The Belcher kids and fellow students combat a possible lice outbreak, and a bonkers school nurse. Meanwhile, Bob gets noisy new stool-tops.
Lice Tropes Are Lice:
- Attention Whore: Nurse Liz is desperate to have something to brag about at her next school reunion, which is why she makes up the "super-lice" infestation.
- Berserk Button: Tina's is pushed when she learns Mr. Frond is cheating on Gayle, wherein she holds Frond down long enough for Nurse Liz to shave his head (and deliberately does so roughly enough to actually hurt him).
- Big "WHAT?!":Tammy: I can't have lice! I go to private school!
Tina: This is public school.
Tammy: WHAAAT!? - Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Nurse Liz is a lot off her rocker.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: Louise and Tammy manage to break out via the library, but Louise convinces Tammy to go back and save the other kids from getting their heads shaved.
- Continuity Nod: This episode finally explains the discrepancy between Tammy's brunette appearance in "Bad Tina" and her blonde appearance throughout the rest of the series—according to Tina, she dyed her hair.
- Drunk with Power: Tina as Nurse Liz's assistant. Or, as Louise puts it, she's drunk with lack of power since Tina doesn't actually get to do anything besides hand out Band-Aids and ice and neither of those are useful for a lice infestation.
- Dumb Blonde: During their escape, Tammy implies she can't tell left and right apart.
- Epic Fail: After fleeing the nurse's office, Tina tells most of the kids that she knows the school like the back of her hand... only to lead them down a dead-end.
- Fascinating Eyebrow: When a half-shaved Mr. Frond shows up at the library looking for Louise and Tammy, Mr. Ambrose gives him a very confused look upon seeing his new haircut.
- Foreshadowing:
- Nurse Liz can be seen complaining about how Wagstaff never has anything exciting like epidemics or outbreaks. It later turns out she faked the entire lice outbreak for this reason.
- Liz also mentions that no hospital would hire her, hinting at her completely batshit nature (or at the very least her inability to properly do her job).
- Gag Haircut: Mr. Frond doesn't get completely shaved by Nurse Liz, making what remains of his hair look completely stupid.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Louise tries to make Nurse Liz think she's got lice as well, hoping she'll be too vain to shave her own head and make her stop. Nurse Liz immediately responds by shaving her entire head and eyebrows while staring at Louise, with Rudy admiring her commitment to do the latter as well.
- Jerkass: You'd think that a guy as desperate as Frond wouldn't cheat on the one woman to truly return his affections, but nope.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Frond's revelations here retroactively make Louise's actions in "The Cook, the Steve, the Gayle, & Her Lover" a case of this. She was trying to break up Gayle and Frond for entirely selfish reasons, but she hit the nail on the head when she claimed that Frond would only break Gayle's heart in the future, which he does here by cheating on her. In comparison, Louise splitting them up before they got serious would seem almost merciful.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Frond makes no effort in trying in prevent Liz from shaving children's heads after her cock-and-bull hypothesis and later states that it will happen just so he doesn't have to be the only one with a shaved head. Add in the fact he's seeing other people aside from Gayle and he justly deserves being the only one to have the majority of his hair cut off (aside from Nurse Liz, but hers was willingly self-inflicted).
- Noodle Incident: After her ruse is exposed, Nurse Liz laments that she'll have to go to the school reunion with nothing to show but a shaved head, again.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Nurse Liz initially seems to be overreacting to an actual problem, but then it's revealed that she was faking the lice outbreak from the beginning.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Louise is strong enough to single-handedly overpower Tammy.
- Playing Sick: Louise and Gene each feign health problems to get out of something they don't like (a pop quiz and gym class respectively). This gets them caught up in Nurse Liz's shenanigans.
- Saying Too Much: Tina seemed almost willing to let Mr. Frond go before he mentioned having a date with someone besides Gayle.
- Sherlock Scan: Tina notices Nurse Liz squinting her eyes while she reads the medical encyclopedia and recognizes the spectacle marks on her nose as indentations from glasses pads. She realizes that Nurse Liz is farsighted and thus couldn't have seen lice on Tammy's head, and was making the whole infestation thing up for attention.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Mr. Frond of all people. When Nurse Liz informs him about the lice epidemic, Mr. Frond suggests that they deal with it by calling the kids' parents and sending the infected home.
- Status Quo Is God: After this episode, Gayle and Frond are no longer a couple, reversing a six-episode changenote to the status quo.
- Threat Backfire: Louise takes off Nurse Liz's rubber glove hat and rubs her head on Tammy's so she's now exposed to the lice, thinking that will get her to stop shaving heads. Instead, Nurse Liz shaves her own head, eyebrows included, without a second thought.
- Toilet Humor: Bob is horrified to realize that the new stool tops make whoopee-cushion noises when you sit on them, and has to "break them in" before a funeral party comes to eat at the restaurant. When the funeral party arrives, the widow sits on a stool and there's a fart sound. The Belchers and Teddy rejoice when they realize it wasn't the stool and she really farted.
- Wham Line: The following exchange between Tina and Mr. Frond, which completely shatters a recent change to the status quo.Frond: I have a date. I have to match my picture! It's already not very close!
Tina: A date with someone besides my Aunt Gayle?
Frond: ...Maybe. - Would Rather Suffer: When Louise points out that Tammy has dandruff instead of lice, Tammy claims she'd rather have lice.
