Amphibia: Hop Pop and Lock

August 21, 2021 7:16 PM - Season 1, Episode 22

Hop Pop reunites with old flame Sylvia Sundew, but is immediately challenged by a another suitor, Monroe. Can Anne help Hop Pop learn to dance so he can express his feelings?

• No one almost dies! Except maybe Anne out of embarrassment upon seeing Hop Pop's moves.
• Continuity: The Plantars are still without a stable place to sell their vegetables following Plantar's Last Stand. Hop Pop is selling vegetables out of a wheelbarrel in an alleyway. Sprig: "Criminal activity. Excitement!"
• Backstory: Hop Pop and Sylvia were a thing years ago, and Hop Pop has long had a rivalry with Monroe. I don't think Monroe shows up again later.
• Sylvia is the mother of Felicia Sundew, who is the mother of Ivy. The two families seem fairly close, considering Sprig's friendship with Ivy. (Although Felicia did call the cops on the Plantars when Anne paid with Hop Pop's IOUs, and she does have a sign up in her restaurant with a picture of Hop Pop and the words "IS NOT GOOD FOR IT.")
• Sylvia (looking at a vaguely frog-shaped warty pumpkin): "I'll take this one! I've always had a soft spot for the weird ones." (winks) Hop Pop: (sweats, makes funny noises)
• When Anne tells Sprig and Polly that Hop Pop is clearly in love, the face that Sprig makes is hilarious. Handpuppet Sprig is the best.
• Monroe looks a lot like an opposite version of Hop Pop: very similar face and body, but blue, with more hair, a mustache, a beret, no ascot or froggy spats. But still, very similar. Evidently, Sylvia has a type.
• I said before that I thought the sheriff was a one-off, but I think that's him rushing into the alley, although you don't get to see his face.
• "So You Think You Can't Dance: A Beginner's Guide." Hop Pop has a lot of specific books in his library. For its quasi-medieval trappings, Amphibia seems to have had printing technology for a while. Another book: "Dying Alone."
• Anne is creeped out a bit, understandably, when she noticed Hop Pop had noticed her dancing. She kicked her remaining shoe off at him.
• The poster: "The Honourable [something] Toadstool Invites You To Watch 'DANCE FEVER!' FAMILY FUN! Romance! SHENANIGANS!"
• Good animation on Anne, Sprig and Polly's dance moves, but the prize, I think, goes to Hop Pop's hilarious freestyle dancing, complete with goofy little scream.
• The montage has a song with fun lyrics, but I can't get them all, and the closed captioning only goes so far in recording them.
• The musicians at the party appear to be standard characters who appear in multiple episodes.
• Sadie Croaker walking by drinking all glasses of punch, one by one. Anne also has a glass of punch and is blushing, it's possible the punch was spiked just a tad.
• It was probably inevitable, by the laws of Cartoon Logic, that it would come down to a dance-off between Hop Pop and Monroe, the same inexorable, inevitable forces that makes contraptions backfire on coyotes and anvils fail to crush roadrunners.
• In addition to the dancing, Anne has other fun gestures in this episode.
• Monroe turns out to be simply a much better dancer than Hop Pop, even with Anne's tutelage, so Hop Pop dances freestyle anyway--complete with assistance from a jar of red ants that he apparently brought along just in case. In the end though, Sylvia is just as goofy a dancer as Hop Pop, so it all works out. Description complete!
• From the backpack: headband, hairband, exercise wear, scrunchy legbands, party dress, another headband

posted by JHarris