By Matthew Moorcroft

I was 9 years old when Phineas and Ferb first premiered in 2007, and I was one of the lucky many (10.8 million, if the numbers are to be believed) who managed to catch it’s premiere episode right after High School Musical 2. As somebody who was in Grade 5 at the time and discovering that “hey, girls were kind of cute”, High School Musical was what I was really interested in because if I liked it, I would be popular with the girls right? That didn’t really happen as per expected in hindsight, but instead I found myself sticking around for the little preview at the end of the movie for the new show. It was quaint, silly, and very funny, and it’s premise of child geniuses who decide to make the most of summer by doing whatever they wanted appealed to the creative introvert that was me. That being said, I wasn’t fully enamored with the show at the time, and while as the year passed and the show became instantly popular at my school – I distinctly remember people talking more about Phineas and Ferb come the end of Grade 6 then High School Musical, which is very funny in retrospect – my interests mostly still lied in other shows of the time for a little bit, mostly treating Phineas and Ferb as a mild curiosity that would be in the background on occasion.

This would change in the summer of 2010, when I was coming home from some kind of family thing – I don’t remember the specifics, but I do know I was with another group of kids my age at the time. We had just gotten satellite a little bit earlier in the year, and that meant easier access to a legion more of channels. I could have watched literally anything at that moment, but for whatever reason I instinctively clicked on the Family Channel (Canadian version of Disney Channel), hoping something, anything was on. Turns out, Phineas and Ferb was on. All I really saw was a paper airplane flying across the ocean and crash landing on a desert island, and the cast desperately trying to find a way home.

Fans of the series will likely already cue this where this is going. This was the start to the jaw-droppingly great third act of Summer Belongs to You, one of the show’s most beloved entries, and unbeknowst to me I was watching it’s premiere airing. Instantly and quickly I was hooked even if I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but even at 12 years old – with a burgeoning love of animation, filmmaking, and writing – I could tell this was special and different. The writing was sharp, clever, and actually filled with pathos that worked. Each character was well defined even if I didn’t know who some of them were at the time. And that last musical number? Well, just listen to it and come back to me. You understand.

Show was a mainstay in my household after that, and the rest is history. Anybody who knows me knows Phineas and Ferb is my all time favourite cartoon, and it’s not really close. Even beyond it’s quality as a show, which is high, but it’s also a show that helped me actually come out of my shell; my sense of humor and just general outlook on the world was rewired thanks to this show, and during the peak of my obsession with the show, which lined up with 2011-2012 during Across the 2nd Dimension‘s airing and my entrance into high school, I was basically living life on the P&F wiki fan boards and DeviantArt trying to find crumbs of anything having to do with it. What was otherwise a seemingly episodic show with little story and mostly just silly contraptions was filled with continuity gags, ongoing character arcs, stellar writing, and some of the most catchy musical numbers this way of Animaniacs, and even as the show entered it’s fourth season and popularity died down a bit it remained a part of my life.

It’s original finale aired on June 12th, 2015, which was during my final weeks of high school (my final Friday to be exact) and it was like the end of an era for me – a show that literally defined a good chunk of my youth and gave me a love of storytelling and animation was ending so I could move on in my own life, using what it taught me to create my own art. I still stand by the finale’s merits as a spectacular standalone episode, but in a flash, Phineas and Ferb was over. And I, like the majority of people, assumed that was it. Outside of a special later in the year and a possible spin-off that was rumored but never greenlit, I assumed Phineas and Ferb was done permanently with it’s creatives moving on to bigger things.

Phineas and Ferb never truly went away though, it’s blockbuster popularity clearly too much for Disney to let go of and every couple of years the boys would creep in and return in some way, shape, or form. They returned as a crossover event for Milo Murphy’s Law (a decision I’d argue crippled that show forever, even if it was a great episode), and then in 2020 Candace Against the Universe premiered during the height of COVID to capitalize on the sudden nostalgia fame of the series. And yes, I watched it 3 times over the course of 24 hours. Sue me.

But even despite those, it’s a little strange to see Phineas and Ferb back on the air in such a spectacular fashion. Cartoon revivals tend to be a generally mixed bag in my experience, constantly rotating between unnecessary but harmless at best to downright abysmal at their worst. And sure, while Phineas and Ferb had the advantage of having most of the original staff on board as well as a proof of concept in the new movie to work off of, there was still the fear that this would be a mistake. A waste of time. After all, the original series ended so strongly and had final images so genuinely moving that torpedoing that could be a colossal mistake.

Oh, how I’ve never been so relieved.

Season 5 of Phineas and Ferb is spectacular. Or, at least it’s first 10 episodes are. But frankly, that’s all I really need to see at the moment to know they’ve nailed it. You know it’s one of the best revivals ever made within the first two minutes, which open with a traditionally spectacular musical number that sums up both the ethos of the show while also being a great transition into the rest of the episode, which is filled with some actually smart twists that I’d dare not spoil for those who haven’t seen it. Suffice to say, the writers know their formula and trying to follow it, break it, subvert it, reconstruct it, deconstruct it, and ignore it at a whim whenever they want. And that first episode, which gets grander and stranger then you would expect even for the show’s already bizarre standard – this is a show which had an episode that had an amusement park based around sap – still manages to reiterate the real themes of the show, which is creativity wins, family is everything, and optimism over all.

And the rest of the season is no different, using the past seasons not as a clutch but as inspiration, never looking backwards but more interested in looking forward to the future rather then just resting on their laurels. Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh have long been some of my favourite creators in the business, and here they and the rest of the talented staff on the series prove why they are the best at what they do. Each gag feels tailored made to be as funny as possible, the characterization is simple but still surprisingly rich with actual emotional depth, and the episodic storytelling remains as razor sharp and economical without devolving into repetitiveness. Their experience on other more serialized shows has also clearly influenced this new era of the show, as while Phineas and Ferb was never a stranger to this sort of ongoing references or continuity it actually feels like an integral element now.

And of course, the songs are just as good as ever, with many of them already some of my new favourites in the canon – especially one focused on a Haderdasher and his numerous, clever hats. Like much of the show, these songs are bizarre when explained out of context and maybe more so in-context, but they are also catchy, fun, and have wordplay that puts most on-air songs to shame. Hell, there’s even a screamo metal song sung by the Fireside Girls here, and it’s just as good as you’d expect it would be (maybe a little better, actually, especially when you see one of them shredding an electric guitar like their life depends on it).

Honestly, it’s so good and there is so much here to talk about that it actually feels like too much at points, especially as I can’t imagine newcomers coming into this and enjoying it as much as long term fans. But even the smaller, standalone episodes – ones that you could show a newcomer and explain “this is the show in a nutshell” – are still so funny, so clever, and so creative you end with a smile on your face. A slumber party episode in particular – which feels like a premise straight out of the original run that they’ve never done before for some reason – feels like a classic episode of the show, particularly in it’s focus on character dynamics and witty dialogue over large scale conflicts. Small scale is the focus.

But it’s the large amount of heart that remains here that I think is what sells it. All of the emotional moments are played seriously, and Dan and Swampy’s commitment to making sure you care about these characters beyond just gags is admirable. This is something they carried over from the original run and it’s always stuck with me as the real secret to the show’s success.

In this regard, I always go back to that scene in Summer Belongs to You, where Phineas, for the first time in the show’s run, gives up. He can’t find a way back home. It’s a moment that works for numerous reasons (mainly strong characterization and writing) but Isabella’s speech to him that gets him back up and going – while cheesy – is the real key. Phineas and Ferb, as a show, is the show that keeps on coming back up stronger then ever, always searching for a new way forward rather then one backwards or sticking to a single island.

I don’t know what the future holds for the show. I know it’s got at least 30 more episodes on the way, and considering how popular the show is likely more then that. I doubt it will ever go away in this constant era of reboots, remakes, revivals, and reimaginations. But if this is any indication, regardless of what happens with other shows, Phineas and Ferb will be fine, will press on, and continue to be one of the best shows on TV whenever it’s on.

After all, you got to keep moving forward.