House of Anubis

House of Anubis

Episode 5: House of Cheats/House of Rumors

By: Carlos Uribe

House of Anubis is a show about an American teenager who goes to a British boarding school. It airs on Nickelodeon.

Spoilers Ahoy!

The problem with having so many episodes is that a lot of them can end up being filler. This is no problem if the filler leads to a great episode (the Parenthood family road trip episode comes to mind) but it can affect the narrative momentum. This is a series that has a lot of filler scenes and it does a lot of stalling, but it does so in an interesting manner. I should be feeling frustrated that we're not further along in the plot, but I'm enjoying the slow reveals that this series has managed to perfect. This creates filler episodes that are entertaining and continue to build up to the narrative momentum rather than to detract from it. This is an episode that does have a lot of filler. The two main stories don't really head anywhere and only seem to bring up more questions. House of Anubis has managed to become a series that has perfected the art of advancing the story as slowly as possible without becoming frustrating. That's one of the reasons that this series has become surprisingly addictive and makes it so that it could almost hold it's own against more serious adult primetime soap operas. This is definably better than the daytime soap operas both in writing and acting.

The whole Nina story had two important developments. The first one is that Amber is brought into it. She discovers that Nina and Fabian are sneaking around and catches Nina with the Egyptian puzzle box. This is actually pretty surprising that Amber managed to get to the truth considering that she's not presented as a bright character. She also led to the most entertaining scene in the episode, when she manages to ensure that Nina and Fabian didn't get into trouble. This development is good in that it expands the importance of the story, rather than just confining it to two characters. Having Patricia be a part of the story is helping to flesh her out while providing some much needed comic relief to the rather serious Nina and Fabian. This helps to get the viewer invested into the mystery because they want to, not because the show demands it. The other development is that it has Nina and Fabian playing the cylinder. This development isn't as important as the Amber one since it merely raises more questions and provides no answers.

The Joy story was revived in the last minute of the previous episode. This episode has Patricia deciding that Joy is dead and that there's a huge conspiracy involving the police. She's absolutely correct about the conspiracy, but I extremely doubt this show would actually kill off Joy. The soap opera rule that anybody's not dead unless you see the character dying probably stands even more true in this series. She doesn't really do much beyond try and tell people what she believes, see a man that no-one else sees, and have a nightmare to close the episode. Oh-and she seems to have convinced a teacher that she is telling the truth. It's not known yet if we can trust this teacher but that's a rather interesting development if he's on her side. Joy can only be an annoyance to the school but the teacher can actually move the story forward.

This was a pretty good episode of House of Anubis. It had some pretty good small developments that barely advanced the two mysteries. The love interest had a small development that really isn't worth mentioning. It wasn't a bad sub-plot, but simply forgettable. What's best is that this series seems to have found a sense of humor that really works well for it. Amber is just stupid enough to be funny, but smart enough to remain human. If the series can continue this balance then it would definably be stronger.