Middleton High's annual talent show is coming up and Kim's rival, Bonnie Rockwaller, is obnoxiously confident that she'll win with her ballet routine. To take her down a peg, Ron signs Kim up for the competition (without consulting her first). Kim isn't sure she has any real performance talents — she used to do some singing, but always had a problem hitting high notes.
A call then comes in from Wade: it seems that Professor Dementor has stolen a device that allows travel over phone lines. Team Possible retrieves the device from Dementor's lair, but Kim is puzzled by the fact that he insists that the "Transportulator" was his own invention. Ron shrugs this off, assuming that Dementor was lying, and Wade concurs.
Next, things get stranger as Wade tells Kim and Ron to bring the device to a pickup point, which turns out to be an empty hanger. Kim suspects that something isn't right when a distorted voice over the hanger speakers tells her to put the device down and leave, but follows the instructions. After they depart the scene, Shego retrieves the device and brings it to Dr. Drakken, who was creating fake broadcasts from "Wade" to manipulate Team Possible.
Drakken boasts about his plans for the device...and then discovers that it needs an adapter to plug into the phone line. Shego offers to fetch it, but Drakken decides to send the heroes on another fake mission. They retrieve the adapter, and then Kim sends Ron home to do some preparations for the talent show while she delivers it.
However, as she arrives at the hanger, the real Wade calls in, explaining that a virus had taken him offline. Realizing that she'd been tricked, Kim bursts in on Drakken's fake-signal broadcasting room, but gets blindsided by Shego and captured.
Kim finds herself stuck in a particularly fiendish death trap, with little time to escape and make her way back to school for the talent show. After Bonnie's performance, Kim is up next, but Rufus signs Ron up at the last minute to help stall. Ron does a variety of acts like dancing, playing glass harp, and karate. Kim escapes the death trap and uses the teleport device to return to Middleton High and give a flawless musical rendition. But Ron is named winner of the competition, proving, in Mr. Barkin's words, that "quantity beats quality."
This episode provides examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Dementor may have been the rightful and legitimate owner and creator of the Transportulator, but given its capabilities and Drakken's keen interest in it, he likely designed it for similar villainous motivations.
- Batman Gambit: Ron signing Kim up for the talent show. He knows she wants Bonnie knocked down a peg or two and that Kim won't give Bonnie the satisfaction of dropping out.
- Bottomless Pits: Parodied.Drakken: (to Kim) First, you'll be sealed in a reinforced titanium box. Next, you will be dropped into this bottomless chasm. Then, the chasm will be filled with water. Then, man-eating sharks and a giant squid will be released into the water!
Shego: Huh? Wait... If the chasm is bottomless, how can you fill it with water?
Drakken: (exasperated) It's VERY VERY DEEP, all right?! - Chekhov's Gun: The class ring Kim received at the beginning of the episode comes in handy for escaping Drakken's Death Trap.
- Dark Horse Victory: Ron wins the talent show with the various improvised stunts he comes up with to stall for time until Kim showed up.
- Express Lane Limit: Drakken gloats about how the teleportation device will let him enter any high-security area he pleases; Shego interjects that he could also use it to get into the "ten items or less" line with eleven items.
- Drakken asks if she's making a serious suggestion or just mocking him. She answers that it's "about 30% serious, 70% mock".
- Fire-Breathing Diner: As part of Ron's presentation in the Talent Show, he eats the content of a package of "Diablo sauce", spitting fire on the judges.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: In Drakken's presentation, you can see the "Bottomless chasm" filled with water only down to a few inches before hitting the supposedly non-existent bottom, thus raising the question on how to fill a Bottomless Pit right before Shego herself does it explicitly.
- Foreshadowing:
- Wade's communication receives static at the beginning of the episode, signalling that he's being hacked.
- Kim has a much somber look on her face as Ron excitedly starts talking about how he's going to get a song and choreography ready for her when she says she once sang choir at Christmas. As revealed later in the episode, it didn't end well.
- Glass-Shattering Sound: Kim escapes from the iced-over pool by singing one of her awful high notes, which cracks the ice.
- Got Volunteered: Ron signs up Kim to the school's Talent Show without her consent. It comes back to him when he has to fill in for her while she's escaping Drakken's latest Death Trap.
- Holding the Floor: Ron goes onstage at the talent show and improvises to buy time for Kim to arrive. Ironically, he ends up winning.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: "Wade" almost referred to the Transportulator by its actual name, which he shouldn't have known since it was only said by Dementor while Kim and Ron were still inside his lair.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Ron signed up Kim for the talent show without her consent at the beginning of the episode. At the end, when he and Rufus have to delay the show long enough for Kim to get back from Drakken's lair, Rufus signs him up without his consent so they can stall the show with a several-part improvised act.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: Drakken tricks Kim and Ron into stealing one of Professor Dementor's inventions and delivering it to him.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Dr. Drakken produces fake audiovisual messages from "Wade", manipulating Team Possible into doing his bidding.
- "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: Naturally, Kim and Ron retrieve the Transportulator by way of this. Makes for a bad time for Ron to have his clothes snatched by the rope, as per usual.
- Noodle Incident: According to Barkin, last year's talent show included both flaming chainsaw juggling and "an unfortunate lion taming melee."
- Not So Above It All: Even Barkin is sitting with visible anticipation as Ron is about to dump and entire Diablo hot sauce pack in his mouth. He's less impressed when Ron's fire-breathing act ends up torching his fellow judges.
- Once More, with Clarity: After a Flashback which showed Kim singing at a Christmas pageant, we cut back to it later to see that Kim isn't good with high notes.
- Quantity vs. Quality: Ron is forced to stall in the talent show while Kim finishes her mission and return to school for her performance. Despite acing it, she and Bonnie are shocked when Ron wins for his variety act.
- Shout-Out: Bonnie's ballet dress for the talent show comes with a swan rolled around her neck, mimicking Björk's dress at the 2001 Oscars.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: More than one character assumes without any information that the Transportulator teleports by using telephones, which is shot down by others as being a highly tenuous conclusion. Turns out Dr. Dementor did design his Transportulator to run on phone lines.
- Talent Contest: The centerpiece of the "basic average girl" plot of the episode. After Bonnie smugly boasts about how she's going to win the talent contest because it's a Rockwaller family tradition, Kim tells Ron that she wishes someone would knock her down a peg. Cue Ron walking over to the table and signing Kim up without telling her beforehand.
- Telephone Teleport: The episode's MacGuffin is a device that enables a person to travel over a phone line. More than one character assumes this is the case without even knowing how it's operated, and have to be clarified by a more sensible one that teleporting and telephoning are distinct things. Kim finds out that they were right.
- That Came Out Wrong: After the laser function of Kim's class ring singes his hair, Ron requests Wade tell her all its functions before he's bald. Unfortunately, Rufus doesn't take kindly to the fact that Ron thinks bald is bad.Ron: (To Rufus) Not that there's anything wrong with bald. On you, it's good.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Drakken has Kim 1) wrapped in chains and 2) sealed in a titanium box, which is 3) dropped into a bottomlessnote chasm, which is 4) filled with water into which is released 5a) man-eating sharks and 5b) a giant squid, after which the pool is 6) frozen over with a six-foot-thick layer of ice just to be sure. He even has a set of diagrams prepared so that he can taunt Kim with her imminent fate before dropping her into the trap.Kim: Ah, beats humiliation at the talent show, I guess.
- Villainous Breakdown: After Kim escapes from Drakken's over-the-top-deadly Death Trap and he's arrested by the authorities, he breaks down in Angrish sobbing about how he thought this time he would've succeeding in doing her in.
- Villains Never Lie: Played with. "Wade" (actually Drakken) tells Kim and Ron that Professor Dementor stole the telephone teleport device. However, Dementor insists that the "transportulator" is actually his invention. Afterwards, Kim wonders why he would say that and why he would give the device a name if it wasn't his; Ron simply assumes he was lying. Of course, "Wade" (not wanting Kim to think about the situation too hard) agrees with Ron.
