While I’m a bit too old for summer camps now, I still miss the weeks full of weaving friendship bracelets, singing songs around the campfire, and sleeping out in nature. There’s something indescribable about the experience of summer camp, so why not try to rekindle that feeling by returning to a staple from the summers of my childhood: Disney’s “Bunk’d.”
The Humor… Exists
It’s been a while since I last rewatched a Disney show, so it took a second to readjust to the humor. The first few minutes of the pilot were genuinely jarring. For some reason, every single character has a one-liner for everything, all of the time. Some of them don’t even make much sense in the context of the scene — they’re just quick jabs in an attempt to be funny. It actually detracts from the characterization quite a bit, too. When all the characters are taking every chance they get to crack a joke, they all start to feel like copies of each other. Because of this, it takes multiple episodes to get a feel for the newer, non-“Jessie” characters.
I was a little surprised to hear certain jokes I would’ve thought too risky for Disney. Granted, they’re still pretty tame, but a few caught me off guard. In one of the episodes, a camper tries candy for the first time and gets addicted. The whole plotline blatantly mirrors that of a drug addict, even giving her the line, “Please, I’m good for it! Just give me some to get me through the night.” I’m a tad shocked this era of Disney gave that bit the go-ahead, to be honest.
In any case, most of the jokes are cheesy and a little hard to watch now that I’m older. Still, if you watch long enough, the humor eventually wraps around from “I’m too old for this” to “this is so stupid, it’s actually making me laugh.” Whether that’s worth the effort, though, is up for debate.
Everything is Falling Apart
Another thing that caught my eye this time around is the camp itself. “Bunk’d” leans pretty hard into how shabby and run-down the camp is. They throw in as many jokes about health and safety concerns as they can into every episode. There’s a gag where someone says the camp is held together by “a dangerous amount of duct tape,” then a background camper immediately falls through a taped-up stair railing.
What’s particularly comical about this to me is that, despite the camp’s supposedly meager funds, they still have extravagant camp activities every day. At one point, the cabins compete in an elaborate obstacle course with a bouncy house, a climbing wall, and a tightrope over a giant mud pit. Who set this all up? How did the camp pay for it? Mind you, this is the same camp that uses chewing gum to hold their canoes together — unsuccessfully, I might add.
I definitely didn’t care to pay attention to the nonsensical logic of the camp’s funds when I was little. Now, I find it contributes to the complete ridiculousness that I enjoyed so much during this rewatch.
Is That Allowed?
Speaking of nonsensical camp details, the punishment system at Camp Kikiwaka is a strange recurring bit that I just can’t stop thinking about. The characters will sometimes drop little throwaway lines about various punishments for misbehaving campers, but they’re not usually brought up again. There are a few comments about “the hole,” which sounds vaguely ominous. There’s an episode where rule-breaking campers are forced to serve and cook food in the lunch hall, which is a health violation in itself — do any of them have food handler’s permits?
We get wind of the most intriguing (and horrifying) punishment, however, through the camp owner, Gladys’s, complaining, “That was no fun. I didn’t even get a chance to put you in the spider box.” If you’re wondering what exactly a “spider box” entails, or why they would possibly have one, that sucks because they literally never bring it up again. Screw the mysterious “Kikiwaka” that supposedly roams the woods surrounding the camp; I need to know more about what sounds like a torture method meant for children!
Hands-Down Best Character
You might have noticed that I haven’t name-dropped many characters. As I said, a lot of the characters blend together into a vague blur of mediocre humor — except for one character: Gladys. What’s funny is that I remember despising her as a kid. For some reason, she’s still stuck on a failed romance from her time at camp, crediting that as the reason her life is so awful now. Even worse, she takes out her frustrations on the kids from said failed romantic endeavor. She even forces them to sell stamps and candy to raise money for her varicose vein removal surgery. Her leadership skills are abhorrent, she hates children, and she doesn’t care about anyone but herself and her own problems — she’s by far my favorite character.
There’s just something about her never-ending misery and her zero stipulations about making it everyone else’s problem that is deeply entertaining to me now that I’m older. She’s only a side character, so she’s rarely in a scene for longer than a few seconds. Still, any appearance from Gladys immediately makes the scene ten times funnier. How Gladys has managed to keep this job for so long is truly beyond understanding.
Final Thoughts
I only watched a handful of episodes before I decided to throw in the towel. Sadly, it’s clear I’m way past the target audience for this show. That said, I still think my criticisms hold. As a lover of cartoons and family-friendly media, it’s entirely possible to create a show that is entertaining for kids and is also enjoyable for everyone else. Still, this is a Disney sitcom from the mid-2010s, so I can’t really have too high of expectations.
Although I don’t think I’d have enjoyed rewatching this show as much without the layers of nostalgia piled on top, I do know that I really did love it as a kid. For a spinoff, I think it deserves some merit — I’ll just stick to letting the kids have this one.
Go watch “Bunk’d” for yourself on Disney+.
Check out Jordan’s latest article about the game “Rust“!
