Poster by Tara Billinger
Max Premiere Date: 6/15/2023
Written by: Kyle Lau
The clones go to Arroyo Fest for spring break, but when the bus breaks down in the middle of the desert, they must deal with the heat of the desert as well as their tensions… and also a cannibal horde.
Tropes in this episode:
- Commonality Connection: Cleo and Frida start building a friendship over the pop musician Mila Brulee.
- "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: In the heat of the desert, JFK's brain expands to fill his big head properly which causes him to become intelligent and emotionally mature as well as giving him a refined accent that pronounces Rs. As JFK's brain cools back down, he uses his final moments of lucidity to tell Joan she deserves someone better and she should break up with him.
- Hollywood Mirage: Scudworth and Butlertron hallucinate and start seeing Vegas, going crazy enough to go through a drug montage and heat stroke.
- Island Help Message: Joan tries making one with shrimp, but after JFK becomes smart, they use rocks and sticks to make morse code for help.
- Or Was It a Dream?: Scudworth and Butlertron wake up back in the desert after a bender and believe they hallucinated their whole adventure in Vegas from heat exhaustion. However, at Arroyo Fest, pop singer Mila Brunée sings her cover of the song Butlertron composed when the two accidentally ended up as DJs.
- Running Gag: This episode's running gag is Topher Bus and his shrimp obsession.
- Ship Tease: Between Harriet and Confucius. The latter pretends to be a hot guy online and catfishes Harriet, but when the former realizes that her online admirer is a lie, the guilty latter comforts her by telling her that there’s still so much for her to live for by listing all the things that she posted on her feed. This makes Harriet realize that Confucius was definitelyahotguy69 and at the end of the episode, when he’s disappointed that no one online missed him in his absence, gives him a heart on one of his posts.
- Take That!: Joan makes a jab about In-n-Out's fries being lukewarm.
- We Want Our Idiot Back!: Subverted. When JFK becomes smarter and more sensitive in his heat stroke induced state, Joan finds that she actually finds him more attractive this way than his usual himbo behavior. It gets to the point that when things start cooling down and he starts returning to his normal self, she becomes an angry dictator towards the others and forces them to help her keep him hot. Her disappointment over JFK returning to normal anyway causes Smart JFK to realize that she needs to be with someone that can be there for her emotionally as well as sexually, and he gives his consent to her breaking up with him since he’d never do it to her.
