Recap / Pinky And The Brain S 1 E 3

Episode: Season 1, Episode 3
Title: Tokyo Grows / That Smarts / Brainstem
Directed by: Al Ziegler (Tokyo Grows, Brainstem) Audu Paden (That Smarts)
Written by: Gordon Bressack, Charles M. Howell IV (Tokyo Grows), Peter Hastings (That Smarts), Tom Minton (Brainstem)
Air Date: September 17, 1995
Previous: Of Mouse and Man
Next: Pinky & the Fog / Where No Mouse Has Gone Before / Cheese Roll Call
Guest Starring: James Belushi, Tress MacNeille

"Tokyo Grows" / "That Smarts" / "Brainstem" together make up the third episode of the first season of Pinky and the Brain.

As one might guess from the title, this episode is a collection of three shorter cartoons. "Tokyo Grows" is a Godzilla parody set in Tokyo in 1956. The Brain decides to take over the world by using a reversed shrink ray to grow Pinky to giant monster size, then grow himself to giant monster size, so he can defeat Pinky and win the loyalty of the world. "That Smarts" has the Brain doing calculations to figure out why his plans to take over the world always fail. When his analysis indicates that the reason he always fails is his big dummy of a sidekick, the Brain decides to use an IQ-enhancing machine to turn Pinky into a super-genius like himself. Finally, "Brainstem", only two minutes long, is simply a song in which Pinky and the Brain sing a song about the human brain and its various parts.

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"Tokyo Grows" provides examples of...

• Acme Products: The Japanese version of Acme Labs is "Acmeshita Labs".
• Affectionate Parody: "Tokyo Grows" is an affectionate parody of Godzilla movies.
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: "I think so, Brain, but I don't think Kaye Ballard's in the union."
• Behemoth Battle: The Brain attempts to take over Tokyo by disguising Pinky as the giant monster Gollyzilla, turning him into a giant with a reversed Shrink Ray, and then turning himself giant too and saving the city by fighting Pinky. Hilarity Ensues when the real Gollyzilla shows up and the Brain fights him instead of Pinky.
• Bilingual Bonus: Pinky and The Brain's cage has a water bottle that is a) full of yellow liquid, and b) marked Sake. (Explains a lot, don't it?)
• Bland-Name Product: A radio labeled "Fony" appears.
  • A billboard titled "Soyota" can be seen when Brain enlarges himself. Another one - titled "Yamha" - can be seen when he confronts the real Gollyzilla.
• Hong Kong Dub: The dialogue is choppy and badly mismatched to the lip movements of the cartoon characters—that is, until the Brain smacks Pinky, and snaps the both of them out of it.
• It Will Never Catch On: When Pinky quite reasonably suggests that the Brain use the shrink ray to make miniature electronics of his own in order to take over the world, the Brain says "There's no future in miniaturization!" No, he'll use the machine for a much sillier plan that involves making Pinky into "Gollyzilla".
• Make My Monster Grow: The Brain dresses Pinky up as a "Gollyzilla" and uses an enlarging ray on him.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: "Tokyo Grows" might be considered a parody of Godzilla: King of the Monsters! rather than the original Godzilla. This cartoon has awkward inserts of a guy who looks just like Raymond Burr saying "Yes, I see," in the same manner that Raymond Burr himself was awkwardly inserted into the 1956 Americanized version of the original 1954 film. Things get absurd when he gets hit with the shrink ray and enters the episode proper to fight Gollyzilla.
• Notzilla: It's Gollyzilla that's terrorizing Tokyo, not Godzilla.
• Perspective Magic: "Tokyo Grows" ends with the out-of-control enlarging ray enlarging the whole earth, so Pinky and the Brain are, relatively, tiny again.
• Shout-Out: The segment’s title is a pun on Tokyo Rose, the name given by the Allies to any female English-speaking Japanese propaganda broadcaster during World War II.
  • Achmeshita Labs may be a reference to Panasonic, which was once known as Matsushita Electric.
  • Pinky mentions Kaye Ballard during his response to Brain's Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?.
• Shrink Ray: The researchers at Acmeshita invent a shrink ray for use in making miniaturized electronics. The Brain reverses the polarity in order to turn Pinky and himself into giants.

"That Smarts" provides examples of...

• Applied Mathematics: The Brain tries to mathematically deduce the reason his plans usually fail. He ends up with a portrait of Pinky. Pinky later corrects a few points on the graph, and it ends up as a portrait of Brain.
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: "Yes, I am!"
• Cymbal-Banging Monkey: One of these is the weirdest part of the very weird machine that the Brain uses to make Pinky smart.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: The Brain makes Pinky more intelligent after calculating that Pinky's stupidity is the reason his plans for world domination always fail. Pinky deliberately makes himself a nitwit again because he's upset at the Brain resenting him for now being smarter than he is, but the Brain unfortunately made himself stupid to restore the balance and was unaware of Pinky having the same idea.
• Pygmalion Snap Back: The Brain makes Pinky intelligent so that his idiocy can stop ruining his plans to take over the world, eventually has both the Brain and Pinky realize that both of them being intelligent has upset the balance. However, because each of them uses the machine to make themselves idiots without telling the other about their intentions, the episode ends with Pinky and the Brain both too stupid to use the machine to make either of them smart again. In spite of this, things are back to normal by the next episode.
• Shout-Out: Pinky mentions Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.
  • One of Brain's plans involves him posing as Jimmy Hoffa, a labor union leader who disappeared in 1975 in one of the most famous unsolved histories in the world.
• Sudden Intelligence: The Brain decides that Pinky's stupidity is the reason why their plans always fail. The Brain uses an IQ machine to zap Pinky into genius. Pinky proceeds to demonstrate that the real reason their plans always fail is that the Brain keeps making mistakes.
• We Want Our Idiot Back!: Played with in that, instead of making Pinky dumb again, Brain makes himself dumb, thinking that in order for their plans to work, one of them has to be an imbecile. Unfortunately, Pinky had the same idea, and the cartoon ends with both too stupid to operate the IQ machine and reverse its effects.

"Brainstem" provides examples of...

• Educational Song: All "Brainstem" is, is a song in which the Brain points out the parts of the human brain on a drawing, naming (singing) each in turn, to the tune of "Camptown Races". Pinky zooms in on a bungee cord to sing "Brainstem! Brainstem!" where "doo dah, doo dah" goes.
• Shout-Out: The Brain’s closing line, “That oughta keep the little squirts happy!”, refers to the urban legend about a host of a children’s program who supposedly ended one broadcast saying, “There, that oughta hold the little bastards!” without realizing he was still on the air.