except for one. The reason for that is that it's the last episode to the entire series where I felt that it deserves its own separate review. Does it end the series on the perfect note? Let's take a look at the show's series finale episode...
DEEP TROUBLE
Billy and Sheena are visiting their Uncle Harold in the Caribbean, but find their stay to be quite boring as their Uncle spends more time working on experiments in his basement than he does with his niece and nephew (why does that sound sooo familiar?). The kids discover a few weird things on the Island and in their Uncle's lab, and eventually find themselves marooned on an uninhibited Island with their Uncle to fend themselves against giant creatures, and a mysterious monstrous cult. I've heard many fans complain about how this episode strays from the book, but as I've stated in my review on "Teacher's Pet" in the show's third season, I am only judging these episodes on their own merits. However, from my research it turns out that this episode is an adaptation to "Deep Trouble 2", and though I feel like the first story should get an adaptation, at least the episode is not trying to confuse audiences who haven't read the books like they did with "Night of the Living Dummy 2" or "Return of the Mummy". But then again, it definitely hasn't pleased the people who read the books.
The setting for the story isn't bad, I do like the idea of having clues in the first part, and having the second part of them trying to escape from monsters, but the execution while not awful, is not as good as it sounds. The characters are nothing new at all. You have one kid who's adventurous and obnoxious, as the other one is reluctant; the scientist family/relative who's responsible (or at least partly responsible) for the weird things that happen; and your predictable twist villain, who doesn't seem normal when he tries to act it. And none of these performances bring anything special or charming to their characters to make to overlook how cliched they are. The only real interesting about any of them is some of the people they casted that appeared in previous installments to the series.
The effects for the monsters are mostly miss, but I will start talking about the few that are pretty impressive. The puppetry for the Giant blow-fish that attacks the kids for instance does look cool, and has a great monstrous design. And some of the make-up and designs for the monsters on the island look as inventive as the make-up design for the Horrors in "One Day at Horrorland". But then we see the characters come across Godzilla sized monsters like Spiders, Crabs, and Lizards, that don't look like that they are actually there at all for how obviously added in they are where you can see the blurs around them. It's some of the cheesiest effects that the show was ever used, where the suspense is so lacking that it doesn't help save the lameness of it.
But it gets worse. We know the show loves to leave some hidden Easter Eggs that reference to other episodes and even re-use a few of their monsters for them to make a small cameo. But here, they make it way too obvious by having monsters from "Shocker on Shock Street" and "Awesome Ants" be right in front of you, rather than being hidden in the background or showing little of them when they appear. I know I praised Sabre's cameo in "One Day at Horrorland", but the reason why that worked was because there was tension and dread surrounding the monster that even led to dark places that the show doesn't usually tackle on that made you overlook that it's a monster we've encountered before; where with these recycled monsters on the other hand, there's nothing that new or dark about them in terms of writing or atmosphere where in the end it comes off as a lazy way to save money. And really, did they have to re-use one of those cheesy looking ants from "Awesome Ants". Well in the very least, at least that monster seems more threatening when compared to the other giant monsters that the characters find on the island since they're really front of the actors.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
This episode is easily the weakest one in this season for it's recycled characters and monsters; dull performances; and some really bad effects. But it's still watchable when compared to the many others in the series. The story does keep your attention, and there are some really neat and inventive effects and designs. It's just a shame that this is the very last episode to close the show with for how mediocre it is when any one of the other episodes from this season (especially "The Ghost Next Door") would've been a better choice to cap the series.
OVERALL THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW'S 4TH SEASON
Going into this season, I expected this to be terrible since none of the episodes are hardly ever talked about as the ones in the past 3 seasons, but I was gradually surprised that there wasn't any episode that I found to be unwatchable or horrible. The last episode was mediocre but it's not as boring or horrific as episodes like "You Can't Scare Me", "Go Eat Worms", and "Don't Go to Sleep". Every episode in this season did offer at least something good and impressive. But though the series worst episodes come from all the other season's, I still do consider this season to be the series' weakest. And why you may wonder since I had something good to say about all of them, well aside from "The Ghost Next Door", all the other episodes are forgettable for how average they are. There's hardly anything about them that makes them stand-out as anything special, since they share nearly the same amount of pros and cons. At least with the other seasons they for the majority had plenty of episodes that were more memorable when compared to this one. You remember the great ones for how scary and inventive they were, but you also remembered the awful ones for how ridiculous and beyond cheesy they were too. So while this season isn't bad, I'm still at the end of the day going to remember most of the episodes from the other seasons than I will with the ones from this one.
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