We are quite fond of talking about firsts, and rightfully so. Firsts are special. Among other things, firsts are a risk. Even if it’s something so obvious as “start making cartoons in colour,” there’s the risk of the technical aspect—how good is your work? Can you get it right? But what we seldom talk about is lasts. At some point, eras come to an end, and we seldom seem to consider the thing that was its ending. The Jazz Singer was the first talking film; does anyone remember the last silent film that wasn’t a deliberate stylistic choice and instead merely How Things Are?

And in fact, I’m not sure I’d ever seen today’s short before deciding to write about it. That’s okay; it isn’t very good. But “Bugs in love” is the last Silly Symphony made in black and white. Its premise is simple; a bunch of bugs are playing about in an amusement park made of cast-off garbage. Two of them, per the title, fall in love. A crow comes and menaces them so he can eat them. And so forth.

I mean, crows need to eat. I’ve been watching Planet Earth II this week, and my goodness but that does not gloss over “animals eat other animals.” But in cartoons, predators are villains. We are shown to have sympathy with prey animals. American crows do eat insects, but it’s rather suspected that it’s a good thing in the sense that insects eat a lot of human crops, meaning the insects are actually the bad ones here. Yet I’m not sure how many cartoons I’ve seen where we’re supposed to sympathize with the insects, even unto watching them destroy crops and being expected to think it’s cute. Also, the crow is not just eating the male bug; he’s locking him up to pursue the female and eat her in front of him, I guess? It’s creepy.

Honestly, I’m also a bit disturbed by the female bug’s home. She lives in a broken cuckoo clock, which is, you know, a cute place for a bug to live. But she’s got a centipede-skin rug. And, of course, she’s using human-sized cosmetics, including absolutely drenching herself in perfume. (Seriously, the amount of perfume she sprays on herself is more than I’d use as a full-sized human.) And the door is bug-sized when it needs to be and crow-sized when it needs to be, but that’s not terribly good cartoons for you.

At some point, I’m going to seek out the very last Silly Symphony, because my goodness but people forget about those. I grant you, this is a bit of a forgettable cartoon. There’s nothing about this that’s distinctly Disney; it could be early Warners just as well. Still, it’s worth seeing what the last was, even if there’s nothing particularly notable about it other than its being the last.

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