Grunkle Stan of gravity falls lives in my brain in a way few characters do. I’ve made like…4 to 5 different fan mixes. Stanmixes. He’s got a heart of gold. Intergenerational Jewish immigrant trauma. He’s been imprisoned and institutionalized. He spent at least a decade homeless. He’s been a drug mule and a sex worker. He has like 3 ex wives. He might be the reincarnation of an insane god doomed to suffer the most mundane horrors earth has to offer just to ultimately kill himself. He had to teach himself theoretical physics without a high school degree. He doesn’t have any of his own teeth left and that’s not even a cartoon stylization because he had to chew himself out of the trunk of a car.
How do I get my HDB followers in on this.
I think part of the magic at work here is like…he’s a big part of the comic relief, but those jokes are grounded in deeper characterization. This is kind of baked into the core concept, right? The classic caricature of the greedy Jewish miser redefined into a 3 dimensional character that subverts the stereotype.
So the comedy is really satisfying and genuinely quite good. I love that he’s petty enough to beef with a child like Gideon (and god, the comedy of having a Jersey conman showdown with a Deep South conman is chefs kiss, they’re hysterical) but gets actually concerned when he thinks the kid is having a total breakdown. Very underrated scene.
I do think with Stanley they do such a great job of marrying cartoon shenanigans with highly realistic portrayals of trauma. And there’s an extent to which the show does revolve around him specifically, like Ford’s characterization being a response to Stan’s. Where they worked backwards to imagine the person that made Stan this way.
It’s just really rewarding to see that effort and attention put into a character, the way Stan slowly progresses to calling Mabel sweetie etc is just! Really good! He is growing continuously and that’s so fun.
ALT
