The Magic School Bus Under Construction
Original airdate: October 5th, 1996
Subject: Engineering, Structures
Focus Student(s): Wanda
On the day of one of Ms. Frizzle's rare "normal" field trips, to a construction site, Wanda's mother orders her to watch her baby brother William for a few minutes while she finishes up an assignment. Wanda agrees, and the class pitches in to occupy little William. Unfortunately, he gets his hands on Ms. Frizzle's portashrinker and accidentally locks the class in the bathroom. To get out, and to the bus to unshrink, the class has to apply practical construction knowledge for towers, and bridges.
Producers Segment
The male producer answers the questions about the episode while he and Liz build their own model of a suspension bridge.
Tropes
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: William is easily attracted to new objects that appear to be toys, from the portashrinker to the shrunken Magic School Bus. Liz finally exploits this to exchange The Magic School Bus for a toy truck.
- Blunt "Yes": When Wanda tries to rally everyone else to cross the alligator-infested bathtub.Wanda: What are you, a buncha weaselly wimps? We've scaled a toilet, crossed a blue lagoon on a hairpin bridge, shimmied up a toilet paper rope, and you wanna quit now?
Class: Yes! - Children Are Innocent: William doesn't mean to cause most of the trouble in the episode; he just happens to be a toddler with Sticky Fingers and an eye for anything that looks like a toy.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot; The reason the kids have to build a tower and 2 bridges to go from the toilet to the sink and out the window is that they can't reach the doorknob... meaning they could have gotten out by building one tower up to the doorknob. All the writers needed to add was having the door get accidentally locked or blocked by something, leaving absolutely no exit but the window.
- Don't Look Down: Wanda Invokes the trope word for word on Arnold as the latter is slowly crossing the suspension bridge over the bathtub with thr alligator in it, spurring Arnold to up and run the rest of the way across.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: William Li, but considering he's a toddler, you expect him to have this kind of speech impediment.
- Human Ladder: The class tries to do this to reach the bathroom door, since Carlos remembers that stacking one at a time leads to an unstable structure. They find that there aren't enough classmates to reach the doorknob and climb to safety.
- Locked in the Bathroom: Most of the plot.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone (including Miss Frizzle) has this reaction upon being hit by the portashrinker, courtesy of William.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: The alligator in the bathtub. Then again, the kids were very tiny in the bathroom.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The class helping Wanda out with babysitting ends up leading to them Locked in the Bathroom and no larger than human hands. With that said, they do find their way out of the situation.
- Noodle Incident: Wanda mentions once that her mom kept a gila monster in the sandbox.
- Oh, Crap!: Keesha, when they learn about the alligator in the bathtub.Keesha: Oh, bad! Oh, bad! Oh, bad, bad, bad!
- Time for Plan B:
- At first the class tries to do a Human Ladder to get to the locked bathroom doorknob. As Tim finds out, however, they aren't tall enough. Wanda then gets the idea to reach the bathroom window and get into the bus to return to normal size.
- Wanda's plan in the bathroom to get to the window initially involves running around the toilet bowl seat. William accidentally knocks down shampoo on the toilet seat, so the class has to build a bridge. When their first bridge fails, they have to figure out how to make a stronger one.
- Wanda uses dental floss to create a relay line across the bathtub; while she makes it across safely, the rest of the class is understandably nervous given the alligator down below that would be happy for an afternoon snack. Tim suggests creating a suspension bridge using the floss, which would be more stable.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: William as a toddler not only finds Ms. Frizzle's purse with the portashrinker but also uses it to shrink the class and the bus by accident. He then smashes it by stepping on it, and starts to play with the bus when the family dog brings it to him.
