Welcome to part one of a multi-hundred part series where I boil absolutely every last title on Disney’s hit streaming service down to the essential experience, saving you that tasty, tasty subscription fee.
Today, the 2012 animated series created by Alex Hirsch… Gravity Falls.
There’s a lot to be said about a summer away from home. The connection you forge comes with the bitter knowledge that they’re not going to last more than a couple of months. Though the experience can be truly valuable and transformative, this can in turn accentuate the inherent sadness of the consistent trek towards that last day of summer.
This is the same sadness that permeates most Sunday afternoons, plagued with the knowledge that Monday is just around the corner.
The experience Gravity Falls provides will feel familiar to anyone who ever had a truly great time at Summer Camp. It spends its time weaving interesting and mysterious threads through characters that are easy to connect to. Then when your fleeting 2-season summer is over, it’s time to celebrate the good time you’ve had fretting over who the author of the diaries really was.
As with all good and creepy things set in a small town, the kneejerk reaction is to compare Gravity Falls to Twin Peaks. The show is clearly mining the tone and setting of the David Lynch classic for inspiration and to call it anything less than an homage would be a bald-faced lie.
Still, calling Gravity Falls animated Twin Peaks would be doing it a disservice as well. This is very much its own animal and should be treated as such. While I never finished Twin Peaks, I don’t believe a gnome ever got caught in a six-pack ring during its duration:
The characters fit tested archetypes, but possess a unique enough design to avoid seeming derivative or played out. A nice balance is struck between character and plot driven moments. There is a compulsion to learn who is writing the journals (a mystery that dodges a disappointing payoff) while the characters’ magnetism makes the monster-of-the week format satisfying.
Gravity Falls has surprisingly small rogues gallery for the type of show it is. Gideon, Bill, and the amazingly named Blendin Blenjamin Blandin (who is obviously voiced by Justin Roiland) are the only antagonists with more than one appearance. They’re fun and unique, but the show doesn’t lean upon them because this isn’t a story about your relationships with your enemies. It’s a story about your relationships with your family (both the ones you choose and the ones your born with).
If anything is the true antagonist in Gravity Falls, it’s mystery. The town’s slogan is literally “Nothing to see here!” yet the reality with Gravity Falls is what you don’t know much can definitely hurt you. (e.g. cursed wax museums, secret societies, a secret code on an arcade machine)
This is why we get the main character we get. Dipper’s borderline obsession with learning all the information in the journals (and why everything seems more hopeless whenever they get lost) is the noble pursuit the show presents. Finding the answers to life’s mysteries is the right thing to do.
The counterbalance to that exists in the other main character, Mabel. From her perspective the pursuit of mystery can be obsessive and a selfish way to indulge curiosity. In Mabel, the focus lies in strengthening the familiar more so than the unknown.
The show ultimately relies on their relationship, even throughout the end. Theirs is the pillar upon which the whole structure rests, so it’s a good thing they have chemistry.
Despite my claim of boiling this down to the essentials at the top of this page, the reality is that I could write thousands of words on Gravity Falls and still not scratch the surface on what makes it great. The reason it is on Disney+ is because it needs to be watched, by everyone. The humor is genuine and incredibly mature at points. The story is intriguing. The animation is quality and design is interesting…
And somehow the voice cast includes this abundance of riches:
Kristen Schaal
Kevin Michael Richardson
John DiMaggio
Will Forte
TJ Miller
Stephen Root
Justin Roiland
Nick Offerman
Nathan Fillion
JK Simmons
Jon Oliver
Alfred Molina
Patton Oswald
and Mark Hamill
At the end, I know my sadness meant the time was worthwhile. I also know at some-point I’ll spend another summer away from home.
EDIT: The Gravity Falls Shorts on Disney+ should also be watched.
They. Are. Hilarious.
Gamer's Daytimer 