![]() With them, we can breathe and enjoy the cleverness that matters. Without episodes like this, Gravity Falls would be too dense and too clever an allegorical puzzlebox for its own good. The Summerween Trickster, despite being the epitome of the paranormal weirdness the show is premised on, has exactly no bearing on either of those mundanely human things. ![]() Like, for example, the big story told here of Mabel and Dipper facing the adult world in completely different ways, or the petty one of Stan taking joy in pulling a trolling fast one on anyone and everyone, including literal children. But that is right and good! Monsters in genre stories can be allegories for bigger things, but if we always force them to signify more than what they are, we risk missing the stories that are being told without being dressed up in fangs and claws. It means so little that, to quote Wendy from another episode on this list, it is literally too dumb for anyone to care about. The Summerween Trickster (Jeff Bennett) is not terrorizing children every summer because its plight-being made up of “loser candy” that no one actively likes- means anything. She’s cheating at LIFE.” - Alexis GundersonĪside from letting Alex Hirsch sneak a Halloween episode into a series stuck forever in June and July, “Summerween” serves, to my mind, one purpose: To remind everyone (hi) who watches cleverly assembled genre stories (…) and spends hours trying to articulate the deep meaning behind it all (I mean), that sometimes a dumb monster is just a dumb monster. All that mattered was the tiny, tiny, adorably deadly turf war amongst Gravity Falls’ bloodthirstiest sports equipment, Mabel and Pacifica’s burgeoning respect for each other’s strengths, and Dipper’s pithy reminder of how failing to correlate personal achievement with generational wealth is a real mistake: “Pacifica’s rich, Mabel. This early in Season Two we didn’t know the degree to which deeply entrenched, deeply stupid rivalry would end up being one of the series’ Big Themes, but when Patton Oswalt’s Lilli puttian putt-putt ball avatar, Franz, rolled into Dipper and Mabel’s lives and gave tiny, unsettlingly toothy mini-golf shape to the well-established rivalry between our dear, doofy Mabel and rich kid mean girl, Pacifica Northwest (Jackie Buscarino), that didn’t matter. And be sure to enter our giveaway for the chance to win one of three Collector’s Edition boxed sets, including 18” x 24” lithographs. To celebrate the series’ legacy-and its triumphant return, in the form of Shout! Factory’s expansive Blu-ray/DVD boxed set, Gravity Falls: The Complete Series Collector’s Edition- Paste is proud to present our ranking of Gravity Falls 20 best episodes. ![]() The siblings’ loving rapport, which also features its fair share of frustration and hurt feelings, gives ballast to the series’ strangest interludes, as Dipper tries to find the truth behind an occult journal he discovers, Mabel tries to find true love, and Stan tries to find a way to keep his secrets hidden from the young ones. As Dipper and Mabel soon learn, despite the blasé attitudes of good-natured employees Soos Ramirez (Hirsch) and Wendy Corduroy (Linda Cardellini), Stan’s tourist trap, the Mystery Shack, is the epicenter of paranormal occurrences that’d make Fox Mulder weep. Still, at the heart of Gravity Falls’ many mysteries is the perfectly rendered relationship between Dipper and Mabel Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal), 12-year-old twins shipped off for the summer to their great uncle, or “Grunkle,” Stan (Hirsch) in Gravity Falls, Ore. But it’s tempting to do so anyway: With its emphasis on familial relationships both healthy and broken, its heady admixture of sci-fi, horror, humorous pop culture references and profound emotion, even its central, ever-looming truth (“Summer ends”), Alex Hirsch’s short-lived beauty summons up thoughts of BoJack Horseman, Bob’s Burgers, Adventure Time, and Rick and Morty, not to mention live-action inspirations such as Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Lost. The Forces of Evil, has acquitted itself well in the 21st century so far. Placing Gravity Falls in the animation canon doesn’t require drawing comparisons to series outside of Disney, which, from Kim Possible to Phineas and Ferb to Star vs.
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