After two mystery heavy episodes, we've gone back to the traditional Gravity Falls episode, mostly jokes and creative stories with a little bit of mystery put in for good measure. Here we have Dipper trying to find someone to play Dungeons, Dungeons & More Dungeons with but no one seems interested, that is except for Great Uncle Ford who Dipper desperately wants to bond with in hopes to learn more about the mysteries of Gravity Falls. However. once it starts interfering with everyone else, things get out of hand and due to a magic infinity dice, the characters in the story come to life and they have to play a real life version of DD&MD in order to send them back to their own dimension. What was interesting about this episode is how much meta-humour was in it, yes Gravity Falls has made meta-jokes and references in the past, but they took it to a whole new level here, not only making jokes of Dungeons & Dragons, but also themselves and their fans. When Grunkle Stan talked about why it's not weird for an adult to watch a kids show because "it has a very engaging mystery and plenty of jokes that would go over kids heads" me and my friend just sort of looked at each other acknowledging that was meant for us. Not to mention the twin brother twist in ducktective. I think that's what makes it work, they didn't necessarily insult their audience (because that would be stupid) they just pointed out the silliness of it, but at the same time they made fun of themselves in the process. Even the Dungeons & Dragons stuff wasn't mean spirited or insulting, they show it from both perspectives, Dungeons & Dragons can be a fun game, but it's also needlessly complicated and people can get way to involved into the escapism of it all. But there are those who judge it harshly even though they've never tried it and the game it relatively harmless and (shocker) fun from time to time.They say you can't really satirise something unless you truly love it, and that's what comes across here, a fantasy piece of escapist fiction making fun of another fantasy piece of escapist fiction. It could be seen as really hypocritical if they didn't show the positives of it as well as make of themselves for good measure. So i'd say it's all in good nature. But, there's still plenty of jokes outside of the meta-humour that had be laughing, Grenda is apparently a murderer now, gotta love a bit of dark humour in a kids' tv show. Also Mabel's expressions in this episode were hilarious, her dialogue was good but seriously, her constant change and exaggeration of her feelings was funny as hell, a lot of the visual jokes in this episode were funnier than normal. That centaurtaur joke had me laughing my ass off for how strange a visual that was. Also making fun of 90's culture is always hilarious, a time when everything had to be extreme and hip, Dipper's line especially got me laughing "the 90's must have been a strange time", mostly because it's always strange for me to think that there are people alive now who were never alive in the 90's who are nearly adults...it's so strange.
Then in the end we got a little bit of plot development with Great Uncle Ford's interdimensional rift, who knows how that's going to come into play, it could do anything, be anything, i'm looking forward to seeing where they go with that. Also Weird Al Yankovic as Probabilitor was awesome, this show is really good at getting major guest stars, JK Simmons, Weird Al, Nick Offerman, Nathan Fillion, Mark Hamill, etc.
Overall, this was a really good episode, delivered plenty of laughs, had a great plot and included enough set-up for future episodes. I'm giving DD&MD an 8/10.
-Danny
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