Review: The ‘Solar Opposites’ Valentine’s Day Special Is Full Of Love

Any fan of Solar Opposites, created by Mike McMahan, knows that their holiday specials are a treat, and not just because they totally revamp the intro to fit the theme. There was a spooky episode for Halloween and a festive episode for Christmas. Now the Solar Opposites set their sights on love as they tackle Valentine’s Day. Realistically, this was the weakest of the holiday episodes. On its own, it is filled with wackiness and craziness involving a bird revolution stylized like Terminator, but it got too far from its Valentine’s Day theme. This is probably because Valentine’s Day is just no match for Halloween and Christmas.

After failing to realize that a restaurant they wanted to try had a pricey special menu for Valentine’s Day two years in a row, the Solar Opposites decide to destroy love from the planet. They view it as obsolete and pointless because they are aliens that reproduce pragmatically and without emotion. They successfully find a way to remove love from the world, but the hole it leaves in all of the humans needs to be filled with something and they choose Jimmy Buffett islander music. This leads to mass amounts of people needing tropical birds, but the birds get smarter and try to overthrow their human masters.

The episode started off fairly strong as it really got into the heart (no pun intended) of the issue at hand. The story was used as an examination of love from the Solar Opposites’ point of view and really tore the emotion apart on a thematic level. This is what was done for the Halloween and Christmas episode and made them fantastic. But the second half of the Valentine’s Day show got a little out of hand. The bird plot line would have been fine in an episode on its own, but for a holiday episode, it distracted way too much from the love side of the story that was so great at the beginning.

Solar Opposites is now streaming on Hulu.