Painbow (The Powerpuff Girls, 2016)

"Painbow"
With emphasis on "pain!"
Series: The Powerpuff Girls (2016) Part of Season: 1 Episode Number: Season: 4 Overall: 4 Air Date: April 16, 2016 Writer: Julia Vickerman Diego Molano Director: Nick Jennings Bob Boyle Previous episode: The Stayover Next episode: Horn Sweet Horn

Painbow is the fourth episode of The Powerpuff Girls that aired on Cartoon Network on April 16, 2016.

Plot

A rainbow causes Townsville to become unusually happy, to the point they're unaware of their destructive actions, forcing the girls to investigate the cause.

Why This Episode is A Pain to Watch

1. Getting the elephant out of the room: The one infamous scene where Blossom and Bubbles, who are little girls, twerk. That scene caused major controversy to the point where the episode was banned in some countries. In other countries, it was completely cut.
   • What makes this even worse is that the episode was storyboarded and even written by Julia Vickerman, who is an infamous pedophile!
   • This isn't the first time the Powerpuff Girls twerk. In the episode "The City of Clipsville" in the original series, the original storyboards for the teen PPGs had them as pop stars twerking while smacking their butts, which was thankfully unused.
2. The episode, in general, is awkward and confusing.
3. The Powerpuff Girls, particularly Buttercup, act out of character in this episode. For example: Buttercup acts very rudely to Ms. Keane during class.
4. The pacing is inconsistent, as in the scene where Allegro is too slow, while other scenes and pacing in the episode are too fast.
5. Speaking of Allegro, he strikingly resembles Panda from We Bare Bears, likely showing that the crew of the reboot who made this episode are lazy. He's also supposed to be the villain, but comes off as creepy, as he forces Buttercup in one scene to hug him even if she refuses.
6. Heavy use of outdated 2012 slang and memes, such as "I can't even..." and "OMG! Yaaas!"
7. The rainbow pretty much makes everyone look high on ecstasy, which is a blatant drug reference.
8. Plot hole: For some reason, neither Blossom, Bubbles nor Buttercup was affected by the rainbow at first. It was possibly because their superpowers make them different from ordinary people, but if so, it was never conveyed, and neither was any other possible explanation.
9. Noticeable animation errors, with one notable example being one frame having Barry over Buttercup before she trips him.

Redeeming Qualities

1. In airings of this episode on some countries, the twerking scene was removed.
2. Rainbow Land’s background design looks cool, and even its theme isn’t so bad.
3. The title's name pun is clever.
4. The concept of a rainbow brainwashing everyone is somewhat interesting, as long as it isn't related to a drug.
5. Even though Buttercup was out-of-character at the beginning of the episode like the rest of the Powerpuff Girls, she is tolerable as she at least had the decency to not twerk with Blossom and Bubbles and was also disgusted with them doing that. She also defeated Allegro on her own, thus ending his chaos and saving Townsville.
6. Good moral: There are times and places where you can have fun.

Reception

This episode received negativity from fans of the original series, not only due to Blossom and Bubbles twerking, but also due to Buttercup being extremely rude to Ms. Keane and the girls using heavy modern slang. It currently sits at a 3/10 on IMDb.

Trivia

• The yelled lyrics, "Je ne sais quoi!" from the song in Rainbow Land means "I do not know what."
• If you look closely, you can spot a yellow bunny playing a guitar that resembles Cuddles from Happy Tree Friends.

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