TELEVISION REVIEW: [SPOILERS]
#TheCasagrandes
Airing today at 1:30 PM, @Nickelodeon (Tucson cable: @CoxComm ch. 63/@Comcast ch. 48)
[To move to Saturdays at 11:00 AM on October 19, and then to 12:00 PM Arizona time on November 9 due to Daylight Savings]
#TheCasagrandes
Airing today at 1:30 PM, @Nickelodeon (Tucson cable: @CoxComm ch. 63/@Comcast ch. 48)
[To move to Saturdays at 11:00 AM on October 19, and then to 12:00 PM Arizona time on November 9 due to Daylight Savings]
As everyone and their mother knows by now, #TheCasagrandes is a spin-off "from the world of #TheLoudHouse" centering on the exploits of Ronnie Anne, her family, and her friends at a place called Great Lakes City, to which she and Bobby and their mother had moved from Royal Woods.
The spin-off has been the subject of discussion and debate in the Loud Crowd for over a year since its conception, and the conception was inevitable from the time that the episode "Relative Chaos" debuted. I am glad that a show such as this one in particular exists . . .
. . . especially given the fact that I live in Tucson, which has a Mexican American population of 36.1% and an Hispanic population of 41.6%. These populations, and many similar populations across the country, finally have a cartoon that they (and everyone else) can enjoy . . .
. . . and this is the first time someone's been able to write that much down since #SpeedyGonzales entered the #LooneyTunes universe. (How else would there have been such an uproar in the Hispanic community over his cartoons' brief departure from the @CartoonNetwork schedule?)
The first episode, uploaded to @YouTube, and available on @Nickelodeon's on-demand service, is about how Ronnie Anne (voiced by @IzabellaAlvarez, who, as you know, took over for @BreannaYde when she decided to graze on greener pastures) discovered that Tio Carlos . . .
. . . (voiced by Hispanic voice acting veteran @carlosalazraqui) has made use of her skateboard. She is then taken to her skateboard ramp, where Tio Carlos tells her he used to wow high school classmates with the way he rode his skateboard, under the pseudonym of Carlos X. 
The two then demonstrate the Willy Foot rail slide and a trick in which they swap skateboards mid-ride. They do it so well that Carlos is kept awake by his trying to hide it from Tia Frida to the point where he ends up putting CJ's diaper right on one of the skateboards.
Carlos and Ronnie Anne then try out another skateboarding trick (swapping out each other's skateboards mid-ride) which leads to him injuring his right leg. Ronnie Anne figures out a way to hide the fact that he was injured: dressing him in a pair of Davy Crockett-esque boots.
With the boots on, Carl exclaims his excitement at what he sees (to him, it's his father slowly turning into Bigfoot), joyously exclaiming that he hopes that would happen to him one day. The kids then go for a piggyback ride which leads to them all laughing on the floor.
Such a pleasant sight that is, and that sight is followed by that of Frida's art installation at the local gallery: a trampoline calculator. He masters the 1 + 7 - 2 equation and in an attempt to master the 9 X 7 ÷ 3 equation ends up crashing the left curtain into the calculator.
This is cue for Carlos to confess to Frida that he has been skateboarding with Ronnie Anne, in a direct violation of a vow he made to her to never skateboard with anyone, not even himself, for the time that they were together, and he and Ronnie Anne apologize for that.
A man named Romeo (voiced by @wcruz73 of Broadway's #Rent and TV's #MySoCalledLife) expresses his delight to see that Carlos X is at the gallery, and the two old friends shake hands and then Romeo suggests that the whole thing be rebuilt as a ramp with painting trampolines . . .
. . . that combine to form a tribute to Carlos X which leads, ironically, to Romeo being injured, ironically on the same leg that Carlos had been injured earlier in the episode.
And what a dandy of an episode and outstanding debut it was. I think it was good to see it on @YouTube ahead of its television airing; it deserves the nearly four million views it has gotten on that website. Some have opted to view the episode more than once, which is fine by me!
[Another episode of #TheCasagrandes, "Walk, Don't Run", which is also skateboard-centric, will air at 1:45 PM Arizona/Pacific time. It was not reviewed here.]
