There’s (another) 104 days of summer vacation, and I will be spending it watching and rewatching episodes ofPhineas and Ferb. One school year later,Phineas and Ferbkicks off the revival with things pretty much continuing as usual — with a few twists. Everyone’s favorite brothers and inventors of impossible contraptions are back, while their sister is still on a futile mission to show their mom the truth, and their pet platypus continues his bizarre saga of fighting (and essentially being best friends with) incompetent evil.
Phineas and Ferbis a nearly perfect and shockingly clever series, which admittedly had a strong ending 10 years agowhen it first supposedly concluded with season 4. After the showrunners were asked to come back,Phineas and Ferbseason 5needed to simply be more of the show we love, but it also had to justify its return. They pull off a transition that largely works while planting the seeds of perhaps some more minimalist linear storytelling, and now we can delight in all that is to come.
Phineas And Ferb Season 5 Isn’t The Show At Its Best — But It’s Close Enough
We’re Not Seeing The Flynn-Fletchers' Biggest Hits, But Are Laughing Nonetheless
Coming back toPhineas and Ferb, I wanted it to live up to the lofty nostalgic fondness, as well as the sheer enjoyment I found in watching the old episodes during lockdown. This meant the new season had to deliver on things like the meta-humor, the music, and making a blatantly repetitive formula engaging for viewers far outside its target demographic. The first episode is a bigger adventure that throws all kinds of curveballs, while the following installments still include very minor tweaks to the formula, much like what season 4 was forced to do.
It’s still tons of fun, and each invention storyline is surprisingly fresh. Supporting characters Isbella (Alyson Stoner), Buford (Bobby Gaylor), and Baljeet (Maulik Pancholy) have good, if not great, individual jokes; the boys and their friends also have a scene of collectively brainstorming invention ideas that makes us think about how much energy these kids store up over the school year. The show’s most iconic songs are definitely in the earlier seasons, but the season 5 tunes thus far are snappy and have some dynamic elements, making me thinkPhineas and Ferbcould still pull out some absolute showstoppers.
Season 5’s First Episodes Put Some New Spins On The Formula & Themes
Dan & Swampy Open Big But Give The Show Room To Grow Still
If you saw the sneak peek, you know about the first episode’s wildly dark twist — andthe show leads into it by very overtly joking about what we expect to happen when we’ve seen it happen 104 times before.Not this time. The first episode of the season is a “special event,” a higher-stakes adventure, but it is not as big in scale as some of the other specials. It’s just big enough to be the vehicle that brings the show back. Once they have pulled that off, they are good to go with doing the same thing as always.
It’s just big enough to be the vehicle that brings the show back.
Doofenshmirtz (series co-creator Dan Povenmire) suffers the worst character regression with his unceremonious return to evil,something that I am just going to have to accept. As a series with a floating timeline, whetherPhineas and Ferb’s casthas actual character development is debatable. Yet I recognize small bits of growth very subtly laid out in the original series, and see how the new season could be doing the same thing as the beloved format of cartoon humor continues.
There are some interesting beats in the premiere and subsequent episodes that remind us that Phineas (Vincent Martella), Ferb (David Errigo Jr.), and Candace (Ashley Tisdale) are actually growing up. The fact that this new season jumps forward a year in time breaks the fundamental nature of the story, which opens up some different thematic routes to go down.Phineas and Ferbis always a low-stakes good time, but there are also valuable lessons about family, friendship, and creativity, and the new episodes set things up well to push forward these ideas.
Phineas and Ferb Season 5
Cast
Phineas and Ferb follows the adventures of stepbrothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher as they embark on various creative and often unreal projects during their summer vacation, while their sister Candace tries to reveal their escapades to their mother. Concurrently, the family’s pet platypus Perry leads a double life as a secret agent battling the evil scientist Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
