Lucharaaaaaaan! Welcome to our review of ¡Mucha Lucha!‘s fifth episode, which includes “Pinball Wizard” & “Not so Buena Girl”. As every week there’s a song for you, this time I’m not giving you a Spanish or latino-related song, instead, I really want you to listen to Daniel Johnston, if you don’t know him, nevermind the low-fi, enjoy the lyrics of True Love Will Find You In The End and Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grievances. And now that the ring is ready, let’s start this review!
1. Recaps
First, in “Pinball Wizard”, Rikochet gets stuck as a pinball from his signature move. Gee, thank you Sonic Sumo! Now Rikochet has to learn to live in a round shape, trust me, it’s not easy.
Then, we have “Not so Buena Girl” where Buena Girl receives a bad providence from a fortune… doughnut? She gets all gloomy, and it’s up to Rikochet to make her feel better… man! That’s why I don’t trust fortune donuts!
2. The fine line between making fun and being racist
The first thing I thought when I heard Sonic Sumo’s stereotypical accent was “Well this is awkard”. But then I remembered that I was watching a cartoon with a lot of mexican/latino stereotypes, and I already said I was OK with that. I still can live with that.
So, what is the difference between an Asian stereotype and a Latino stereotype? What makes one acceptable to me but the other feels -if not wrong- not okay? It’s a really hard topic. So I saw this post yesterday from CNN: this sunday they will talk about this in their show History of Comedy. Maybe it’s a good chance to explore this.
3. “A pinball gets no respect”
In this episode, Rikochet feels useless because of his “condition”, he feels like a burden for his friends and the people around him, stuck in mud, lost on the sewers. Then, when he meets El Portero, he start’s thinking about enjoying himself and looking at the brightside of things. And maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but I’m thinking that they have a message for kids with physical and emotional difficulties: you are not worthless, neither a burden, go out, enjoy life and don’t let anybody make you feel bad with yourself.
Well, I guess it IS a stretch, but I’m hoping that if I thought this, maybe someone with a problem watching this show thought the same about this episode and felt a little better.
4. Not giving up on yourself
The second part of the episode also has a plot related to being yourself. When Buena Girl reads her fortune she gets depressed, and although she gets down because of a fortune donut, people can be THAT hurtful. We all can relate to that, some people want to make sure you know that you don’t belong somewhere, or that you are not good enough.
So, Buena Girl is a good example for the kids that see this show, you have to be strong and forget about every critic on your life (or bad-fortune cookie). Again, I hope this show managed to inspire at least one person when It started airing.
5. Señor Estupido
That joke was dark! I laughed like three minutes non-stop. In fact, I think I noticed an improvement on the writing and the animation this time, I already liked both, but now they are getting better on delivering jokes, both in the script and the screen. Now that the creators are getting used to the characters and getting more creative, I’m confident this last episodes (and the following seasons) will only get better.
¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tres! ¡Ganadoooooor! That’s our review for this week. Let us know what you think of this episode of ¡Mucha Lucha! (and any other series from our Summer TV Binge) in the comments below. See you next Friday!
