The eighth episode of the eighth season of Rugrats (1991).
Cynthia Comes Alive
The babies think a moody teenager at the Java Lava is Angelica's doll come to life.
Trading Phil
Angelica tries to befriend a group of older girls by letting them play with Phil.
"Cynthia Comes Alive" provides examples of:
- Alliterative Name: The toy turtle the babies play with at the beginning of this episode is named Toby the Turtle.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: When Chas tries unsuccessfully to talk to Cindy about her bad work ethics, Cindy tells him that her last boss said she was fun, full of ideas, and full of fun ideas.
- Cassandra Truth: When the adults find the shop a mess thanks to the babies trying unsuccessfully to shrink Cindy, Cindy tells them the babies made a mess. Due to a combination of the adults not keeping proper eyes on their children and Cindy's bad work ethics, they don't believe her.
- For Inconvenience, Press "1": When Chas calls Cindy's high school to inform them that Cindy's work ethics are not what his shop needs, he is put on hold due to band music playing.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: A variant; near the beginning of this episode, Stu is tasked with fixing both the babies' Toby the Turtle toy and Angelica's Cool Teen Cynthia doll, both of which have voice boxes activated when their strings are pulled. At the end of the episode, Stu fixes both toys, but accidentally switches their voice boxes, to both the babies' confusion and Angelica's horror.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Cindy tells Chas that she doesn't smile, Angelica says that she knows exactly what she means, as smiling is so yesterday... as she is smiling.
- Identical Stranger: Cindy bears a striking resemblance to Angelica's Cool Teen Cynthia doll, so Angelica tricks the babies into thinking that Cindy is Cynthia come to life.
- Literal-Minded:
- When Chas says he's going to go broke because of Cindy's bad work ethics, the babies think that Chas is going to break just like Toby did.
- When the babies overhear Betty telling Chas to bring Cindy down to size, they think that if they shrink Cindy, she'll turn back into Cool Teen Cynthia.
- When the babies overhear Betty saying that Cindy is full of hot air, they think that Cindy is filled with hot air like a beach ball, and in order to shrink her, they have to pull her plug. They pull on her belly button ring, mistaking it for a plug.
- Living Toys: When Angelica sees Cindy, she tricks the babies into thinking that Cool Teen Cynthia came to life. This leads to the babies thinking their toys can come to life.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: When Cindy stumbles back after the babies pull on her belly button ring, mistaking it for a plug, and gets her left shoe stuck in one of the cups of the waterfall display. She removes her shoe to escape.
- Never My Fault: When Angelica accidentally breaks Cool Teen Cynthia by falling on her, she blames the babies even though Tommy points out that she was the one who broke her.
- Noodle Incident: When the babies try to come up with ways to shrink Cindy, they bring up the times they sat on the balloons at Chuckie's birthday party and they popped and shrank, and the time Chuckie's pajamas shrank after Chas washed them.
- Phone Aholic Teenager: When Kira and Chas consult the employee handbook on how to deal with employees like Cindy, Cindy talks on her cell phone. This leaves her off-guard as the babies sneak out of the playpen and pull on her belly button ring.
- Repetitive Audio Glitch: When Kimi plays with Toby at the beginning of the episode, he starts skipping his speech before winding down.
- Say My Name: This episode ends with Angelica shouting "Uncle Stu!" as she discovers that he accidentally switched Cool Teen Cynthia and Toby the Turtle's voice boxes.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Near the end of the episode, Chas is about to fire Cindy for her bad work ethics, but Cindy willingly quits out of her own accord due to the babies trying to shrink her.
- Shrunk in the Wash: Discussed; when the babies try to come up with ways to shrink Cindy, Chuckie brings up the time his pajamas shrank after Chas washed them. This gives the babies the idea to wash Cindy so she'll shrink.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: When the babies decide to get Cindy wet to shrink her, Kimi pretends to cry to get Cindy's attention while the other babies dump a pitcher of tea on her.
"Trading Phil" provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The names of the two four-year-old girls are Kayla (the African-American girl) and Marli (the girl with red hair). They are never referred to by their names, neither when spoken to nor spoken about, but their names are listed in this episode's closing credits.
- Closest Thing We Got: In this episode's B-plot, Grandpa Lou tries to train Spiffy like he did with Spike, but Spiffy keeps eating the dog biscuits before doing what Lou wants him to. Eventually, he runs out of dog biscuits, and is left with only baby biscuits.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Angelica tells the babies that she's going to play with the cool kids, Lil tells her to wear a jacket. Angelica then has to explain to the babies that she means "cool" as in "popular", not "cool" as in "cold".
- Covered in Mud: Near the end of the episode, Angelica trips on a rock and falls into a mud puddle when she tries to convince Phil to come back and play with the older girls. The older girls see this and say "That is so three-years-old!".
- Food as Bribe: To get Angelica to prove to him that she can be nice to him and his friends if he agrees to play with the older girls for her, he has her give him a worm, a roly-poly, cookies, and a Reptar bar.
- Kids Hate Vegetables: When the older girls play with Phil, they pretend to feed him creamed spinach. When Phil refuses to play along, Angelica tells him that the spinach isn't real, but Phil retaliates by sayng that he doesn't even like pretend spinach.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Near the end of the episode, Phil decides to go back to playing Mud Pie Factory with his friends when the two older girls want to dress him up.
- Training the Pet: In this episode's B-plot, Grandpa Lou is trying to teach Spiffy the energetic puppy tricks, which isn't so successful since Spiffy keeps doing the opposite of what he's told. Dil, on the other hand, is better at obeying Lou's commands.
- Trouser Space: When Lil laments that the older girls chose Phil to be their baby instead of her, she asks Chuckie what Phil has that she doesn't. Chuckie asks her, "A muddy bug in his diapie?", then Lil looks in her diaper, seeing that she does have that.
