Clone High Review: Anxious Times at Clone High and The Crown

Anxious Times at Clone High and The Crown, reviewed

The Clone High revival aired its third and fourth episodes together on Max on June 1, 2023, and the pair works as a double bill about two kinds of pressure. In "Anxious Times at Clone High," a school full of teenage clones of historical figures panics over pre-midterms. In "The Crown: Joancoming: It's a Cleo Cleo Cleo Cleo World," the same students go to war over Homecoming. Between them, the episodes tell a clear story about how stress turns into politics.

For anyone arriving late, the premise is that the students of Clone High are clones of historical figures, raised as teenagers. The revival premiered on May 23, 2023, with its first two episodes, and ran ten episodes through June 22. Episodes 3 and 4 were released together on June 1, so they are best watched as a pair.

Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Bill Lawrence created the show, and Erica Rivinoja is the showrunner of the revival. The episodes are quick, loud and crammed with jokes, but they stay on a clear line: Joan of Arc, JFK, Abe, Frida, Cleo and the rest are teenagers who say the part they would rather hide.

Anxious Times at Clone High: the recap

The episode, directed by Jack Shih and written by Dannah Phirman and Danielle Schneider, opens on pre-midterm jitters. Joan of Arc (Nicole Sullivan) is calm because she is dating JFK (Christopher Miller), and the two are, in her view, basically prepared. Harriet Tubman is at the opposite end of the anxiety scale. She dreads becoming a vacuous "winemom" after a failed exam, and a gift from JFK ends up giving her an unexpected sense of perspective.

Frida Kahlo (Vicci Martinez) listens as Abe (Will Forte) frets about his best friend being half of a couple with a portmanteau name. Cleo (Mitra Jouhari) has only half her face painted. Nobody is doing well.

Candide (Christa Miller) sees an opening. Operation Spread Eagle has entered its second phase, and the signs telling students not to stress only make them more stressed. Principal Scudworth (Phil Lord) wants credit and, even more, wants to be ignored. To manage morale, Candide introduces a mascot inspired by the Babadook named Heebie Jeebie, a creature meant to help students de-stress.

The Heebie Jeebie problem

The mascot feeds on stress instead of removing it, and the episode spends its middle act watching it eat. JFK gets a text that begins "We need to talk," the dating-era equivalent of a bell tolling, and Heebie Jeebie moves in. Confucius (Kelvin Yu), a master of avoidance, offers JFK an escape into wood shop. Topher's (Neil Casey) emotional support opossum becomes wall art, which tells the viewer the monster has to be stopped.

Abe sends Joan to JFK, but the creature already has Abe, and Frida wants it nowhere near her temple. Frida shows Abe her version of calm, which involves painting murals for sick kids. The mascot crashes that too.

Harriet, Frida and Abe skateboard to the school after hours and find JFK and Joan in the middle of the conversation JFK feared. Scudworth's plan backfires, and Candide is the only person who could not see it coming. The students shelter under Confucius's weighted blanket until Joan clears the air between the two men in her life. The mascot ends up as a stress reliever instead of a stress eater, and Ian Ziering, appearing as himself, climbs out of the suit. He says he took the gig to scare kids into better mental hygiene.

The episode closes at the Broad Daylight Swimsuit Dance with a cliffhanger. Students who were captured respond to the chirp of Candide's flute, Joan is still with Abe, and the only calm thing in the room is the empty mascot suit. Then a rabbit occupies it.

The Crown: the recap

The second episode, directed by Kristen Morrison and written by Judah Miller, opens thousands of years ago with a Stone of Eternal Servitude unearthed and set into a crown. Its power proves too great for mortals. In the present, Candide holds the crown and Homecoming is near, and the control she wants is for herself, not for the Secret Board of Shadowy Figures.

Joan and Frida work on a politically loud float, and the new JFK just wants Joan on top of it. Cleo courts votes with pumpkin spice lattes. Joan sees Homecoming as too trivial to campaign over, until the "Instructional Boogie" proves hard to resist. She then escalates with an accusation against Cleo's coffee, and "Blood Pumpkins" begins trending.

The satire has a real point under the jokes. Joan's campaign argues that to build support for what you stand for, you have to admit that what you stand against still exists. Naming an opponent does not give it power; it pulls it into the light. The episode then undercuts her by letting her skip the middle lane and go straight to a smear, which lands her in the same mess she criticized.

Harriet announces two victors, JFK and Joan. Accepting the crown would mean accepting defeat, and fighting the patriarchy, in Joan's mind, does not include leaving Cleo in charge. At the game, Joan frees JFK from Cleo's control, and Confucius helps her reach the library. Abe and JFK find her and bring her to the Queen. Mr. Butlertron helps Joan break free before suffering a very funny indignity. Choreographed clones and pumpkin-spiced tsunamis cannot stop the truth, and Joan's heartfelt apology and Cleo's half-hearted one carry the same weight. It is politics as usual for the student body.

Voice cast across both episodes

• Joan of Arc: Nicole Sullivan
• JFK: Christopher Miller
• Abe Lincoln: Will Forte
• Frida Kahlo: Vicci Martinez
• Cleo: Mitra Jouhari
• Confucius: Kelvin Yu
• Candide: Christa Miller
• Principal Scudworth: Phil Lord
• Topher: Neil Casey
• Guest star: Ian Ziering, as himself in "Anxious Times at Clone High"

Verdict: two strong episodes from the Clone High revival

Both episodes use the same trick well. The first turns a real teenage fear into a monster that eats it, and the second turns a school dance into an election with a cursed crown. It also helps that two of the show's creators are in the voice cast. Christopher Miller voices JFK and Phil Lord voices Principal Scudworth, so the people shaping the jokes are also delivering them. Neither pretends the stakes are small, and both leave a distinct final image: an empty mascot suit that is no longer empty, and a Homecoming result everyone saw coming.

The detail that stands out is the title sequences. The show reworks its Abandoned Pools theme for each episode, first with an unsettling outro and then with a Sousa-style march. It is a small thing, but it rewards the viewers who do not skip the intro, in an era when skipping is as common as binge-watching.

Michael McDonald's Gandhi is absent, since the character remains frozen in the revival, but Frida's mural keeps him present and shows her as the heir apparent. Ian Ziering's cameo, as himself and for a cause, keeps the show in the older tradition of real guest appearances, where a celebrity lends a face instead of a voice alone.

Cleo gets more screen time here than before, and the character is still finding her footing. The voice has the vanity but not yet the vulnerability that would make her a fully balanced rival to Joan. Other clones at the Dance could have been more present, too, though that is a small complaint about an otherwise busy hour.

Anxious Times at Clone High is the stronger of the two for jokes per minute. The Crown is the stronger for story. Watch both in order, since the revival is easiest to follow when the episodes are taken in sequence.

Together the two episodes show the range of the revival, one a creature-feature parody built around a school mascot, the other a political satire built around a cursed crown. Both keep the cast's relationships in motion for the episodes that follow.

Sources

• Clone High, Wikipedia — Checked against: revival episode list and air dates.