When an oozy creature shows up in Arcadia, Jim and the gang set out to find it — while playing parents to two sacks of flour for a school assignment.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Blind Seer: Dictatious claims that in his blinded state, he has been receiving visions from Argante. The fact that this gets Gunmar's attention speaks volumes.
- Blob Monster: Gruesomes are a race of sludge-like monsters that feast on the stone of dead trolls. They are smart enough to wear trench-coats and hats when walking through human settlements, but cannot speak full English and usually repeat words people say to them. They are nigh impossible to kill with the exception of dwärkstones and flour. They usually flock to locations where mass troll-death is expected to happen, their presence in Arcadia implying its doom at Gunmar's hands.
- Chekhov's Gun: Toby revealed that he keeps a piece of Bular in his mineral collection, causing the gruesome to go after him.
- Clarke's Third Law: When Otto shows a recorded video go Strickler to Gunmar projected against the wall, he demands to know what kind of dark magic were used to make Strickler so large.
- Closet Geek: Super-butch Draal is just as into their tabletop game as Blinky and Aaarrrgghh!!! are, if not more.
- Continuity Nod: The arm the gumm-gumm lost in "Hiss Hiss, Bang Bang" becomes a plot point here when it is brought in to Arcadia's science museum, making it an easy target for the gruesome.
- Credits Gag: The end credits shows a series of selfies taken of Toby with his flour-sack baby, accompanied by a sentimental piano score.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Toby's parents won the state lottery and went on a world cruise to celebrate. The ship sank when a storm hit and Toby went to live with his nana, all of this happening when he was two years old.
- Either/Or Title: The end credits credit the episode as being titled "Just Add Water" or "The Unexpected Life and Death of Sir Issac Gluten"
- Egg Sitting: Everyone in Jim, Claire and Toby's class have to play Parents for a Day to a flour sack as a homework assignment. Jim is with Claire, Toby is with Darci and Steve is with Eli. Oddly enough everyone plays it seriously (though Darci has serious apprehensions about leaving her grade in Toby's butter-fingers).
- Epic Fail: In the end, every pair except for Toby and Darci manages to destroy their flour baby.Coach Lawrence: I weep for your offspring, and pray I'm retired by the time they reach high school.
- Helicopter Parents: Eli and Steve fail because Eli's mother threw their flour bag out. Why? Because Eli is allergic to gluten.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: This little exchange.Coach Lawrence: For the next 24 hours, this is your baby.
Mary: Are going to learn how babies are made?
Coach Lawrence: At the flour mill, apparently. - Indirect Kiss: Blink and you'll miss it, but Jim ends up having some of Claire's milkshake at the diner, only for her to take it back.
- It Makes Sense in Context: Steve and Eli's antics in the episode are explained in the next episode.
- Lame Pun Reaction: When Claire explains the "flour"/"flower" joke of naming her and Jim's four baby Petunia, Jim and Darci just stare at her while Toby frowns and slowly shakes his head.
- Parents as People: Claire implies that she feels incidental in her parent's lives, her mother too busy with her job to really find the time to be with her. Jim admits that the closest thing Jim had to a father was Strickler and we all know how that played out. And then there was what happened to Toby's parents...
- Present Company Excluded: When Blinky confirms that the new rock at the museum is a troll arm, he asks flabbergasted who would be so careless as to lose an arm. Draal awkwardly responds "not mine."
- Present-Day Past: In Strickler's video for the Janus Order, one of his lines were "Welcome to the 20th Century", implying that the video was recorded before 2000 and that they may have suspected Gunmar's return far sooner.
- Pun: Toby phrases the new mineral exhibit at the science museum as a "rock show", making it sound like he was bringing his "baby" to a musical concert. You can tell he did that on purpose just to get a reaction.
- Punny Name: Each of the flour sacks are given such names. Toby and Darci have "Sir Isaac Gluten", Logan and Mary "Dwight D. Eisenflour", and Jim and Claire calling it "Petunia", a take on "flour/flower" (though Jim wanted to call it "Jim Lake, Jr. Jr.").
- The Reveal: Otto tells Gunmar that they have a spy within Trollmarket.
- Shout-Out: The board and pieces used by Blinky, Draal and Aaarrrgghh!!! for their roleplaying game is in-fact the Maces and Talons board from Dragons: Riders of Berk.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Jim designs their flour-sack "baby" after Claire right down to her hair and hair-pins (though curiously tries giving it the masculine name "Jim Lake, Jr. Jr.").
- Unexplained Recovery: Toby's flour sack is somehow miraculously okay despite having thrown it to kill the gruesome. At least for now, the next episode shows exactly how the flour sack survived.
- The Unpronounceable: A minor gag involves that only Blinky can properly pronounce dwärkstone.Blinky: Not a rock. Dwärkstone.
Jim: Dork-stone?
Blinky: Dwärkstone.
Claire: Dork-stone?
Aaarrrgghh!!!: Close enough.
Blinky: Dwärkstone is incredibly rare, highly volatile, and the only guaranteed way to expel a gruesome.
Toby: All I'm hearing is "dork-stone." - Weaksauce Weakness: The gruesome can be killed with a 4-pound bag of flour.
