"Look at that sun, look at that sky, look at my sweater vest I look so fly, look at that mailbox, look at that tree, it's about as beautiful as it can be. Today is gonna be exceptional. Never boring even for a minute. It's my world and we're all living in it. It's my world and we're all living in it. Go Milo, go Milo, go. Thanks everybody, that is so motivational. Go Milo, go Milo, go. No point in sitting and watching the world turn, you know I'd rather spin-it. It's my world and we're all living in it. Never boring even for a minute. It's my world and we're all living in it".
That's the theme song of Milo Murphy's Law. If it were enough for you to deduce from the lyrics what the show was about then good for you, it wouldn't have for me. (The video which accompanied it would have but that's a different story.)
Milo Murphy is a spin-off of Phineas and Ferb and is specifically based on the premise of the episode Just Our Luck wherein Dr. Doofenshmirtz accidentally zaps Phineas and Ferb with a "Bad-Luck Inator" causing them to be cursed with bad luck and the two responding to the realization by making sure to be comically hyper-prepared for any bad thing that could conceivably transpire, no matter how unlikely, illogical or absurd that way bad luck can't keep them from their mission to make the most of every day "and every day's a brand new day so Carpe Diem". As usual, everything reverts back to normal by the end of the episode.
In Milo Murphy's Law, Milo is that episode incarnate to the (entirely understandable) frustrations of his new friend Zack who often reacts normally and logically to the comically preposterous situations he finds himself in thanks to not being Milo, who was desensitized to it by going through it for his entire life. And this is in stark contrast to Milo's friend/Zack's love interest Melissa Chase who was frightened by the effect of Murphy's Law when she first met him when they were six but now derives an intense pleasure from the thrill of risk associated with his misadventures.
In the meantime, two time traveling dimwits by the name of Cavendish and Dakota fulfill the deuteragonist role occupied by Perry the Platypus in the original show of which Milo Murphy's Law is a spin-off Phineas and Ferb.
They're a parody of Dr. Who (I don't know if they're a good parody of it as I'm not all that familiar with Dr. Who) and their mission is to go back and time to prevent pistachios from going extinct. Unfortunately for them, pistachios are Milo's favourite food and as a result he tends to show up to wherever they go to purchase and eat pistachios and because in his vicinity "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" his presence causes their pistachio protecting projects to transform into disastrous failures and fiascos with Cavendish and Dakota being as oblivious to his impact as Candace was to that of Dr. Doofenshmirtz in the original show.
That's this show's formula as opposed to that of the original show Phineas and Ferb. But unlike Phineas and Ferb which relied quite extensively upon its formula to the point where Season 4 was largely undermined by its constant efforts to subvert the formula that made it great in the first place, Milo Murphy's Law managed to avoid getting bogged down in formula when the writers realized that the obliviousness to interconnectivity joke from Phineas and Ferb was a little done and allowed Cavendish and Dakota (eventually) to notice the frequency of Milo's appearances leading them to consider the possibility that he was an active villain.
This set up the second thing Milo Murphy's Law did better than Phineas and Ferb, have multi-episode storylines. Yes, Phineas and Ferb had those in its fourth season but that wasn't something which really worked in that show's context.
Here Milo and Dakota recognize one another from all the previous episodes wherein Cavendish and Dakota appear and several episodes end up becoming devoted to Cavendish's quest to prove that Milo is evil. And that story arc is ended with the episode Fungus Among Us wherein Cavendish and Dakota explicitly ask Milo about the contrived coincidences surrounding them revealing their nature and mission in so doing with Milo explaining everything in response.
And the Pistachions episode was well set up by the sentient blob episode and ended up working quite well as a multi-episode storyline. While the aliens story arc from season two was well set up and I would argue culminated in essentially the same storyline that would later be used as the basis for the movie Candace Against the Universe but was far better executed here.
I have mentioned twice before that Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher are not actually protagonist material. And here I should mention why. Because 1) with some extremely rare exceptions practically nothing bad ever happens to them even though more or less any work of narrative fiction of any kind relies on something going disastrously wrong for the main characters otherwise there isn't a story and 2) because they practically never make any significant mistakes. And those kinds of protagonist are actually quite boring.
I know that there are exceptions to what I said about Phineas and Ferb in a number of episodes here and there but generally speaking my point about them is valid and it's why the show needs to compensate for them with the deuteragonist Candace who is a character who suffers, who stumbles and falls and fails and loses and make mistakes and constantly comes just short of getting what she wants but who remains persistent and tenacious in her efforts to actualize her needs and desires anyway no matter how hard it becomes. That makes her 1) a character who is worth caring about because we know she can lose and 2) an interesting character. And to a certain extent, the same is true of Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
And the same applies to Milo Murphy who is actually stronger as a protagonist than Phineas and Ferb are because "I'm not a rock, I'm not a statue made of stone I'm just out here on my own.
I'm not so sturdy that I can stand alone against the squall, so if you knock me down, I'm gonna fall" but he still perseveres because "Though I'm not made of brick, you know I'm not made of straw. I won't fall to pieces with some fundamental flaw. I can take this all day long, I'm just coughing, I'm not chokin. I may get beaten but I'm never broken". And that's also a great mantra to have "I fall down but then I get back up again".
While Vincent Martella does an excellent job playing Bradley who lives and breathes pure snark. And the "Diogee go home" running gag is quite funny. As were all the references to the llama incident.
Does this show have its flaws? Of course. The Phineas and Ferb Effect was a dumb explanation for Candace never being able to bust Phineas and Ferb. And the series could have done a better overall job integrating Dr. Doofenshmirtz into the show's formula. While Dakota and Cavendish's time travel shenanigans don't really make sense. (Though to be fair, time travel stories seldom make sense.) And Eliot explicitly telling Milo that he shouldn't exist was more cold-blooded than anything that Candace ever said to Phineas and Ferb (including in Phineas and Ferb's Christmas Vacation) though he does apologize for it at the end of the episode but it's harder to treat him as if he were a misguided character with a heart of gold the way I could for Candace in Phineas and Ferb given that Phineas and Ferb showed Candace coming through when the chips are down whereas Eliot Decker never makes it to a point where he's used for any purpose beyond comic relief.
Having established all of that, I actually do like the show quite a bit. Do I think it's as good as the original show of which it is a spin-off Phineas and Ferb? No. That said, it's still an entertaining and worthwhile cartoon.
Like the theme song says "never boring even for a minute. It's my world and we're all living in it!"
That's the theme song of Milo Murphy's Law. If it were enough for you to deduce from the lyrics what the show was about then good for you, it wouldn't have for me. (The video which accompanied it would have but that's a different story.)
Milo Murphy is a spin-off of Phineas and Ferb and is specifically based on the premise of the episode Just Our Luck wherein Dr. Doofenshmirtz accidentally zaps Phineas and Ferb with a "Bad-Luck Inator" causing them to be cursed with bad luck and the two responding to the realization by making sure to be comically hyper-prepared for any bad thing that could conceivably transpire, no matter how unlikely, illogical or absurd that way bad luck can't keep them from their mission to make the most of every day "and every day's a brand new day so Carpe Diem". As usual, everything reverts back to normal by the end of the episode.
In Milo Murphy's Law, Milo is that episode incarnate to the (entirely understandable) frustrations of his new friend Zack who often reacts normally and logically to the comically preposterous situations he finds himself in thanks to not being Milo, who was desensitized to it by going through it for his entire life. And this is in stark contrast to Milo's friend/Zack's love interest Melissa Chase who was frightened by the effect of Murphy's Law when she first met him when they were six but now derives an intense pleasure from the thrill of risk associated with his misadventures.
In the meantime, two time traveling dimwits by the name of Cavendish and Dakota fulfill the deuteragonist role occupied by Perry the Platypus in the original show of which Milo Murphy's Law is a spin-off Phineas and Ferb.
They're a parody of Dr. Who (I don't know if they're a good parody of it as I'm not all that familiar with Dr. Who) and their mission is to go back and time to prevent pistachios from going extinct. Unfortunately for them, pistachios are Milo's favourite food and as a result he tends to show up to wherever they go to purchase and eat pistachios and because in his vicinity "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" his presence causes their pistachio protecting projects to transform into disastrous failures and fiascos with Cavendish and Dakota being as oblivious to his impact as Candace was to that of Dr. Doofenshmirtz in the original show.
That's this show's formula as opposed to that of the original show Phineas and Ferb. But unlike Phineas and Ferb which relied quite extensively upon its formula to the point where Season 4 was largely undermined by its constant efforts to subvert the formula that made it great in the first place, Milo Murphy's Law managed to avoid getting bogged down in formula when the writers realized that the obliviousness to interconnectivity joke from Phineas and Ferb was a little done and allowed Cavendish and Dakota (eventually) to notice the frequency of Milo's appearances leading them to consider the possibility that he was an active villain.
This set up the second thing Milo Murphy's Law did better than Phineas and Ferb, have multi-episode storylines. Yes, Phineas and Ferb had those in its fourth season but that wasn't something which really worked in that show's context.
Here Milo and Dakota recognize one another from all the previous episodes wherein Cavendish and Dakota appear and several episodes end up becoming devoted to Cavendish's quest to prove that Milo is evil. And that story arc is ended with the episode Fungus Among Us wherein Cavendish and Dakota explicitly ask Milo about the contrived coincidences surrounding them revealing their nature and mission in so doing with Milo explaining everything in response.
And the Pistachions episode was well set up by the sentient blob episode and ended up working quite well as a multi-episode storyline. While the aliens story arc from season two was well set up and I would argue culminated in essentially the same storyline that would later be used as the basis for the movie Candace Against the Universe but was far better executed here.
I have mentioned twice before that Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher are not actually protagonist material. And here I should mention why. Because 1) with some extremely rare exceptions practically nothing bad ever happens to them even though more or less any work of narrative fiction of any kind relies on something going disastrously wrong for the main characters otherwise there isn't a story and 2) because they practically never make any significant mistakes. And those kinds of protagonist are actually quite boring.
I know that there are exceptions to what I said about Phineas and Ferb in a number of episodes here and there but generally speaking my point about them is valid and it's why the show needs to compensate for them with the deuteragonist Candace who is a character who suffers, who stumbles and falls and fails and loses and make mistakes and constantly comes just short of getting what she wants but who remains persistent and tenacious in her efforts to actualize her needs and desires anyway no matter how hard it becomes. That makes her 1) a character who is worth caring about because we know she can lose and 2) an interesting character. And to a certain extent, the same is true of Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
And the same applies to Milo Murphy who is actually stronger as a protagonist than Phineas and Ferb are because "I'm not a rock, I'm not a statue made of stone I'm just out here on my own.
I'm not so sturdy that I can stand alone against the squall, so if you knock me down, I'm gonna fall" but he still perseveres because "Though I'm not made of brick, you know I'm not made of straw. I won't fall to pieces with some fundamental flaw. I can take this all day long, I'm just coughing, I'm not chokin. I may get beaten but I'm never broken". And that's also a great mantra to have "I fall down but then I get back up again".
While Vincent Martella does an excellent job playing Bradley who lives and breathes pure snark. And the "Diogee go home" running gag is quite funny. As were all the references to the llama incident.
Does this show have its flaws? Of course. The Phineas and Ferb Effect was a dumb explanation for Candace never being able to bust Phineas and Ferb. And the series could have done a better overall job integrating Dr. Doofenshmirtz into the show's formula. While Dakota and Cavendish's time travel shenanigans don't really make sense. (Though to be fair, time travel stories seldom make sense.) And Eliot explicitly telling Milo that he shouldn't exist was more cold-blooded than anything that Candace ever said to Phineas and Ferb (including in Phineas and Ferb's Christmas Vacation) though he does apologize for it at the end of the episode but it's harder to treat him as if he were a misguided character with a heart of gold the way I could for Candace in Phineas and Ferb given that Phineas and Ferb showed Candace coming through when the chips are down whereas Eliot Decker never makes it to a point where he's used for any purpose beyond comic relief.
Having established all of that, I actually do like the show quite a bit. Do I think it's as good as the original show of which it is a spin-off Phineas and Ferb? No. That said, it's still an entertaining and worthwhile cartoon.
Like the theme song says "never boring even for a minute. It's my world and we're all living in it!"