Light Work
Late at night, Mrs. Portillo calls Manny with an urgent problem- her chandelier is about to fall out of the ceiling! Manny can see what needs to be done right away, but encounters a very problematic conundrum trying to execute the repair- the power in the living room needs to be off in order for him to safely work on the chandelier, but with the power off it’s too dark to actually see what’s he’s doing.
”Light Work” contains instances of the following:
- Audible Gleam: One appears on Dusty after Manny cleans her blade with a sponge, and soon after Felipe gets one when Manny cleans him after he falls into a container of spackle (It Makes Sense in Context).
- Banana Peel: One of these spills out of the trash can Fluffy knocks over at the end of the episode; Mr. Lopart promptly steps on it, slips, and falls backwards, landing in the tub he’d just given Fluffy a bath in.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: Manny needs the power to be turned off in order to safely repair an electric chandelier, but with the power off it’s too dark for him to see what he’s doing in the repair. (Oh, by the way his flashlight is out of battery.)
- Cats Hate Water: Mr. Lopart is seen trying to give Fluffy a bath, with her being as uncooperative as you’d expect. By the end of the episode, he’s finally managed to get her clean… only for her to immediately jump out of his arms and make a beeline for the garbage can.
- Contrived Coincidence: Kelly provides a double example- she just so happens to drop by Mrs. Portillo’s house (with a Hand Wavey excuse about being there to give Mrs. Portillo some glue sticks to help her make paper flowers) when Manny is there to repair her chandelier, and she just so happens to have the exact kind of light canopy he needs to fix the chandelier mixed in with the junk in her purse.
- Covered in Gunge: This happens to Felipe after Pat accidentally knocks him into a jar of spackle.
- Furry Confusion: Once again, Manny has his flashlight, which will retroactively become an example of this when Flicker is introduced later in the season.
- Hollywood Darkness: When Mrs. Portillo turns off the power to her living room, it becomes dark enough that the characters can’t see anything, but the audience still has a perfectly good view of the room.
- I've Heard of That — What Is It?:Pat: Oh, a canopy! (beat) What’s a canopy?
- Offscreen Crash: After taking a bath, the newly clean Fluffy jumps out of Mr. Lopart’s arms and causes one. The camera then cuts to her sitting in trash spilling out of an overturned garbage can.
- Pun-Based Title: On the phrase “many hands make light work”.
- Shaped Like Itself: After sniffing Mrs. Portillo’s paper flowers, Pat says they smell like paper.
- Simple Solution Won't Work: Manny tries to resolve the above-mentioned Catch-22 Dilemma by using his flashlight, but his flashlight is out of battery and Mrs. Portillo doesn’t have proper replacement batteries for it.
- Slippery Skid: While trying to give Fluffy a bath, Mr. Lopart slips on a bar of soap and falls into the tub of water he’d prepared for her.
- Slow Light: A ray of light from Mrs. Portillo’s kitchen lamp takes its sweet time bouncing between various mirrors (and a very shiny toaster) Manny and the tools had set up before finally shining on the chandelier in her living room.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Invoked by Mr. Lopart when he puts a pink bow on Fluffy after finally managing to give her a bath.
Abuelito’s Tomates
Abuelito’s tomato garden is in tatters, thanks to a neighbor’s dog who keeps slipping into Abuelito’s backyard through a hole in the fence. Abuelito calls Manny to come fix the fence; however, in the process of doing so, Manny makes an interesting discovery about the dog.
”Abuelito’s Tomates” provides examples of:
- Balloonacy: Fluffy grabs the string of one of Mr. Lopart’s balloons as it drifts away, and is promptly lifted off the ground by it, although the added weight does seem to make the balloon drift around horizontally instead of simply floating up into the sky.
- Chekhov's Gun: Abuelito offhandedly mentions having played fetch with the neighbor's dog once at one point; as it turns out, the reason said dog was destroying his tomato patch was because the red ball he had it fetch looked a lot like a tomato, and it just wanted to play with him again.
- Continuity Nod: In the opening of the episode, the tools are coloring pages from a coloring book; Felipe has colored an image of Supremoguy yellow, while the cover of the coloring book itself contains an image of the Mighty Little Toolbox, along with some cartoon crayons.
- Cuteness Proximity: The dog that’s destroying Abuelito’s tomato garden causes this in Pat, much to Turner’s annoyance.Pat: Oh, who’s a cuddly-wuddly tomato-eating poochy? You are! Oh, you are!
- Duct Tape for Everything: Mr. Lopart attempts to keep balloons from floating away by duct-taping their strings to the ground; as you may expect, this does not work out very well.
- Foreign Language Title: The title is half-Spanish, with “Tomates” meaning (as you may guess) “tomatoes”.
- Pest Episode: Manny and the tools have to deal with a dog (apparently owned by Abuelito’s neighbor) that’s tearing up Abuelito’s tomato garden.
- Slippery Skid: At the beginning of the episode, while the tools are coloring, Pat ends up landing on a red crayon and slipping.
- Tyop on the Cover: The episode double-subverts this: “Tomates” is not a misspelling but the Spanish word for “tomatoes”; however, when Handy Manny was added to Disney+, whoever uploaded the episodes entered this one’s title as “Abuelito’s Tomatoes”, introducing a typo while thinking they were fixing one.
