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Despite the fact that I’m about to explain why The Terrible Two’s Last Laugh is a bad ending to the series, I actually did like it. I cried for ten minutes after reading it because I was so into it. Then I reread it and got other peoples’ opinions on it, and I realized it actually wasn’t that good. There are a slew of issues that make it an unsatisfying and incredibly disappointing ending to the series.
I’d like to note that this is all a matter of personal opinion. On Goodreads, for example, The Terrible Two’s Last Laugh actually got the highest rating of any book in the series. Granted, the people who rated the first book outnumber the people who rated the last book by a 10:1 ratio, but it’s still worth mentioning. It’s perfectly fine if you liked this book.
So, without further ado…
Miles Moving Away
This is the most obvious problem. Why did the authors decide to take this totally random plot twist? In canon, the reason Judy and Miles move again is because Judy has gotten a new job that pays more. This suggests that the job she moved to Yawnee Valley isn’t paying her enough to be satisfied with. While moving twice in three years is unusual, it’s certainly not implausible. There are tons of factors that play into how a family’s annual income is spent: property taxes, the cost of clothing and food, vehicle and home repair, health care, various insurances, and much, much more.
The real problem here is how unexpected this decision is. We never see Judy struggle with money or her job. We never learn the exact benefits the Murphy family receive by moving away. From a story-telling perspective, this is literally the worst way to insert a plot twist.
The Terrible Two series makes extensive use of foreshadowing, leaving little clues to every plot twist so that they feel realistic. My favorite example appears in the first book, where Niles being a secret rule-breaker is foreshadowed when he takes revenge on Josh for making him swallow rocks over the summer, a detail which comes back in the second book as the motive behind Niles becoming a prankster. The prank lab is another source of detail: “hotwiring for dummies” and “the prank that only exists in the victim’s mind” in the first book; “know thy enemy” in the second book; a drawing of a ghillie suit in the third book. How is it possible that the biggest plot twist in the series, the one that turns our protagonists’ futures upside down, comes completely out of nowhere?
Keep in mind through the rest in this piece that everything resulting from Miles moving away could have been avoided. The authors had the freedom to end this book any way they wanted, and they picked Miles randomly moving away.
Character Development
I’ll give the writers this: Principal Barkin’s character development is spot-on. At least they managed not to fumble the bag on that, which would be basically impossible given all the work they did on him in the first three books. All they have to do in the final book is make sure our reasonable, education-valuing principal doesn’t do anything too crazy. Like, I don’t know, offering to flunk two of his students and jeopardize his own career. That would be pretty unrealistic, right?
Actually, he did do that. How peculiar. Well, at least the authors resolved all of the internal conflicts Niles and Miles have, right? Funnily enough, they didn’t do that either. Niles is still trying to figure out who he is and Miles is still worrying about the thought of Niles leaving him behind by the end of the series. The authors even bring up the question “Who is Niles Sparks?” in the first few chapters of the book and then proceed not to answer it.
They actually do this with a lot of questions. How did Niles’ parents react upon finding out he’d gotten detention for probably the first time in his life at the end of the second book? How did Niles manage to explain his half-shaved head at the end of book three without exposing what he’d been doing all summer? Is he ever going to have the courage to be open with his parents? And what about Miles? Does he ever get to feel secure in his relationship with Niles? We’ll never know.
It’s fine to end a series with questions to be answered in the future. It’s not fine when the core personalities of your main characters depend on the answers. It’s especially not fine when the ending ruins all possibility of those questions being answered.
Mood
For a book called The Terrible Two’s Last Laugh, this book was seriously depressing. I’m dying to know why this book was pitched as a “hilarious conclusion” and “rollicking finale” (Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble). Even the narrators joke about how sad the book is. It’s true there are plenty of jokes, just like the rest of the series, but they don’t change the fact that the two “soul matches” and main protagonists are being forced apart (for no reason).
How is their relationship supposed to thrive under these circumstances? Miles and Niles became friends in the first place because pranking together was better than pranking alone. Now that they can’t prank together, significant damage has been done to their relationship. If we assume that neither move away until they become adults, the earliest chance they have at reuniting (since they never bring up the idea of visiting each other during The Conversation) is college, assuming they pick the same one. Even that is at least five years away, depending on how old you think they are.
Most of the books’ humor comes from pranks. This is not the case in The Terrible Two’s Last Laugh. The biggest prank in each book is as follows: the entire school is filled with cows, a Barkin gets pantsed and humiliated, a Barkin gets pantsed and humiliated, a Barkin… hey, wait a minute! To be fair, it was only in the form of a painting. But the fact that this prank is repeated for the third time to end the series in lieu of a funny and creative prank is ridiculous.
The prank isn’t even effective. Bertrand Barkin manages to completely ignore all the modifications made to his portrait. The Terrible Two weaponize pranks as retribution because they’re blatant and provide immediate payoff: the humiliation of the victim. Bertrand Barkin is not humiliated; he doesn’t even realize he’s been pranked. For all that he’s done, Bertrand Barkin got off very lightly. Only the readers know what has happened, and that isn’t until the last scene of the last chapter.
The Last Chapter
The fact that it gets its own section basically sums up everything.
To start, I’d like to discuss what could have gone here instead of what we actually got. The build-up to Miles moving away is pretty intense: Miles’ talk with his mom, The Conversation, Miles planning his last prank. It’s the biggest event in the book, after all. The last chapter could have been Miles’ last goodbyes to his friends before moving away; the authors could have even gone for a circular ending where the last picture of the book is Miles in his mother’s car. In my opinion, this would have been the best ending under the circumstances.
But say this is out of the question. No problem! There are plenty of other ways to provide closure. We could get a look at Miles’ new town and see how he’s still keeping in touch with Niles. Since they move away in the summer, we could see him and Niles spend one last summer afternoon together. We could even get a last chapter consisting of one long letter to Niles, wrapping up anything the audience was left wondering.
Say all of these are out of the question. Again, no problem! We can have the book close on Miles and Niles at the dance, working out their issues. If we pretend Miles doesn’t move away at the end, even more possibilities open up. The common thread is this: as long as the last chapter closes on Miles and Niles, the two best friends and main characters of the series, it’ll be a satisfying end.
So, of course, the book ends on a conversation between Principal Barkin and Miles, with Gus the janitor making a cameo for some reason. I have to wonder why Gus is given so much focus in this book. He gets an interaction with the kids, a look into his background of being a janitor, and is the center of the second-to-last drawing in the book. Who is this guy? Why do we care about him? Were we supposed to see that illustration at the end and go, “Ha, classic Gus! Sitting outside and reading a book. What a funny guy.” It’s like if the school photographer from the second book came back and the book ended on him taking a picture of some random kids’ birthday party.
The conversation between Principal Barkin and Miles is sweet. It tells us that Principal Barkin has completely changed his opinion about Miles and feels that he’s a good kid. But the interactions between Principal Barkin and Miles aren’t the main subject of the series. Neither are the fatherly feelings Principal Barkin has for Miles.
Principal Barkin expresses preference for Niles over Miles in every single book and says in the very first book that Niles is like a son to him; given Niles’ distant relationship with his parents and his longing for their approval, we can safely assume that Niles appreciates this sentiment. In contrast, Miles doesn’t see Principal Barkin as a role model or a father figure. He even tells Principal Barkin point-blank that he admires Niles more than him. (Ouch.) Ending the book on a heartfelt scene between Principal Barkin and Miles instead of Miles and Niles was a very odd decision. So was the decision to make Niles leave Miles alone to go dance with Holly, whichever way you interpret it.
I think my favorite sentence in this chapter is the last one: “(It was the album version, five minutes, forty-eight seconds, but that’s not really important.)” If it’s “not really important”, supplemented by the fact that the sentence is in parentheses, then why make it the last sentence of the series?
This, along with the problems listed above, perfectly sums up my biggest problem with The Terrible Two’s Last Laugh as a finale to the series: it doesn’t feel satisfying. We end the entire series in the middle of a scene with a side character talking about a song the readers don’t care about, and none of the important questions about our main characters, one of which was brought up right at the beginning of the book, are answered.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (2004) was the best Barbie film. Wait. Wrong essay. I’ve never even watched a Barbie film. In conclusion, The Terrible Two’s Last Laugh was the best Barbie film. No, that’s not right either, is it? Well, you get what I mean. Thanks for reading!