Dark Qiviut

Roadside Attraction done. The episode's moral is to not treat a girl's feelings towards you as a means to an end. On its own, it's fine. Unfortunately, its execution is the episode's fatal flaw. How? To go over the reasons one by one.

1. The episode brings up his crush on Wendy way too late in the season (and the series). After Wendy softly rejected his crush, he wasn't only okay with it, but grew into a stronger human being more emotionally, as well. His behavior really matured since then, one of the best in Northwest Mansion Mystery. He acted like he moved on. To bring it up this late in the show is really poor timing and feels more like regression than progression.
2. Dipper wasn't written to be an asshole. Throughout the trip, he worried about how they felt if they found out he flirted with other girls on the trip in order be more self-confident in communicating with girls as a whole. Dipper's really insecure of himself and will try anything to feel more responsible, including accepting awful womanizing advice from Stan. Unlike Time Traveler's Pig, Fight Fighters, and Boyz Crazy, he doesn't need to learn a hard lesson to set himself back in line. We're seeing this episode in Dipper's perspective for the majority of the episode, so we're seeing the conflict in his POV. So, when all four girls argued and put him into the proverbial corner, you can't help but feel really bad for him.
3. All three girls he met and conversed conveniently converged at once while he was on his date with Candy. If only one girl came into the scene, then the outcome might come off a little more organically. But when all four girls converge (one of 'em calling him out for not calling her, even though she only met him yesterday *shiver*), it implicates that the writers only want to really punish him. Rather than believing he deserved the outcome, the tone becomes mean-spirited.
4. The way the episode teaches it is very hypocritical. For the first time, Dipper now feels what it's like to be written as a prize. What I wrote about the setup previously remains. But as a whole, there are four major problems here:
   1. The "prize" aspect doesn't come up at all when he converses with the other three girls. He's more worried about their feelings than his own. Therefore, this part of the episode's moral is a non-sequitur.
   2. Candy's sudden crush on Dipper is revealed to both Mab and Grenda first. Dipper has no idea about it until Candy's friends play matchmaker and then gets his space invaded by her. Grenda and Mabel's guessing game of their future nephew or niece as they watched them enter the attraction was creepy in a bad way.
   3. His conversation after all four girls left her was this:

      Quote

      Dipper *panting*: Girls! There you are.

      Mabel: Betrayer!

      Candy: Oh, you. What do you want?

      Dipper: I need your help.

      Candy: With what, some sick jealousy trap?

      That was the extent of the entire second half of their conflict, andt doesn't come up again until the resolution. Any emotional weight that the A-plot might have is lost when there's no expansion to the emotional side of the conflict, and bringing it up again at the end comes across as wanting to settle it before credits roll.

   4. Candy's manizing of Dipper was not only not called out, but also written to be in the right. Dipper was treated wholly in the wrong and had to learn the lesson all the way through, from his guilt that lasted through handing Candy a pamphlet to apologize to her to Candy using his fear of the spider creature as a half-assed excuse to "break up" with him. Candy advances on a boy who doesn't welcome them, yet this part of the conflict is treated as his fault, because he was too nervous to say "no," yet the episode contrively drops that in favor of the "be-more-comfy-around-girls" angle established from earlier. If he also treated her emotions as a means to an end, that'd be much more different.
      
      Women's feelings shouldn't be treated as a means to an end. Likewise, it's just as wrong to treat men's feelings the same, too. Toying with their emotions is wrong. When you don't apply this moral equally, you implicate that it's okay for one side to do it, but not the other. Rather than teaching a valuable moral about real feelings for the other primary gender, the moral comes off as sexist and damaging to both girls and boys alike.

That's really unfortunate, because there were some good parts of the plot. Chemistry between Stan and Dipper was really organic. The hijinks by Stan and the kids on the other Oregonian tourist traps were hilarious. The credits (Soos being accidentally left behind in the maize maze) was funny. Candy's plan to escape Darlene was crazy and clever. Dipper's unrequited crush on Wendy finally ends, and he comes out more confident.

How I wish a sorrily-executed moral and setup didn't ruin it.

Grades:

1. Tourist Trapped: A-
2. The Legend of the Gobblewonker: C+
3. Headhunters: A
4. The Hand That Rocks the Mabel: A
5. The Inconceiving: C+
6. Dipper Vs. Manliness: A-
7. Double Dipper: B
8. Irrational Treasure: C
9. The Time Traveler's Pig: A
10. Fight Fighters: A
11. Little Dipper: B-
12. Summerween: A
13. Boss Mabel: C+
14. Bottomless Pit!: B-
15. The Deep End: B-
16. Carpet Diem: A-
17. Boyz Crazy: D+
18. Land Before Swine: A+
19. Revenge of the Gid: A+
    1. Dreamscaperers: A
    2. Gideon Rises: A+

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1. Scary-oke: B
2. Into the Bunker: A
3. The Golf War: B+
4. Sock Opera: A
5. Soos and the Real Girl: C-
6. Little Gift Shop of Horrors: C+
7. Society of the Blind Eye: A
8. Blendin's Game: A+
9. The Love God: F
10. Northwest Mansion Mystery: A+
11. Not What He Seems: A+
12. A Tale of Two Stans: A-
13. Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons: B+
14. The Stanchurian Candidate: B-
15. The Last Mabelcorn: A
16. Roadside Attraction: D