Man, it’s been a while since I did one of these. But I’m in a Nickelodeon mood, so let’s do it.
Cold Open
Penelope tries to win a dinner with Amanda.
• One of the more memorable Penelope storylines. The visual of 50 phones in her room is amazing.
TV Clips: A man says “Honey, this is great coffee!”
Introduction
Amanda teaches an audience member how to do karate.
• A bizarre concept, but it works due to the commitment of Amanda and the audience member. I love his over-the-top karate noises as he does the moves.
Fake Ad: Meatloaf Crunch (repeat from Episode 2)
Judge Trudy
Jason Fima (Drake) sues his parents for cutting his allowance. The parents are then beaten up by pro wrestlers. Next, Amy Drummel sues her mother for sending her to her room for refusing to kiss her Aunt Sophie. Mrs. Drummel is sentenced to confinement in a box with sick children.
• The Bailiff finally has his usual over-the-top personality that we all remember him for.
• Johnny’s wig as the father is great.
• As much as I hate to admit it, I’m finding these Judge Trudy sketches kind of formulaic looking back at them. While there will be some occasional changes from the norm, we almost always get the same thing with these sketches.
Stop-Motion Amanda
The adventures of Amanda…IN SPAAAAAACE!!!!!!
• One of my favorite stop-motion bits.
• The voice of the guy communicating with Amanda is hilarious, and not immediately recognizable as Dan Schneider.
• I’m not entirely sure, but I think a lot of Amanda’s dialogue in these shorts is ad-libbed. It adds a lot of personality to her character, like when she’s singing that song about flying in space.
• Another staple of Schneider’s shows makes its appearance here: a bra joke. One of the things Amanda’s ship runs into is a giant bra.
The Girls’ Room
Amber tries to become School President.
• The sketch now has its usual voiceover from Amanda.
• Debbie seems to have gotten dumber since the last sketch, and is more like how she usually is. Though I guess we have an explanation in this one, as she says she was dropped on the head as a baby.
• Sheila: “You better check the date on your brain, cuz I think it’s expired!”
• Debbie, numerous times throughout this sketch: “Happy Hanukkah!”
• This is the first time we hear about Amber’s rival, the nefarious Danielle Spencer, who would later become a recurring character in these sketches.
• Bizarrely, the sketch ends with Amber and Danielle teaming up to assault a pretty boy named Jamie Bradford. Kind of strange to see given how much they hate each other later on.
Penelope Taynt
Penelope tries to direct all the radio’s calls to her house.
• A follow up to the cold open, we get to see Penelope’s continued attempts to win the contest.
• The feature on her website this week is an interview with Amanda’s mother (which I’m sure she had to pull a lot of strings to get). I like how Penelope has to point out the obvious fact that this is indeed Amanda’s mother’s head.
• One of the questions asked is “Did you do anything special when you were pregnant to make Amanda so talented?”
• This week’s video clip is one of my favorites: Amanda names a tree “Herman”.
Totally Kyle
Kyle tells of the time he asked a girl out on a date.
• Another really relatable story from Kyle about asking a girl out, even if you can already guess what the punchline is.
Souper Dooper
Doreen and her dad now sell disgusting soups.
• Right off the bat, we get Raquel asking if this place used to sell ice cream. I like how continuity-heavy these Dooper sketches are.
• First appearance of the “We’re (insert food here) people” catchphrase.
• Foot Joke #5: One of the soups is “Foot Fungus Chowder”, and we even get a gross close-up of Johnny’s foot.
• I like when Raquel takes home the poodle that they use to make “Noodles and Poodles”, and Doreen’s dad says that she must want to go home and make it herself.
• A pretty memorable scene where Nancy’s soup is revealed to have underwear in it. Why? Because it’s “Underwear Chowder”, of course! Doreen’s dad cheerfully admits that the underwear used to be his.
• Doreen: “Aren’t they cute?” Nancy: “No! They’re disturbing!”
• I’m totally shocked that they were able to get away with the “Pee Soup”.
• Another appearance from Andrew Hill Newman. This time, he plays an irate customer who’s returning a soup filled with hair.
• We get introduced to Doreen’s grandfather for the first time, as the hair in the soup comes from him. Grandpa will go on to become a recurring character in these.
• My favorite part of this sketch is the ending, where the customer enjoys a soup called “Lincoln Punch”, and Abe Lincoln randomly shows up to punch him.
Closing
Penelope wins the contest, but can’t figure which of her phones to answer.
• The Penelope plot concludes in a great way. She actually wins the contest, but because she has all of those phones, she doesn’t know which one to answer. I’d say this was unfair if she didn’t try to cheat.
Final thoughts: Yet another great episode. Next time, we get what might be my favorite one of all…
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