Wake me up when September ends.

Another summer at Camp Campbell comes to an end, but while it’s sad to see our favorite campers of Camp Camp go, it’s with the knowledge that the show has really come into its own during its first three seasons. Though given that the most recent season of RVB went completely off the rails, Nomad of Nowhere having just emerged from a three-month hiatus, and RWBY currently being in a downward spiral critically, Camp Camp may just be most well rounded scripted animated show Rooster Teeth has right now. But it still has to stand up on its own, so let’s look back on the season and see where it kept up the pace and where it lagged behind.

A third season is always a challenging time for an episodic series. Everything from the planning stage has probably been used up in the first season, and everything subtly foreshadowed from then has been used in the second. Likewise, Camp Camp pretty much established every camper’s base character trait and gave all the minor characters their own limelight episode within those first two seasons, so some retread or back peddling was going to be inevitable. But they had to fill some episode slots, so why not give Ered and Nerris a double act episode? People are kinda backing off from Nazi humor, so how bout retooling Dolph into just being “the nice German kid”? The Flower Scouts got a story to themselves last time so how about the Wood Scouts get one to even it out? Basically what I’m saying is that a portion of this felt just a bit like scraping the bottom of the barrel for episode ideas, but those ones did at least end up being decent, and that’s not to say the character work didn’t mostly hold up.

While he spent the first two seasons walking in and out of the campgrounds for dubious schemes, Cameron Campbell actually turned out to have the best-constructed character arc of the bunch, even with only a few episodes of focus. After the events of last season landed him in Super Guantanamo, Campbell’s only goal was seeking vengeance on David for seemingly selling him out and leaving him to rot. He properly re-enters the story in “Cameron Campbell the Camp Campbell Camper”, donning an awful disguise that even David can see through, but hoping to frame him with a fake confession. This goes south thanks to Max, but David’s disappointment drives Campbell to sequester himself in the woods until “The Candy Kingpin”, where a contemplative Dolph seeks wisdom on how to deal with Max’s manipulations. He comes back to save the camp in the finale, “Camp Corp.”, but even with time to reflect on his follies, he falls back on his old greedy ways until confronted by everyone. In the end, he despite all his talk of wanting money, he really was just scared to be left alone, and losing the approval of someone as pure and innocent as David was the first step to realizing that.

David is an odd pick for focus here, but I feel like he’s worth a look because he VERY NARROWLY avoids character development several times throughout the season, like a blind man who wanders onto a construction site and somehow ends up walking on the lifted girder and causing an industrial accident without his knowledge. In the third of the Jasper Trilogy, “Dial M For Jasper”, we learn exactly how our friendly ghost friend and David’s former friend died. We see young David a lot in the flashbacks, but present David ends up on the sidelines while the main kids solve the mystery. Similarly, when Campbell comes back to camp in disguise, David assumes the best as usual but doesn’t go through much growth upon finally accepting his former mentor and idol’s true colors. I’m not expecting a mind shattering shutdown like I would’ve when I saw David in Season 1, but I do really think this undersold it. And then there’s his time in the finale, in which he basically comes down to Max’s level for the first time to save the camp, but doesn’t really change as a result. Maybe David’s come to a place where he can bend his morals while keeping his chipper attitude, but he seems a bit more malleable than he should be to me.

Max ends up taking up much of his cohorts’ development time this season, getting directly involved in over half of the episodes in some way, and each showing a different facet to him that come together and form…a rather jumbled mess of a person, especially in motivations. In Season 1, his motives are crystal clear in that he wants to escape or shut down the camp and outright murder and/or humiliate anyone who gets in his way. In Season 2, he’s mellowed out a tad and just wants to survive the experience with his pals, especially since we learn later his home life is apparently less than ideal. In Season 3…I can’t really tell WHAT he wants, but his meanness factor got cranked up a few notches. In the premiere, “The Fun-Raiser”, the story acts like there’s a reasonable chance he might actually sabotage efforts to save the camp, only for it to be part of a greater plan that will ensure it will succeed. After that, he’s generally just a mischief maker until we get to Gwen’s token episode, “Something Fishy”, where Max is genuinely upset that she’s happy because he himself is not. His time with Dolph shows he is not above abusing and manipulating people until fearing Dolph might be dead, and the finale puts a direct focus on his fear of letting go of things he cares about and using Campbell as a dark mirror that he could become one day if he doesn’t learn. Whether he still wants to leave the camp more than avoiding his bad parental situation (which we will have to learn about at some point), Max has clearly been going through some stuff this season, so here’s hoping he worked the kinks out for Season 4.

The rest of the cast get their own snippets of growth, though nothing huge. Neil finds love and learns to respect himself in “The Lake Lilac Summer Social”, Nikki faces mortality in “Nikki’s Last Day on Earth”, Gwen gets to live the Best Picture-winning love story, Ered gets her cool back, and the kids explore the city for once in “City Survival”. Though my favorite of the bunch has got to be “Foreign Exchange Campers”, which introduces four great characters (who BETTER BE BACK NEXT SEASON), has a great lesson that means a lot in the current political climate, and is just generally made up of the best parts of a good Camp Camp episode. It takes a certain amount of time to get a clear way of measuring what makes use of the best parts of a show, but it’s nice to know we’ve reached that point.

The finale, however, does have me a bit concerned. Not because it wasn’t a fine twenty minutes on its own, but for what it might mean going forward. While it will be interesting to see Campbell in a more frequent position on the show and hear more of the sultry tones of Travis Willingham, it kinda feels like we’ve just used up the last big finale premise that this material allows. The camp has now nearly shut down, let all the kids go to the camps they intended, and then brought them all back, so where can you go from there to top it? Beyond finally meeting Max’s parents, bringing back the foreign kids, and maybe telling David about Jasper’s death (which he will no doubt shrug off), we’re kind of backed into a corner for how to best proceed with this series, if there is a way at all.

Altogether, this was a solid and stable season for the current front-runner of RT’s animated lineup, with almost every episode having at least one line that gives me chuckles every time I hear it. With the show’s noticeable fandom and the release of the first two seasons bundled together, it’s probably safe to say we’ll be getting at least one more go around at Camp Campbell before all’s said and done with (or at least that the final season will have to be an even number). Wherever this show goes, I have faith it’ll be at least entertaining. This is the first series I’ve only really known as looking at on a critical level, and the fact that it’s held together to this extent is certainly impressive. So, have a great summer, and Campe Diem.

Score 7/10