Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Day Three Hundred and Fifty-one - Barbie: Life in the Dream House, "This... shouldn't be possible. But it's really happening."

Holy crap... more episodes of the extremely self-aware and meta, yet still vapid in a "Clueless" sort of way, Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse has shown up on Netflix... and I find myself more than willing to fall down this rabbit hole yet again.

It's fairly obvious by now that these are being compiled way out of order as props and characters that we've seen before in the previous three "episodes" (themselves compilations of 2-4 minute webisodes) are introduced here. There's Midge, the 50's throwback friend who appears in Malibu in black and white (only to be colorized after a modern makeover and the shoe-eating robot that we saw Barbie and Raquelle get sucked into after the shrink-ray accident last time to name the obvious ones.

Still, Life in the Dreamhouse is surreally entertaining despite the terrible puns and one-off jokes meant to cater to the tween crowd.

It helps that there are tons of nods to the fact that these characters are actual dolls, complete with articulation points (and issues revolving around them) and plenty of jokes that lampshade just how many different careers and lifestyles that Barbie has held over the years. Heck, there's even a reference to when she was molded with a bellybutton for the first time (13 years ago, apparently).

I'm also a big fan of how most of the various personalities of Barbie-dom are characterized, the exception being token black friend Nikki, who feels like a walking stereotype sometimes... although that's kind of the point of the show, most of the dolls being valley girl and surfer dude cutouts. I have to say, every time Midge short-laughs, I fall a little in love, which is disturbing when I stop to think about it.

Thankfully, apart of the jokes aimed at the target audience, the in-jokes and references are enough to make me really, REALLY enjoy this series (just like I do MLP:FiM)... and it's finally a weirdly off-age group property that I can share with my friends, since Brit and Melanie were laughing along right there with me. Kudos to Mattel for hiring folks willing to break the kid's show mold.

Definitely my only regret is that they've only added two more compilations of webisodes to the Queue. Here's hoping this series gains traction (a la MLP:FiM) and gains enough of a following to earn more content.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

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