Phineas and Ferb

Creepcrawl...honestly, you're blowing your disapproval way out of proportion to the point it in itself is cliche. I actually applaud them for doing something slightly mundane...because that's real life. Getting into relationships is EXACTLY this awkward and nerve-wracking, it's a big responsibility and runs the risk of going wrong and ruining a good thing. I know that won't happen with Phinibella, but taking that giant step forward is never easy. I tried the same thing with my best friend of several years and she 'zoned me. Fortunatly we still love each other in a special non-romantic way and still are each other's confidants, but it could have went a slightly different route. The point is, what I did was'nt spectacular or fancy or explosive, it was just a very frank confession and a very frank conversation.

I gravitated to what Phineas and Isabella went through here, and I'm glad it worked out for them rather than me

I'm not bothered by relationships being a mature thing and being "realistic". I'm just annoyed that they had to sacrifice a big focus on being a comedy TO be realistic.

The show, if you haven't noticed, is absurd and silly and like I said, runs on silliness and nonsense on a pretty consistant basis. It annoys me that Phinbella has to act like a realistic, cliche teenage couple when they've basically done better.

Montness was formed from a badass Perry fight and even formed a decent story arc for the couple. Candace and Jeremy had their own arc for awhile and even hooked up in Paris during Summer Belongs To You. They were all great and worked because they didn't sacrifice the cartoony-tone of the show for the sake teenage romance drama.

It also feels very hypocritical that Candace and her friends is often portayed as amusing stereotypes of teenagers while Phineas and his friends act like teenagers and they act so damn serious about it.

I don't expect THAT much realistism in a show where platpi fight crime and floating baby heads are the norm. I just expected Phinbella be done in a unique way of hooking up; the various amounts of specials like the Halloween special and the Star Wars crossover could all be decent ways of making the couple canon to me.

The episode was STILL silly and comedic.

This has been brought up some posts up, but IMO 'Act Your Age' places the entirety of the burden on Phineas' cluelessness and none on Isabella's hesitancy. This isn't just a fan's gripe/observance. Whole eps have been devoted to her not being able to spit it out. Did I miss a reference to it? All I seemed to hear was how Phineas didn't see her obvious affection. While true, it seems incomplete for the series as it developed.

To be honest, it's hard to write a 'satisfactory' conclusion to the Phineas/Isabella relationship. Because by now too long has been spent in the 'unspoken crush played for laughs' stage, because P&F is just that kind of show. It's not been a 'believable' romantic arc one can conclude in a fitting way, it's a cute running gag, and it works that way. Of course almost anything you tack on at the end of it is going to feel either too little and a whimper and too much and overblown for what it always was. It's not something that merits a real 'romantic' serious conclusion, but a cute punchline in the final episode.

The Star Wars special can get away with what it did about it because it was its own minature universe, and while their relationship was still a relatively unimportant subplot (we only needed Isabella to develop friendship towards the boys, not romance towards Phineas. The emotional bond was necessary, but not the romantic one), it still plays accordingly with a done-in-one neat punchline that wraps the subplot up nicely if they never do a sequel, yet leaves enough open for a sequel.

edited 11th Feb '15 5:43:49 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

To me it feels like Dan and Swampy wanted to a weird deconstruction of the Phinbella relationship as a whole for AYA; Phineas' obliviousness is played up way too much (it was cute when he was a kid where it was believable but no 19-20 year old can be this commendably blind to what Isabella claims as "super obvious hints") and Isabella's hestitancy about NOT telling Phineas about her feelings within the 10-year time skip instead of giving up and moving on.

It kinda makes the argument of Phinbella being a "realistic" teenage couple kinda null and void, considering that these two aspects not only make it hard to support them but it feels like an attempt to make an overcomplicated bit of drama just to have the two finally get together.

What makes Isabella's hestitancy worse in AYA is that we JUST had an special (Night of Living Pharmistists) where Isabella actually FINALLY told Phineas about her feelings. Yes, they stuck to the status quo and mindwiped them, but it's the sheer POSSIBILITY that she can tell him and there was justification to her telling him soon (they're about to be Doofified so last chance to tell him). Here, there's literally NOTHING stopping Isabella from telling Phineas sooner instead of getting frustrated to the point of giving up on him.

It's childish and it doesn't feel like a REALISTIC way for two teenagers, not even teens more like young adults to handle it.

I must say, before anything else, I haven't watched Act Your Age yet, and I probably won't until it shows in Latin America. But it sounds like the problems are brought from the most natural and logical problem with time skip resolutions, and the reason why I don't like them. A time skip story requires to explain HOW things have changed since the series' regular timeline, AND then develop its own conclusion from there. Either of both things, on itself, is demanding enough. Trying to juggle both at once, especially in under half a hour, it's a nearly impossible mission.

My personal overall policy on time skips is 'if things changed enough, why don't you show us WHAT happened instead of just skipping over it, and if things didn't change in a way that merits actually showing them, why to bother with the skip in the first place?'

Kinda how like Baljeet's line, "We're guys. We don't talk about feelings" feels more like the creators trying to handwave the time-skip without REALLY explaining why no one felt like telling Phineas about Isabella at all and stretching out the drama of the episode even more.

If this episode was like....maybe set 5 years after the current show instead of the 10 years, it'd be understandable or at least tolerable. Stretching out the time-skip was a terrible choice because it basically and annoyingly stretched out the Phinbella far longer than it should have been resolved. If anything, this episode would be have okay if Phinbella was already a couple.

We already know they're gonna hook up, so it'd be more interesting if we could see them handle things like an actual couple. Like Phineas choosing colleges between a good possible future and being with his girlfriend...may have not been funny but it would at least work in a relationship-sense.

Hey guys. You should look at this.

http://comments.deviantart.com/1/513116680/3746351049

Bernie Peterson who was one of the writers for Act Your Age commented on one of the Act Your Age reviews regarding the behind the scenes work on the episode.

Thus is an interesting read. And yes Creep Crawl, you should read this too.

I will admit that this was an interesting and it did give me some insight to how AYA was processed; certain things were cut out and pretty much had to change a few things in the long run.

That said, I'm still not crazy about the whole episode which feels pretty subpar to me.

I'm sorry but I'm physically in capable of hating an episode in which Doof shouts KAZOO SOLO! and then DOES ONE. also he's happy and they all get together and bowl on thursdays. perfect.

As for the rest, it was fine. Nothing spectacular, but fine.

Did Ferb get V.D. of her own free will, or was there some device involved?

He probably get Vanessa of her own free will.

While i can't say the episode itself was bad; there was something appealing about it to me (not sure what though), i can't help but feel a bit depressed about Phineas and Isabella's relationship.

I think that it's a little sad that the two of them went this long without getting together, i would have assumed Phineas would have caught on a bit sooner. Also, I find it a little depressing that Isabella practically gave up on the whole thing by high school. That means, from her POV; she basically waited patiently for Phineas to return her romantic feelings for many years and received no reward for it, save only a broken heart. Try and reason that any way you want, but that's pretty sad.

One of the reason why I actually dislike the episode, honestly.

What's even sad and worse is that this is Dan and Swampy's plan all along....this is what they perseive Phinbella should get together by. The context and implications are implying a relationship that doesn't come off healthy to me.

It's like if Dan and Swampy did a deconstruction on Phinbella's relationship...amping up Phineas' obliviousness to the point where it actually becomes a major problem and Isabella's hestitancy on revealing her feelings to him holding her back and giving her obvious emotional issues.

From what the episode has given us, it's less like a happy little conclusion to a cute pairing and more like watching a bittersweet ending to a really flawed relationship that might not even last as long as the creators unintentionally implied.

That's awfully negative. Do you think that they were ready for a serious relationship before that? I'm sorry but I generally think that college is a fine age to start seriously dating, and doing so before that can only lead to disappointment at the very, very best.

Contrary to popular belief, young love has a nasty habit of not working out at ALL.

Yeah I'm with Zarius and odafangirl on this one Creep Crawl. They both bring up good points.

Personally, I think the song and the 3rd act worked well. To me, it does feel like a happy little conclusion.

&

I'd be easier to believe it with the series if they didn't TRY to make it so serious because it doesn't work on either factor of what this episode is trying to be.

As a P&F episode, it's toned down the usual surreal humor and cartoony antics to tell a relatively mundane and kinda boring teenage drama (which even compared to Canderemy and Montnessa who all had some level of absurdity in their relationship makes the conclusion stick out like a sore thumb).

As a episode trying to be like a realistic teenage romance, it's really stretching out the drama, flanderizing certain aspects of the characters and trying to make some sense out of a pairing that is more like a cute running gag than an actual romantic arc.

I actually do like Phinbella, as much as I've been debating on the forum about it....but the episode didn't feel satisfying enough as an episode that quote-unquote is how the relationship begins. I expected something....a bit more grand and amusing, honestly.

Like I said, most of the couples, even ones like Lawrence and Linda, all had something memorable and grand about how their relationships started out. Here? It's really kinda dull and underwhelming.

I dunno, I guess I had TOO much banking on Phinbella or something.

Again, I don't think we were ever expected to wait much from Phinbella in the first place. It was a running gag! At least Candace/Jeremy and Monty/Vanessa had actual development and growth, which is why it bothers me so much the latter was apparently scrapped in favor of a Vanessa ship that makes much less sense.

So when a story in a usually wacky cartoon is more slice-of-life and realistic, even slightly, it's automatically boring?? OKAY!!! >:

JJ didn't show up because his heartbreak from his breakup has already started him down the dark path to journalism, where he will be obsessed with "busting" a certain wall crawling superhero.

Would have been nice to hear Ferb was now working for Tony Stark.

Ferb : He told me to reveal all our activities since childhood to the press. I told him No, Who Would Be That Stupid? He then revealed it all himself. But there was surprisingly no evidence of anything we did.

No, no, Tony revealed it all, and with evidence too, but Linda still managed to miss on all of it for years afterwards.

At least they actually resolved the romance instead of left it hanging (forever) like with Hey, Arnold. Though maybe Arnold and Helga already officially tied the knot?

I feel happy for Isabella but I felt more "romantic closure" with Heinz and Perry's relationship...

When will Heinz return the feeling Jeremy showed by skipping a chance to be alone with Candace during the Candace party episode to get in Heinz's pants?