Roadside Attraction (Gravity Falls)

Roadside Attraction is the 16th episode of the second season of Mh:besttvshows:Gravity Falls and the 36th episode overall. It premiered on September 21, 2015, on Disney XD. It also serves as the last episode before the four-part Weirdmageddon Sega, which is the series finale of Gravity Falls.

Plot
Grunkle Stan takes the kids with him on a road trip to sabotage all the other tourist traps in Oregon.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While the episode is nowhere near horrible, its plot is rather insignificant, unnecessary, and awkward to the series as a whole, being one of the few episodes in the entire series that serves as true filler much like The Great Divide, Scrambled Eggs, Get the Hock Out, and Stunt Fever, it also doesn't help the fact that this episode was aired between two important episodes, those being "The Last Mabelcorn" and "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future".
 * 2) Even Alex Hirsch stated that this episode could've been released earlier in the second season before "Not What He Seems".
 * 3) Much like Scrambled Eggs and Mrs. Cuddles, The show's tone in this episode was changed from being equally dark (as seen in many episodes) to entirely campy with less darkness and a little more light than usual, resulting in this episode's tone being too juvenile and unusually weird even for the show's standards, especially since many episodes before this usually had their dark moments.
 * 4) While its true that Gravity Falls normaly has light-hearted/funny moments in previous episodes, and even in the four-part Weirdmageddon Saga, those don't overstate their welcome.
 * 5) Some of the characters were suffered from flanderization and even somewhat out of character in regards to this episode:
 * 6) * Stan is very out-of-character and is at his absolute worst in this episode since is one of a few episodes that had his greediness went one step too far as he destroy a lot of people's attractions, but at least he got karma from the owners by vandalizing the Mystery Shack.
 * 7) * Dipper was flanderized in this episode to a womanizer-wannabe who wants girls to love him and how he is treated badly doesn't even help in this episode.
 * 8) * Mabel is just there to know Dipper's secret crushes when she would properly use her scrapbook for her secrets.
 * 9) Some of the events of the second season like the appearance of Ford Pines were ignored in this episode, thus making it more of a filler episode from Season 1 rather than a continuation of the story.
 * 10) It's quite clear that the bizarre chemistry choice between Dipper and Candy felt like the writers were trying too hard to pander to the shipping crowd, even the girls that Dipper met at the attractions were only there just for filler and to make him a womanizer-wannabe.
 * 11) * It’s also weird since in a previous episode, Northwest Mansion Mystery, it seemed as though the writers were trying to push a potential romance between Dipper and Pacifica, but that ultimately ended up going nowhere with little to no closure.
 * 12) The gang (even Dipper and Stan) don't even seem to have cared about Soos being trapped in the corn maze, and rather than going back to get him, they decided to leave him in the maze throughout the rest of the episode.
 * 13) Bad Ending: The gang arrives at the Mystery Shack, decimated by the owners of the previously pranked tourist attractions. They leave, and Dipper asks if they have to clean it up. Mabel responds that Soos can take care of it, before realizing that he is not with them.
 * 14) * Also, Ford and Wendy, for some reason, don't appear to be protecting the Mystery Shack (in which the wood contains the Unicorn blood below the first floor, as established from the previous episode) in this episode at all when Stan's attraction rivals have destroyed their property. Also, if the Pines, Soos, nor Wendy didn't defend the shack, then it could've heavily implied that it could and can accidentally give Bill Cipher a big chance to get in and take the interdimensional rift to unleash Weirdmageddon early, without the Pines family’s intervention!
 * 15) Aside from Stan who got punished for destroying the attractions, Mabel and Grenda barely get punished for revealing Dipper's secret crush on Candy in public.
 * 16) Darlene is very generic and weak as a villain, especially for Gravity Falls standards.
 * 17) * Also her species couldn't be that cave-turn-tourist attraction on Mystery Mountain at all since they're far away from Gravity Falls, given the road traveling montage throughout the episode, as earlier revealed in the previous episodes (but in flashback), that all of the monsters and other oddities are trapped in Gravity Fall's weird forcefield dubbed "Anomalous Phenomena". So, their location should've been a bit close to where Gravity Falls works well.
 * 18) This episode could've got Wendy and Ford to join the gang on their road trip as Wendy would've helped Dipper get the best girl tips then Stan and Ford would've looked through Mystery Mountain or stayed at the Mystery Shack to defend it (as mentioned earlier), making it missed opportunity for the two to appear in this episode.

Good Qualities

 * 1) A few funny moments, such as the hot tub scene with Dipper and Stan and the end credit scene of Soos in the corn maze.
 * 2) The animation and voice acting is still top-notch.
 * 3) Despite the ending being awful, Stan got his comeuppance from the attraction owners by vandalizing the Mystery Shack.
 * 4) Add to GQ1, this is the first time when Stan and Dipper have a bond without Mabel, unlike the Season 1 episode, Dreamscaperers.

Reception
"Roadside Attraction" was unpopular by many fans and is widely considered the worst episode to ever come out of Gravity Falls due to its awkward nature and treatment of Dipper. It received an 8.1/10 on IMDb.

Trivia

 * On the side of Stan's map of the tourist traps, there is a box with text in it that reads:
 * "Oregon is known for its natural beauty, but, let's be honest guys, trees get boring after a while."
 * "That's why man created tourist traps. There's a really big shoe, for example. And the yarn ball is neat. I haven't been there but I've heard good things."
 * Alex Hirsch and Rob Renzetti have been animated and can be seen riding the Trambience.
 * In one scene, where Dipper, Mabel, Grenda, and Candy were upside down, at the Upside Down House attraction, Dipper's upside-down hair resembles his old hairstyle in the show's pilot episode.
 * One of the numbers written on Dipper's arm ends with "0618."
 * In the Vigenere cipher for this episode, it is claimed that Soos has befriended a talking bulldog, though in "Dreamscaperers" Bill shows that Soos' nightmare is a talking British bulldog.
 * Stan's ex-wife, Marilyn, is mentioned in the episode's cryptogram, but she was supposed to first be mentioned in "Dreamscaperers." For a production art shot of a hallway in Stan's mindscape, there is a cryptogram that reads "EWTUG AQW OCTKNAP." Once decoded using a "two letters back Caesar cipher," it reads "CURSE YOU MARILYN." However, in the actual episode, this message is edited out.
 * Marilyn might be a reference to Alex Hirsch's Grandma Marilyn.
 * It also could be now considered a hindsight reference to Eda Clawthrone's human disguises from Mh:besttvshows:The Owl House, as now since showed at the latter show's episode "Yesterday's Lies".
 * The Fire Retardant Raccoon was originally supposed to be named the "Fire Retardant Bear", a parody of Smokey Bear.