Yeah, I only recently discovered that show and I friggin' love it, but that one is particular wasn't in the best in my opinion either. Still better than average, but overall "meh" by Gravity Falls standards.
While Darlene's side of the story was pretty great, this episode still pisses me off even more than the blatantly insulting 'Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons'.
The moral is a good one - don't string people along. Don't toy with others' feelings. It's a lesson that we could stand to see reaffirmed in this day and age.
The problem is that it's not a lesson Dipper needed to learn. Dipper knows full well that doing this is morally wrong, which is why *he doesn't do it*. Dipper does nothing more than speaking to some girls and getting a few numbers/Email addresses. He is not initiating a relationship with any of them. No one made any commitments, and Dipper is guilty of nothing for speaking to more than one of them. They're on a road trip. He's meeting new people.
Then the episode takes it further and portrays him as stringing Candi along when, at NO POINT did he consent to so much as a date with her. Candi blows a gasket, the writing jumps through a dozen hoops to get all the girls together, then has them ALL suddenly decide Dipper committed to being in a relationship with them, and berate him.
Seriously, what the hell? Dipper is guilty of none of the things this episode is portraying him as doing. He makes it abundantly clear that he's not committing to anything, and that he doesn't want to string anyone along, despite Stan's urges.
I get what they're trying to do. Dipper's not malicious about it. It's just something a person could slip into if they're not mindful of others' feelings. Except Dipper never slipped into it. Not once.
If we're going to do this plot, we need to either A. Actually SHOW Dipper doing these things the episode is accusing him of, or B. Not accuse him of them in the first place. And since, again, this is not a lesson Dipper needs to learn, the latter is preferable.
You know what would've worked better? Give Stan the lesson. It would be FAR more in-character for Stan to be a pickup artist, and it would be something a little different from usual, to be focusing on him. Give Dipper a smaller subplot about meeting new people, but don't run him through the wringer like this!
As it currently stands, the only lesson Dipper learned here is that if you're socially awkward and try to talk to people, all the horrible, ridiculous things you imagine happening will happen, and it will be completely your fault. And that is just fucking disgusting.
... Why exactly did you find Dungeon, Dungeon and More Dungeon insulting?
As for the whole lesson thing, well, Stan DID have to learn a lesson as well, and it's pretty obvious why he couldn't learn Dipper's: he isn't exactly the kind of guy you'd expect to be a womanizer.
Anyway the fact Dipper was portrayed as needlessly wrong bothered me too, but also because I am not a fan of stories that involve the protagonist being "punished" to learn his lesson. And I feel Gravity Falls was above that in earlier episodes, which saddens me to see they are still capable of doing it. There is also the disturbing fact that in the end, Darlene not only got away, but will probably continue killing people and parading their corpses. The Fridge Horror made me feel rather... uncomfortable. This episode was supposed to be a break before the finale, but frankly it left me with a rather bad impression.
D,D&D was mostly just meh, up until the stinger, where it blatantly suggested people only turn to roleplay because they can't be arsed to find self improvement in the real world. It was pretty blatantly insulting - and the egregious mistakes they made about the rules didn't help matters.
But you raise good points. They didn't actually STOP Darlene, despite being in a perfect position to do so. I can sympathize if they didn't want to outright execute her in cold blood, but it seems like they could do *something!*
And I agree with the idea that GF is usually above the old "punishment to teach them a lesson" structure. This was another episode that felt like it could use another draft.
Ah, that. Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, I don't know why people feel like making that kind of comment so often. Linkara pretty said why this is stupid in his One More Day review. Personally I tried to not judge the episode on that alone, since aside from this part, Dipper's and Grunkle Ford's passion for roleplaying was despicted in a positive enough light (I mean, it did allow them to befriend each others, and ironically got helped Ford get away from his experiments a bit). As for the mistakes on the rules, I see it as just a case of Shallow Parody.
And exactly for Darlene. Now in their defense, I am not sure what they could do: as you just said they can't kill her, and the police wouldn't buy it if they told them, but still...
Overall, yeah, that episode could have used another draft. In all fairness, it's still above average in term of quality, but for a Gravity Falls episode it wasn't the best. I trust that was just because of the filler nature of the episode and we'll get the good stuff next episode, though.
It's kind of strange how the episode really goes out of its way to make Dipper look bad and feel bad.
If nothing else the episode makes for interesting double feature with The Love God in that they both have a poorly executed romance themed Aesop, and they treat their spotlight characters' mistakes very differently despite the similarity of the situation.
I actually found it very offensive, the double standard this episode sets up. Not only is Dipper emotionally ostracized by his sister and her friends and made to believe he did wrong when he didn't (Mabel even hisses "Betrayer" at him when he tries to talk), but he's punished via plot for doing something Mabel does all the time. Heck, from the very first episode we get a montage of how Mabel throws herself (sometimes literally) at random guys to seek out her dream summer romance, and this is treated as a charming quality of her character. But when Dipper tries to talk to girls, it's a huge moral sin he has to shame himself (calling himself "dumb," a "loser," and a "jerk") in order to apologize, something which is never addressed as going way too far.
Basically, instead of a lesson of "Don't be a playboy," or whatever (a moral which makes no sense to give to the socially awkward and insecure character), what I got out of it was "Don't try to have friendly conversations with girls, girls will misinterpret any interaction you have with them as deeply romantic and meaningful to you both, so giving attention to more than one at once is a bad idea." And that's one of the most deeply sexist undertones I've ever seen in a modern children's show, right there—against both men and women.
So basically, because of the crazy message and the double standard, the lesson I got from Gravity Falls' "Roadside Attraction" is: Girls can flirt with whoever they like, but boys can't because girls assume things. Also, it's not the girls' fault if they do, it's the boys that are terrible people if they put girls through that.
Is people stringing others along romantically a problem? Of course. Is it something we should address to the pre-teens this show is geared towards, who will soon be emerging into the dating pool? Absolutely. But this message for them is worse than mediocre, it teaches boys that they shouldn't talk to or make friends with girls unless they want to pursue a romantic relationship. It teaches girls that boys are always at fault if there's a miscommunication in a relationship. It's harmful.
This is the worst episode of Gravity Falls yet, worse than the obvious Take That, Critics! Character Development cop-out that was "The Last Mabelcorn."
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Roadside Attraction
Warning: Spoilers ahead
Frankly, Gravity Falls has started to show a slight decrease in the writing of the latest episodes. It's still good(and it's comprehensible too, as said episodes are light on continuity before things get truly crazy) but they just have been put together with less care and detail as past ones. And Roadside Attraction, being particularly continuity free, follows that trend.
The episode revolves around Dipper trying to overcome his crush on Wendy. Seeing this while they're on a road trip to sabotage other touristic attractions around Oregon, Stan decides to help Dipper by teaching him how to flirt. It obviously backfires as Stan's advices make him get more on his hands that he can handle(and without knowing how to do so), as Dipper ends getting the attention of many girls that happen to cross their paths...Candy included(and whom he did not originally intend to charm). Along the way, Dipper learns confidence but also to not toy with girls' hearts when everything falls apart and they race to save Grunkle Stan's life.
This has a good and a bad side. Good moral, but questionable execution. While it's true Dipper DID flirt with various girls, he got as far as just getting their contact info. The misunderstanding and how it was handled clumsily tried to portray a nice message about not to play with people's feelings, but it also demonized the actions of Dipper when even himself understood to not take them too far.
The monster of the week on the other hand is pretty neat. Not the most original, but to have a giant spider usually works for creepy imagery, and it doesn't disappoint here(we basically have a Jorogumo. That's awesome)
Probably the most interesting(YMMV on wether is good or bad) thing about this, however, is how shipping hostile the episode in question is. It kept beating on whats already a dead horse with Dipper and Wendy, abruptly sunk any chances with Dipper and Candy, and some even noticed it gave a blow to ships regarding Grunkle Stan. That's quite a feat for one single episode, and it really seems Alex wants to put the romance subplots to rest to focus on the mystery.
Overall, not a bad episode but not outstanding either. It was just...standard I guess(shipping massacre aside).Fortunately, it seems Dipper and Mabel VS the Future will get things going again.