2x10 Northwest Mansion Noir

[7.8/10] I thought I had this episode pegged pretty early. Dipper and Pacifica would develop Beatrice/Benedick-style chemistry while busting ghosts in the Northwest Mansion in the A-story, and Mabel and company would flirt with eligible high society boys at the elaborate party in the B-story.

And it would have been a promising episode based on that alone! It’s nice to see Dipper developing a love interest his own age; the two of them bouncing off one another worked well, and the show came up with some creative hauntings with the scary, fire-bearded lumberjack challenging them both. At the same time, Mabel, Grenda, and Candy yukking it up with their usual antics in a snooty party is a recipe for comedy.

But as usual, Gravity Falls kicks it up a notch. I love the extra thematic oomph here. This isn’t just a tale of Dipper being brought in as a hired gun to solve a problem for someone he doesn’t like. It’s a story about the haves excluding the have-nots after exploiting their labor to attain what they have. It’s a story about Pacifica realizing that there’s no such thing as inherited sin and that she’s not responsible for the misdeeds of her elders, but that she can break the chain of exclusion and malfeasance. And it’s also a story about her learning to assert her own independence and break away from the conditioning, both figurative and seemingly more literal, that’s left her acquiescing to her parents’ crappy demands and expectations.

Learning more about the history of the Northwest family in Gravity Falls is interesting, and the lumberjack ghost’s ability to turn the party guests into wooden figures on the sesquicentennial anniversary of his death nicely walks the line between being kid-friendly while also being really creepy. The reveal that the Northwest family knew about the curse, and could have fixed it by just opening up the front gate to the “riff raff,” but instead chose to enlist Dipper to hunt ghosts without telling him the full story is a telling detail. And the only thing better is how Pacifica breaks out of the cycle, choosing to be the one to open the gate despite her selfish and pompous father’s instructions not to.

I can’t say I’d had any great desire to see a one-note mean girl character like Pacifica given more depth like this, but between this episode and the mini-golf episode, I’m actually really glad to see it. Showing the reasons behind her bullying and superiority, giving us a line of sight into how her parents have molded her to be that way, and watching her break free of that influence and start to become a better person is genuinely heartwarming.

The same goes for Grenda’s little triumph here. Most of the block and tackle involving the girls is just silliness. But for a character who’s often the butt of the joke, it’s nice to see that her forwardness and unrestrained attitude is what wins her the heart of the young gentleman the trio admires, rather than holding them back. Go Grenda!

Overall, an episode that surprised me a bit with where it went, but in a good way, that adds depth to the town’s history, the relationship between the characters, and one of the show’s erstwhile antagonists-turned-allies.