Often when a show produces an episode that makes me react with visceral anger, that means that I have something against the episode. This is not the case with "Bringin' on the Rain." Throughout the show, I have been impressed by how the show makes me react to Pete as a character. I believe this episode was where Pete behaved in the absolute worst possible way, but it all seemed plausible.
Even though PJ's suffering in the episode was played pretty dramatically, and I honestly did think PJ needed to be immediately removed from his home a couple of times (which is something I rarely thought on the show, despite my opinion on Pete's parenting), that didn't make me angry with the writers—I was impressed they decided to do something so bold on a kids' show, especially from the perspective of, "Yes, this is a real problem," and I was also impressed that they put a few PJ-centric episode elements into a Pete/Goofy episode, since those are my favorites and felt sort of shorted in the series.
Pete's treatment of Goofy was just as bad, and I thought it was interesting that the writers decided to do both in the same episode. Given this, Pete seems to be carrying a Jerkass Ball—impressive for someone who is already a Jerkass, but I love it and here's why: one of the biggest struggles I have in cartoons is Designated Villains. Cartoon antagonists rarely get proportional punishment. Pete, on the other hand, does. His punishment in this episode is delightfully nonspecific. In fact, it's nonspecific enough that I (and I'm sure many other members of the unavoidable Periphery Demographic) imagined something that was not at all kid-friendly.
The thing I liked the best about this episode was that it followed the pilot's idea of taking some aspects of everyone's episode tones and putting them in one episode. And during the brief Max-esque scene, something really struck me. Max does an Ask A Stupid Question immediately followed by PJ doing a Rhetorical Question Blunder. This struck me because it showed that Max and PJ were on equal footing with each other mentally. And speaking of said jokes, there were really funny moments despite the episode's tone in general being somewhat more disturbing than most.
Bringin' on the Rain: An interesting phenomenon
Often when a show produces an episode that makes me react with visceral anger, that means that I have something against the episode. This is not the case with "Bringin' on the Rain." Throughout the show, I have been impressed by how the show makes me react to Pete as a character. I believe this episode was where Pete behaved in the absolute worst possible way, but it all seemed plausible.
Even though PJ's suffering in the episode was played pretty dramatically, and I honestly did think PJ needed to be immediately removed from his home a couple of times (which is something I rarely thought on the show, despite my opinion on Pete's parenting), that didn't make me angry with the writers—I was impressed they decided to do something so bold on a kids' show, especially from the perspective of, "Yes, this is a real problem," and I was also impressed that they put a few PJ-centric episode elements into a Pete/Goofy episode, since those are my favorites and felt sort of shorted in the series.
Pete's treatment of Goofy was just as bad, and I thought it was interesting that the writers decided to do both in the same episode. Given this, Pete seems to be carrying a Jerkass Ball—impressive for someone who is already a Jerkass, but I love it and here's why: one of the biggest struggles I have in cartoons is Designated Villains. Cartoon antagonists rarely get proportional punishment. Pete, on the other hand, does. His punishment in this episode is delightfully nonspecific. In fact, it's nonspecific enough that I (and I'm sure many other members of the unavoidable Periphery Demographic) imagined something that was not at all kid-friendly.
The thing I liked the best about this episode was that it followed the pilot's idea of taking some aspects of everyone's episode tones and putting them in one episode. And during the brief Max-esque scene, something really struck me. Max does an Ask A Stupid Question immediately followed by PJ doing a Rhetorical Question Blunder. This struck me because it showed that Max and PJ were on equal footing with each other mentally. And speaking of said jokes, there were really funny moments despite the episode's tone in general being somewhat more disturbing than most.