The episode opens with Calvin and Hobbes at a GROSS meeting, where Calvin explains that a strange force from between the dimensions is approaching Earth.
At the same time, a tour around Yellowstone Park gets interesting when Jack appears, searching for a metallic box that erupted with the geyser just a bit prior. Returning to Brainstorm's lair, it turns out that he's also been monitoring the void with his Recombobulator.
While Calvin attends school, Brainstorm tries and fails to harness the power of the void. Miss Wormwood ends up furious thanks to the antics of the MTM, but her efforts to explain it to the principal don't end well.
Meanwhile, Jack realizes that the thing trying to enter their world is sentient and really wants in, while Brainstorm completes his Interdimensional Pliers. He inadvertently ends up releasing the evil into the world.
As Calvin rides home on the bus, the MTM sets off a level 5 alarm when it escapes, and Calvin has it track down the source of the breach. Meanwhile, Dr. Brainstorm hijacks the Yellowstone security cameras in order to keep an eye on the smoke. As it turns out, the smoke erupts through the volcano and engulfs the crowd, inexplicably stopping their screaming. He gets Jack into the Brainstorm Rocket and flies into the fog, finding that some of the people look blank and are attempting to convert the non-corrupted into part of their own. The smoke then reappears and begins speaking to Brainstorm, telling him that he has a dark future ahead of him, though Brainstorm refuses to believe it.
Shortly after this, the corrupted people start throwing rocks at the ship, one of which lodges in the engine, causing it to fall and crash. Brainstorm and Jack escape with a teleporter (obtaining it through a teleporter teleporter).
When Calvin arrives home, he is greeted by Hobbes in the customary fashion, and he gives after chase, and before long the MTM finds the location of the breach: under Yellowstone Park. They summon the others and head to Brainstorm's lab.
Tropes:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The three inventions mentioned by Brainstorm are a pogo stick/letterhead stamp hybrid, a fishing rod that can link with satellites and fillet a trout, and a whoopee cushion... that plays the paranoid rants of Glenn Beck.
- As You Know: Something similar is used by Calvin when describing the void.
- Call-Back: The MTM's full name is used for the first time in a long while.
- The tour is rather similar to the one in "Robot's Day Out".
- Calvin notes that Miss Wormwood still drinks Maalox straight from the bottle.
- Cassandra Truth: Miss Wormwood refuses to believe Calvin about the MTM.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The teleporter for the teleporter, which is really just a teleporter that would only teleport other
- Death Glare: In Part 5, when Calvin is accused of being "only a child", he gives one to Alyx and Kim that the author describes as "would've chilled a six-pack."
- Don't Explain the Joke: See Waxing Lyrical below.
- Extendable Arms: Jack has them.
- Five-Man Band: Lampshaded (more or less):Calvin: You're all essential! Look, I know we don't necessarily like each other all the time, but what it all boils down to is that we make a good team. We all have our little niches to fill.
Socrates: We do?
Calvin: Sure! I have my unbridled genius, Hobbes has his agility, MTM has his gadgets, Socrates has his cunning, Sherman is clever, and Andy is…\\[pause]Calvin: really important. - I Take Offense to That Last One: "Hey! Who're you calling irrelevant?"
- The Omniscient: The fog claims this.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Inverted - Brainstorm ends up causing the being to be released.
- Non-Indicative Name: Lampshaded:Calvin: Of course, I don't use [the Mini Time Machine] for time travel much anymore.
- Noodle Incident: Don't feed the water buffaloes marshmallows.
- Super Smoke: The being.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Brainstorm's the cause, naturally.
- Take That!: Jack isn't a fan of morning talk shows, or NBC and Fox for that matter.
- Another example that overlaps with Genre Savvy:
Jack: I watch enough movies on the Sci-fi Channel to be able to figure these guys out, now. Repetitive plots at times but interesting what people do when they accumulate a lot of money and then say 'let's make a movie!'.- According to Brainstorm, the fog is about as impressive as Nostradamus.
- Then there's the Glenn Beck whoopee cushion...
- Teleporters and Transporters: Brainstorm attempted to build one of these, but it would only teleport other teleporters to him.
- Twitchy Eye: Miss Wormwood has one.
- Understatement: Done quite a bit, mostly from Jack.
- Vagueness Is Coming: The smoke indulges in this.
- The Virus: The smoke invokes this.
- Waxing Lyrical:Jack: Yes, I admit you're a genius, but you're also about as coordinated as a one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people-eater.
(Beat)Dr. Brainstorm: What?Jack: Well, they only have one eye. They probably lack depth perception.
