April 9th
In this Very Special Episode made as a direct response to 9/11, a seemingly normal spring morning takes a turn for the worse when a fire destroys part of Lakewood Elementary School, and the kids react in different ways; Arthur's dad was at the school at the time catering a breakfast for the faculty and could've been seriously hurt, Sue Ellen's journal she's had since first grade is destroyed in the fire, Binky catches a glimpse of the flames during the evacuation and doesn't want anyone to know it frightened him, and Buster misses the whole disaster because he overslept.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Anxiety Dreams: Arthur has a nightmare about his dad catering at the aquarium while serving pirates. The pirates hold Arthur back as the octopus in the tank grabs David, who starts screaming for help as he's drowning. Arthur wakes up and starts worrying about what will happen at the aquarium.
- Ash Face: Played for Drama. David and his catering outfit are covered in soot from the fire. He's also coughing from the smoke inhalation.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nearly everyone's arc ends this way:
- Sue Ellen can't recreate her old journal, but she recovers the torn llama postcard that her pen pal sent her, and finds joy in the mural that everyone creates. She says that April 9th taught her that every day is special.
- Arthur knows that his dad may not be safe everywhere, but that David will always make an effort to come home safe. He starts staying up to wait for him to come home.
- Buster is heartbroken that Mr. Morris has to leave to take care of his health and move in with his daughter. He's also grateful that he got to know Mr. Morris as more than the janitor, and they had a chance to bond.
- Binky doesn't get over his fear of fires. He finally admits that he's scared, and Mr. Frensky reassures him that it will get easier with time.
- Call-Back:
- In "Binky Barnes, Art Expert", Arthur and Buster tried to lie to Binky that the school burned down "only on the inside". Binky naturally scoffed at them. Here, in one of the greatest fits of irony, Arthur and Buster's words come true and Binky is traumatized.
- Sue Ellen's diary was the center of an episode where she lost it at the public library in "Sue Ellen's Lost Diary". Here, the journal is damaged beyond repair in the fire.
- Commercial Break Cliffhanger: The first part ends with a mysterious gloved hand pulling the fire alarm at the Mighty Mountain Elementary School, and all the kids gasp in fear after hearing the horn sounding, to which either the "Word From Us Kids" interstitial (on PBS and other educational station airings) or an ad break (on some other international network) airs. The second part then begins with the kids outside the school learning that someone had allegedly pulled the fire alarm.
- Continuity Nod: Francine's job as a reporter for the school's newspaper, as first seen in Season 6's "Citizen Frensky," reappears here when she is interviewing kids about the reopening of Lakewood Elementary.
- Dramatic Drop: Downplayed, but Binky starts spilling the litter he's supposed to be cleaning when Mr. Frensky mentions he was a volunteer fireman. He then laughs nervously when Mr. Frensky points it out.
- Everyone Has Standards: Binky is the only one who notices Mr. Morris being loaded into a stretcher, asking if he's going to be okay. Everyone else was too shaken to see.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Arthur blurts out that he's scared of something happening to his dad at the aquarium. At first, David asks why Arthur would be worried, and stops dead cold. He kneels and asks if it was because of the fire, and that he nearly died. Arthur can't respond, but David understands.
- Go-to-Sleep Ending: The final scene features Sue Ellen in bed, writing an entry in her new journal about how it's been a month since April 9th and how she and her friends were able to get through the fire and aftermath together. Then she closes her journal and turns out the light to go to sleep, ending the episode.
- Grandfather Clause: The fire alarm systems at Lakewood Elementary and Mighty Mountain Elementary sound fairly old, with scoreboard buzzer-like horns pulsing when set off and no strobe lights. Though it's justified in that a later episode mentioned Lakewood Elementary was built in The '50s when such fire alarm systems were common in new construction. It's also Truth in Television that several older public school buildings in the USA may still have such older fire alarm systems in use, unless the school renovates or the old alarm system fails, in which the system needs to be replaced with a newer up-to-date fire alarm system, which means they are noticeably less common in schools at the start of this current decade compared to back in 2002.
- Hidden Depths: Buster had encountered Mr. Morris when solving mysteries at school but never really talked to him. When he does in the hospital, he learns that Mr. Morris plays the accordion and believes in alien encounters.
- Hollywood Fire: Defied; it's not the fire itself that hurts Mr. Read but the smoke. When the firefighters evacuate him, he's visibly coughing as Arthur goes to him.
- Injured Limb Episode: Mr. Morris breaks his leg during the Lakewood Elementary fire. When Buster visits him later on and sees Mr. Morris having to get around on crutches, he mentions a kid he knew broke his leg but healed in just a few weeks, to which Mr. Morris explains that's because the kid was much younger, and at his age, his leg could be hurt for much longer.
- Jerkass Ball: Justified and Played for Drama; Binky grabs it in this episode and reverts to his earlier bullying behavior from Season 1 when he's around his friends, and he even goes so far as to pull the fire alarm at Might Mountain and laugh about how scared everyone was. It turns out this is a trauma response to the fire and a means for him to reassess control over the situation. Talking about the fire with Mr. Frensky helps him finally overcome this.
- Manly Tears: After denying that he was scared, and acting out for most of the episode, Binky starts crying when admitting to Mr. Frensky that he's terrified of going back to school.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Right when the kids are about to take a test at Mighty Mountain Elementary, someone who turns out to be Binky pulls the fire alarm, and the kids all gasp in fear hearing the horns sounding.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Mr. Morris gets injured by closing the teacher's lounge door so as to stop the fire from spreading rather than evacuating with everyone else. His leg is broken so badly he has to retire.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Zigzagged. Binky goes Deer in the Headlights when he sees Mr. Morris closing the teacher's lounge door. Mr. Ratburn tells him to come along because this is a dangerous situation. The firefighters rescue Mr. Morris and carry him on a stretcher.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Francine's dad sees that Binky is very jittery during community service and finds him when he runs away from school. He relates that he couldn't sleep for a week after seeing the devastation from his first fire.
- One-Episode Fear: When Mr. Ratburn's class evacuates the school due to the fire, Binky catches a glimpse of the flames in the teachers' lounge on the way out and develops a fear of fire, which he won't admit to anyone. Later on when he watches an episode of The Bionic Bunny Show, the fiery villain Hothead appears and pushes Binky's Trauma Button. A little later when the kids are temporarily housed at Mighty Mountain Elementary, Binky pulls the fire alarm there so he can see how quickly the fire department would arrive as an attempt at reassurance, but this ends up getting him sentenced to community service of cleaning up trash at the park, where Binky learns Mr. Frensky was a volunteer firefighter in the past. Then when Lakewood Elementary reopens and Binky can't go back in the school due to the trauma of the fire, Mr. Frensky finds him and Binky finally confesses. Mr. Frensky fully understands as he went through something similar during his volunteer firefighting job, and this helps Binky feel better.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Normally, Arthur's dad laughs off his son's attempts to get out of school or chides him. Here, his expression changes when Arthur blurts out, "But what if bad something happens to you... at the aquarium?!" Then he talks with genuine sympathy and reassures Arthur that he will be fine.
- Binky tries to revert to his tough-guy persona to hide his trauma. Then he runs out of school in a panic, ignoring a concerned Mr. Haney calling after him, and seems on the verge of tears when talking to Mr. Frensky.
- Sue Ellen is so upset about losing her journal that she writes "I have nothing to say" in the new one Muffy gives her for several days. She's only able to write in it earnestly at the end after doing the mural with her classmates.
- Playing Sick: Arthur attempts this on the morning his dad is supposed to go to the aquarium to cater for a deep-sea fishermen's convention, leading to the talk. His dad doesn't buy it when Arthur shouts in worry, despite supposedly having a sore throat.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Buster does a platonic version. When he learns that Mr. Morris has to stop working so that his daughter can take care of him, Buster offers to take him in. The janitor is touched but tells Buster that it's too much for a kid to handle.
- Punch-Clock Villain: "Villain" may be a stretch, but it's revealed that the Mighty Mountain kids are actually quite nice when they aren't playing sports against the main characters. Francine even does thumb wrestling with them, commenting on how good they are.
- Put on a Bus: Mr. Morris, the school janitor who has been a semi-recurring character since the first season, retires and moves out of Elwood City after breaking his leg during the fire. Buster is heartbroken.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: This episode was written largely in response to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Mr. Ratburn realizes the school is on fire when he smells smoke and sees other classes evacuating. He urges everyone not to panic and gets them to exit in an orderly fashion, ordering Sue Ellen to not pick up her backpack. When Binky goes Deer in the Headlights, Mr. Ratburn goes back for him and tells him to come along.
- Mr. Haney proves to be this. He's annoyed that Binky pulled the fire alarm at Mighty Mountain, which could have gotten the kid suspended, but senses that Binky did it for a reason and gives him community service with Mr. Frensky instead. Considering that Mr. Frensky was a volunteer firefighter, the pairing seems intentional. Later, he calls after Binky when the latter runs out of Lakewood Elementary in a panic, looking genuinely worried for him. Offscreen, he gives permission for Binky to spend time with Mr. Frensky when the latter calls him.
- Saying Too Much: Among the kids learning that they evacuated Mighty Mountain Elementary School due to an intentional false fire alarm, just as they wonder who could've pulled it, Binky comes in making fun of the scared reaction of some of the Mighty Mountain kids, but then explains how he was impressed with the firefighters' quick arrival and reveals that he actually timed them, which earns him suspicious looks. And then the clincher comes when the fire chief and the Mighty Mountain principal appear behind Binky with his knapsack that he left beneath the fire alarm pull station he activated.
- To Be Continued: At the end of the first part, when the fire alarm sounds at Mighty Mountain Elementary and all the kids gasp in fear, the text "Stay tuned..." appears on the screen as it fades to black. Early airings did not have the "Stay tuned" title, though.
- Trauma Button: Anything relating to fires or the Lakewood Elementary building to Binky Barnes after he catches a glimpse of the actual fire during the evacuation. The biggest one is on the gang's first day back at the repaired and renovated school when Binky stares into the repaired teachers' lounge (where the fire started) and can't help but hallucinate the flames and smoke in there, causing him to run from the school screaming.
- Unwanted Gift Plot: Of a sort. Muffy initially doesn't understand why Sue Ellen is so upset at the loss of her beloved journal, and so she decides to buy her a new one. She doesn't have success with the first one, particularly after somewhat offending Sue Ellen at calling the original journal a "ratty old thing". A while later when Muffy gives her a fancy personalized journal, Sue Ellen accepts it, as she now feels somewhat better. Though when Sue Ellen rejects the first journal, we get this gem from Muffy:"This wasn't cheap, you know! Eight dollars, and it was on sale!"
- Very Special Episode: The episode revolves around a school fire (and was written in response to the 9/11 attacks) and how each of the kids react to it.
- Wham Line:
- Mr. Ratburn's "What's that smell?" after sniffing the air while starting the school day, spoken right before the fire alarm sounds.
- Another one is Mr. Ratburn saying, "Mr. Morris isn't in today. In fact, he's not coming back."
- What the Hell, Hero?: Arthur is not happy with Buster making up an exaggerated story of how he was there when the school fire happened and tells his friend that his father nearly died in the very same fire that Buster is making a big deal of.
