Sadly, Skulker is uncharacteristically easy to defeat here. He was clever in his approach, especially his simple yet elegant “frame” of Danny, but once the hunt was on in the Ghost Zone he just stood around and let the kids bond and escape. He didn’t seem to be any threat to them at all!
Sam and Tucker are relegated to a “B” plot, but in this case the “B” plot has so much in common with the “A” plot that I don’t mind it as much as I did in 13 and Micro-Management. They struggled to cope with the same assignment that put Danny and Valerie in such close proximity. Their contrasting approaches to parenting nicely echoed their vegetarian/carnivore conflict back in Mystery Meat. And even though Tucker’s baby-sitting service was naturally doomed to failure (it’s his fate in life to provide comic relief) it was a pretty impressive enterprise.
I usually try to ignore variations in animation quality, but there was one element of this episode’s “look” that bothered me a lot. Normally, Valerie’s eyes are not visible inside her visor. But in the second half of Life Lessons her eyes were almost always visible, making her face-mask look silly rather than menacing.
There are a couple of revealing moments for Danny in this episode. One came as he and Valerie were rocketing through the Ghost Zone. He said, “This is the Ghost Zone, I am a ghost!” This struck me as a remarkable thing for him to say. No question that he is more familiar with their surroundings than Valerie is, but he has only been an infrequent visitor to this world himself. And I don’t recall him referring to himself as a “ghost” very often, if at all; usually he says he “has ghost powers.” Part of it surely was because he needed to be in character for Val’s benefit, but it was still an interesting thing for him to say.
The second moment comes back at Valerie’s apartment, when he realized that it was Valerie inside the Nasty Ned costume when he was so rude earlier in the day. He said, “And I’m supposed to be the good guy.” That’s just a gem of a moment of self-awareness. Danny doesn’t think of himself only as somebody who tries to be good, but as “the good guy.” He holds himself to a high standard, and was disappointed in himself for falling short. Nice.
Rating: 
By: Bluemoonalto
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