Reviewing Camp Cretaceous: The Final Season
A largely disappointing season, Season Five finishes the show with more of a whimper than a roar.
First, the bad news. There’s more robots, more time spent on a nonsensical island, and a consistent stupidity from our protagonists. I get it – you love dinosaurs and you want to save them. But these kids are literally working with tyrannosaurs now! It’s one thing to save a baby triceratops from danger – but to feed a family of tyrannosaurs and keep them safe is absolute lunacy. For how often these kids run for their lives from dinosaurs – and it's nearly every episode – they never seem to get over this instinct to protect the dinos even at the expense of getting home. And five seasons in, there’s no more room for suspense of disbelief. It just feels dumb.
The ending also feels more or less anticlimactic. Like, yes, they get home. But it’s not as though there’s much of a new status quo. No arch-enemy has really been defeated. Yes, Kenji’s dad is in jail. But we never actually saw that happen – in fact, the last thing we see is him escaping the island. Dinosaurs are all over the world now, too – so it really doesn’t feel like the story is finished. I just wasn’t satisfied with much of anything this season.
Now, there is a killer dinosaur fight in the penultimate episode. They’ve figured out how to remote-control the dinos, leading to a fight between the controlled dinos and the real ones. That was a blast. But there wasn’t much else redeeming about this season.
Looking back on the show as a whole, I’m thankful it exists. Seasons 1-3 were all more fun than frustrating, but Seasons 4 and 5 didn’t have nearly as much to offer. But kids screamed, people got eaten, and we got lots and lots of dinosaurs. And I’m thankful for that.