A Room of One's Clone: Pie of the Storm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Clone High episode | |
|---|---|
| “A Room of One's Clone: Pie of the Storm” | |
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| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 8 |
| Guest star(s) | None |
| Writer(s) | Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Bill Lawrence |
| Director | Phil Lord and Christopher Miller |
| Production no. | 108 |
| Original airdate | 15 December 2002 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Plane Crazy: Gate Expectations" | "Raisin the Stakes: A Rock Opera in Three Acts" |
A Room of One's Clone: Pie of the Storm (also known as 'A Room of One's Clone: The Pie of the Storm') is an episode of Clone High.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
[edit] Synopsis
When Joan’s house burns down, she is forced to move in with Cleo, causing conflict. When the Secret Board of Shadowy Figures gives Scudworth an Ecybopooch, he becomes more interested in it than in Mr. Butlertron, causing conflict. JFK and Gandhi are fighting too. And Abe, an exact clone of the ultimate conflict mediator, decides to fix it all.
[edit] Episode walkthrough
In a rare change, Toots is narrating the episode. He tells us that a “storm’s a brewin’” in Exclamation, USA. A lightning crash sets Joan’s house on fire, leaving her and Toots homeless. The next day at school, Abe and Cleo come up to Joan. Cleo uses the opportunity to passive-aggressively hurt Joan, up to the point where they’re about to fight. Abe stops them, because, being the clone of Abraham Lincoln, he’s against conflict. Later on, Cleo holds a “Pity Rally” for Joan, who’s now living under the bleachers with Toots. Toots then reveals that he’s been courting a woman, and she’s agreed to let him and Joan move in. The woman is Cleo’s Drunk Foster Mom, and Joan ends up moving into the same room with Cleo, who makes her sign a non-disclosure agreement.
JFK is in the Grassy Knoll, ordering food from Marie Antoinette and making veiled sexual references to the fact that she has large breasts. Gandhi is standing in line behind him, and tries to join in the jokes. JFK gets angry, saying, “The booby bit is mine!” He’s about to punch Gandhi, when Abe comes up and tries to stop the conflict. This time, Abe is unsuccessful, and JFK beats up Gandhi. Later on, Gandhi tries to spy on Joan and Cleo’s room, but winds up in the same “peeping bush” as JFK. Again, they fight.
Meanwhile, Scudworth has just received an invitation to the High Society Principal’s Ball, which is taking place at the ballroom of the Pie Factory. He invites Mr. Bultertron to be his “plus one.” Then, Scudworth receives an Ecybopooch from the Secret Board of Shadowy Figures “for going one full year without planning some suspicious plot behind our backs.” Scudworth loves the toy robotic dog, and begins spending all of his time with it, and not Mr. Butlertron. Mr. B becomes increasingly suspicious of the new robot.
Meanwhile, the situation is getting worse in Joan and Cleo’s room. Joan is becoming increasingly jealous of Cleo and Abe (who aren’t making things easier by making out as she lies in the next bed over). Disheartened by all of the conflict, Abe decided to take a conflict mediation seminar. He learns several techniques, and tries to resolve the conflict between Joan and Cleo. First, he tries a trust exercise, and then suggests they express their emotions by painting them. They decide to paint a dividing line down the center of the room, but, unlike most sitcoms where they do the same thing, they divide the room into upper and lower sections. Joan becomes “like a monkey in every way,” climbing all over the walls and ceiling and throwing things at Cleo.
Everyone is fighting, and Abe decides its time for desperate measures. He goes to the Unspecified Rodent-Themed Amusement Park and listens to robomatronic Abraham Lincoln. He hears Lincoln speak, and becomes inspired.
It’s the night of the Principal’s Ball. Things have not improved between Scudworth and Mr. B, who just wants to get it over with. Scudworth had failed to mention to Mr. B that he is taking Ecybopooch as his “plus one,” and not Mr. B. They leave, and Mr. B, frustrated, smashes Ecybopooch’s dog house, only to make a shocking discovery.
That same night, Cleo tries to smother Joan. When this fails, they decide to duke it out, once and for all, in a pillow fight. Of course, within seconds, their clothes get ripped off, and they begin fighting in their underwear. Gandhi and JFK, who are still fighting in the peeping bush down below, stop fighting. Cue Benny Hill music and silly chase scene. Gandhi and JFK run upstairs, then run back down, in Joan and Cleo’s clothes, chased by Cleo and Joan, in Gandhi and JFK’s clothes. They run down the street, chased by a police officer.
The Principal’s Ball, a very classy affair, is interrupted by Gandhi, JFK, Joan and Cleo, who break through the impenetrable slide curtain that protects the ball from the pies. A huge, very silly pie fight ensues. Meanwhile, Ecybopooch pulls out a cell phone to call the Secret Board with “damning evidence” against Scudworth. Scudworth asks what Ecybopooch is doing, and Ecybopooch tries to shoot lasers at Scudworth. The lasers are deflected off of a pie at the last moment – a pie thrown by Mr. B, who has come to save Scudworth, after discovering Ecybopooch’s plans. Scudworth is still mad at Mr. B, but they begin throwing pies at each other and all is healed.
At that point, Abe shows up to end all of the fighting (pie fighting). He leads everyone outside, and tries to do a majestic speech. It fails, and everyone starts throwing pies at Abe. Just then, a rain storm starts. Toots the narrator tells us that the rain “washed all that bad feeling away; and also the pie.” Gandhi and JFK patch things up. Scudworth and Mr. B patch things up. Joan and Cleo decide to “put and end to their overt hatred for each other; instead, have an understood, unspoken hatred” of each other. Finally, we see Toots narrating, apparently to a blank wall. Cleo’s Drunk Foster Mom comes in and asks who he’s talking to. He realizes he’s not talking to anyone, and says, “Well if that ain’t the most embarrassing thing,” and winks at the audience through his empty eye socket.
[edit] Featured cast
- Andy Dick – Mr. Sheepman
- Donald Faison – Toots, Martin Luther King Jr,
- Neil Flynn – Moses, Ecybopooch
- Sarah Chalke – Marie Antoinette
[edit] Songs
[edit] Stop Harken Doo Da Day
by Mad City
- There’s battle lines that bisect.
- Nobody's correct, if everybody’s incorrect.
- Folks fightin’ everywhere you go.
- Let he without sin cast the first throw.
- Stop, harken, doo da day,
- What’s so civil 'bout war anyway?
- Get it.
[edit] Featured clones
[edit] Deleted scenes
- While Joan and Toots are living under the gym bleaches, Scudworth originally came up to them and said, “You can stay there through the Under the Sea Prom, but not during the Under the Bleachers Prom.”
- This was one of many instances of a running gag about Clone High’s many different proms that was ultimately canceled. [1] (see Main Page Trivia)
[edit] References
[edit] Historical references
- When JFK starts to fight with Gandhi for stealing his joke, Gandhi hardly even moves in response. This is most likely because of the original Gandhi's practice of non-violence, which Clone Gandhi mentions in episode 1.
- Martin Luther King Jr starts his speech "I have a dream..." King is best known for his "I Have a Dream" speech.
- Moses can’t have ham and cheese sandwich, because he’s Jewish, and also lactose intolerant. His lactose intolerance would rule out the cheese, but Judaism (and specifically the Jewish rules of Kashrut) rule out both ham and cheese. Ham is strictly forbidden, as is the mixing of milk and meat.
- After Joan and Cleo paint a horizontal dividing line down the center of the room, their conflict quickly degrades into a parody of the American Civil War, with Joan's top half of the room as the North and Cleo's bottom half as the South. They even begin calling each other “Yankee” and “Dixie slut”.
- Robomatronic Abraham Lincoln’s speech is taken from Lincoln's second inaugural address.
- The fast-moving, more exciting part of Mr. Lincoln’s Wild Ride is called "Ford's Theatre." Ford's Theatre is where Original Lincoln was shot. There is even the sound of a gunshot as the log flume enters "Ford’s Theatre."
[edit] Pop culture references
- The first part of the title of this episode is a reference to Virginia Woolf’s "A Room of One's Own".
- Ironically, the original essay by Woolf is all about sexism, and the 'catfight' plot could be considered one of Clone High's most sexist plots (if intentionally so).
- The second part of the title refers to the so-called "eye of the storm," the area in the centre of a storm (especially a cyclone) that is relatively calm compared to everything around it.
- Cleo gives Joan a Hypercolor t-shirt. Hypercolor was a real type of shirt marketed during the 1980s, which changed color when exposed to heat.
- The song "Stop Harken Doo Da Day" is a parody of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth."
- The amusement park Abe goes to is a parody of Disneyland named "Unspecified Rodent-Themed Amusement Park," a reference to Mickey Mouse.
- The ride Abe goes on is called "Mr. Lincoln’s Wild Ride: An Educational Log Flume Through America’s Darkest Hour," a reference to both Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, two attractions at Disneyland.
- The children at the park even wear hats with rodent ears, similar to Disney's Mickey Mouse hats. However, the hats at Unspecified Rodent-Themed Amusement Park are red.
- The 'robomatronics' used at the park are a parody of Disneyland's animatronics.
- Churros are a popular food at both the park Abe attends and at Disneyland.
- The final climactic fight is a parody of the Benny Hill Show; complete with fast-motion action, cross-dressing, and pie-throwing. It also features a modified version "Yakety Sax," the song used on Bennny Hill during such sequences.
- During the slapstick chase between the policeman, Cleo, Joan, JFK and Gandhi, they pass by several stores, each based on a ‘silly’ form of violence: the Tar Plant, the Feather Mill (thus, tar and feather), the Banana Peel Outlet, and finally the Pie Factory.
[edit] Trivia
- The fight scene in this episode takes place in a dark room while the previous episode's "next time" shows them in a light room.
- Joan is a vegetarian.
- Mr. Butlertron speaks a lyric from Katrina and the Waves’ song, "Walking on Sunshine."
- At the conflict mediation seminar, “Conflicts are Bad” is written on the blackboard.
- Ecybopooch is a parody of Sony’s Aibo robotic dog.
- Cleo suggests that people donate cat food to Joan and Toots after ripping off the label, so “they’ll totally think it’s tuna.” Right after that, we see Toots eating a sandwich – presumably a tuna sandwich.
- Mr. B says he “can hold complex conversations in two distinct intonations,” referring to his normal voice and his lowered voice used at the end of sentences. He in fact has several intonations. His voice occasionally (if rarely) goes up, rather than down, at the ends of sentences. Also, in Episode 4, Film Fest: Tears of a Clone, Mr. B cries like a normal human.
- Abe stops at a store named “Frank’s Stoves, Pipes, and Stovepipe Hats.”
- The theme of the High Society Principal’s Ball is “Old Money.”
- GESH’s Colonel Principal, from Episode 6, Homecoming: A Shot in D'Arc, makes a return appearance at the High Society Principal’s Ball.
- Scudworth is the only person to be hurt by the pie fight – something which in reality would hurt quite a lot. There was a similar occurrence in Episode 7, Plane Crazy: Gate Expectations, where Scudworth was hurt by having TNT blow up in his face, despite the fact that no one would ever get hurt on "Looney Tunes".
- Ecybopooch’s business card reads “Ecybopooch, Freelance Spy. fundog11@hotmail.com.”
- Much of the episode is based around pathetic fallacy; with the impending storm representing the impending conflict (a well-worn cliché of pathetic fallacy). Of course, in true Clone High fashion, conflict breaks out before the storm; and the storm ends up “wiping away all the bad feelings,” hardly the traditional role for a storm that’s complete with dark menacing clouds, and violent thunder and lightning. Also, the metaphor is not complete. At one point, as the conflicts are getting worse, it is bright and sunny out for no reason.
- The line “Storm’s a’brewin’” (and variants on that line) are said six times during the episode.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Pava, Adam. Episode Six: 'Homecoming: A Shot in the D'Arc' Notes (HTML). CloneHighUSA.com.
[edit] External links
