Bon Bon the Birthday Clown: A Star Among Planets

I don't usually comment on something that comes out directly (with exception given to The Force Awakens, Frozen, Captain America: Civil War, and Zootopia), mostly because I do not want to be viewed as a critic of any kind who only goes after something while it's still a hot commodity.  However, as is the case with Zootopia, I will comment on something if it hits me home on an emotional level.  Along with other stellar episodes of my favorite shows, like "Almost Got 'Im" and "Heart of Ice" for Batman: The Animated Series, "Aftershock" and "Things Change" for Teen Titans, or pretty much 80% of the episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, one particular episode of a quickly blossoming show caught my attention in ways I never thought possible of a Disney Show not named Gravity Falls.  In terms of the epic flowing narrative, Star vs The Forces of Evil is not up to par with the three previously listed shows, nor can it be judged alongside contemporaries like Steven Universe or Gravity Falls and expect to come out on top.  However, it does possess a charm about it that MANY other cartoons lack and it has definitely won me over with a few solid episodes.  And the Winter Finale of the show, "Bon Bon the Birthday Clown", completely shocked me in more ways than one and has officially brought this show into serious consideration as the top dog in cartoons.  It had comedy, action, romance, and tragedy that few shows can balance so well without falling into cliches or common destinations.  To put it bluntly, I have watched this episode no less than 15 times since it premiered on November 21st and have even downloaded a version of one of the most tender and endearing songs I've heard in an animated show in recent memory.

WARNING: The remainder of this post will be going into detail over SEVERAL key aspects of the show, along with revealing spoilers for other similarly themed episodes of Danny Phantom, Kim Possible, and a few other shows of it's ilk.  Reader's discretion is advised.  

Before I go in depth about this episode, let me first talk a little bit about the show:

Star vs The Forces of Evil is a fantasy/comedy animated show that follows the bizarre adventures of Star Butterfly, the magical princess of the kingdom of Mewni, who is sent away to our world (or at least as close to our world as it can be) in order to avoid entanglements with various monsters that plague Mewni.  While on Earth, she lives with and befriends the members of the Diaz family, chiefly their son Marco, with whom Star becomes fast friends with.  While adjusting to the new customs of her new home proves challenging sometimes, Star does eventually make more friends, including the skater girl Jackie Lynn-Thomas, an "oddball" named Janna, and the object of one of her first crushes, a "rocker" named Oscar.  But evil manages to find it's way into Earth, as many villains and fiends attempt to steal Star's powerful wand and use it for evil purposes, including the maniacal Ludo, the mysterious Toffee, her hotheaded ex-boyfriend Tom, and the headmistress of S. Olga's School for Wayward Princesses, who tries her hardest to have Star (and even Marco) committed for their wild ways.

Season 2 started over the summer and has continued to get more and more complicated.  Due to events in the Season 1 finale, Star's Wand has been "cleaved" and now has many strange oddities about it.  Only adding fuel to the fire has been the discovery of a hole in the Mewni Monster Shield, Ludo's acquisition of half of Star's Wand, and a potential romance blossoming between Marco and Jackie and the unforeseen consequences that may follow because of it.

Now, for the episode at hand:

Plot: Despite beginning with a flashback to the titular character's unfortunate demise, very little about this episode has to do with the actual spirit of the dead clown.  Instead, I will say the episode begins with Star and Janna talking about performing the seance to resurrect the spirit of Bon Bon, as he warned that he would return to the realm of the living that very night.  Star is conflicted though, because she would have to cancel her plans to attend a school dance with Marco.  These thoughts are initially alleviated because Jackie asks Marco to go with her instead, which a lovestruck Marco happily agrees to.

That evening, as Star and Janna prepare for their seance, Jackie arrives at Marco's house in a beautiful dress that Star remarks as "You Look like the Ocean".  However, the spotlight shifts to Marco, who we discover cleans up exceptionally well for a boy who was once too afraid to even speak to Jackie.  Star is stunned by her friend's handsomeness, but soon remembers that he was dressed that well only for Jackie.  After taking a picture of them, Star watches them leave the house with mixed emotions, holding onto those mixed emotions even at the graveyard as she, Janna, and her book of spell's keeper, Glossaryk, try to resurrect Bon Bon's spirit.

At the dance, Marco and Jackie remark with disappointment with the festivities and decide to leave to go off on their own, as Jackie tells Marco she should have just asked him out on a date instead of to go to the dance.  Despite Marco messing up with Jackie on their date, she explains that she always liked Marco because of how he always got up and tried again even with his numerous failures (which she hilariously reminds Marco of).  When Marco confesses that he never rode a skateboard before, Jackie coerces him into riding with her.  The two balance on the board together (with similarities to the scene in Titanic where Jack holds Rose near the bow of the boat).

The seance preparations go off the rails when Star constantly brings up petty things to say about Marco and Jackie and when both Glossaryck and Janna fall asleep.  Left alone with her thoughts, Star attempts to call Marco, but cannot get through to him.  Desperate to know what's going on, Star goes through her spell book to find a "Spying Spell" that Glossaryck warns is delving into Dark Magic.  Using the spell, Star sees Marco and Jackie close together on the skateboard, their arms wrapped around each other.  Filled with jealousy, Star uses her powers to cause the skateboard to trip.  Stunned by her actions, Star is unable to sense the coming ambush of Ludo and his henchmen.

Recovering from their fall, Jackie and Marco find themselves holding hands.  After remarking about their date, the two share their first kiss, which is interrupted when Marco sees the Blood Moon in the sky (see below for more information).  Sensing Star was in trouble, Marco and Jackie rush to the graveyard to find her, which causes Star to lose focus on the fight with Ludo and instead create a dark vortex that began sucking her in.  As Marco rushes to Star's rescue, Ludo steals Star's spell book with Glossaryck still inside.  Despite being rescued, Star is devastated, both by her loss of the book and Glossaryck, but also the thought of losing Marco to Jackie as well.

The Non-perfect Emotion: 

The ultimate reason for this being one of my favorite episodes of any show may not be one you are thinking of.  Throughout the history of animation, virtually the entire gambit of emotions has been felt by at least one character.  However, while most of the emotions have been captured perfectly at least once, one of the few I noticed was never truly captured was heartbreak.  Many animated shows and movies attempt to show heartbreak, but they always fall into two stereotypes with regards to the emotions:

1. One and Done: No, this does not mean that they feel it for a minute and then feel better.  No, this means that the heartbreak is only felt in one way.  Heartbreak is not a simple to define emotion.  In many cases, it is almost impossible to define.  It runs through many of the emotions at once, from jealousy, regret, sorrow, and depression.  But in quite a few cases, heartbreak only covers one of these emotions.  Many Disney films that deal with heartbreak fall into this trap.  Beauty and the Beast, for instance, falls into the trap of just depressing the Beast when Belle leaves to help her father.  The whole gambit of heartbreak is not felt by the Beast when his true love abandons him.  The same can be said for The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Tangled, both of which only react sorrowfully and then immediately get reminded of a bigger plot importance (the plight of the Gypsies for Quasimodo and Rapunzel's royal heritage).  It goes past Disney films, though.  In Adventure Time, Finn goes into a deep state of depression after Princess Bubblegum rejects him, never going through the other stages involved with it.  Actually, as disgusting as this sounds as I write it, Padme's "heartbreak" in Revenge of the Sith is the closest I can think of that goes through at least two or three of the stages.  She goes through denial and sorrow over how Anakin has changed.

2. Comedic Overselling: This is one of the most infuriating ones to cover.  These are the heartbreaking moments in shows that get overly weepy, overly angry, or overly depressing.  Shows that ranged from overly childish like Total Drama and The Fairly Odd Parents, to more adult shows like Family Guy or The Simpsons have all had moments like this, where a character goes to great lengths to make their heartbreak comedic and it is either quickly forgotten by a character or just ignored for the duration of the episode.  In fact, this current season of South Park is a major culprit of this crime, with the boys and girls getting into Battle of the Sexes that has them all at each other's throats over a matter as mindless as trolling on the internet.  This one infuriates me to no end, chiefly because it usually tries to take something very serious like heartbreak and tries to make it something worth exploiting for a cheesy story line or a punchline.


This episode of Star vs The Forces of Evil took a much different tone with the development of Star's character.  While many of the shows fans have "shipped" them together for sometime, it did not become abundantly clear to the bulk of fans that there was something brewing between Star and Marco until the Season 1 episode called "The Blood Moon Ball".  In the episode, Tom tries to convince Star that he's changed, only to trick her into dancing with him during the Blood Moon, which is said to forever bind those that are beneath it's gaze for eternity.  Through a misunderstanding, Marco and Star are together underneath the moon and dance together.  Then, in the Season 2 premiere, Marco and the audience almost discover Star's "Thoughts on Marco" which Star is incredibly worried Marco would discover.  But by far the biggest hint at things to come came in the episode "The Sleepover", when a box that demands the truth of all that take part in it's questions goes haywire when someone lies about who they have a crush on.  At the end of the episode, when Star shouts at Marco for not going with her to get breakfast burritos, the box responds by saying that she indeed did have a crush on Marco.

Star's emotional free fall in this episode is what truly made this episode for me.  Personally, I have gone through an event in my life similar to hers, where I took a friend that I liked for granted and then lost just when I realized how special she was to me.  It isn't overdone for laughs nor is it glossed over as just some fans overthinking something.  Star's character took a surprisingly dark turn in this episode, as she finds herself willing to even touch dark magic in order to get what she wants.  She always expected Marco to remain by her side, never truly understanding what he wanted and what his heart needed.  Her heartbreak covers several stages in this episode, from curiosity and confusion, to jealousy and despair.  If there was a moment that cemented this for me, it would be at the end, when despite him coming to her rescue, Marco seemed more concerned with Jackie's well-being than hers and the face she makes was truly painful to see.  It was a combination of all of the above emotions all wrapped into one character who seemed finally ready to break under the pressure of all that had happened.  You usually don't see someone break down like this in a cartoon like this, so that was very refreshing.

The Love Triangle

The Love Triangle has always been one of the most difficult things to pull off in any medium.  From soap operas and romantic comedies, to big musicals and animated films, there have been numerous attempts at a love triangle that have never truly taken off.  This can be attributed to a few reasons, most commonly being that one of the parties is an unlikable character that should be out of the relationship all together but is either engaged to another party or has leverage over both parties to get what they want.  In some cases, the love triangle can sprout between friends and family and tear friendships and family apart because of them.

And then there are the rare cases like this one, where all three parties just happen to be likable characters.  Jackie does not turn out to be a shallow and vain girl like Paulina in Danny Phantom, nor does she turn out to be a pawn of or even an incarnate of evil like Eric in Kim Possible.  Jackie was once a background character to both Star and Marco, but she has gotten more and more screen time as the series has progressed and has become a truly likable character.  She sees the good side of Marco through all of his many understandable and even quirky faults and cares about him because of this.  She was oblivious to Marco's crush on her until the events of "The Sleepover", where Marco makes an impassioned speech about how he believes she deserves someone who wants to know her for who she really is and expresses his desire to be that guy.  Marco, conversely, has been in love with Jackie since preschool, but never had the courage to speak to her or often messed up his opportunities to talk to her.  However, thanks to his adventures with Star and his perseverance against foes like Tom, he has grown more confident in himself to come to terms with his flaws and even confesses to her a laundry list of his own personal flaws when afflicted with a spell meant for him should he try to ask Star out instead.

And then there's Star Butterfly.  She always viewed Marco as a friend, but through many events in the series, from the Blood Moon Ball, to his encouragement of her riding a bike for the first time, and from his desire to repay her for all she has introduced to him of Mewni by showing her some of Earth's wonders, to his proclamation that the best thing he could ever ask for was her friendship, she developed feelings for Marco.  And yet, prior to the second half of the episode, she held no animosity towards Jackie and even encouraged Marco to take bigger steps in talking to her and becoming a better person in her eyes.  As with many close friendships, there can come that time when one develops feelings for the other that are not reciprocated (at least as far as we know from Marco).  Star's confusion with regards to her feelings for Marco do lead her to do bad things, particularly using the spell her ancestor, the Queen of Darkness used to rule over Mewni with an iron fist.

As with all Love Triangles, I see no way out for one of this triangle's three participants.  In other words, this is going to end badly for either Jackie or Star and I can literally see it going either way.  From a dramatic standpoint, I see it going badly for Star more likely than Jackie, otherwise there wouldn't have been much of a point to introducing her as a more developed character at all.  But from a personal standpoint, it literally crushed me to see some of Star's reactions in this episode and as I explained earlier, do not want to see Star go through what I went through with my friend.  So, from that standpoint, I am torn over how I want the series to progress (which is ALWAYS a good thing).

Moving Forward: Growing up is coming fast for me.  Though I am well out of High School, there are still many things I take part in that would not be considered age appropriate.  But things about my life are changing.  Integral parts of my childhood and life in general are changing and if I don't adjust as well, I could be left behind.  My sister is engaged, Ash Ketchum got his first kiss from someone that was neither a Pokemon in disguise or a non-canonical adventure, Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, and many other series from my youth are wrapping up, Kingdom Hearts III is right around the corner, and Disney seems back to making animated films as good as when I was born in the 90's.  So, like Star, I have to pick up the shattered pieces of myself and recreate the puzzle so that I am satisfied with where I am and where I can go.  Also, like Marco, I have to venture off into areas I am unfamiliar with and take on dangers head-on so I will be ready should the day come when I can no longer look to my parents for support.  And like Jackie, I have to be able to see the goodness in people and be willing to take chances on both myself and others.  When a cartoon about a magical princess can affect me as much as something as powerful as all the other things in my life have, what more can I ask for?