Recap / The Powerpuff Girls (S1E5): "Boogie Frights"/"Abracadaver"

Original air date: 12/16/1998

Production code: PPG-105

Boogie Frights: The girls must confront their fear of the dark when a villain threatens Townsville with eternal night.

Abracadavar: The zombie of a stage magician returns to terrify the populace.

Boogie Frights contains examples of:

• An Aesop: Face your fears.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Monsters are afraid of streetlights, night lights, and the streak of light when the door is opened a teeny bit.
• Blackout Basement: The space under the beds and the entire town with the disco ball eclipsing the sun.
• Blaxploitation Parody: The Boogie Man and his minions talk and look like they're straight out of a Blaxploitation film, complete with funk music on the soundtrack.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Buttercup is revealed to snuggle with a stuffed alligator when she's asleep.
• Call-Back: Bubbles' fear of the dark is revisited, and the Professor again leaves the hall light on and cracks the bedroom door open in order to take care of any Boogie Men that might show up.
• Don't Explain the Joke:
  Narrator: So Once Again, the Day Is Saved! (Snicker) Get it? The day was saved? You don’t get it, it was going to be eternal night! You know, daylight! They saved the day — literally!
  Blossom: Shh!
  Narrator: Oh. Sorry.
• Face Your Fears: Bubbles remembers the Professor's words to brave the Boogie Man's assault.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Bubbles manages to stay asleep throughout the narrator's joke at the end.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: The Boogie Man holds a party and blocks the sun with a giant disco ball.
• Leitmotif: The Boogie Man has one. It certainly is funky enough to fit.
• Malaproper: Blossom misquotes Benjamin Franklin's proverb "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise":
  Blossom: Now, girls, you know we need to get plenty of sleep. It’s our responsibility as superheroines to be well-rested so that we’ll be at peak crime-fighting performance whenever evil rears its ugly head.
  And, like Ben Franklin always said— “Early to bed, early to wake, makes a lady smart, pretty, and great.”
• The Night That Never Ends: The Boogie Man's plot is to block out the sun so that he and the other monsters can party forever.
• Phrase Catcher: The Boogie Man has one for whenever he does anything nasty. "Blame it on the Boogie!"
• Pimp Duds: The Boogie Man arrives in town in them.
• Punny Name: The boogie man.
• Precision F-Strike: It really does sound like the Boogie Man said "shit" before unleashing the giant disco ball.
• Tears of Fear: Bubbles sheds these twice; first when Buttercup scares her, and when she's trying to get away from the Boogie Man's spaceship.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: The Boogie Man plans to make the night last forever for him and his fellow monsters.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The Boogie Man blocks out the sun with a giant disco ball to create eternal night.
• Trench Run: The girls taking out the disco ball, a direct homage to A New Hope.
• Visual Pun: When Blossom tells Bubbles that Buttercup is trying to get her goat, Bubbles reaches for her stuffed goat.
• Weakened by the Light: The monsters cannot stand light, even night lights and the hall light through the door crack - but most of all, the accursed sun. Boogie Man's plan is first to remove all the power in Townsville, then block the sun so it will never shine again. When the girls stop his plan, the sunlight causes the monsters to melt away.

Abracadaver contains examples of:

• And I Must Scream: Blossom manages to somehow switch places with Abracadaver while under hypnosis. This could imply that she was aware of what was happening even though she was in a trance, including his plan to put her in the Iron Maiden and Abracadaver trapping her sisters in lethal traps. Had she not made the switch, she would’ve semi-consciously faced her own demise and her sisters most likely would have died.
• Antagonist Title: Al Lusion comes back from the dead as the episode's titular villain.
• Back from the Dead: As the old theatre is being demolished, the wrecking ball inadvertently hits the iron maiden that Al Lusion was killed in. Cue his reanimated corpse emerging from it and magically producing black, dead flowers!
• Beyond the Impossible: Blossom somehow switches places with Abracadaver when she seemingly enters the Iron Maiden. The fact that she was in a vegetable-like trance raises even more questions.
• Book Ends: The whole mess started with Al Lusion being killed by his own iron maiden, and ended with him being killed in it again, magically, of course, as the girls pulled some tricks of their own so he ended up resting in pieces once again.
• Brainwashed: Blossom is mistaken for the girl who ruined Abracadaver's career and is bewitched by him. He doesn't really make her do anything, just leave her in an immobile mindless state to try and murder her.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The flashback of Al Lusion's ill fated final performance is animated in black and white, with vertical lines across the screen as if it's an old movie.
• Description Cut: The girls are watching a zombie movie and when they hear a noise, Bubbles suggests it was a zombie.
  Blossom: What was that?
  Bubbles: I think it...it was a zombie!
  Buttercup: Cut it out, Bubbles! There’s no such thing as zombies.
  (Cut to a screaming woman watching Abracadaver's mayhem.)
  Woman: A zombie!
• Disney Death: Blossom is hypnotized, swung like a yo-yo, and tossed into the Iron Maiden by Abracadaver until it's revealed she switched places with him and survived.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Blossom meekly facing off against Abracadaver is sort of what you might find in a situation involving a child predator.
• Due to the Dead: Averted. Al Lusion's body is abandoned in the theatre, still inside the spiked coffin that killed him. If someone had given him a proper burial, this episode would never have happened.
• Dutch Angle: Used on Blossom as Abracadaver is hypnotizing her.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: A magician alone would make a credible antagonist but the villain here is a magic zombie.
• Expressive Accessory: When the girls fearfully answer the hotline for the Mayor talking about Abracadaver, the hotline looks scared as well.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: A man was killed by a spiked coffin in front of an audience, some of whom were children.
• Fatal Method Acting: Al Lusion is accidentally pantsed by the little girl who was trying to get her doll back and the attempt to get his magical items back causes him to fall into an iron maiden, killing him.
• Heroic Willpower: Despite Abracadaver putting Blossom under his hypnotic spell, she was somehow able to swap places with him before meeting an untimely fate.
• Hypno Pendulum: Abracadaver uses this on Blossom at one point.
• Identical Stranger: Blossom (and her sisters to an extent) looks exactly like the young girl responsible for Al Lusion's death. When said magician is revived as a zombie, he sets his target on Blossom, assuming that she's the same girl that he wanted revenge on.
• Iron Maiden: The titular Villain of the Episode was a magician who died in an iron maiden-like coffin after a little girl pushed him for losing her toy. After he was revived as a zombie, Abracadaver exacted revenge on Blossom, who resembles that little girl decades ago, by hypnotizing her and sealing her inside the iron maiden. In the end, the Abracadaver is revealed to be Blossom, and Blossom did the switcheroo by sealing the zombie inside the maiden.
• Lovely Assistant: A massively dark example as Blossom is forced into this position when Abracadaver mistakes her for the girl who ruined his career and brainwashes her. Bubbles and Buttercup could count when the zombie magician used his magic to put them in fatal magician-like scenarios a female assistant would normally find herself in.
• Leitmotif: Just like the Boogie Man, Abracadaver has one. This one is very dark and scary. Again, totally fits him.
• Magicians Are Wizards: Abracadaver is a magician turned zombie wizard. Then again, a few of his spells, like the traps for Bubbles and Buttercup, turn out to be tricks in the end.
• Match Cut: Used on Blossom during Abracadaver's P.O.V. Cam when he mistakes her for the girl who ruined his career.
• Mind-Control Eyes: Blossom's eyes turn into red spirals when hypnotized by Abracadaver.
• Misplaced Retribution: Due to having a similar appearance to the same little girl who unintentionally caused his demise, Blossom becomes Abracadaver's target in taking down.
• Monochrome Past: The Mayor's flashback of Al Lusion's career ruined is in black-and-white, complete with minimal music and no sound effects like it's a silent movie.
• Mummy Wrap: Abracadaver uses a bunch of handkerchiefs tied together to trap a brainwashed Blossom in and use them to toss her in the same Iron Maiden he ended up being in.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Abracadaver is a combination of the magic word "Abracadabra" and cadaver, meaning a corpse. Fitting for a reanimated magician zombie.
• Near-Villain Victory: Abracadaver was nearly successful in taking down the girls had Blossom found a way to undo his evil.
• Our Liches Are Different: Abracadaver is a zombie with magic powers.
• Punny Name: Al Lusion has returned from the grave as Abracadaver.
• Reflective Eyes: Abracadaver's pocket watch is reflected into Blossom's eyes for a moment while hypnotizing her.
• Shout-Out: During his stage act, Al Lusion pulls a moose out of his hat.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The little girl in the flashback catalyzed the episode's events when she exposed Al Lusion as a fraud.
• Would Hurt a Child: The title villain has absolutely no qualms about doing bodily harm to three little girls.

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