Recap / Danny Phantom S 1 E 9 My Brothers Keeper

"Presented In Phantomation"

Produced 2003, aired in U.S. on 6/18/04

Production order: 9 (1-9)

It's Spirit Week at Casper High, and the keynote speaker for the upcoming centennial celebration, Jazz Fenton, is meeting with Mr. Lancer to discuss plans for the week’s events... and share her concerns about her brother Danny, who she can’t help but notice is acting very strange lately. She’s sure he needs help, but, of course, he’d never let his big sister help him; he doesn’t tell her anything anymore. What’s wrong with him lately? What’s he hiding?

Meanwhile, the subject of her anxiety is inside the school fighting a green blob of a ghost, and not having a very easy time of it. The battle’s a short one – by the time Jazz and Lancer show up, the ghost has escaped, the office is completely trashed, and Danny is beating himself up for letting him get away. (Lancer isn’t too pleased, either.)

The office (or what’s left of it), it turns out, belongs to a Dr. Penelope Spectra, a renowned teen therapist with a voice as sweet and sugary as her smile and a habit of keeping her office extremely cold (to "keep the mind icy sharp," she says). Apparently, the school’s brought her in to make sure the centennial Spirit Week is extra-spirited; so far, her and her assistant, Bertrand’s, plans to that end consist of a display of dominoes that will spell out CASPER SPIRIT when they’re knocked over and a finale with "spirit sparklers" (Lancer’s personal favorite). Spectra comes on a little too strong for Jazz, but, even so, the girl thinks talking to her might help her brother. Lancer agrees... that it would be a fitting punishment for destroying her office.

Danny shows up very unwillingly for his session later that day, furious at his sister for suggesting Lancer make this his punishment. The fact that Spectra insists on keeping her office so cold that he can see his breath does nothing to help his attitude. Spectra isn’t surprised by how he keeps complaining, as she explains Jazz told her what a baby he can be, but Danny shouldn’t care that his sister thinks he’s a loser. Danny’s shocked to hear Jazz said such things about him, but Spectra, walking behind him and putting her hands on his shoulders, tells him it doesn’t matter.

Spectra: I'm not saying you’re a loser, Danny – I think you’re a great kid.

Danny: Then why do I feel so miserable?

Spectra jubilantly reminds him that "Mess is just the beginning of Message!" before sending him on his way, more depressed than when he came in. Once Bertrand closes the door behind him, Spectra opens her compact and looks at her reflection as she absorbs a green aura of energy that erases the lines in her face, making her look even younger. She exposits that she feeds on misery to keep herself looking young and beautiful, so teenagers make the perfect prey, and Danny in particular is a veritable feast. Bertrand decides they ought to make sure he stays that way and shapeshifts into the same ghost Danny fought earlier, then into a giant green hornet.

A brief look at Danny talking in the hallway with Sam and Tucker makes you wonder why that’s necessary. He’s still upset about what Jazz supposedly said about him. Unlike Danny, Sam doubts that she would ever say things like that, but then Jazz herself shows up, putting an end to the friends’ conversation. Jazz tries to tell Danny that she’s only trying to help and she’s been worried about him "ever since the accident," but Danny refuses to discuss it. Jazz continues to read him the Class Representative Riot Act, lecturing him on everything from hardly having any friends to his complete lack of extracurricular activities, until his ghost sense goes off. Jazz only worries even more when he suddenly runs away, yelling for her to leave him alone.

Jazz has bigger things to worry about now, though – namely, the "freakishly large hornet" flying down the hall! She hasn't even finished screaming when it flies towards her, grabs her, and licks her face. Before you can examine the implications of that any further, Danny flies in, already in ghost mode and intangible, and kicks the bug through the wall. While Jazz tries to come to grips with the fact that she's just seen not one but two real ghosts, Danny takes the fight out to the schoolyard.

Danny’s so flustered that he forgets to go intangible when the bug charges at him, which makes him feel like an idiot: "I’m not getting better at this – I’m getting worse." He manages to protect himself from the next attack with an ectoplasmic shield, but when he whips out the Fenton Thermos, the ghost has disappeared. His second loss of the day convinces Danny he really must be a loser before he flies away, unaware that Jazz is watching him.

At home later that night, Jazz can’t wait to tell Danny about the ghosts, but Danny denies he saw anything. Another attempt to talk to her brother failed, Jazz resorts to Plan B: "Mom! Dad! Can I talk to you about Danny?!" Terrified, Danny tries to stop her, but their parents have already rushed in, their mom asking if something’s wrong with Danny, and their dad asking if there’s a ghost involved. Seeing an easy out, Danny tells them about the ghost Jazz supposedly saw in school today, successfully distracting them. Jack shows them his latest invention – the Fenton Ghost Peeler, a handgun-sized weapon that, with the push of a button, envelopes the bearer in full-body armor, and then peels the ghost apart molecule by mole... er, "atom by atom." Danny happily tells them to enjoy their chat as he makes his exit, leaving Jazz groaning in defeat.

Not ready to give up, Jazz confronts Sam and Tucker the next day at school when Danny’s not around, asking them directly why her brother’s been so depressed lately. Tucker’s insistence that, as Danny’s friends, they "keep his secrets from you" seems to weaken when Jazz hands him a bill, but Sam quickly returns it and tries to assure Jazz that her brother’s fine and she should stop worrying. Cue the fire alarm going off and the sprinkler system soaking everyone and everything in the school.

No one, not even Danny, knows it was Bertrand who pulled the alarm and framed Danny for it. Lancer at first punishes him with a month’s detention, but Spectra talks him out of it, as she has something else in mind. Danny tries to object, but Lancer hands him over to Spectra again. This time, she dresses him up in the Casper High Spirit Baby costume to help him overcome his fear of being made fun of, as she knows he cares too much about what other people think... Well, she’s right, given how humiliated Danny feels when Dash and his posse come in and laugh at him, which provides her a nice meal of misery.

Danny’s not the only one feeling miserable these days. While getting ice cream at Elmore’s Pharmacy that night, various students share the horrible things Dr. Spectra’s taught them about themselves:

Valerie: Spectra says I worry too much about material possessions.

Kwan: At least you’ll have them – Spectra says I’m gonna wind up old, broke, and alone.

Tucker tries to cheer Danny up by showing him some funny pictures he took of him in that baby suit, but Danny snaps at him for taking them... and then feels guilty for getting mad at him. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him these days, why he’s been feeling worse and worse ever since he started talking to Spectra. The trio are interrupted by Jazz (again) and by Danny’s ghost sense (again). Danny sees the ghost (Bertrand in his amorphous form) sneak up behind Paulina, now obsessed with making herself look perfect thanks to Spectra telling her how important beauty is, doing her makeup. Needing to get away from Jazz, he yells about his friends taking her side to give himself an excuse to leave and runs out the back exit. Jazz runs after him, and Sam and Tucker run after her, but they’re too late. Jazz opens the back door and finds her brother hiding in the alley... transforming into the same ghost she saw earlier! Oblivious to what’s just happened, Danny flies off as Jazz gasps in shock and Sam and Tucker panic.

Jazz frantically asks Sam and Tucker if they saw what she saw. Tucker stammers about how it’s not what she thinks, before Sam silences him with an ice cream cone in his mouth and laughs it off as Jazz seeing things just like her parents – of course they all know ghosts aren’t real! Jazz realizes that they already know and, of course, wouldn’t tell her the truth in a million years. She plays along, declaring her parents’ insanity must be rubbing off on her, and runs off to work on her Spirit Week speech. Tucker and Sam buy it, sighing in relief at how they dodged that bullet. (No doubt they’ll be engaging in some serious Face Palming next season.)

Back inside, Danny kicks Bertrand away from Paulina and the cashier, only to get backhanded across the room. He dodges a bunch of energy blasts without fighting back as the rest of the customers run for their lives and display after display gets totaled. His disappointed opponent observes he’s not very good at this before shapeshifting into a cougar. Once again, Danny doesn’t fight back or even try to turn intangible but just backs away until he’s up against the wall.

Tucker shouts for the ghost to get away from him, causing him to turn his attention to the two humans. Danny finally finds the will to fight, telling him to leave his friends alone, and tackles him away from them. The two combatants land with Bertrand on top of Danny, taunting the "loser ghost" about his "baby helpers." Danny snaps when he hears himself called a loser again, kicks the ghost off of him, rises up, and fires a huge energy blast that causes even more damage to the store but none to his target. Satisfied with the mayhem he’s caused for today, Bertrand reverts back to his default form and floats away, leaving Tucker to hope the place is insured and Danny to berate himself for his latest failure. A wide-eyed Jazz watches him fly away in despair – at last, she understands.

That night, as he plays with a plate of food he’s not eating, Danny wonders why his sister’s looking at him so weird, and what she’s up to when she randomly reaches out and touches his arm. Jazz nervously admits that she’s been hard on him lately but hopes he still knows she thinks he’s great. Actually, Danny heard just the opposite. Jazz tells him he’s wrong, and apologizes for coming off as a pushy, Know-Nothing Know-It-All jerk. She reminds him that she’s his sister, and she’ll always care about him and be there for him, and she just wants him to know he can talk to her about anything, no matter what.

Danny actually seems touched by her speech and, after a brief pause, starts to say, "Um..." when they’re suddenly interrupted by explosions from the living room. It’s just their parents trying out the Fenton Ghost Peeler again, which Jack is still eager to try on a real ghost, although Maddie warns him they can’t completely vaporize it if they want to examine the remains. The sight makes Danny decide he’d rather not talk about his secret with anyone in his family, but instead of pushing him, Jazz just smiles and says, "Yeah... I’d imagine not," accepting his wish to keep this to himself. She gives her brother a quick kiss on the head and leaves him be. Although he finds that as "Gross!" as any little brother, Danny smiles at the gesture, too. Things are definitely looking better for the Fenton siblings.

If only the same could be said for Casper High, where things have gone from bad to worse, emotional state-wise. The next day, the entire student body is depressed and listless. So much for a peppy Spirit Week. The only kids in the school who still have some degree of happiness in them are Jazz, Sam, and Tucker, which is odd since, as Tucker points out, they’re the only ones who haven’t had a session with the great Dr. Spectra. Something finally clicks for Danny, and he looks at Tucker’s digital photos from yesterday, where his icy cold breath is clearly visible. Even when Spectra sent him out into the hallway in that costume, he was still so cold around her that he could see his breath. He now realizes that it couldn’t have been from the cold temperatures in her office – what if it was his ghost sense all along, meaning that Spectra is actually a ghost? "Only one way to find out," Sam concludes.

After a thoroughly depressed Sam and Tucker leave Spectra’s office, an invisible Danny flies inside and watches Spectra absorb their misery and grow younger. Hypothesis confirmed. Bertrand arrives next and informs his boss that everything’s set-up: the domino display is rigged to trigger the spirit sparklers, which are set to incinerate the speaker, which will be so terribly painful for the audience to witness that the anguish will keep them looking young forever! The two partners eagerly float away to put their Evil Plan into action, while a horrified Danny struggles with the knowledge that they’re planning to kill his sister.

As the assembly begins, Danny catches up with them in the hallway, revealing that he’s onto them. He knows Spectra feeds on misery, so she finds every kid’s greatest weakness or greatest fear and stirs it up until misery is all they can feel. She’s done it to every student, just like she did with him! Spectra applauds his discovery: "Very good... but I fear you’ve missed a few details!" With that, she transforms into her true form: a completely black, demonic-looking creature with glowing red eyes, surrounded by green and purple smoke. While Danny’s reeling from that sight, Bertrand takes on his cougar form again, and the two ghosts phase outside through the wall , as Lancer knocks over the first domino in the gym.

Danny seems to have it together this battle, phasing through a tree to avoid getting his eyes scratched out and then phasing up through the ground to send Bertrand flying with one strong punch. Spectra now joins the fight, grabbing Danny and dragging him toward the gym, telling him she can still sense his doubt and misery and that it’s still making her stronger. She holds him up to the window, gloating over how he’s about to watch his sister die and he’ll be left to take the blame; as icing on the cake, "By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be sure it was all your fault!"

Danny’s finally had enough: "I am so tired of you dumping on me. And I am so tired of dumping on myself! Jazz never did that... even when I was mad at her... and I won’t. Let! Her! DOWN!"

With a great burst of Heroic Resolve and a bright flash of energy, Danny breaks free of Spectra’s grip. She tells Bertrand to finish him, and her assistant flies up and lands on a tree branch where he transforms into a ninja. Danny looks on with boredom as the guy twirls his weapon around and around in a complicated pattern before following Dr. Jones’ example and casually sucking him into the Fenton Thermos. An enraged Spectra charges him, but Danny evades her, only to turn around, grab her, and fling her into a dumpster. He then remembers Jazz and flies as fast as he can into the gym just as the spirit sparklers light up. He reaches her in time to pull her off the stage as the podium is reduced to a smoking pile of ashes.

Danny phases them through the wall into a hallway. At first, he and Jazz stare blankly at each other, neither knowing what to say... when Spectra bursts in, grabs Danny, and drags him into a storage closet. Danny whips out the thermos again, but she knocks it out of his hands and, in one last desperate attempt to get under his skin, asks him what he really is: "A ghost trying to fit in with humans? Or some creepy little boy with creepy little powers?" Danny’s confusion and the green aura of despair radiating from him into her show she’s gotten to him, calling him a freak no one cares about.

"Excuse me." They both look up to see Jazz standing in the doorway with the Fenton Peeler. "I don’t know this kid, but I hope it’s okay if he gets a second opinion." With that, she activates the weapon and, once it’s armed and ready, turns it full blast on Spectra. Just as Jack said, layer by layer of her is peeled away, each one older and more decrepit than the last, until she’s reduced to her true state: a powerless, wrinkled, old woman. Danny sucks her into the thermos with no problem, finally putting an end to this nightmare.

As soon as she’s free from the armor, Jazz walks over to her now very-nervous rescuer but then suddenly screams, "Ah! Ghost!" and runs away, waving her arms. She pauses at the door to tell the ghost he should go, and Danny sighs in relief before taking her advice. Jazz proudly watches him phase through the ceiling, deciding, "He can tell me when he’s ready." Lancer now comes looking for her and takes her back to the gym, where the mood couldn’t be more different from what it was five minutes ago. Everyone's cheering and celebrating; even Danny waves happily at his sister. Lancer compliments her on her great disappearing act, which seems to have done wonders for everyone’s spirit. The only spirit Jazz is interested in, however, is her brother’s, and judging by the way she sees him fly joyfully through the sky that night, as if he’s finally at peace, she can finally stop worrying about him. For now.

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This episode provides examples of:

• Armor-Piercing Question: Spectra gives a stinging question towards the end to throw Danny off his game, and it doesn't help that there's no right answer.
  Spectra: What are you? A ghost trying to fit in with humans? Or some creepy little boy with creepy little powers?
• Bad "Bad Acting": "Ah! Ghost!"
• Bad Samaritan: Spectra drives kids to despair under the guise of helping them.
• Big Brother Instinct/Big Sister Instinct: As Spectra learns the hard way in the end, do not mess with Danny’s sister, and do not mess with Jazz’s brother!
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Spectra may act like a sweet, peppy, enthusiastic school councilor who loves spirit week and has it out to lift the spirits of the collective school body. But behind closed doors, she's a manipulative ghost who feeds off the students' insecurities and lack of confidence, purposefully give them terrible advice on improving their outlook on life (ex. making Danny believe his sister thinks he's a loser, telling Paulina her looks are all that matter).
• Brother–Sister Team: Danny and Jazz defeat Spectra together.
• Call-Back: Jazz once mentions that Danny's behavior has changed ever since "the accident". This likely refers to Danny's Freak Lab Accident that gave him his ghost powers, which took place before the series (as described in the intro). This may also imply that Jazz has known about Danny's accident and has been monitoring him since then.
• Character Development: Contains some of the best in the series – Jazz goes from being a know-it-all who is overprotective of her brother to a Cool Big Sis who better understands her brother (even if Danny’s not fully aware of just how much). Danny also goes from a moody Emo Teen who resents his sister to a caring brother.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Fenton Peeler.
• A Day in the Limelight: This is Jazz's first focus episode as it has her get involved with her little brother's adventures as a ghost.
• Death Trap: Bertrand and Spectra rig one up for Jazz that’s actually justified, as their goal isn’t specifically to kill someone but to make a large audience watch someone die.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: In this case, because extreme cold renders the hero's ghost sense moot, stopping him from catching onto your evil nature.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Danny has one after Sam and Tucker mention how the two of them and Jazz — the only ones who haven't had a session with Spectra — have the most spirit in the school compared to all the other students. Danny finally starts to realize that Spectra is somehow making everyone miserable and suspected she's a ghostly imposter.
• Forced to Watch: Spectra has this planned for everyone during the Spirit-a-thon, but for Danny in particular.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Spectra's first action was to reduce the temperature of the thermostat. This messes with Danny's ghost sense because he could've mistaken sensing a ghost for seeing his own breath. Were it not for a photograph of him with his ghostly chill actually seen, Danny would have been too late.
  • Valerie, who had an Early-Bird Cameo in "Parental Bonding", establishes that she worries too much about "material possessions", which comes to play in the next episode when she loses her rich lifestyle.
• Jerkass: Danny sees Jazz as this due to her know-it-all attitude and pushy nature, calling her a fink and refusing to talk to her though Jazz truly loves her brother and is only trying to help him. Danny spends much of the episode being this to Jazz, pushing her away and giving her attitude when she’s trying to help.
• Heroic BSoD: Danny spends most of the episode in this state thanks to Spectra’s mind games, until his sister’s support and his desire to protect her snap him out of it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Non-fatal example; after Danny theorizes Spectra is a ghost making everyone miserable, Sam and Tucker say there is one way to be sure and have a session with her themselves. This causes them to become miserable like the rest of the school, but ultimately gives Danny the proof he needs.
• Hidden Depths: Jazz gets to show her true, heroic colors for the first time. By contrast, the sweet, friendly, peppy Dr. Spectra is actually an Emotion Eater draining everyone of their happiness so she can feed on their misery.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: When Jazz catches Danny going ghost, she asks Tucker and Sam if she saw what she thought she saw. Though she never specifies exactly what she thought she saw, the two quickly shoot down any notion of ghosts being real. This helps tip Jazz off that Danny's friends are in the know and keeping it from her.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Spectra has spent the better part of the episode actively tearing the students' self-confidence down (especially Danny) until they're gloomy shells of themselves. With the Fenton Peeler, Jazz repays Spectra for emotionally abusing her brother and the entire student body by reducing her to a greatly aged shell of her former self.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jazz sees Danny transform and is stunned. Sam and Tucker almost convince her that it's not remotely possible, but then Jazz remembers what they said earlier about being Danny's friends and keeping his secrets from people like her.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Sam and Tucker realize something is up with Spectra when Danny tells them that she told him Jazz called him a loser since that doesn’t sound like Jazz. But Danny is too caught up in his own insecurities, stress and resentment towards his “fink” sister to see it until later.
• Perpetual Smiler: That memorable shot of Jazz walking through the hallway, all smiles while everyone around her is depressed.
• Present Company Excluded: Jazz tells Danny that he hardly has any friends, right in front of Sam and Tucker who are offended. Jazz quickly catches herself.
  Jazz: Well, okay, besides these two.
• Psycho Psychologist: The villain of the week, Penelope Spectra, poses as a psychologist to manipulate the students with their insecurities to feed off their misery.
• Poor Communication Kills: If Danny would have just talked to Jazz about his problems, especially about what Spectra told him, like how Jazz asked many times he could have found out that Spectra lied about Jazz calling him a looser and worked through some of his emotional turmoil. Instead Danny just kept it to himself and boiled in his insecurities and anger while resenting his sister more.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After learning she's a ghost, Danny confronts Spectra and sums up her emotional parasitism.
  Spectra: (To Danny Phantom) I'm sorry, can I help you?
  Danny Phantom: No, I'm sure you can't. You can't help anyone except yourself. You find the one thing that a kid's most afraid of. Their looks, their future, their confidence (...) and you pick at it and pick at it while your snippy little ghost assistant feeds on it.
  Bertrand: (offended) Hey!
• Secret Chaser: Jazz – finding out said secret after only one episode has to be a record for Secret Chasers.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Jazz becomes this for Danny, deciding not to tell him she knows his Secret Identity until he wants her to know.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Jazz gives Spectra a very satisfying one, in response to the latter's sadistic question to Danny.
  Jazz: I don't know this kid, but I hope it's okay if he gets a second opinion.
• Spanner in the Works: When Danny was dressed up as a baby as part of Spectra's "therapeutic" punishment, Tucker took a picture of the public humiliation. Although a touch mean-spirited, it's rather useful to Danny in the long run. Because the picture shows Danny's ghost breath going off, even outside of Spectra's cold office, indicating she's a ghost. Had it not been for Tucker's picture, Danny wouldn't have had the tangible proof that Spectra was up to something. This also teeters on Nice Job Fixing It, Villain territory, as Spectra was the one who set up the public humiliation in the first place.
• Spoiler Cover: In the episode, Spectra is initially portrayed as a genuine shrink. However, the title card features her with with a Slasher Smile controlling Danny and Jazz as puppets, spoiling that she's Evil All Along.
• Symbolism: The title card for the episode has Spectra using Jazz and Danny as marionettes. Appropriately, it represents how she's using both siblings and turning them against each other. Respectively, she's Gaslighting Danny into believing his own sister thinks so little of him, and she intends to use Jazz in a scheme that will make Spectra beautiful at Jazz's expense. The entirety of the plot is about the Fenton siblings cutting the strings that keep them trapped in Spectra's toxic influence.
• Wham Episode: Jazz learns about Danny's ghost powers, and this starts to alter certain events in the show.