Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of The Loud House with the 10th chapter to my story 'Put Down the Dummy'. Aka, my review of Stage Combat. After 6 months of waiting for the eps to make its US debut, this thing is finally ready to meet the public eye. And at long last, the story is officially complete. Please enjoy my very long and overly excessive thoughts on this singular episode and the season, as well as a little epilogue to the story. Happy reading!
I don’t have a problem with her sternly telling Luan to do what she’s been told to do right now. That’s just kind of par for the course mother behavior. What bothers me is her shutting down Luan’s attempt to make a pun.
Shutting down Luan’s pranks is one thing. I can understand not liking those. I can also understand if Rita herself doesn’t like puns, but they are absolutely, 100 percent, harmless forms of self-expression. She’d never tell Lucy to smile more or tell Luna to not quote song lyrics or tell Lola to wear less makeup or force Lana to wear a dress.
To me, it’s just the writers showing us how much Rita seems to despise one of her daughter’s very core personalities. Would she rather Luan respond like a normal moody 15 year old?
It also bothers me because (spoiler alert) it’s revealed at the end that everyone worked together to prank Luan, and at this point in the execution of the plan, they needed to keep Luan from talking to Mr. Grouse, so allowing Luan to take some extra time to tell a pun before getting her clothes would actually HELP the plan go off successfully.
There’s a million more important issues out there and I do recognize that, but Rita had started doing so much better as a mom as of late (she even actually had some downright caring moments towards Luan in Doll Day Afternoon), so it was a little disheartening to see more confirmation of Rita seemingly viewing Luan as her least favorite.
P.S. Rita needed an episode like “Home of the Fav” WAY MORE than Lynn Sr. did.
By Chapter 4, Luan is still playing with Mr. Coconuts without stopping, and Luna is still trying to hide how much this is tearing her up inside. Rita takes notice and offers her depressed daughter some encouragement. So now Luna has received some reassuring advice from Lori and her mom. Did their words help her solve her problem with Luan?
No.
Things escalate, spiral of control, and get ugly really fast. A horrifying revelation, a shattered heart, and now Luna is away without a trace. Lori, Leni, and Lynn all watch anxiously as their dad hurries off to find their missing sister. To make matters worse, there’s a huge thunderstorm on the approach…
…and then the story abruptly switches to the present. This is where my creative liberties really get to have fun. Unlike the present-story in the last 3 chapters, this is now a totally original scene that slips right in Room and Hoard. Luna and Luan play a hand of Go Fish before bed while Luan expresses disappointment in having to give up their theatre. They’re soon summoned by the sounds of Lily crying. Nothing the siblings try soothes their cranky sister, not even Luna’s singing, which usually does the trick. Then Luan gets the idea to put on a puppet show with their old theatre. She and Luna put her plan into action…and it works! With Lily now out, everyone retires for the night. As they drift off to sleep, Luan mentions to Luna that there was a certain song that Luna could have tried singing to Lily that may have worked. Luna doesn’t know what song this means and Luan unexpectedly becomes a little disheartened at this. Luna falls asleep with a question now bouncing around her head: what song did Luan mean?
This chapter is by far the most emotionally-heavy of the story so far. Young Luna Loud, the calmest, gentlest, and most sensible sibling, the prim and proper of the family, completely breaks. Finally pushed to her limit, she just explodes, something she has never done before. This is also the first time in the story when we meet young Lynn Jr. and Lincoln. Neither of them do much, but it’s very clear that Lynn is ready to scour the entire globe to look for her big sister. Lincoln only gets 1 scene in the entire past-story, but I made sure it was a good one for the die-hard Lincoln and Luna fans. Only 5 years old, and yet he’s already developed a sixth-sense to detect when his sisters are upset. Luna appreciates this greatly. In the present-story, the part when Luna sings to Lily while cradling her was deliberately written with the old beloved visual of Luna always carrying Lily around in mind. We all love that and we all miss that. There isn’t a single soul who doesn’t adore that doting big sis-energy Luna used to emit in the early days and I wanted it in my story. Finally, there’s a new element introduced in this chapter. A mystery element. There’s a certain song that Luan hints at and Luna can’t remember…but gets the impression that she should. Luan seems very cagey over this song, not even name-dropping, prompting Luna to try to figure out what the song is.
The entire concept of Luna and Luan playing cards on Luan’s bunk before bed was adapted from Parasomnico’s long-gone comic ‘All You Need is Laugh’ which featured such a scene. It’s very unfortunate that it’s no longer available as far as I can find, as it had some truly wholesome moments between Luna and Luan at a time when they had absolutely nothing. Also notice that the sisters are snacking on cookies. Not only a call-back to Chapter 1, it represents that the sisters’ bond has not changed in 6 years…despite the fight they had in this same chapter. Luna is also totally fine with Mr. Coconuts, a complete turn-around from her pure hatred towards him in the past-story at this point. A lot of flip-flopping with emotions in this one. It ends on a not-so-happy ending with a lot of questions that need answering. How did Luna come around to being on good terms with the puppet? What is this mystery song? And after such an intense rupture to their sisterhood and friendship, how did Luna and Luan get back together?
Luna makes 3 more song references. And Victoria is mentioned a second time.
Story link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14518644/1/Put-Down-the-Dummy
I’ve loved our girl from day 1, and even though part of why that love has bloomed over the past decade is how far she’s come as a character, I gotta highlight that she freaking rocked in the pilot.
I’ve said before I miss the motif of Luan being a video maker and wish they’d harken back to it occasionally. It can’t be overstated how it was thanks to her and her camera that Lincoln felt better about missing his TV show. She literally was the one who provided him concrete comfort thanks to that camera.
Let’s also talk about how she’s the only one to not complain at all during the episode. She just tries to keep the mood light, and even when she’s done wrong by Lisa, she just completely rolls with it. To the point where Lori doesn’t even have to ask her to eat another radioactive cookie…Lori knows Luan would do it if it would help the situation. That is an awesome sibling.
Also…even if she didn’t successfully make her family laugh, Luan’s jokes DID HELP if for no other reason than it took everyone’s minds off of being scared. They were annoyed but that’s better than being scared.
Luan has been awesome from the start and quite frankly, her family doesn’t always deserve her.
In honor of the 10 year anniversary of the show, I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about what I still think is the shining achievement episode. It’s my favorite Loud House episode of all time and truly what cemented Luan Loud as my absolute favorite character of the series. Everyone I know loves this episode, and I’ll never get tired of giving it its well deserved flowers.
I think what Luan does for Lucy in this episode is easily one of the kindest things any Loud sibling has done for any one of their fellow siblings, simply because Luan helped Lucy without expecting anything in return and knowing that she had nothing to gain outside of making the creative road easier for her little sister.
Even characters like Lincoln will primarily help his siblings if he has something he can gain from doing it…or he will help his siblings after he does something that messes things up for them or puts them in peril. You get none of that from Luan, she just wants to help Lucy because she knows Lucy needs her help.
For her part, Lucy is great too. At this point in the series, most of the time Luan speaks or tells a joke, the reaction is overwhelmingly negative. I like how Lucy really does respect where Luan is coming from and how she lets her defenses down a little bit…even laughing at Luan’s puns (despite her being the last sibling you would expect to do so).
Some people kind of harp on how outwardly jealous Luan gets when Lucy gets invited to read her poem, but I think it’s really noteworthy that while it is very obvious to the audience that Luan is upset…it’s clearly not obvious to Lucy. Yeah, Lucy knows that SOMETHING is up, but Luan isn’t outright ignoring her or being mean or harping on her skills…she’s just upset. Lucy wouldn’t even know WHY unless Lincoln outright told her what was going on. Luan might not have done the best job hiding it, but if it was up to her, Lucy would have NEVER found out that this reading was her taking Luan’s dream.
Luan was also not only willing to go, but made the extra effort to look especially nice for the occasion. She also instantly became concerned when she thought that Lucy was truly sick. Even before she knew why Lucy was potentially going to not do the reading, she immediately entered protective big sister mode. Her tone softened and any of the “hints” of jealousy from the previous days melted away.
I’m sorry, but how ANYONE can see this episode and not think that Luan is a morally good family member and human being is so beyond me!! If you ask me, this episode alone has earned her a hundred April Fools Days.