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Tangled 10th Anniversary Countdown

Day 2: Plus Est En Vous

@tangledaddict

Tangled the Series: Season 1 vs. Season 2 vs. Season 3

So yeah, I started these “Battle of the Seasons” posts early into 2020, and then that year went completely insane so I lost track of making more than the initial three. But now that things have mercifully calmed down, I can resume them, starting with a show that concluded shortly after I got cut off: Tangled the Series, also known as Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.

This series was structured as a three-season story from the beginning, similar to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 1 is about Rapunzel’s adventures of Corona after interacting with a mysterious plaque gives her back her magical long blonde hair, with her and her friends trying to solve the mystery of the sharp black rocks that appeared at the same time and are rapidly growing across the land. Season 2 is about Rapunzel and her friends going on a journey beyond Corona, following the black rocks in order to reach the fabled Dark Kingdom so that Rapunzel can discover and achieve her destiny. Season 3 is about Rapunzel’s destiny pitting her against her former best friend Cassandra, who now embodies the moon just as Rapunzel embodies the sun, and how their collision puts the fate of both Corona and the world at risk.

What’s so interesting about this show’s seasons is each has a different style that end up balancing each other out. Season 1, set in Corona, is mostly slice-of-life, simple adventures with occasional big, fantastical, epic stuff happening. Season 2, set beyond Corona, is mostly big, fantastical epic adventures with occasional breathers. Season 3, set mostly in Corona but also having episodes where the main characters travel beyond it, is an even ratio of both.

While the whole series is of exceptional quality, when taken season by season I believe that Season 1 holds up as the strongest, Season 2 as the weakest, and Season 3 in between. There is something about the slow build to the epic scale going on through Season 1 that is just so good and so appealing to me, and the structure of the episodes (in both production order and broadcast order) works perfectly. From the premiere movie “Before Ever After” to the surprisingly intense “Queen for a Day” to the amazing finale “Secret of the Sundrop”, it just flows so smoothly in a way I don’t think the other seasons do. Season 2 is especially haphazard in its pacing, with several episodes coming off as filler and too much time than is ideal spent in some locations like the town of Vardaros or Terapi Island. And in Season 3, the four episodes between “Cassandra’s Revenge” and "Plus Est En Vous" feel like events are escalating way too fast and several of them feel like they’d work better placed in a different order than they actually are. I also can’t think of any Season 1 episode that I flat-out disliked, whereas Season 2 has “There’s Something About Hook Foot”, which is cringe-inducingly stupid, and Season 3 has “No Time Like the Past”, which is downright morally offensive.

On the first of March, 2020, the hour and a half long series finale of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure finally aired. For all the ups and downs the series and especially this last season saw, the way it ended was as close to perfect as they could manage to pull off. They gave us everything we were most wanting to see - all of Corona united to take on the greatest threat to their kingdom, some more of the history between Zhan Tiri and Lord Demanitus, Cassandra betraying Zhan Tiri and attempting to take the Sundrop's power as her own, Varian completing his character arc by standing for Corona even if it meant having to decieve and knock out his father, Eugene showing what a natural leader he now is and reaching out to his own father when he and the Brotherhood have fallen under Cassandra's control, Rapunzel and Cassandra finally having an all-out evenly matched fight with their powers inside the castle, Zhan Tiri taking the stones' power and attempting to wipe out all life in Corona just to satisfy her ancient grudge, really just about everything to do with that final battle and the way Raps and Cass are able to take out Zhan Tiri together, Cass leaving Corona to go make her own destiny as a hero elsewhere, and one last musical number followed by the promised successful marriage proposal to Raps by Eugene, who speaks the show's perfect final line "I love you, Rapunzel." Yes, Eugene. We do.

The chimney section of the Rabbit Hole is by far my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE part of the whole sequence, so obviously, the different frames deserve some extra special attention!

As Alice floats towards the chimney in earlier frames, you could see her measuring out her dress with her hands, and deciding that she needed to push on her skirt to squeeze through. Obviously she didn't exactly thing things through, as we know how THAT decision ended!

You can see Alice's dress starting to lose the air trapped underneath as her hands get closer, even deflating into the "neutral" position it normally rests in. Unfortunately for Alice though...

...Her dress loses ALL the air it held underneath in a parachute shape, and starts to crumple up here. Alice doesn't initially seem to notice, until...

...About here, when her dress starts to completely fly up, and her free freefall through the chimney begins!

Here you can see the surprise, fear, (and maybe a little embarrassment!) in Alice's face, as she falls with her dress and petticoat blowing up around her and flashing her undergarments! You can especially see as she looks down, that she is definitely regretting her decision to push her dress down!

As she exits the chimney section though, Alice manages to let go of her skirt, but she still looks confused and a little afraid. She is falling at a breakneck speed, after all!

As her dress starts to puff up with air again, Alice starts to push down her apron again. Maybe this means she's regaining her composure? Or she just wants it out of her face like when she first fell into the Rabbit Hole!

Either way, now that she's not pulling a "Marilyn Moment" through the chimney section, Alice's dress puffs up like a parachute again and breaks her fall once again!

FINALLY I'm posting my second text-based edit of Alice's fall into the Rabbit Hole, this time from the perspective of the Rabbit Hole itself.

I'll be honest: This one took as long as it did because I went through so many different iterations! After all, how do you personify the Rabbit Hole and give it a distinctive personality??? It was a such a challenging thought exercise that really pushed me, and I think I went through...Four different versions before this final version?

In the initial edits, I leaned pretty heavily into the stereotypical "butler" persona, but every time I went back to review the final product, it felt too much like a lecherous old man watching poor Alice float down and struggle with her dress.

I ended up deciding to make the butler more of a maid instead - specifically Mary Ann, the White Rabbit's maid that he mistakes Alice for - to eliminate the "creepy old man" vibe. I wanted Mary Ann to be almost sympathetic with Alice's predicament, exasperated and even experiencing some secondhand embarrassment, as she sees Alice's dress puffing up, and can (almost!) relate to her, but still identifies her as an "intruder" to Wonderland to be dealt with firmly!

5 Disney Films Meme

• Edmund is literally so cool??

• Adira is the funniest of the brotherhood and she always clocks everyone’s tea

• Lance being the most sane out of the main cast is so funny and sad at the same time. WDYM a literal retired thief is more okay than the literal Princess who embodies the sun and all things bright and lovely!? That girl has more trauma than half of the kingdom that fought a demon. Eugene got killed once and daddy issues (Lance seems to be okay with his past more than Eugene). Cass is…Cass. Varian (though not technically main cast until s3) is a literal mad scientist ex terrorist???

Bro forget fear of spiders, I’d have a fear of your friends.

• How much Arianna has been through. Girl needs a breaakkkk

• Frederic’s egg collection. Say what you want about his ruling as king but bro is kinda funny as hell for that.

• To piggy back in the last one, Frederic being either the dumbest person in the room (“In Like Flynn”) or the absolute most strategic monarch??

Corona is a kingdom of idiots, at least in Queen for a Day. Rapunzel blames herself but I think it’s the ppl’s fault. (No hate to the show, the people, or the song, I just don’t like how they blame Rapunzel for the results of their lack of imagination as Anne of Green gables would say)

“He won’t let my sheep graze next to him without a fight!” Rapunzel goes on to remind them that pastureland is public, shouldn’t they have already known that? Dear person who wants to fight, this is a you problem. Second person, just ignore them and go on. Rapunzel gives them the simplest instructions and to share the public field like they were supposed to, and they don’t even think to keep their sheep separated or marked!? That’s not Rapunzel’s fault!

“How can I cut hair with this guy fiddling?” Um, tell him to move?? I’d assume your barbershop is in town so I doubt this dude’s playing in the confines of his house. Tell him to go elsewhere. Raps gives him earmuffs and he doesn’t have the brain cells to think to take it off occasionally to hear the customers!

“The city’s overrun by cats and kitties.” Do ya’ll just hate cats? Adopt some, build a shelter. Rapunzel says she’ll feed them which I mean wasn’t the most clear, but common sense should indicate that some need to live off mice to keep them under control. Or they could’ve corrected it themselves….

They all come back and blame Rapunzel when her instructions were flexible and assumed they’d know how to carry them out. Rapunzel goes on to say that she failed but she didn’t!! She did fine!

So, yeah….

10/10 It's a nice ceremonial color palette that represents both her and the kingdom, I'm digging the popped collar and the decorative trim. But in general, it gets a 10/10 for one very specific reason:

It's an awkward screencap, but it's really the only one where you can see the back of the dress. They used the yellow design to indicate her old hair. (In terms of costume design, not in-universe. It's like how her wedding veil is 70 feet long.)

This fanart by @clarichi does a better job illustrating it: