Recap / The Little Mermaid S 1 E 7 Charmed

It’s a new morning in Atlantica, and Ariel invites King Triton to go for a swim together. Triton has to decline due to his busy schedule of refereeing the octopus arm-wrestling match. Ariel and Flounder head out to explore a sunken ship where they find a number of odd human artifacts, including a painting, a mirror, and a magnifying glass (which Ariel refers to as a "biggermajigger"). Ariel takes the biggermajigger home to study it, but when Triton finds out that she has a human artifact, he loses his temper and blasts it to smithereens. Ariel is crushed, and before Triton can say another word, she swims off. Triton regrets his actions and realizes he was too hard on her once again.

Ariel rants to flounder about how unfair her father can be, when she comes across a dark underwater chasm. Flounder warns Ariel not to get too close to the Great Abyss, but this makes Ariel more angry, pointing out that Flounder sounds just like her father. She swims closer to the chasm to investigate.

Flounder: Gee, someday I might be a father. I might even have a daughter like…no! It’s too scary, way too scary!

Meanwhile, Triton gets a haircut as he talks to Sebastian about Ariel. Triton is still upset that Ariel won’t listen to him to stay away from human things, but he regrets having lost his temper and decides to apologize to Ariel when she comes back.

Ariel sees something glinting near the top of the chasm. Investigating the gleam, she finds a human charm bracelet, decorated with figures of a ballerina, a castle, and a teddy bear. When Ariel pulls the bracelet out of the coral, the key attached to the bracelet snaps off. Not noticing this, Ariel studies the bracelet. She recognizes the ballerina as depicting a human girl, and therefore concludes that the teddy bear must be a human boy.

Ariel: Hmm. He’s uh…not very handsome, but he looks like he has a nice…personality!

Guessing that the bracelet is some sort of decoration, Ariel experiments how one might wear it, and eventually gets it to fit on her wrist. After admiring the bracelet in the sunken ship’s mirror, Ariel tries to take it off, only to find that the bracelet has clamped around her wrist like a shackle, and it won’t come off. Unable to remove the bracelet, but knowing her father will be angry if he sees her with another human artifact, Ariel doesn’t know what to do.

Ariel: Daddy said if I ever bring another human thing into the palace he’ll…oh, who knows what he’ll do!

Flounder: But if you explain that it was an accident…uh, sorta…kinda…

Ariel: Daddy won’t listen! Oh Flounder, what am I gonna do? I…I can’t go home!

Night falls, but Ariel still can’t go home. After unsuccessfully trying to break the bracelet with coral, Ariel realizes that she needs the missing piece to open the bracelet. Despite Flounder’s protests, Ariel swims back to the abyss to find the key.

Back at the palace, Sebastian tries to help King Triton rehearse his apology, but each time Triton tries to explain that humans are dangerous, he starts to lose his temper again. Back at the abyss, which is now quite dark and cold, Ariel finds the key to the bracelet lodged in some coral. As she’s struggling to get the key, a sudden whirlpool sucks her down deeper into the Abyss. At the bottom of the abyss, Ariel sees the maw of some horrible monster, which causes the whirlpool to suck food into its mouth. Ariel narrowly survives by staying out of reach just long enough for the monster to close its mouth, at which point the whirlpool stops. An eel-boy greets Ariel, and tells her about the "flow monster".

Eel-boy: You’ll never get out of here. You can’t possibly swim fast enough to reach the opening…(the flow monster’s jaws reopen, causing another whirlpool)…between feedings!

The bottom of the abyss is full of bizarre creatures, including bioluminescent worms, a purple witch with an ominous bag, and fish that look like buzzing bees. None of them are able to help Ariel find her way out. Chased by grinning faces, clawed hands, and giant anemones, Ariel is forced to take refuge in a cave.

Ariel: This place is so terrible! (to the bracelet) I didn’t go home because of you, and now I’ll never go home again.

Back at the palace, King Triton and Sebastian are getting worried that Ariel hasn’t come home yet. Flounder arrives and tells Triton that Ariel is trapped in the great abyss. The three of them rush to the abyss and throw themselves into the whirlpool. A blast from Triton’s trident forces the flow monster to close its mouth. Hearing the commotion, Ariel comes out from her hiding place and is reunited with her father. When Triton sees the bracelet that caused all this trouble, he is about to reprimand her, but Ariel interrupts him.

Ariel: I knew you wouldn’t listen. You never listen! That’s why I was afraid to come home.

The eel-boy informs the group that it’s impossible to get out of the abyss, but Triton takes hold of Ariel, Sebastian, and Flounder, and uses the trident to rocket their way to safety. Ariel stops to get the key for the bracelet, and nearly gets sucked back down again, but Triton helps her and together they remove the bracelet and get out of the abyss. Triton realizes that his harsh reaction earlier is partly to blame for this misadventure.

Triton: I’ve made you afraid to come to me with your problems. From now on, I promise to listen.

Ariel: I’d…I’d really like that, Daddy.

Triton: So no matter what trouble you’re in, I want you to know you can always come home.

Tropes

• Artistic License – Biology: When Flounder complains about being cold Ariel retorts that as a fish, he’s always the same temperature, which is the opposite of how cold-bloodedness works.
• Berserk Button: As usual, anything relating to humans is this for Triton.
• Deranged Animation: Ariel being menaced by the strange creatures in the abyss with lots of eyes and claws.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Ariel’s attempts at interpreting the charm bracelet cause her to think that a teddy bear is a human boy.
• Homage: The scene in the abyss where Ariel is menaced by ominous hands and eyes is an homage to the scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when Snow White is lost in the forest.
• Jerkass Realization: Triton realizes that losing his temper made Ariel too afraid to come home when she needed help with a problem.
• Lamprey Mouth: The only visible part of the flow monster is its mouth full of teeth.
• Mega Maelstrom: An underwater example. The flow monster gets its food by creating a whirlpool and sucking all the things trapped by the whirlpool into its mouth.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: In the abyss, Ariel meets a boy with the bottom half of an eel. This might be a reference to The Little Mermaid comic book "Serpent Teen", in which Ariel encountered a kingdom of half-eel merfolk known as the Moray.
• Scylla and Charybdis: When the bracelet won’t come off, Ariel realizes she is stuck in the position of either enraging her father again, or of not being able to come home. For bonus points, she ends up encountering a monster that creates whirlpools just like the mythological Charybdis.