When Louise breaks a rule sticking up for another student, Linda sneaks her out for a reward ice-cream. Back at the restaurant, a short-staffed Bob enlists Teddy for help.
Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: Mr. Frond punishes Louise for pantsing a bully, even though Louise was sticking up for Pocket-Sized Rudy, and the two brothers bullying him are apparently let off the hook. Mr. Frond even acknowledges that Louise is probably right about defending a kid, but maintains that he has to keep a "zero-tolerance policy".
- Body Horror: Frond's mother needs an operation to remove six ingrown toenails. On one foot. Linda appropriately gags.
- Bystander Syndrome: Part of why Louise stepped in to help Pocket-Sized Rudy was because nobody else would.
- Call-Back: Linda is still mortal enemies with Colleen Caviello.
- Character Development: While Bob and Tina have largely seen Louise as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold (due to both being able to appeal to her good side), and Gene sees Louise as his partner-in-crime, Linda has mostly seen Louise as a delinquent and troublemaker who constantly undermines her authority, emphasized at the start of the episode when she remarks about Louise getting in trouble with an annoyed tone. Throughout the episode, she comes to terms with the fact that Louise is capable of doing good in her own vigilante-like way.
- Chekhov's Gag: Gene and Tina's notes come in handy when Louise bullshits that they're part of her "essay", saying Gene's drawings of an angry hot dog are who she is, while Tina's failed attempt at a haiku represents the kind of person she wants to be (poetic and more open to others). A frazzled Mr. Frond decides to accept it and lets Louise go.
- Continuity Nod: Within the episode — Bob takes several orders from the bike riders meeting at his restaurant before Teddy takes over. One customer asks for the special without cheese and another customer asks for more fries. The next time we see Bob at the grill, he has four orders plated. One burger doesn't have cheese and one plate has noticeably more fries than the other three.
- Description Cut: Linda says that Bob probably doesn't need her help back at the restaurant. Cut to Bob swamped with orders as cyclists come to eat after a big race.
- Detention Episode: Louise is given an in-school suspension after standing up for Pocket-Sized Rudy. Linda thinks it's unfair and breaks her out and takes her for ice cream, then has to sneak her back in before Frond finds out.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Louise may be a troublemaker, but she draws the line at bullies, pantsing one in defense of Pocket-Sized Rudy.
- Even Frond's mom is exasperated by her son's attitude to the point of asking if he's joyless.
- Eye Scream: Teddy gets jalapeno in his eyes after touching the burgers despite Bob's warnings.
- Female Gaze: Tina stares at Jimmy Jr.'s butt while he passes a note under the ISS door.
- Getting Suspended Is Awesome: Defied, as Mr. Frond admits that kids see getting sent home as a reward, so the punishment for pantsing is an in-school suspension.
- The Ghost: Pocket-Sized Rudy is mentioned again. This time, we get to briefly see the top of his head, which gives a better sense of his size.
- I Reject Your Reality: By the end of the day, Teddy keeps talking about how he pulled through as a server and he and Bob make a fantastic team. This despite Bob repeatedly interrupting Teddy to inform him no, they didn't, and Teddy's a really bad server.
- Ironic Name: The podiatrist Mr. Frond and his mother go to is named Dr. Hand. Frond lampshades how unfitting the name is.
- Karma Houdini: Timmy and Scott apparently get away with bullying Pocket-Sized Rudy. One of them getting pantsed is nothing compared to Louise getting an in-school suspension, when they should have received it instead.
- Keep Away: The two O'Brien brothers do this with Pocket-Sized Rudy's lunch.
- Meta Guy: Mr. Frond's mother speaks for the audience when asking her son point-blank if he's joyless.Mr. Frond: Don't start that again, Mother!
- The Millstone: Bob is understaffed enough to request Teddy for help. Teddy proceeds to do such a horrible job that Bob might as well have done the lunch rush himself.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Sticking up for Pocket-Sized Rudy is what lands Louise in trouble. Linda agrees that it's unfair, and decides to sneak Louise out of school for some ice cream in an effort to teach her that doing the right thing and standing up for others is worth it.
- Odd Friendship: Zeke and Ms. Schnur, of all people, get along.
- Pants-Pulling Prank: Louise is put in detention for pantsing one of the O'Brien brothers as payback for playing keep-away with Pocket-Sized Rudy's lunch. Later, Linda admits to Louise that she pantsed a boy when she was a kid, though in her case she also pulled down the boy's underwear as well.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Mr. Branca lets Gene and Tina slip their notes under the ISS door because they're not entering the room themselves.
- The Reveal: After being The Ghost in his debut appearance, we finally learn what Pocket-Sized Rudy looks like—namely, he has brown hair in a hairstyle that resembles Bob's hairstyle as a young kid.
- Selective Enforcement: Two brothers team up to relentlessly bully Pocket-Sized Rudy? Frond turns a blind eye. Louise bullies them back to defend Rudy? Frond immediately punishes her.
- Shout-Out:
- While Linda and Louise sit and eat ice cream, the stores behind them are Some Like It Pop Old Timey Soda Shop and Smoothie Criminal.
- The end credits sequence spoofs Dirty Dancing, with Bob and Teddy singing "I've Had the Time of My Life", then doing the famous lift at the end.
- Tempting Fate: Linda decides she can take the day off, remarking that it's not like the restaurant will be too busy for Bob to handle. Cut to Bob having to deal with an insane amount of customers by himself.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Bob's reaction to asking Teddy to help.Bob: Oh, God help me.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: As awful as Teddy's service was, Bob ended up getting a lot of customers, with most of them being implied to have ordered more than a single burger, resulting in a day of very good business.
- To Be Lawful or Good: This episode firmly takes the side of good. Linda breaks Louise out of ISS to reward her for doing the morally right thing.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Last we saw of Colleen Caviello, she was just annoyingly smug about her baked ziti. Since then, she's apparently graduated to full-on sabotaging other cooks by tricking everyone into making the same thing at Linda's bake sale.
- Vague Age: Teddy remarks that he has to start working out after meeting a 49 year-old guy in decent shape, implying he's that age or a little older, but it's never made clear.
- Whole-Plot Reference: As per the episode title, the first half spoofs Thelma & Louise, with someone named Louise going on the run after having committed a questionable act for understandable reasons and being accompanied by someone close to them. The second half has more in line with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as both Louise and Ferris have skipped school for a fun day out and are trying to make it back to where they're expected to be before a suspicious faculty member can find them missing and prove that they ditched.
