Polly attempts to rebuild Frobo and seeks some assistance from two program-savvy girls, but her plans are far from effective.
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Full Recap
TBA...
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: Subverted. Frobo briefly reactivates after one of Polly's Swiss-Army Tears reaches his circuitry and creates a spark that reboots his memories, but his cobbled-together body is shortly afterwards smashed to pieces once again from the impact of him crashing back to earth after his jet thrusters fail. However, despite Polly fearing he's been killed all over again, it turns out that his head is still functional, giving Polly her best friend back, even if in a reduced capacity.
- And Show It to You: Polly removing the creepy teddy bear's battery is framed this way.
- Ash Face: Anne and the Plantars get covered in this when Frobo's eye lasers go off.
- Back from the Dead: This is Polly's intention for Frobo, though it's hampered by his complex systems and the fact that Polly hadn't even seen any electrical devices before he and Anne showed up, not to mention her relative youth. She manages to obtain a working knowledge of electronics through YouTube instructional videos.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: The teddy bear makes these, claiming it loves to eat eyes... cream. It loves to eat ice cream. Anne mentions Loggle would probably enjoy it because of this.
- Bittersweet Ending: Polly's efforts to revive Frobo result in her only succeeding in keeping his head and memories intact. The IT girls come to mount a rescue a few minutes too late, but they offer to help rebuild him, properly and safely. Polly accepts this is more than fair, as do the Plantars and Boonchuys.
- Both Sides Have a Point: While Polly is understandably angry at the others for suggesting that it might be safer to leave Frobo deactivated for the time being, since that's effectively leaving her friend dead, she later admits that they were right about her rushing into things.
- Brainy Baby: Ziggzagged. Polly thinks she'll be able to quickly learn about mechanics by simply looking it up on the internet, but soon discovers that whilst there's a wealth of information on there, she can't fully understand it herself without an expert to help break down the more complicated data she's looking for into easily-understandable nuggets of information. She does take to the complicated process quite quickly, but she still requires somebody more experienced to help her with understanding how to repair Frobo.
- Butt-Monkey: Mr. Boonchuy keeps having his attempts at gaming ruined by Polly's efforts at fixing Frobo.
- Call-Back:
- Anne mentions how Loggle would enjoy the teddy bear due to their shared speech patterns.
- Polly's Zoom with the IT Girls uses Anne's account of "Anna_Banana".
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: The IT Girls show up after Frobo has crashed, rightly suspecting Polly's eagerness would lead to disaster. However, it now means Polly has access to actual experienced help for a proper rebuild.
- Chekhov's Gun: The creepy teddy bear's battery is used by Polly to power Frobo up again.
- Company Cross References:
- In Anne's garage, there is a head that looks like Stan Pines.
- When Polly arrives to announce Frobo has been rebuilt, Anne, Hop Pop and Sprig are watching a movie that is clearly a parody of Attack of the Clones, complete with a nod to Anakin's infamous "I don't like sand" line.Anne: I still can't believe you guys like the prequels more.
- Cranial Processing Unit: Frobo's head continues to function even after his body is destroyed, though this is justified because Polly plugged the main power source directly into his head.
- Creepy Doll: Anne shows Polly an old animatronic bear toy she used to play with, which time has not been kind to. The first words out of its mouth are "I eat eyes!" It then clarifies it meant ice cream.
- Empty Shell: When Polly successfully reboots Frobo, he defaults to factory settings and takes off so he can contact Andrias. His jets fail after a few seconds, however. In freefall, one of Polly's tears reaches his CPU, causing a spark that restores his original self.
- Facepalm: Mr. Boonchuy does a double facepalm after Polly's last attempt to fix Frobo causes a blackout just before he can finish a 10-hour boss fight.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When Frobo's haphazard body proves incapable of arresting his fall, he shoves Polly into his chest compartment to protect her from the crash.
- Hidden Depths: This episode reveals that Mr. Boonchuy is a hardcore gamer.
- Ignored Aesop: At the end of the episode, Hop Pop suggests to Anne and Sprig that maybe they should use the internet for more constructive purposes instead of watching cat videos all the time. They end up doing the latter instead.
- Ignored Expert: The IT Girls advise Polly against turning Frobo on in her garage, citing safety concerns, but she's already stopped paying attention by that point. While they realise this and track her down, it's too late to prevent her from turning Frobo on and almost getting herself killed.
- I Have No Idea What I'm Doing: Polly plans to rebuild Frobo and reactivate him, but being a baby, and never having seen any kind of electronic device before she met Anne, not to mention the human world not having something as advanced as a fully sentient robotic mind like Frobo, it's obviously an uphill struggle. Her first attempt is simply slapping together whatever electronics she could find into a rough approximation of his original form, which only causes Frobo's Eye Beams to go haywire when she plugs him in. This gives her the idea to look up tutorials online.
- The Internet Is for Cats: Zigzagged. Anne shows Hop Pop and Sprig that the Internet is full of cat videos, with the three of them getting hooked on them, but Polly's focus on finding a way to repair Frobo ASAP means she actually uses Internet access for learning robotics and engineering, with the episode's end noting how much more capable she's become from her efforts.Anne: Wow. Polly's really gotten into this computer stuff, huh?
Hop Pop: Maybe we should use the inter-webs to educate ourselves too, instead of watching cat videos.
Sprig: (whips out Anne's Phone) Did someone say cat videos!?
Hop Pop: (as the trio start watching and dancing along to a goofy cat dance video) Ain't that cute? - Instant Expert: Played With. Polly's haphazard attempts to fix Frobo don't succeed at first, but receiving instruction on robotics from online YouTube videos give her a better understanding of how his internal systems and electronics fit together, and at the end of the episode she's able to have a Technobabble discussion with the IT girls over Frobo's systems, with Anne Lampshading how fast she's learned engineering.
- Plug 'n' Play Technology: Zig-zagged. Simply slapping some common remote batteries into Frobo's power slot does nothing because the compartment doesn't have battery contacts, but somehow the larger battery pack in a animatronic bear toy has a connector that is exactly the right fit for the one Frobo uses.
- Shout-Out:
- Anne's creepy teddy bear is a parody of Teddy Ruxpin.
- The movie Anne and the Plantars watch is a clear riff on Attack of the Clones, specifically of the scene where Anakin talks to Padme about how he hates sand.
- A poster for “My Hero Macadamia” can be seen in the background.
- The montage of Polly searching the internet is full of these:
- One of the websites she visits is about “Neopals”
- The Image Search of frog robots includes a frog "Gumdam", a frog carrying Cloud's Buster Sword, and a frog with "menacing" symbols superimposed over it.
- While Polly is browsing YouTube, one of the videos she scrolls past is a Best of Angry Gamers Compilation video, complete with a similarly styled logo, while another is about a newly-released frog skin in "Forkknife".
- Shown Their Work: The Internet montage is very accurate for an animated cartoon. Most of the fake posts Polly sees look like things that would actually be posted in The New '20s.
- Status Quo Is God: Polly's attempts to bring Frobo back cause the garage to be wrecked with several holes and dents in the roof and a crater to appear in the back yard, yet the front of the house is back to normal the next episode.
- Swiss-Army Tears: Polly's tears fall into Frobo's circuitry, causing a spark which reboots his original memories.
- Take That!: Anne, Sprig and Hop Pop are shown watching an Expy of the Star Wars prequels, with Anne questioning how they can possibly prefer them to the originals.Sprig: Look, Anne, we just watched them in order with no context.
Hop Pop: You can't blame us for not having nostalgia. - Technobabble: Polly engages in a scientific themed conversation with the IT Girls regarding Frobo's development.
- That Poor Cat: Domino is on the roof, and very nearly gets incinerated by Frobo's eye beams, causing her to yip and screech.
- This Is Reality: The IT Girls say that because of how big Frobo is, he can't be activated in a garage, otherwise he'll set the whole place on fire. Polly brushes them off, but finds out too late that they were right— if anything, the damage Frobo is capable of, even in his junked state, far outstrips what the girls assumed.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The season 3 promotional poster prominently showcases an active Frobo, with his usual eyes instead of his blue factory default peepers, showing that Polly will be successful in restoring Frobo to his old self, even after he appears to have been killed once more by episode's end. Furthermore, it also shows Frobo's going to be reconfigured into an RC-car esque form, spoiling that Polly's attempts to restore him to his original look wouldn't be fully successful, and that his remaining Amphibia-robot parts they managed to drag through the portal with them would also be scrapped somehow.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The IT Girls offhandedly comment that they noticed Polly had a tail in their video chat, but they apparently end up overlooking it in favour of the life-threatening danger she gets herself into and getting to geek out over Frobo's technology.
- Verbal Backspace: To cheer Polly up when she first can't revive Frobo, Anne shows her Teddy Lumpkins, a creepy doll that used to be her robot friend. It creepily says, "I eat eyes." This freaks the others out, until the toy clarifies, "...cream. I eat ice cream."
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Polly openly calls out her family for their unwillingness to support her in trying to bring back Frobo. She even calls them out for acting like that they'd rather do nothing and leave her best friend to stay dead. Anne, Sprig and Hop Pop's uncomfortable looks at the accusation shows that they're aware it's a cold choice to make for somebody they basically adopted into the family, but they stand by their choice out of concern for Polly's safety.
- On the flipside, Hop Pop and Anne call Polly out for being so reckless and impatient, pointing out that she could've gotten herself or others killed. Sprig specifically points out that her first attempt led to his hair being put on fire, so he's in favor of her waiting until they can get some professional help with the project.
- What Were You Thinking?: Hop Pop says this to Polly after her disastrous first attempt at reviving Frobo ends up powering up his Eye Beams, nearly vaporising them, Domino and incinerating Jeff's newly-delivered limited edition video game controller.
- Writing Around Trademarks: The logo on the box Mr. Boonchuy is holding is clearly the Amazon logo, but flipped vertically to avoid trademark issues.
