for his failures.
  • Slinkman. He has to put up with a deranged Scoutmaster for every day of each summer until the Grand Finale.