Determined to not put in the effort for a gift for Grandma Gloria's birthday, the kids try finding a fabled ceramics room supposedly walled off in the '80s due to a kiln fire. Meanwhile, Teddy makes himself uncomfortably at home at the restaurant while fixing cell phone screens.
The Secret Tropes Room of Secrets:
- The Alcoholic: Mr. Ambrose claims that the beverage he's drinking on the job isn't coffee.
- Ambiguously Bi: Gene calls seventh-grade Mr. Frond "sexy-tary".
- Appeal to Flattery: Louise gets Mr. Frond off the kids' trail by claiming people need his job more than ever.
- Awful Truth: Mr. Frond believes if kids knew what he did, they wouldn't think he was perfect and would lose respect for him. This is ignoring the fact that literally nobody respects him and, as Tina proved, such an action would convince kids to not make mistakes like he did.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: It's only a brief mention, but Bob hints that he'd like for the kids to start making gifts for his father, indicating that his relationship with Big Bob is on the mend.
- Blatant Lies: Bob is speaking in a noticeably stilted manner when he claims it'd be horrible if Gloria happened to die soon.
- Crappy Homemade Gift: The episode begins with Linda admonishing Tina, Gene, and Louise for their "half-assed" homemade birthday gifts for their grandmother (such as a necklace made of one noodle on a string). Rather than put in the effort of making better gifts this year, the kids try to break into the titular abandoned ceramics room and pass off other kids' old pottery as their own. They succeed in getting in, but ultimately realize that a genuinely homemade gift, even if it turns out crappy, is better than lying to their family.
- Chekhov's Gun: When the kids ask adults about the ceramics room, Mr. Frond mentions having been seventh-grade class secretary at the time of the supposed kiln fire. This forms a major part of why Frond wants to keep it secret.
- Dark Secret: Back when he was running for seventh grade class secretary, Mr. Frond stole some ballots and hid them inside one of the vases in the ceramics room. He felt guilty and was going to confess, but then the ceramics room burned down and was closed up, so he kept it hidden for all these years.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The episode title invokes this trope.
- Embarrassing Cover Up: Tina and Gene are assigned by Louise to throw away the dust produced by breaking into the ceramics room. Their idea of trying to do it quietly and without raising suspicion is to say things like the following:Tina: Man, all this dandruff is so embarrassing.
Gene: What's all this cocaine doing at school? Throw it away. - Entitled Bastard:
- Teddy makes himself way too comfortable at the restaurant when he sets up his repair work there, to the point of acting like this is his business too and using the employee bathroom (which he backs up).
- Gloria apparently thinks Tina, Gene and Louise need to make her better birthday gifts, despite the fact that we've never seen her giving them anything for any occasion. As awful as the kids' gifts are, at least they do something for her.
- Given Name Reveal: Gene refers to Teddy as Theodore. Assuming Gene is correct, this is the first time Teddy's actual name has been stated.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Louise goes through hoops to find and retrieve an already handmade ceramic from the hidden ceramics room because she can't be bothered to make an actual handmade gift herself that would take considerably less time than doing the whole quest, until she realizes that she doesn't want to cheat like Mr. Frond did.
- Heel Realization: Louise has one after seeing how desperately Frond's working to keep his Dark Secret hidden and what kind of person it turned him into. She ultimately decides she'd rather work on a gift for her grandparents instead of pretending she did and then spend years lying about it to the people she loves.
- Henpecked Husband: It's suggested that Bob is only telling the kids to give Gloria better gifts because Linda is right there.
- Hypocritical Humor: Teddy is the one who blames Bob for apparently being too disruptive in his poor job, though Bob pretends to agree with him just because blaming Teddy would surely break him apart.
- Ignored Epiphany: When it's pointed out Mr. Frond would be better able to relate to kids if they knew he cheated during the class secretary election because the kids would feel he wasn't so different from them and feel comfortable to truly open up about their problems, Frond instead decides to keep his secret hidden and further wrecks his ability to be a competent guidance counselor. He even ignores the advice as it's proven true right in front of him with Louise.
- Irony: Louise doesn't want to half-ass making a half-assed handmade gift for her grandparents, so she puts a lot of work to find the ceramics room just to pick an already-made handmade ceramic. And to further add salt to the wound, when the kids do actually make ceramics, they're god-awful anyway (Linda's "necklace" is the equivalent of putting a heavy rock to wear, and Bob's is literally a lump of clay).
- Laborious Laziness: Tina points out to Louise that they're working harder at finding the secret ceramics room and then breaking into it than they would actually making their own gifts.
- Never My Fault: At the end of the B-plot, Teddy has the gall to say Bob is the obnoxious one after spending an entire episode being disruptive and generally annoying. Bob only goes along with it because it'd take less time than trying to explain the truth.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Bob finds it difficult to convincingly act like he'd be upset if Gloria were to pass away. Given it's Gloria, it's also hard not to sympathize with him.
- Only Sane Man: Tina repeatedly tries to reason with Louise and Gene that it makes more sense to make their gifts instead of wasting time they could be spending on that to search for gifts that were already made and passing them off as their own.
- Shout-Out:
- The first Burger of the Day is the "Sous-Vide and the Banshees Burger".
- The final Burger of the Day is the "We Bought a Zucchini Burger".
- In a flashback scene, one of young Mr. Frond's campaign posters reads "May the Frond Be With You."
- Rose says she knows the ceramics room got boarded up because she made some Monchhichi mugs she never got back.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Mr. Frond refuses to confess to his Dark Secret because he assumes that the kids listen to him because they think he's perfect. He is very wrong.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: By the end of Bob's subplot, Teddy announces he can't stay at the restaurant to fix cell phones because Bob is too annoying. Bob is more than happy to agree with Teddy just to get him out.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Teddy makes himself a little too at home while he fixes broken cell phones.
- Trivially Obvious: At the end of the episode, Louise asks Tina what Tina thinks of the pinch-pot she made. Tina replies, "It's, um... Well, you made it."
- Vote Early, Vote Often: Turns out that when Mr. Frond was running for seventh grade class secretary, he stole some of the ballots for his rival and hid them in the ceramics room, allowing him to pull ahead and win the election. He then felt horrible about it and was going to confess—except the vote for class secretary was the same week as the kiln fire, so with the evidence sealed away (seemingly for good) he decided to keep quiet about it.
