I Don't know why, but this is my favourite episode of the entire series.
Well, I do know one reason, but it's a little personal so it's not in my interest to share it.
Anyways, this episode is the one I've rewatched the most, and as a kid I've ripped off this episode quite a lot in my stories. One notable ripoff was the start of season 2 of one of the many Daniel's Adventures reboots I tried to make. Catbuddy hang-glides over a forest and crashes into it, where he finds a sentient gauntlet. (In fact, this particular season was entirely a ripoff of Angry Birds Stella!) Unfortunately, the only evidence I have is this old drawing of Evil Catbuddy, because kid-me did this cool thing called "keep all your ideas in your head and never write them down."
(also the Golden Egg equivalent is a gauntlet because Minecraft: Story Mode)
I'm getting sidetracked, let's talk about the actual episode for a bit.
Now, at risk at sounding like those people on Twitter who gas up Puss In Boots for having "realistic panic attacks", the scene where Stella's parasailing goes wrong is pretty damn gnarly! The music score and Stella's cries for help as her situation gets worse with each passing second is tense in a way one wouldn't expect from goddamn Angry Birds! Rewatching this as a slightly older kid, I was quite surprised to learn that the sequence lasted only 30 seconds, I remember it being longer!
I do have mixed feelings about how they resolved Stella's issues at the end. They hoax Stella into jumping into the very situation that traumatised her, and suddenly she's cured of everything. It's a very simple answer to a complicated question, and said answer is wrong a lot of the time in real life; but again, this is a kids show. Children may be smarter than you think, but you still gotta tell them square roots of negative numbers aren't a thing before you properly get them into Calculus.
To be frank, I'm still a little bewildered that this episode exists. I mean, I'm not opposed to heavy topics in kiddie stuff; in fact, this episode did help me as a kid, as silly as that sounds, but still, y'know, we've been having simple fun for 7 episodes straight until suddenly Mrs. AngryBirdsStella pulls out a chair and goes "Hey Kids. Have you heard of this thing called 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder'?" I don't know man, that's kind of a whiplash and a half. Queen behaviour, actually. You go, Angry Birds Stella!
