Gravity Falls

Books, comics, TV, music
1

I guess there’s not a thread for this show, but since the last episode aired tonight, it’s probably as good a time as any: You should be watching (have watched) Gravity Falls. It’s a fantastic cartoon with a definite beginning, middle, and end. It’s kind of like Twin Peaks meets Welcome to Night Vale, but with more goofy cartoon monsters and weird secret organizations. And it gets dark at times.

If that sounds appealing at all, find it on Disney Channel reruns, and start at the beginning. Watch it in order. It pays off.

2

I’m halfway through tonight’s finale (the zodiac circle), and this is lovably insane. Gonna miss this show.

3

Great show. Finale is recorded. I’ll (try to) wait to watch it with the kids tomorrow.

4

One of my favorite cartoons in a very long time. Absolutely insane, and hilarious.

I wish it could have a SpongeBob/Simpsons/Southpark type run because I will definitely miss it.

5

I still have to catch up with the second half of the second season. Really loved the show and am sad to hear it’s over, but at least, that way, it never got to the point where it becomes stale or repetitive.

Colleague of mine had recommended it, but I was a bit hesitant because it was a Disney Channel thing. When I checked out the pilot I, at first, thought the character setup was a bit formulaic, especially since Rick & Morty had also been pushing a weird grandpa at the same time. But it’s really its own thing and I enjoyed the integration of the general plot, the voice acting, the look and the humor of the show.

6

It’s over already? That makes me sad. I’ve been looking for another cartoon to binge post-Phineas-and-Ferb, and this was on my list.

7

Pretty late to the party, but just started binging through this on Hulu. Enjoying it! Man that theme song is catchy.

8

It really is a spectacular show! Avoid looking anything up on the internet for maximum enjoyment. Can’t wait to hear what you think when you finish!

9

My front page mash note to Gravity Falls.

10

Man, the first season is great but it gets even better in the second season. More than a little sad that I only have so many episodes left :/

11

All done. What a ride. Really sad to have it over, but what a way to go out. Absolutely bonkers final episodes.

12

I’m really impressed with that they managed to do with this show, and what they were able to get away with! “I’m going to shuffle all the openings in your head!” is such a graphic image! Really fantastic way to end the show.

And the voice of the bus driver at the end was Kyle MacLachlan.

13

Raced through this over the course of a couple of weeks. By midway through the first season, as the larger lore and metaplot was coming into sharper focus, I was already fully onboard, and I’d even become bound up in Kristen Schaal’s exuberant performance as Mabel (much as I might dislike super “kiddy” kids in TV, @triggercut is right in his review above; she is absolutely perfect in the role). The wild ride through the end of S1 only got better from there, and I figured I was in for a real treat of a series to follow-up all the other similar programming I’ve been binging over the last year (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Voltron: Legendary Defender, The Dragon Prince, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, Over the Garden Wall, and The Owl House).

But then, oh fuck, season 2 comes along, and it goes weird right away. The few minor handholds sanity had left on the Pines twins’ world were blown off in the first fifteen minutes of the episode and it was one long, increasingly insane and episodic ride from there through the end. Like Owl House, Gravity Falls was masterful in showcasing [seemingly] hilarious one-off bits and gags that slowly developed into fully fleshed out characters and storylines, and the number of randos from early on I fell in love with by the end was pretty stunning.

But man, nothing prepared me for how utterly batshit crazy bonkers Hirsch was allowed to go in the last half-dozen or so episodes. That shit would not be remotely out of place in the most mind-bending Call of Cthulhu sessions run by our local RPG collective, straight up. And I’d never have counted on hearing a villain scream “I’ve got some kids to turn into corpses!” before wrenching his body into a three-dimensional tool of murderous violence and exiting, stage left. Going for the dementia-esque twist with Stan at the end there to save the world was also surprisingly dark in a much more subtle way

But at the end of the day, what really stuck with me was the heartfelt ode to the magic of the best summers of our lives we never realized we were living through in the moment. I’ve watched a lot of “uplifting, well-constructed young adult fantasy” cartoons in the last 12 months of continuous lockdown, but none of them made my heart ache for my own days gone by quite like Gravity Falls.

Mind, at least in part because I absolutely fell head over heels for my share of Wendy’s when I was Dipper’s age :-D

Watch this show, y’all! It’s up on Disney+ now, along with Hulu.

P.S. - The crazy level of codes and hidden content sprinkled through the entirety of this series is mind-boggling. I am genuinely in awe of the creators. Bravo!

14

There’s a…mystery around the identity of a certain character set up almost from the start of the show. (I won’t spoil it for people who haven’t watched yet.) And the way Alex Hirsch threw people off the trail was as follows:

  1. Tweet a picture of a totally different (and wrong) answer to that mystery.
  2. Delete the tweet after maybe two minutes.
  3. Deny that he ever posted that tweet.
  4. Let the conspiracy theories fly!

It’s pretty ingenious.

Oh, and if you ever want to visit the statue that appears in the last episode of the show, it currently resides at Confusion Hill in Piercy, California, about four hours north of San Francisco.

15

I’m not sure how I never posted in this thread since it was a favorite and I was watching it as it aired, look up the shorts, they are good and creepy.

16

Glad you enjoyed it. I watched the whole thing with my kids. There are some genuinely creepy things that happen in a few episodes. Also, “Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons”. With Weird Al.

17
18

I mostly prefer the earlier standalone episodes to the latter more arc-driven ones, but I love that one if only for Stan remarking “only a game designed by nerds would have charisma as a fantasy power” when Dipper is playing D&D.