| Kid TV | Gallery | Transcript |
|---|
| Season 3 Episode 23a | |
|---|---|
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| Kid TV | |
| Original Airdate | May 8, 1994 |
| DVD release | Season 3 Complete Series |
| Previous Episode | Pickles vs. Pickles |
| Next Episode | The Sky is Falling |
"Kid TV" is a Season 3 episode of Rugrats.
Characters Present[]
Characters Introduced[]
Synopsis[]
When Stu breaks the Pickles' TV in a fit over his latest invention, the Rugrats use an old box to create some television shows of their own - Description from Klasky Csupo
Plot[]
Stu and the kids are channel surfing on the home television, stopping at a show called Cartoon Cavalcade. Didi begs Stu to stick with a show he likes, but Stu says he has to scan for toy commercials. When asked how his transforming toy Transformo is doing, Stu says that it still needs work.
Cartoon Cavalcade's first commercial break starts, and a commercial featuring a toy called a Miracular begins. It showcases how it can turn into a bird, a rocket, a helicopter, a tank, a space station, a submarine, and an atom smasher. Stu isn't pleased when he sees this and now knows that someone has beaten him to the punch and made it perform far better than his own invention. When the Miracular is also seen to do tasks such as homework, cleaning rooms, taking out garbage and washing dishes, Stu gets even angrier and, in a fit of rage, throws Transformo at the TV, which gets damaged. Stu tries to turn the TV back on but has no luck. Didi comes in to the living room. Stu stops Angelica from saying that he broke it, but he also promises that it was none of the kids' faults. He and Didi go into the shed for a box big enough to fit the TV. The box he found- not the one the TV came in but his "Cheese of the Month" sampler case- is not big enough, though, and he goes back into the shed to look for another box.
The babies decide to make a TV out of the box, and the babies each take turns with their own shows. Tommy is first with a game show: Getting in Trouble. His first contestant, Chuckie, is picked to play the first game, setting a Bad Example by Breaking Valuable Objects.
Angelica, bored with this, decides to go next with a commercial advertising her beauty juice. Phil and Lil want the beauty juice, but Angelica says that her beauty juice isn't available because the only bottle is hers.
Tommy pushes Angelica out of the way, getting back to the game show. Chuckie performs the next game: Spinning in Circles (He feels like he ate too much spaghetti) then asks Tommy what the fabulous prize is. Tommy thinks for a second, but Angelica shows them her toy car, a "Ferrini Conderossa X10-Zillion", the same car used by Angelica Bond: Master Spy. Angelica pushes Tommy and Chuckie out of the way again and does her spy show.
Phil and Lil are too bored and have a turn with their own show, a soap opera called The Teeny and the Tiny. Lil says to Phil that she is having a brain transplant. Phil protests, telling her that the doctors should have his brain instead. Chuckie asks Tommy what the twins' show is supposed to be, and Tommy replies he thinks it's a soap opera. Angelica butts in, singing, thinking it's an actual opera. She asks the twins to sing, but they don't know how to sing yet, which leads Angelica trying to force them to sing.
Tommy begs them to stop showing too much violence on TV, saying it's Chuckie's turn to do a show. Chuckie does a news program, starting off with a top story about the Pickles' television being "broke". Tommy is in the "studio" telling the viewers how he's handling this tragedy. In other news, Spike "knocks out" a rival dog in a fight, but nobody knows when or why the outcome happened. Phil and Lil butt in, whispering remarks about each other into Chuckie's ear.
Angelica butts in yet again, this time, with her own police show, with the babies as prisoners. The babies try to run away from her, but she catches the DeVille twins. Tommy announces one more game for Getting in Trouble: Stay Away from Angelica. If the contestants win, they get either the toy car or the beauty juice. The babies run, with Angelica giving chase. Chuckie gives a special report on the race between the Pickles cousins.
Stu and Didi return to the living room, without a big enough box, in disappointment, but are pleased to see that the kids are playing without the TV. Stu blabs that it doesn't matter if he threw Transformo at the TV and busted it after all. Hearing this, Didi is very angry at him, especially for lying the whole time, whilst Stu grins sheepishly.
Trivia[]
- The Wig Club ad parodies the Hair Club for Men commercials ("I'm not just the president, I'm also a client").
- Here are the following TV shows imagined by the Rugrats.
- Getting in Trouble: Hosted by Tommy, it is a classic game show like The Price Is Right.
- Angelica Bond—Master Spy: Starring Angelica, it is a parody of James Bond classic movies and is also a parody of the British television show, The Prisoner.
- The Teeny and The Tiny: A drama and soap opera with Phil, Lil and Angelica like Loving.
- Evening News with Chuck Finster: The most recent Rugrats news hosted by Chuckie like World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
- Angelica The Cop: A crime show starring Angelica and the babies like Cops.
- The last segment, while the babies run away from Angelica, shows the complete cast and their TV shows.
- In this episode, Angelica has a small pink bottle of potion called "Beauty Juice". This pink substance somewhat resembles the pink potion, used to stop the process of aging, in the movie Death Becomes Her.
- The commercial for Miracular could have been slightly exaggerated as many television commercials have had a tendency to exaggerate their products, adding to the fact that it would have cost a great deal of money for the Miracular company to produce a toy that did everything their commercial said it did.
- The title is a reference to CBS's Saturday morning cartoon lineup in the late '80s and early '90s.
- One of the insults exchanged by Phil and Lil is a clean version of an old joke, "If brains were gasoline, yours wouldn't have enough to power a pissant's go-kart to go five laps around a Cheerio!"
- Footage from this episode, with new dialogue dubbed over, was used for the babies' acceptance speech when Rugrats won Favorite Cartoon at the 1997 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.
- The final image of Angelica on top of the box with the rest of the babies inside was used as the promotional image for the show on Nick.com.
Goof[]
- The end credits list Kath Soucie as voicing "#1 Kid" instead of "Kid #1" in the toy commercial. It also misspells Neil Ross as playing "Columist", rather than "Columnist".
