Amphibia: Cracking Mrs. Croaker

September 7, 2021 4:45 AM - Season 1, Episode 28

Everyone in town loves Sprig! Everyone except elderly Mrs. Sadie Croaker, who for some reason is always "meh" whenever she encounters the young frog. This eats at Sprig to the extent that he resorts to outlandish means to get her to like him.

• A lot of these episodes have got to seem to you (if indeed anyone is reading these) as fairly insubstantial. Amphibia is one of those shows that, like Steven Universe, lays hints in earlier episodes, and eases into its larger plot slowly. These early episodes also help establish what the characters are like and let the situation sink in. Anne being a human girl in a family of frogs feels like more of a normal thing for these episodes, which will come to matter more when we get to Season Two.
• So, the episode. Mrs. Croaker was the one who "played" Sprig way back in Anne Theft Auto. Could that have been the origin of Mrs. Croaker's disdain for Sprig? Anne was at least as much a part of that as Sprig though, and she doesn't seem to be disliked by her.
• Anne seems to have an issue with a girl back on Earth named Jamie Krieger, and she also never seems to have gotten over it. But we're in Amphibia, so, it's Sprig's inability to let things go that's the subject, and not Anne's.
• Sprig hears the opposite of what Anne says to him twice. Gah.
• Townfolk opinions of Mrs. Croaker. Stumpy: "She's just a kooky old spider lady." Loggle: "I think she was born that old. She looked exactly the same when I was a kid." Maddie: "She smells like wet leaves and fungus. I love it."
• Anne plays "Shake Man" on her phone, which seems to be a maraca-focused rhythm game possibly based off of Samba De Amigo.
• No soundproofing on the Plantar house walls? They're made of stone!
• Mrs. Croaker's book: "In The Heat Of The Swamp."
• Sprig goes off looking for Jonah, who he presumes is Mrs. Croaker's long-lost love. Upon knocking on his door, he answers thinking it's from the Puzzle-of-the-Month club.
• Sprig: "Mrs. Croaker! Do I have a surprise for you!" Mrs. Croaker: "Oh, is it the Puzzle-of-the-Month club?"
• It turns out that Jonah and Sadie Croaker have some kind of life-long hate vendetta. At the end, Mrs. Croaker has him captured and warned the others to not to talk about what happened. Amphibia is kind of messed up sometimes.
• Jonah: "The Guild will surely take me back if I took you down!" What kind of guild? Are we talking Thieves? Assassins? Bakers?
• Sprig has a cowboy hat on him that says "She likes me" in the event that he succeeded. Unhealthy.
• From the backpack: teen magazine (visible for less than a second, before Sprig startles Anne)

posted by JHarris