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In the weirdest and wildest episode of the series we follow Greg in a dream sequence or vision quest. It’s not about nostalgia, because the past isn’t a golden era for Greg and Wirt. The boys are more like Dante than Odysseus. Greg also needs to consider how his actions affect Wirt.
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Wirt can't take responsibility for himself and blames his failures on the dumb pluck of Greg. Wirt and Greg on the other hand, cannot simply return and all will be well. He needs to return to his home, and to return his home to its former glory. Odysseus doesn't need to improve, he needs to restore and reclaim his land, his people, and his faithful wife, Penelope. He inherits Achilles armor over the mighty Ajax, his stratagem leads to total victory over Troy. The godlike Odysseus, is the best of the Greeks. The Odyssey is about homecoming it's about nostalgia. However, Greg and Wirt are critically different from Odysseus. Overarching all of these episodes, though, is a recognizable hero's journey, with Greg and Wirt leaving the familiar, descending literally into the unknown, and returning as heroes to their former places. Here it seems the point may be the importance of being responsible to others.
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She had planned to use them to free her family from the curse that turned them into bluebirds, but decided against it after getting to know them. When Beatrice first meet Greg and Wirt she also emphasizes this placelessness, “so, um, you two are lost kids with no purpose in life, right?” Eventually, the two are inadvertently betrayed by Beatrice. Later on their journey, when the three enter a tavern, it feels like the show is about the pressure for adolescents to find their place in the world as the other patrons seem to have a compulsive need to categorize Wirt in an occupation. In the second episode, when Beatrice becomes their guide to lead them out of the unknown, it seems the show is about the inescapability of death, as the brothers and Beatrice encounter a village of living pumpkins. And Wirt's Penelope is not Beatrice, as is Dante's Penelope, but a girl named Sarah he can't bring himself to ask out.īecause the story is a series of semi-related episodes, many themes are introduced. Beatrice, a talking bluebird, serves as a guide. The Woodsman, seeking to save his daughter's soul from death, keeps a lantern burning, haunted by the Beast. Like Odysseus, Greg and Wirt encounter monsters and trials, new friends and betrayals on their return journey. We find Odysseus stranded on the island of Calypso, longing to return to his home. The structure is somewhat reminiscent of the Odyssey. Like Dante, they find themselves lost in a dark forest, the Unknown, and the pair try to find their way through the forest and home. Greg, the short, stout, carefree, younger brother, just as inexplicably wearing a tea kettle on his head and holding a frog named at various times George Washington, Kitty, Benjamin Franklin, Wirt, Jason Funderberker, among others.
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Wirt, the tall thin worry wart of an older brother, is inexplicably wearing a civil war looking cape and a red dunce cap. The narrator says, “Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history lies a place that few have seen-a mysterious place called the Unknown, where long forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood,” and the two boys revealed, lost in the woods. Like any good epic, it begins en media res, in the middle of the action. It's an old timey Americana, picaresque, Halloween epic following brothers Greg and Wirt through the Unknown. It’s charming yet creepy, cheery and sad, absurd but moving. It only takes like two hours, and it's great. But when I watched it, I found out why people kept recommending it. For far too long, people kept telling me to watch it and I’d ignore them. Over the Garden Wall is a ten episode miniseries that you can watch right now on Hulu. It's delightful, but whenever I try to come up with some grand unified theory for what it's about, loose threads dangle as in an unfinished tapestry. Over the Garden Wall is hard to pin down.