122: Remote Control (prod 121)

Original airdate: August 2, 2005

Story by Magnus Scheving

Written by Noah Zachary, Cole Louie, Magnus Scheving

Directed by Magnus Scheving, Raymond P. Le Gue

Executive producers - Magnus Scheving, Ragnheidur Melsted, Raymond P. Le Gue, Mark Read, Brown Johnson, Kay Wilson Stallings

Starring Magnus Scheving, Stefan Karl Steffanson, Julianna Rose Mauriello

Puppeteers - Ronald Binion, Gudmondor Thor Karason, Jodi Eichelberger, David Matthew Feldman, Julie Westwood, Sarah Burgess

There was a time in history where this was my favourite episode of the show. It was also my mother’s. No, I totally wasn’t agreeing with her just because she is my mom, hehehe!!!! There was ALSO a time where I made a crappy YTP of this episode, but we will get into that latur (or never!!).

So, anyways, the episode begins with, whaddya know, a recycled cold open. This is the fourth time in Season 1 I’ve seen this cold open. Frankly it’s just getting annoying. It’s not even worth noting.

Stephanie runs into Milford’s house telling him that she is gonna play football with her friends, and she is eating breakfast while Milford is talking about how he was so good at football, they called him Maddog Meanswell. Classic ‘cooler-when-younger’ trope in almost every show I’ve watched. Stephanie is drinking some orange juice (the new Badland Chugs??!!).

Then she exits so fast we barely see her. To practice, she throws a ball around and is running, and Robbie is watching her in disgust. Sportacus is of course, cartwheeling around town and sees her, to his excitement.

 

Just look at this dude. How can’t you like him? So, Sportacus flippity flops over to her, and she asks if he can teach him to play football. And Robbie gasps and gags.. in a reused shot.. from the first ever episode they filmed of the show “Sports Day”.. what is going on?

This. Is. Not. What. They. Meant. By. Recycling. Reusing. Or. Reducing. So, Stephanie goes to get Ziggy and Pixel. They run over to him, and Pixel trips over his shoelaces. And Stephanie.. is annoyed. “Oh, you just fell flat on your face? Don’t care, blue kangaroo wants to play sports with us.” What a kind soul!

Sportacus explains how to play and Pixel has to run for the touchdown. When they start the game, it’s going well until Pixel trips AGAIN. So the ball flies and hits Robbie’s spying thing and he falls over the railing. XD LOL ROFL!!!!

So, it seems that in the span of .. however long that was, Pixel totally disappeared and went home.. and he suddenly has a shoe-tying gadget. The guy has a HOARD of electronic devices. He could’ve just searched up a video on how to tie them with your hands. This is 2004. (And YouTube was made in 2005, but you get my point..)

Then he returns, telling them he had to go tie his shoes. They say he could have done that on the field, but he says he’d have to bring his Shoe Tier 6000. Dude, I don’t think this is the 6000th shoe tier you’ve made.. So they all leave Sportacus (the jerks!) without telling him (the even bigger jerks) all alone. But I don’t think he really cared.

Meanwhile, Robbie is in his lair, demonstrating how much useless sports there are, basketball, baseball, football, and he cracks his posterior and arm bones in the process. Robbie wishes there was a way to control Sportacus. 4SHADOEEENGGUHHH!!

Everyone is impressed by his gagdet until Stephanie speaks up and says that it’d be easier to just learn how to tie them. But it wouldn’t. But, then again, you’d have to bring it everywhere if your shoes untied. So she has a point. Pixel says that he doesn’t have to memorize it this way because he already has a machine that does it for him, then he brings up the RIDICULOUS, STUPID idea to make a machine that does everything for him.

Stephanie doesn’t like the idea, but the one time Lover Boy doesn’t listen to Stephanie JUST has to be this one. So they perform Gizmo Guy, a new, updated down- I mean UPgrade from Easy Way, which was rejected by Nickelodeon because of the word 'thingy’.. sometimes.. I just don’t even know. I think it’d have been cool if Easy Way was in 117 and Gizmo Guy stayed in this episode, like they did with 'No one’s Lazy’ & 'Take a Vacation’. By the end of the song, Pixel has finished crafting the one and only Remote Controller 6000.

This time the Remote Controller 6000 can tie your shoes (oh, so solution, use the remote control because it’s more lightweight!), untie your shoes, reverse, turn off all TVs, turn ON all TVs, freeze, do your homework, basically anything! Ziggy drops the lollipop on the floor, and Pixel rewinds it. They do the trick another time.. and Ziggy LICKS the lollipop the second time, because of the three second rule. MY GUY, THAT WAS NOT THREE SECONDS. Even Steph is disgusted.

But she kinda looks like a vampire in the above screenshot for some reason. So, Stephanie decides to go tell Sportacus the news of Pixel’s invention.. then runs away because the remote control is gonna do her homework. But Sportacus is doing some practice and warmups. So the gang are hanging out, and the remote control does Stephanie’s homework in 4 seconds. HOMEWORK IN FOUR SECONDS WOULD BE HEAVENLY.

For a while, Pixel is totally obsessed with his remote control, and he even plays football, baseball and basketball using it. But Stephanie and Ziggy get bored. In fact, Steph is so bored she starts checking her nails. You have to be the most bored person on the universe to do that unironically.

So, they get mad at Pixel, and they go away to do something like a real game until Ziggy starts yapping. AND PIXEL TURNS HIS VOLUME DOWN. THAT IS SUCH A CRAPPY THING TO DO, REMOTE CONTROL OR NOT. So, then Stephanie tells him to put his volume up, but then we see Ziggy angry moment (!!!!!!!!!!) about how you can’t do that to people.

So once they try to leave, Pixel.. freezes Ziggy solid like a popsicle (in his own words). What a little french fry hair boy. This just makes me mad, personally if I was ice cream hair boy I wouldn’t take that kind of disrespect.. but they are too mad to talk to Pixel, but another problem has arised - Robbie heard it and saw it all.

He has the idea to remote control Sportacus FOREVER!! Meanwhile, Pixel gets kinda bored and he throws away the remote control. Unfortunately, Robbie has been busting his butt off finding this thing, and it lands in a bin he’s carrying after riding a skateboard on accident.

REEMOOOTEEE CONTROOOOLLL!!! XD, Stefan was hilarious. RIP. So, anyways, he dances of happiness, and then Milford walks into town. Robbie makes the skateboard go forward and Milford steps onto it.

Depending on what he crashes into, he could be injured seriously hard if Sportacus wasn’t in town. So Robbie is a really devious man. But Sportacus is on the rescue and he gets him off by spinning the puppet around which looks funnier then it is. Sportacus stops the skateboard by doing an astonishing flip and landing on it.

After Sportacus makes sure that Milford is okay, Robbie realizes that the problem is Sportacus, so Robbie freezes him mid frontflip. Genuinely surprised that he managed to do that.

So, anyways, Milford is asking him if he’s sleeping, and he whispers that he likes taking naps too. XD! But Robbie isn’t amused and he freezes Milford too. So, Stephanie and Ziggy see the freeze victims and ask themselves why Pixel did it, then Robbie reveals he did it (villians always lie but not this softie..) and mutes them.. then he freezes them while Stephanie proves she could have a career as a poser for YouTube clickbaiting thumbnails.

Meanwhile, Robbie decides to have a little fun with Sportacus. (This scene is exactly why my mum declares this her favourite episode.) He makes him run in fast forward, freezes him, makes him run backwards, and.. makes him do.. the cha cha cha. Cha cha, real sporty.

Then he makes him do a spinning flip.. for fifteen seconds. Then he throws a ball at him and freezes him as he catches it in mid-air. Frozeacus. XD. Pixel walks in and tries to run to save them, but trips over his shoelaces, and he TIES THEM HIMSELF. AFTER ALL THAT COMMOTION. MY. GOD. So, Robbie calls for a truck to run Sportacus over, but he clicks the Wildlife Channel instead.

XD. The truck is only like 2 seconds away from riding Sportacus over, but then Robbie fumbles it up. He tries pressing the fast forward button.. but he FACES IT AT HIMSELF. And he throws the control into the air, and Pixel catches it, playing Sportacus, when he shoulda been run over like 30 seconds ago..

So Sportacus kicks the ball away, uses the digger of the truck as a launching pad, frontflips into the driver’s seat and stops the truck. Then Pixel unfreezes everyone, and he says he found a better gadget, his own body. Then they perform Bing Bang. Pixel plays with Robbie, then he unfreezes him and he falls into his lair, flopping on the floor.

He stands up and walks off camera then the episode ends.

It was kinda good, actually.

8/10

 

 

121: Play Day (prod 129)

 Original airdate: August 1, 2005

Story by Magnus Scheving

Written by Noah Zachary, Cole Louie, Magnus Scheving

Directed by Magnus Scheving

Executive producers - Magnus Scheving, Ragnheidur Melsted, Raymond P. Le Gue, Mark Read, Brown Johnson, Kay Wilson Stallings

Starring Magnus Scheving, Stefan Karl Steffanson, Julianna Rose Mauriello

Puppeteers - Ronald Binion, Gudmondor Thor Karason, Jodi Eichelberger, David Matthew Feldman, Julie Westwood, Amanda Maddock

Now it’s time to play!.. this episode of LazyTown on YouTube.

The episode begins with a combination of cold opens from ‘Sportafake’ & 'Cry Dinosaur’, mixing scenes where Sportacus is stepping on buttons from Cry Dinosaur with scenes where he is controlling the airship in Sportafake. This all in all might actually be my favourite cold open of the season.

 

Except, this time, it takes him 42 seconds to do all that stuff. It’d take me the full 60 seconds! Trixie and Sweetacus are playing Daredevils. Sweetacus is going down the slide, but Trixie thinks that what he had done (going down the slide like a normal person) was lame, so she decides to show him by going down the slide.. on a wheelbarrow.

So then whaddya know? Sportacus has to save her (shocker!!) and she interrupts Robbie’s nap. I forget this scene exists, then I suddenly remember it: “Oh yeah, that scene from New Superhero.” Sportacus asks what they’re doing and she tells him about Play Day. And guess who is coincidentally eavesdropping?

Robbie Rotten, who doesn’t like the sound of Play Day. At all. But he hopes that they play something quiet. When Sportacus leaves, they decide to play dinosaur, and Stephanie joins them. Ziggy wants to eat candy (they say no, LOL!) but they wanna do something exciting and noisy - like cowboys. Robbie is about to sit down, but he bobs back up super fast when they say 'cowboys’. LOL!’

The disguise time sequence actually features a DIE HARD reference, which was nice that the writers put it in. So anyways, Robbie ends up in his cowboy disguise, The Rotten Kid. He is going to challenge the kids to a showdown.

Then he says when he wins that they’ll have to be quiet forever. But being the softie he is he would want them to be loud again. Anyways, he takes out his weapon (a cane..?) and he throws it, declaring he needs some more practice. Meanwhile, Ziggy and Trixie are playing cowboys, and Stephanie shows up in what is probably my favourite costume from hers aside from the jumper.

Then Rotten Kid shows up with hay in his mouth (what???) and says that there ain’t enough room for the four of them.. but he puts up three fingers. For number ten on the list of the smartest villians.. he is really dumb.

So, anyways, Rotten Kid spits out his hay and nobody knows who he is. It’s funnier because Ziggy’s like 'Oh no, it’s the.. who is this guy?“.. and I took about 4 screenshots of Stephanie during this scene because she looks so goofy.

He introduces himself as The Rotten Kid, and says it’s high noon (it’s 3:15). And he has had enough. So he gets out the rope, swinging it around, but Sportacus’ crystal beeps like in Rottenbeard.. so here comes another epic fight scene rated G by action film legend MAGNUS SCHEVING!!

He brings his ping pong paddles and a backpack and starts pedalling downtown. So The Rotten Kid finally ties them to the tree, but Sportacus comes to the rescue, saying that it’s just 'you and me’.. then Rotten Kid asks about the kids. LOL!! So Sportacus tells him to make his move, and cue an epic staredown.

Then Rotten Kid’s nose twitches (WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN IN THE MOST. RANDOM. TIIMEEESSS???!!!) and he rubs it, yelling that it wasn’t his move. So they stare at each other for a while, and then the two grab something from their pockets. Robbie’s are empty, from the time he threw the cane in his lair. (Plot armor!!) Sportacus grabs the ping pong paddle and yells for an apple, hitting it with the paddle.

He says 'Look out, kid!’ but then all the Tumblr fans saw this scene in 2016 and declared he said 'batch’.. and I’m not talking about a cookie batch. Anyways, the apple hits his hat and it falls off. (Funny thing is that the hat wouldn’t have fell off if Rotten Kid didn’t move his head!!)

Sportacus says you can’t be a cowboy without a hat, and Robbie bends down to pick it up (hear me out..), Sportacus kicks a bucket (how did that even get there? plot armor.), calls for another apple, hits it with the ping pong paddle so it hits Robbie’s.. ehm.. posterior and his head falls in the bucket.

So, he has lost the fight. But, Sportacus, being the kind, awesome dude that he is gives Rotten Kid the hat back and he even has the audacity to say thanks. As Rotten Kid goes back to the lair, Sportacus flips over to the kids in a reused shot which was edited to make it look like he has the ping pong paddles in his hand. Sweet editing.

The kids are debating on what to play next, and they ultimately decide something noisy, soccer. But Stingy tells them to change because they’re using HIS ball. Meanwhile, Sportacus is playing some soccer of his own.

Then he checks on the kids to see what they’re doing, and then Playtime is performed, a song which I genuinely and honestly love so much! Then the kids have a game of soccer, and once the ball is kicked in the goal, Stingy checks on the ball.

It has a grass stain, and he stops the game of soccer. What a clown. If I was in the town, I wouldn’t make it 4 episodes without punching Stingy right in his latex nose. Anyways, Robbie is eavesdropping (how can he even see with the bucket on his head?) AGAIN and the kids decide to play something wild - WILD ANIMALS. LAZYTOWN FURRY PROPAGANDA NOT CLICKBAIT AT 3AM!! And Robbie is raging in the lair, asking himself "WHAT HE’S GONNA DOOOOOOOOO!???!!!”

Until he realizes the answer is in front of him (but he can’t SEE in front of him!!!) and he throws the bucket off his head, performing ’Master of Disguise’, a recycled and better version of Versti Fantur. Damn, Stefan Karl could SING!

So then out of nowhere Robbie goes up on the stairs where there is a mirror waiting for him. Classic 'who-are-you-oh-you’re-me’ trope because comedy. So the kids are playing Wild Animals. Stephanie is a lion, Trixie is a tiger, and Ziggy is a…

mouse. So Stephanie is playing her bongo drums, Trixie and Steph are roaring and Ziggy is squeaking. Robbie decides to fulfill their wish of playing wild animals.. by becoming a wild animal.

Then he jumps over the railing. LOL!! But he thinks he is missing something. What could it be? A gorilla soundboard? Some bait? No.. you won’t believe what he needs. SPORTS. CANDY.

But it’s too healthy for him so he decides to unpeel it and throw the peel away. Foreshadowing shot of the peel plays! Anyways, the kids are still banging on the drums, roaring and squeaking, and Robbie is disgusted. What’s so bad about having some fun?

Plus, he has noice cancelling headphones for trains. How doesn’t he think of using them? So he calls for a rope Sportacus style, and he decides to climb up a wall (while making gorilla noises, LOL!!!!) and swing down on them. But he is too scared, and cue a hilarious sequence where he talks to himself.

One side of him is like “Hurry up and climb the vine, Robbie!” and the other side is like “NO!! I CAN’T!!” until he finally gets the courage to do it. So he’s on the wall with a gorilla head and suit, and nobody notices him until Trixie points it out.

So they run away, but Robbie slips on the wall OVER NOTHING (in movies and shows, the character must always trip over nothing.) and swings on accident.. then he hits a tree. LOL!! The scene isn’t that funny until we see Stephanie’s reaction.

XD!! Then the funny meter turns up a notch when he slips and falls onto his unicycle. Plan - failed. Crotch - broken. He rides around town and scares the kids on accident, then the crystal beeps. I think the guys at LazyTown really liked ropes, because Sportacus uses a really longly knit scarf behind his bed as a rope instead of just flipping down like he did in other episodes.

I guess Magnus really likes ropes. Sportacus kicks a wheelbarrow nearby, then the unicycle hits the edge of the wheelbarrow and Robbie does a frontflip into the unicycle. Sportacus tips him out and now everyone can see it’s Robbie.

So, the kids decide to play Bing Bang next (pretty sure that’s a dance routine, not a game) and Robbie is super sad and annoyed. When he goes back to his lair, he says nothing can happen to him there.. then he slips on that banana peel he threw out and breaks the lamp.

LOL!! Then the credits play.

Good songs, fast-paced, decent plot. 7/10