The Magic School Bus Gets Ready, Set, Dough
Original airdate: November 5th, 1994
Subject: Kitchen Chemistry
Focus Student(s): Carlos, Dorothy Ann
When the class plans a party for Ms. Frizzle's birthday, they forget the cake! Worse, the bus is acting up, growing and shrinking at inconvenient times, so Ms. Frizzle cancels the class field trip to the bakery. The class convinces her to reschedule it, so they can acquire a cake for her. When the bus shrinks them, however, they have to sneak into the bakery's kitchen and made a cake for it.
Producers Segment
The baker answers the questions about the episode that are asked by an unnamed boy who visits the bakery while Liz eats the baked goods.
Tropes
- Actor Allusion: Dom De Luise plays a baker, alluding to his second career as a gourmet chef.
- Ageless Birthday Episode: The kid visiting the bakery in The Stinger lampshades this by saying that, while the episode covered several important topics about chemistry and safety with baking ingredients, it left out one very important detail: how old Ms. Frizzle was.
- "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Carlos elbows Arnold in the stomach while trying to convince Ms. Frizzle that they had been really looking forward to their latest field trip.
- Big Eater: Liz cleans out the entire bakery during the "producer" segment, complete with a Balloon Belly.
- Cassandra Truth: The Baker tries to call pest control on the "moth" in his kitchen, only to get called crazy when he reports its "pouring milk" and "stirring in eggs". Ironically, when he finds prepared cake batter and considers that the moth made it, he laughs and calls himself crazy for thinking such a thing.
- Chekhov's Gun: DA's experiments with baking soda and vinegar allow her and Carlos to create an explosion that allows the bus to escape the baked cake.
- Chewout Fakeout: DA nearly chews out Arnold for knocking her down along with baking soda and vinegar, but then she gets impressed with the results and decides to start experimenting.
- Didn't Think This Through: Carlos having the bus hide in the cake batter when the baker returns to the kitchen. They get trapped in the oven, nearly suffer from overheating, and cannot escape the cooked batter.
- Face Palm: Liz does this when Ms. Frizzle reminds her of the air conditioning she could've turned on in the first place.
- Food Porn: Considering they go to a bakery, this is inevitable. Subverted with the producer's segment, after which viewers might not have a big appetite after seeing Liz pig out on everything.
- From the Mouths of Babes: A toddler sees the shrunken bus flying around and starts saying "Bus! Bus!" Her dad agrees; they're taking the bus home.
- Guile Hero: Carlos. He not only convinces Ms. Frizzle to un-cancel the field trip so that they can get a cake, but also persuades her to visit the Auto-Parts shop next door to give the class enough time to bake her a cake. He also divides labor when collecting ingredients so that he is "stuck with the chocolate".
- Hidden Depths:
- Carlos apparently organized the party, and was clever enough to run a rehearsal which led to the Something We Forgot moment. In the bakery he allocates everyone to proper jobs, shown when DA distracts Ms. Frizzle from returning.
- The Baker seems to know about the Bus, because between his chasing the Bus out of his bakery under the assumption it was a moth and the Frizz's birthday party, he took the time to finish the cake the "moth" had made.
- Large Ham: The Baker, full stop.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The class twice, first when they shrink in the middle of measuring ingredients, and second when they're trapped in the oven.
- Mundane Made Awesome: The Baker singing opera in the bakery, rhyming "Figaro" with "filo dough".
- Oh, Crap!:
- Carlos and Arnold when they realize they've forgotten the cake.
- The Baker mistakes the tiny bus for a moth and tries to swat it. Liz barely drives the bus to a hiding space in the kitchen.
- Dorothy Ann's reaction when Ms. Frizzle returns.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ms. Frizzle is genuinely sad when she can't figure what's wrong with the bus, and that she has to cancel the field trip. She only perks up when the class convinces her to un-cancel the trip.
- Opening Shout-Out: Part of the opening sequence has "Just to make your day complete, you might get baked into a pie" as it shows the Bus popping out of the pie, startling the same Baker from this episode. This is pretty much what happens in the episode, except the bus is baked into a cake instead of a pie.
- Pet the Dog: Although the Baker considered the chocolate cake "ruined" because a "moth" burst out of it (actually the bus), he took the time to decorate it nicely with pink frosting for Ms. Frizzle's birthday.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: Some of the magic bus parts like "mesmerglobber" and "shrinkascope". Lampshaded when Ms. Frizzle says the Auto-Parts people had no idea what she was talking about.
- Rock Bottom: While trying to spoon in sugar while tiny, Arnold doesn't see how things could be worse than "being half the size of a hotdog." The bus then acts up and causes everyone to shrink even smaller so that salt appears as building blocks and sugar crystals appear as diamonds to them.
- Ship Tease: Carlos hugs Dorothy Ann, calling her a good chemist.
- After the two get The Magic School Bus out of the cake, Arnold hugs Dorothy Ann out of gratitude.
- Something We Forgot: What starts the episode. Arnold and Carlos both realize they forgot birthday cake for Ms. Frizzle's party.
- Special Guest: Dom De Luise voices the Baker.
- Tempting Fate: Ms. Frizzle says "that wasn't so bad" when the bus makes it to the bakery, only for the bus to shrink, along with the class.Ms. Frizzle: Well, maybe it was.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Chocolate is Ms. Frizzle's favorite cake flavor. Part of the reason why the bus had to bake the cake was that none of the cakes on display were chocolate; the other was that, as Carlos pointed out, "We're too small to buy one."
- You Are in Command Now: When Ms. Frizzle goes to the Auto-Parts next door, she puts Liz in command. Liz drives the bus, but Carlos commandeers the people.
- You Have to Believe Me!: When the Baker sees the "moth" (The shruken, flying Bus) making cake batter, he is naturally disbelieved when he calls the exterminator and reports it. "No, I am not crazy!"
