From the man who bought us Rocko’s Modern Life comes a comedy take on summer camp. Camp Lazlo takes place in a universe where everyone is an anthropomorphic animal and centers around a group of boy scouts at a camp called Camp Kidney. At the camp we follow the adventures of a happy-go lucky monkey named Lazlo, his Indian friend Raj the elephant, and Clam a dim-witted rhinoceros who is secretly a genius. These 3 are for a lack of better term idiots who often cause trouble for the other campers but at the same time help the camp out the most. They also had a scout master named Lumpus an egoistical moose who hated Camp Kidney and wanted nothing more than to leave. He also had an assistant named Slinkman a slug who did Lumpus’ job better than him but remained loyal to Lumpus. There was also a girl camp across the lake called the Squirrel Scouts where the prettiest and most popular girl there had a crush on Lazlo.
Most of the adventures were camp related stuff such as protecting a tree, serving food at the cafeteria, anything that you think of happening at a summer camp they did it. One of my favorite episodes is the Valentine’s Day episode where the scout commander of Lumpus shows and we find out that he’s the father of Patsy the girl who has a crush on Lazlo. When Patsy secretly gives Lazlo a love letter and the scout commander finds it he believes one of the bean scouts has a crush on Patsy so he goes on an insane crusade trying to figure out who likes his daughter so he can destroy them. This episode is funny because it’s every guy’s worst nightmare, dating/liking a girl only to find out that their father is very overprotective of her and will not hesitate to kill you to keep her safe if he feels you’re not worthy to date her. His facial reactions and personality throughout the episode is hilarious and the things that he does to the bean scouts just to find the guy who his daughter likes keeps me laughing. Even when I think about the episode I chuckle a little.
Overall the show received a lot of good praise from critics and did win a few awards. Personally, I liked the show, I thought it was funny, safe for kids to watch considering what the creator of show worked on before this and I did enjoy the many characters in the show. I especially like Lazlo, I love his optimism, even though he’s going to a camp that everyone seems to hate and isn’t really that good of a camp to begin with he tries his best to make the most of the situation and tries to have fun while also making the camp fun for the other scouts. Lumpus is my favorite character on account of he’s a selfish and lousy scout master who only looks out for himself and does everything within his power to escape Camp Kidney but every chance he gets foiled by the bean scouts unintentionally. I also liked the music since it was all reincarnations of classic campfire songs I used to play in band back in middle school. Now while l liked the show I will say I had one problem with it. I watched it and got a good laugh out of it but I often found it hard to relate to because I never was a camp person. I’m still not a camp person. My idea of camping is spending the night at a Motel 6 and then bragging about it the next day. So while I couldn’t fully enjoy it as much as I would have liked I still say it was a good show and if you enjoy camping or went to camp when you were young I think you’ll really like it and for those who didn’t go camping like myself I still say the show is worth checking out just to get a good laugh at what camping might have been like.