The Powerpuff Girls Season 6 Ranking and Review

 

When people talk about Seasons 5 and 6 they usually talk about them as a unit, the lesser seasons. However these seasons do feel significantly different, and truthfully I feel like it's a substantial step up from last season. 

Season 6 Ranking:

27: Sunscream: The worst episode of the series, this is the only episode of the series that's legitimately hard to sit through. The girls get badly sunburned across their entire body that hurt them as they try to fight crime. That it's, that's the whole episode. I don't know how this was expected to be appealing.

26: Prime Mates: This episode is about the worst monkey from Mojo's army in the movie, a depressed monkey named Mopey Popo, a depressed monkey that messes up Mojo's scheme repeatedly. I get he's a reference to Droopy, and I get what that humor is supposed to be but Mopey just really drags the fun out of a scene. In a way it's oddly evocative, but not evocative of something fun.

25: Roughing It Up: The Girls and Professor go camping the same spot as Fuzzy and his nephews. This episode is frustrating because there's no build-up to the ending and it's mostly Fuzzy's nephews messing with the girls with no justice. I feel like the ending where the Professor and Fuzzy put aside the difference seeing the children get along had potential if it was written in one of several different ways but as it currently stands it feels like it comes out of nowhere. 

24: Say Uncle: The PPG mistake a Sasquatch for their uncle and antics ensue. Mostly harmless. The humor is really slow paced compared to what PPG used to be but it's mostly just stock humor "antics" about the Sasquatch loving taffy and keeping across people with taffy.

23: What's the Big Idea: Mojo makes the girls big so they have to be careful not to break things as they wander around. Once again, pretty slow-paced stock humor, but it's a little bit superhero themed and feels less generic.

22: That's Not My Baby: Most of this ep are the girls taking care of a baby, and in particular focusing on a child-friendly version of the more annoying parts of taking care of a baby. It's not especially fun, though the ending twist is pretty alright.

21: The City of Frownsville: A couple of clever lines are the standout this ep, but unfortunately most of this ep are people crying over-dramatically which is not a pleasant or funny sound. I think this episode plot could have worked, if a depressed villain made others take their sadness without the crying sounds. I know this because Courage the Cowardly Dog had an episode just like that, the Tower of Dr. Zalost. Something like that would have probably worked a lot better.

20: Crazy Mixed Up Puffs: Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Powerpuffs stronger. This is a bizarre episode about Mojo fusing the girls together and them having to learn to work together. It was still a little slow, and the girls were harsher than normal with each other for the moral, but I thought parts of it was amusing, especially the ending gag of the Narrator saying the day was saved due to and then trying to combine the girls names. 

19: A Made Up Story: This was a pretty eh 22 minute ep. It's about a make-up themed villainess putting non-removable make-up on people while making puns about it. It never really explains why she doesn't do it to Blossom and the ending is weirdly mean to Blossom for no reason. Mostly though it's just fine.

18: Night Mayor: This is a bizarre episode of the Powerpuff Girls going inside the Mayor's brain and seeing his perspective on the world where everyone has a Mayor head and the Mayor is the beloved ultra-competent leader of the city. It's basically a worse version of "I Dream of Jimmy" from Jimmy Neutron. Once again it's mostly fine with an alright twist at the end.

17: I See a Funny Cartoon in Your Future: To my understanding, this episode is a reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle. I have not seen Rocky and Bullwinkle and I don't think it was necessarily a good idea to make an entire episode referencing something kind of niche. As such I can't really talk about it on that front. I like the puns and the meta-stuff, and the episode has a very unique identity but it seemed very strange to me without context.

16: Nuthin' Special: The girls demonstrate a lot of powers trying to find Buttercup's unique power. The twist at the end about what Buttercup's power is pretty funny, and it's kinda cool seeing all kinds of random powers, but the ep is PRETTY plot-light.

15: Coupe D'Etat: Classic Evil AI story. Professor builds a fancy new car which he becomes obsessive off. Then when he tries to leave it, the car's AI takes the professor hostage. It's a little disconcerting how the Professor initially starts neglecting the girls for KARR, but it's not that big and for the most part this is a pretty normal AI story. I think the ep does well enough making one feel bad for KARR near the end as it admits it just wants to be loved for by its creator the way the girls do.

14: Octi-Gone: This is a semi-mystery ep about who "killed" Octi. Bubbles is pretty sympathetic this episode, and her trying to think of why each person might have done it is interesting enough. I do think the ending wasn't very funny and Mojo's actions this episode don't really make sense. For the most part it's a pretty good episode though.

13: West in Peaces: Basically a Powerpuff Girls episode set in the Old West. It's kind of interesting to watch, though the central plot is basically just a really standard PPG plot with a costume swap. I find that kind of aesthetic/costume swaps alright for individual episodes like this, just to speculate what it would be like, though I'm glad it was contained to only one episode as I don't think they could get many plots from this premise. 

12: Simian Says: Mojo beats up the Narrator and takes his place, using his narration powers to mess with the Girls. It's a pretty wacky premise that really fits Season 6's overall jump in meta-humor as well as uses one of the most recurring elements of the series, the Narrator, in an interesting way.

11: Little Miss Interprets: This episode does one of the most cliché plots in fiction, the characters overhearing something and getting the wrong idea. With that said, it is one of the best applications of this plot I have seen just because it has some pretty funny lines. I am glad that nobody was mad at the girls for the misunderstanding at the end, given how apologetic they were and the fact that they are only six. 

10: Neighbor Hood: Bubbles is tricked by a television show into thinking they need a donation or else the characters in the show will be gone. It's mostly teaching children about scams which I think is a really good lesson and doing it in a way that's both funny while remaining useful. The ending joke is a pretty funny meta-gag about how they're learning to not trust everything the TV says from a television cartoon.

9: Oops, I Did It Again: So yeah the concept doesn't work since the Professor HAS made things on purpose before, but given it's a psychological crisis in his head, and suspension of disbelief, I don't mind. This is basically an episode on what if the Powerpuff Girls were made the way the Professor intended them too, and parodies the typical episode conventions by showing what the Girls would be like without powers. 

8: Mizzen In Action: This is the episode with the Chemical X-powered pirates coming to the present day and fighting the girls. It's mostly just a fun little pirate adventure with a pretty fun reveal at the end involving where the secret treasure was actually buried. 

7: Custody Battle: This is the episode where HIM and Mojo engage in a contest of evil to prove they are the Rowdyruff Boys' real father. I think this is a really good episode premise, and while I would have liked the RRB to be a little more apathetic towards the twos attempt to win their favor, it's fun seeing the two of them attempt to out-compete each other, as well as the conclusion where the two look on like proud parents at how evil the RRB are.

6: Reeking Havoc: Despite the rather...gross premise and the existence of toilet humor, the episode had a lot more going on than one would expect, in particular a bizarre meta gag where Blossom says she got the giant match from where she got the giant jar in "Insect Inside, Season 1 Episode 2" which was....a bit shocking. I also thought that was a pretty funny way of beating the gas monster.

5: Live & Let Dynamo: A really underrated fight this episode as the girls fight Dynamo. Not only is the fight framed well, given Dynamo was the mecha with they battled the monster that easily beat them in Season 1, you can view this fight as the progression of their power between Season 1 and Season 6, able to hold back the Mecha that used to beat enemies much stronger than them. It's funny seeing them speculate on everyone having Dynamo and I only wish we could have seen more.

4: Aspirations: An actual sequel episode, rare in this series, and even rarer it's a sequel to two seperate episodes "Something's a Ms." and "Buttercrush". Sedusa gets the Gangreen Gang to gather mystical items to make her giant and ultra-powerful. This episode has some pretty funny lines, in particular Buttercup's lingering anger at the Gangreen Gang, and her barely contained anger at them serving Sedusa. It's also cool how the Gangreen Gang help the PPG save the day given they were always one of the less evil villains in the series while Sedusa was one of the more serious evils. 

3: Mo' Linguish: This episode's quality depends pretty much entirely on whether you like the one central joke of it was Mojo teaching everyone to speak his form of extremely extended speaking. Personally I thought it was pretty funny, though I can understand if it's not everyone's brand of humor.

2: Makes Zen to Me: An episode that could pretty easily pass for having come from earlier in the series, Buttercup has to take lessons from a martial arts master learning to be calmer and more disciplined, less prone to rage which has historically been a problem for her. The slower pace of seasons 5 and 6 works well for this atmosphere is trying to make as Buttercup has to learn patience herself. Overall this feels like one of the best Buttercup episodes in the series. This episode is usually considered one of, if not the best in Season 6 so I don't this will be very controversial.

1: The City of Nutsville: There's not very complex reasons why I liked this episode most. It's just this episode is full of cute squirrels, and the return of Powerpuff Bullet. Bubbles can't speak this ep due to an injury, and she really needs too as a horde of squirrels are rampaging across Townsville. Despite the fact that this was the perfect time for Bullet to return, if I hadn't seen it before I wouldn't have imagined she would have. Powerpuff Girls for the most part doesn't have much continuity, even though I would honestly like it too. However it feels completely warranted because Season 6 is full of references to prior parts of the series, and this feels like a pinnacle of it. This really could have been a finale to Season 6 because this episode shows the best part of Season 6 and the potential that element could have had, bringing back elements of the series in new fun ways.

Season 6 Review: 

I have to say, while it's not back up to the level of the first four seasons, Season 6 feels like a substantial improvement over Season 5. To get the negative parts out of the way first, it still feels slow at times, the characters are more mean-spirited (a trend that started in season 5 but really got bad in this season), it still has some gross-out, and it doesn't have the ambition of earlier seasons, even Season 5. But while the best Season 5 episodes are better than the best Season 6 episodes, so much of Season 5 were really flawed episodes, even some of the higher end ones were good "in spite of their flaws." Season 6 is to Season 5 what Seasons 3-4 were to Seasons 1-2, sacrificing upper end potency for consistency. Sun Scream is the obvious outlier, but most of the episodes this season were perfectly decent cartoon episodes and it was actually pretty hard to rank them. Plus this season heavily uses two types of humor both of which I really enjoy; characters being overly dramatic about mundane things, and references/parodies. Having these two made a lot of the humor particularly funny this season. On a connected note what most stands out to me about Season 6 was the amount of meta type material, not just in the humor but tons of sequel episodes, callbacks, meta episode premises. I mentioned my top want for the new PPG is that it has a little bit more continuity than the original series. Not a huge amount necessarily but if it could have the levels of callbacks and continuity of season 6 while having the overall strength of the first four seasons, that would be fantastic. I have a personal love for when any series gets large enough that it can starts getting reflective and meta about itself and I would love for a PPG series to do more of that.