Amphibia: Contagi-Anne

August 8, 2021 1:04 PM - Season 1, Episode 15

Anne pretends to be sick, with the "mochalattes," to get out of work during a storm, but as a result the Plantars actually get sick, and she is guilt-stricken.

• While it seems the Plantars come down with a life-threatening illness during the story, they are really just normal-sick, so this is another episode where characters don't almost die.
• A point that I feel should be mentioned. While Anne is often self-centered, and this episode has her ducking out of work, there was never a story where she questioned whether she should doing chores and farm-work for the Plantars, even though that work is frequently laborious. While there is at least one story that implies there are adventures she and the Plantars have had outside of episodes (we'll get to that in another writeup), for the most part, the story is pretty compressed. The first four episodes take place on consecutive days, and in none of them has Anne ever complained about the hard work of farm life, despite her Earth life being as a modern kid in Los Angeles. (And, being a big, gangly human, she probably makes life much easier for the others by helping them in the field.)
• Even Polly helps out to protect the crops in the rain despite having no legs.
• Sprig: "Rain gear? We're frogs. We should actually be taking off our clothes!" But this storm is a lot more violent than that.
• Anne tries on Sprig's clothes in his room, perhaps getting back at him for wearing her "DIVA" nightshirt back in Flood, Sweat and Tears. (That shirt is never seen again.)
• The symptoms. Polly: eyes swollen shut, ballistic sneezes. Sprig: tongue hyper-inflated. Hop Pop: sticky.
• Anne way more than makes up for shirking work in her efforts to cure the rest of the family, which is what redeems her character in this story.
• Other stories make evident that Anne is the best cook of all of them, which possibly comes from helping her parents out with their restaurant.
• Anne being able to drive Bessie helps her take the others to the curative mineral pond, the "Peak of Health."
• Sprig's a little quick to play drums on his dying grandfather's belly. Polly has been tied to a brick to stop her from bouncing everywhere after sneezing.
• To get the frogs to the pond faster, Anne take the cart off Bessie and pulls it herself. We know she's athletic, but would you say this level of strength implies something else is going on...?
• That pond has got offer some strong healing, it has to make up for all the injury frog folk suffer trekking out to it!
• And now, a very important lesson. Anne: "What, the book was wrong?" Hop Pop: "Books are wrong all the time! Lot more than you'd think!"
• Hop Pop: "...anyone dead yet?" Sprig: "Not yet!" Polly: "Present."
• Although the story is a bit compressed to fit in 11 minutes, this episode is pretty strong, I think. While we know where the story is going, and has a fairly obvious Chekov's Gun (the mushroom), the resignation of the frogs to their fate is funny, and Anne's determination to save their lives is heartwarming. And at the end no one is mad at anyone, they're just happy to be alive.
• From the backpack: magazines, nail polish

posted by JHarris