Headscratchers / Central Park

As this is a Headscratchers page, spoilers will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Can she even DO that?

• This is more just curiosity than exasperation, but legally speaking can Bitsy just buy up Central Park? As I understand it, the City of New York considers it an historical landmark, or similar—there's a ton of red tape to get through just to section off a tiny piece of it for private use, and Bitsy wants to bulldoze the whole lot of it to make way for urban sprawl. The MST3K mantra in effect as it is, I'm just legitimately curious if such a plan would work in real life, if one had access to the ludicrous amounts of money it would take to buy a plot of prime NYC land like the Park.

Cameras?

• Why don't they have cameras around the park?
  • They do, come "Rival Busker".
    • That was a single nature camera. Why don't they have security cameras around the park?
  • It's possible that the mayor has made it so that park staff can't see what's on the security cameras. Since, of course, the mayor is doing everything he can to make the park look bad.

The $55, 000

• Why didn't Owen take the reward money? Even if he has a job as park manager he could still put it back into the park as a way to (at the very least) replant the turtleheads.
  • Considering that Cole technically abducted Shampagne, Owen probably saw it as accepting ransom money. Like he also states, he’s there to help.

Searching through the turtleheads

• Why were people looking through colored turtlehead fields for a dog that’s entirely white?
  • Simple-Bitsy never mentioned Champagne’s color at the press meeting, just that he was missing.
    • But there was a picture of Champagne at the press meeting. Even if they were listening to the radio they should still have a phone or something to know what the dog looks like. Even if they found a dog, they wouldn't know if it was Champagne or not.

Bitsy's plan to find Champagne

• Wouldn't it have made more sense for Bitsy to contact Owen (as the park manager) to find the dog without the need for a reward?
  • Considering Bitsy's plotting to undermine the Park, it wouldn’t help her plan to actively seek out help from the very person she’s trying to put out of a job. Even then, while Champagne was last seen in Central Park, he could’ve easily gotten beyond the park area by the time she announced the reward.
  • Tying in to Bitsy's plot, considering later episodes show Bitsy trying to wreck the park’s image, such as a buildup of garbage or an increase in graffiti, a large mob recklessly charging through the park would probably be seen as a bonus to Bitsy, on top of finding Shampagne.

Birdie's coverup

• Couldn't Birdie make the excuse that he overheard Helen mumbling to herself about Bitsy's plans as a way to cover up the spoilers? He’d be able to keep himself in check as the narrator and technically still be true. Birdie could be in earshot and, unlike knowing what's going on in Bitsy's penthouse, is in a place he could’ve easily been wandering around in. He could even have a flashback set up for the audience while he's telling it. Helen was in the room when they were discussing the real estate plans, so it wouldn’t be too big a leap to believe she’d mumble that to herself at some point.
  • Technically, he does try to cover up the spoiler by saying he tends to overhear things as a busker — however, one of the Narrator’s Rules is to “stick to the facts", and Birdie clearly wasn’t “sticking to the facts” as a passive observer. And judging by Griffin’s temporary takeover of his position at the end of the episode, Birdie couldn’t bluff about where he heard the spoiler without breaking the “rules” and losing his job.

Picking up the birds

• Any birdwatcher worth his salt could tell you that touching the baby birds would mean the mother wouldn't come back. So wouldn't Owen have known not to touch the birds?
  • Parent birds don’t recognize their young by smell. They won’t abandon a baby if it’s been touched by humans, but only if the nest itself is sufficiently disturbed — and Owen's only intent was to put Tito back in.

The rules of the Narrator

• The rules seems kind of flimsy. Especially when Griffin is narrating from a place of danger rather than a place of joy when the boys are stuck in a tree in "Rival Busker".
  • The rule says that the narrator has to operate from a place of joy. Judging by the wording, that means they have to operate from an internal place of joy (I.e in taking pleasure in narrating/what they’re doing) or from a physical place (I.e where they themselves feel most comfortable). Birdie's "place of joy" melds both interpretations of this rule — he deeply loves Central Park itself and enjoys getting close to the action/characters he describes. Griffin’s comes from following the narrator rules strictly (keeping his emotional/physical distance, not interfering with the characters in any way, and simply narrating the action), and knowing he's not doing anything that could potentially break them (which would cost him his job).

Shampagne or Champagne

• People can't seem to decide how to spell this dog's name. Is there anything official that spells it?
  • It's Shampagne; especially given how one of the song titles uses this spelling.