#sewer queen

Because at long last, I have arrived at "Dodgy Decisions," aka the episode about Jackie, "The Arm," who is revealed here to be deaf and communicates by signing. Furthermore, from what I've read, Jackie uses Black ASL, and I appreciate that specificity--that the creators knew enough about Jackie to know he would use this dialect specifically.

This brings Creek up to four languages, except wait, there's more! Because Raj's grandmother only speaks Gujarati, bringing us up to five. And I love how the show differentiates Raj and Sewer Queen's living situations, considering Raj openly says he's not very good at Gujarati, but Sewer Queen seems to be fluent in Bisaya. I also think "Grandma Smugglers" is a nice story about immigration. And the Bollywood style episode was a nice homage.

Speaking of Sewer Queen, she does traditional dancing with Frisboy in "Craig of the Talent Extravaganza." I have Karen (an ethnic group originally from Myanmar) students who do traditional dances in which people move bamboo poles in and out and the dancers move in and out of them to the beat of the moving poles. I have never seen this kind of dancing represented in anything other than Craig of the Creek. And though Sewer Queen is not Karen (previous episodes indicate her family hails from the Phillipines), I imagine the Karen kids at my school would find it pretty neat to see traditional dancing like their own in an American TV show.

Oh, and "Lost and Found" introduces us to Salma, who I'm pretty sure is the third Muslim girl we've seen in the show, after Amina, who is friends with Bernard and the girl who often appears on Craig's side of the Creek. (I assume Salma is a different character, since she seems to be on the other side of the overpass, and she looks older.) This whole episode reminded me of Ruth Hogan's The Keeper of Lost Things, and I hope we get to see more of Salma because her lost and found is pretty fantastic, and she and Craig need to invent some things together.

I'll tell you the truth, I'm running off old notes here, so I can't say much about the animation in particular, but I wrote that I liked the "video game animation" in "Chrono Moss," which I'm assuming looks like a battle from Baulder's Gate or something like that. I really did enjoy this episode, and the fact that all these kids so perfectly act the roles of NPCs, down to repeating the same thing over and over. I also like Craig, Kelsey, and JP being classified as a mage, fighter, and bard respectively, and that the kids running the game agree that melee, range, a 6th grader makes a well-balanced team.

Well, one of my predictions has come true, at least in a sense, since the stump kids went looking for Kenneth at Elder rock. But they don't have a cube. But the elders did give us an additional clue to the Heart of the Forest--that it's a giant glowy puddle that grants you wishes (somehow, I think it won't be, though.)

I kind of wish I had seen "Backward Day" before I saw the solar eclipse last year. I'm really glad that this isn't what happened to me when I went, though. I particularly like backwards Kelsey, Kit, and Elder Mark (though JP was fun too--it felt like a different version of "Alternate Creekiverse.") Also, props to Craig for making boxes so they watch the eclipse safely.