ControChoices: Phineas and Ferb get Busted

Based on ControChoices by Intrancity 

Show: Phineas and Ferb

User's Rating: Good-Meh

A.R.R. Rating: Great

Plot: Phineas and Ferb finally get busted after many failed attempts, and get sent to a rough boarding school to control their urges. However, Candace feels guilty about doing it, and starts to miss her brothers, and decides to get them back.

Opinion: If there is one way I can describe this episode, it would be wasted potential. This episode is not bad, but given this episode's premise and the flashback scene with Candace later on in the episode, they could've done so much more. Candace was having a flashback to her brothers when they were younger and still building things. And...the flashback is just three minutes of nothing. No extended interaction with Candace and the boys, no motive as to why she would start busting them. If what the creator said on Twitter about her motivations were true, why not show it in this episode? Show her brothers not getting in trouble for building something and Candace getting in trouble for the same thing or something similar. Instead, it shows the boys rebuilding her dolls and doll house, and her seeing them appear in her life. That's it, and nothing else was accomplished from that flashback. Stacy's song could be as nice as it can be, but it doesn't excuse the uselessness of this flashback. 

That was my biggest problem with this episode. If there's anything else I didn't like, it was that Baljeet was there for largely no reason. He basically put himself in that horrible military school because it was a school, and he liked it. This random obsession for school is one of the reasons I never liked Baljeet really much. From what I've seen, pretty much his entire gimmick is "I like school, learning things, and pretty much nothing else", and he had no point in being in this episode. 

Other than that, this episode is fine. The ending is my favorite part, with how everything just went completely off the rails with the zebra, the dream reveals, and the puppets. Also, this was a great appearance by Candace, with her trying her damndest to free the boys, even at the cost of having fun with her friends, which she was doing at first before starting to miss them and feeling bad about what she did. I still think that she's an awful character, but I'm not one to ignore a good performance, no matter how awful I think the character is. 

Overall, this is not the worst episode of the show, far from it. But, this has a piece of wasted potential that, to me, is such a monumental letdown. It also doesn't help that half of the episode has pointless jokes (which aren't funny) and scenes that don't do anything for the episode. There are positives to this episode. Like I said, Candace has a great performance here, and the ending was pretty funny. 

Lowlights: Disappointing flashback and backstory, pointless and annoying Baljeet appearance

Highlights: Candace's performance, the ending.