Picture Perfect
Manny and the tools take a trip to Mr. Diller’s variety store- and end up being the 100th customers to walk through the door, earning them a prize- any item from the store, for free. Unfortunately, there are nine of them and only one free item, and the tools can’t decide on what it should be…
Tropes in “Picture Perfect” include:
- Alliterative Title: Picture Perfect.
- Buffy Speak: Mr. Diller at one point forgets the word “tool”, and calls Squeeze a “fixit-thingy”.
- Call-Back: News reporter Dwayne Bouffant shows up to interview Manny about being Mr. Diller’s 100th customer and winning a free item for it.
- Continuity Cavalcade:
- Mr. Diller’s variety store contains loads of items from part episodes on its shelves- there’s the fairy princess costume Squeeze offered Mr. Lopart in “Halloween”, the kind of glue Manny uses in “A Sticky Fix”, Spiffy Soap, the same kind of trophies that Lyle and Leland Lopart won in the Soapbox Derby, the Mighty Little Toolbox coloring book the tools were coloring in “Abuelito’s Tomates”, the movie that Manny rented at the end of “Elliot’s New Job”... the list goes on.
- Another one occurs when Kelly looks at the photos that came out of Mr. Diller’s photo machine- there’s one of the Christmas tree in the park, one of Rusty bobbing for apples at the Halloween party, one of Felipe singing at the talent show, and photos from the tardeada, Manny’s birthday, and the 10th anniversary of Mr. Lopart’s candy store.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: One of the photos that comes out of Mr. Diller’s photo machine depicts Turner dancing with a rose between his teeth; Turner does not want the other tools to see it. Notably, it’s also one of the few photos that isn’t a Continuity Nod (well, aside from the general idea of Turner being unwilling to admit that he was dancing), making it unclear what the context of it is.Turner (moving to block the photo with his body): Okay, we don’t have to look at that one.
- Fictional Document: Mr. Diller’s store contains quite a few books- these include a book that depicts a dog conducting a train, a book apparently about a saw with a broken tooth, and a book with a cartoon Animate Inanimate Object pencil on the cover.
- Irony: Mr. Lopart got a hook to hang his keys on so he wouldn’t always be losing them, but ended up losing the hook.Pat: Maybe he should get a hook for the hook.
- Noodle Incident: One of the photos that comes out of Mr. Diller’s photo machine depicts Turner dancing with a rose between his teeth; the only other thing we know about this event is that Turner does not want the other tools to see the photo.
- Offscreen Crash: This happens when Stretch accidentally knocks down some mannequin heads while trying to reach an item on a high shelf; the viewers then see that one of the wigs has landed on Turner.
- Percussive Maintenance: Mr. Diller at one point thumps his malfunctioning photo machine in an effort to get it to work; this makes it start spewing out photos.
- Remember the New Guy?: Mr. Diller, the owner of a variety store, is “introduced” this way. His failure to appear in previous episodes could possibly be excuses, however, as the fact that Manny is only his 100th customer indicates that he probably hasn’t been open for very long.
- Umpteenth Customer: Manny and the tools are the 100th customer to enter Mr. Diller’s store, and as a prize get to have one item from the store for free; however, as they came in together, it’s not clear which one of them should actually get the prize.
- We Sell Everything: This is the point of a variety store and, indeed, Mr. Diller’s shop has sponges, soap, bootlaces, a veritable Continuity Cavalcade /
Prop Recycling Center of items from previous episodes, wigs, cameras, and much, much more. - Worst News Judgment Ever: For some reason, Dwayne Bouffant considers Manny being the Umpteenth Customer at Mr. Diller’s store and winning a small prize for it as making him worthy of being interviewed for the five o’clock news.
Some Assembly Required
While installing a new jungle gym outside the community center, Manny discovers that an important component is missing. He goes off to Kelly’s hardware store for a replacement, and leaves the tools behind with instructions to sort the other parts. Unfortunately, while he’s gone, the tools decide they want to complete the build themselves- without the instruction manual.
“Some Assembly Required” provides examples of:
- Anthropomorphic Food: A box of crackers has a pair of cartoonish anthropomorphic crackers printed on its side- presumably, they’re mascots made by whatever company made the food.
- Brick Joke: About halfway through the episode, Manny encounters Kelly, who is building a toy airplane for the tools. At the end of the episode, after the jungle gym has finally been assembled correctly, Kelly shows up at the playground and launches the toy plane, which promptly demonstrates an uncanny knack for chasing Rusty around the playground.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Manny tells the tools to sort all the jungle gym’s parts while he goes to Kelly’s for replacement wood steps, Pat decides to sort them by color.
- Compartment Shot: One happens when Felipe looks down a hole a nut he kicked fell into.
- Death Glare: A gopher pops up to give Felipe one after a lugnut he kicked falls into the gopher's hole.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: This ensues after Kelly’s toy plane chases Rusty around the playground, and ends up “picking” him up and carrying him into the air.Rusty: Hey! That was fun!
(Everyone laughs) - Pun: When Felipe is "golfing" with lugnuts (trying to entertain himself by kicking them all into a pile), and one nut overshoots the pile and lands in a hole in the ground.Felipe: Hey, I got a hole in one!
- Read the Freaking Manual:
- When Manny goes to Kelly’s for a replacement wood step, he takes the jungle gym’s assembly manual with him so he can show Kelly what kind of wood he needs. This means that, when the tools decide it would be a good idea to assemble the jungle gym without Manny, they don’t have the manual handy; naturally, this leads to them producing an absolute disaster.
- When Kelly is assembling a model plane for the tools, she can’t figure out how to get the propeller to fit- until Manny points out the instructions for the plane are on the box (a fact she’d somehow missed), allowing her to finish the plane.
- Rod And Reel Repurposed: Mr. Lopart decided to attach one of Fluffy’s cat toys (shaped like a small frog) to a fishing rod so that he couldn’t lose it; naturally, he loses it anyway when he casts it out for Fluffy to get, tries to reel it in when she won’t play with it, the toy gets stuck in a sewer grate, and the fishing line snaps when he tries to reel it in harder.
