The Book of Rannells: Ridley Jones: Season 2, Episode 1 – “Bison Ball” / “Dude, Where’s Our Egg?” (2021)

Since I last reviewed Ridley Jones, apparently two more seasons have come out and it looks like Andrew Rannells appeared in an episode of both of them. While it’s still much more of a kids’ show than a family show, I think I enjoyed this one a little than I did either of the season 1 episodes I watched, even though Rannells in only in it briefly.

In “Bison Ball,” the museum exhibits prepare for their annual dance, and Fred the bison is nervous about what to wear. Ismat the mummy volunteers to help out, but she and Fred have very different opinions about their style. And in “Dude, Where’s Our Egg?”, the kids find an unhatched egg in the museum and aren’t sure where it came from. Dudley the dodo and Dante the dinosaur both dream of it being a “little bro” for them and compete over who gets to take care of it.

I’ll start quickly with “Dude, Where’s Our Egg?”, since it’s the story Rannells isn’t in. It’s cute and has some amusing jokes, like the kids warning each other not to look directly into Dudley’s “sad dodo eyes” when he’s trying to get what he wants. And the song Dudley and Dante sing, separately envisioning the fun they’ll have with their new little brother, feels a little stronger to me than any of the songs I heard from season 1. Still not my demographic, obviously, but the show might be hitting its stride a bit more.

Okay, so let’s circle back to “Bison Ball.” I remembered Fred as a character from Rannells’s season 1 episodes, but I didn’t realize at the time that they were nonbinary. So I did a bit of a double-take when I heard Ridley and Ismat casually using they/them pronouns. But that’s cool, and it’s nice to see the gentle lesson of Fred gaining the confidence to express themselves through the outfit they want to wear to the dance, not the ones Ismat picks out for them. This is a good line: “Fashion is about feeling good, and feeling good is about feeling like yourself.” Also, fun fact! Fred is voiced by Iris Menas, a nonbinary performer who played Anybodys in the new West Side Story. Again, the song in this story feels like an improvement on the season 1 offerings.

The only real ding against “Bison Ball” is that it’s woefully short on Andrew Rannells. Ismat’s dads appear briefly to help with Fred’s makeover, so Rannells (and Chris Colfer) are only in one short scene. Rannells’s most noteworthy line here comes when Ridley and Ismat urge Fred to try dancing in their new getup, and Aten exclaims, “It a good thing we got the disco pyramid polished!” At which point, a ceiling panel in the Egyptian exhibit slides back and a miniature “disco pyramid,” held by an upside-down mummy servant who apparently just hangs out in the ceiling waiting to be needed(??), descends and starts twirling.