Max of Sector 4103, you have great love of camp in your heart.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the days after Camp Corp. bought Camp Campbell, every one of the kids is sent off to the specialized camp they had originally signed up for. Everyone except Max, that is, who does not process this well. As Neil and Nikki board the bus, his emotional stunting can only allow him to tell them they were “temporary friends” at best, leaving them on awful terms. This leaves him stuck at Camp Campbell with nothing to do but dwell and sulk until he comes across the newly reflective Cameron Campbell, who’s found that he himself has been the cause of all of his greatest failures, and he’s at the end of his rope. But when Max mentions Camp Corp., Campbell remembers the Campwells, the kindly old couple that run it, as only being schemers who betrayed him when they all first put the company together.

This gives Max the idea to team up with Campbell, Gwen, and David to sabotage all of the camps the other campers went to in order to get back at Camp Corp. and save Camp Campbell. Things go well for the most part, until they need to get Neil and Nikki. Both have become troublemakers in their new camps and have ended up at Camp Corp. HQ, allowing Gwen to sneak them out and explain the situation. But the reunion with Max is less than ideal, not helped by the plan being caught by the Campwells, so Max just threatens the same chaos at all their other camps all over again if they don’t comply. Campbell manages to get them to sign the paperwork, but this only gives him complete ownership of the camp again and enough cash to finally disappear…until he realizes he’s just going to end up burning bridges with whoever he runs into next once his greed gets the better of him again (just like it did with the Campwells, according to them), which gets Max to realize how crappy he’s been this whole time.

During the heartwarming wrap-up, Campbell escapes in the bus before turning himself in to Ered’s FBI dads. They decide the best use of serving time is counseling at Camp Campbell…under David.

OUR TAKE

Not quite how I first guessed this would go, but this matches up more or less with a typical season finale plot. After what seems like years of complaining about their usual setting, most characters find themselves in what they thought they wanted all along, while others find themselves in a worse situation than ever. In this case, finally getting a glimpse at what all the Camp Campbell kids were actually expecting when they first arrived at the camp. The odd one out is Max, who was never signed up for a camp, and so is finally forced to face up to his insecurities. A big development like that is fitting for a season finale, though it does feel like it could’ve been tightened up a bit more.

For one, I know we established in the last finale that Max’s parents are negligent, but surely taking him back home HAD to be an option if he couldn’t pick a camp in time. Before, his absent parents edged on really sad and depressing stuff, but this just makes it confusing. At this point, I’m almost expecting them to just not exist to explain this.

The other thing is that Max’s big tiff with Nikki and Neil doesn’t play as big a part on proceedings as it probably should. It’s more of a nudge Max needs to really confront things that have made him such a little butt this whole summer, and it does that well enough, but it feels…lacking, I guess.

We also have the pay off to bringing Campbell into all of this, since he plays a big part in this finale and finishes a pretty solid character arc that’s been spread over his handful of appearances. He serves as a dark reflection of Max’s inability to escape his own demons and gives us some insight as to how the camp and Camp Corp. came together in the first place. Though learning this much kind of gives an air of approaching finality, but I’m guessing the first two seasons being released at once probably means there’s at least one more year of this show needed to warrant another DVD.

In terms of comparing this to the two previous finales, I would say I’d rank it above the first one about David mentally imploding, but below the second one that managed to grant just about everyone a little character development. This was very primarily a Max and Campbell finale. In a way, it’s a bit what I was expecting out of Episode 7 of this season. But where do we go from here? What can we gleam as the true nuggets of memorable moments in these past twelve weeks, and which are best left in scrapbooks? We’ll take a proper look back to make sure in the Season Review next week.

Score 8/10