"Spike" is the first episode of the second season of Lilo & Stitch: The Series, and the fortieth episodenote overall. It first aired on November 5, 2004.
Experiment 319, a porcupine-like experiment, is activated just before a trivia competition that Lilo and Mertle are facing off in. Lilo's confident that she and her team will win easily thanks to Stitch's high intelligence level, but they are soon jeopardized when Stitch is hit by one of 319's quills, which causes stupidity and goofiness for 48 hours.
Pleakley, meanwhile, organizes a therapy group for the other experiments, which includes 319, who gets named Spike.
Experiments who appeared or were mentioned in this episode:
- Fibber (X-032): Is part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group. He naturally calls out a few lies.
- Squeak (X-110): Jumba tries to use an invention called the Evil-liminator on him to remove his evil traits (which for 110 is constantly talking). It fails and explodes, and the experiment continues talking.
- Bonnie (X-149): Is part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group. She thinks she's too smart for the therapy and blames her partner for their arrest. Fibber disagrees.
- Clyde (X-150): Is part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group. He calls out Bonnie for their arrest and Fibber essentially backs him up.
- Nosy (X-199): Is part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group. He exposes a secret about Pleakley (his antenna is actually dyed green because it's turning prematurely orange) and admits later in the episode that he cannot help being a gossip.
- Spike (X-319): This episode's Monster of the Week; a dark blue porcupine-like experiment designed to fire quills that cause people to become 99% silly and 1% clever for 48 hours.
- Slushy (X-523): Is part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group. He begins the fight by throwing the snowball that hits Splody, aggravating him. He also wears an orange aloha shirt in this episode for some reason.
- Yaarp (X-613): Is the scorekeeper at the Ohana-Rama trivia competition. Also, although he is not part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group, he can be seen hiding under the sofa during the fight.
- Splodyhead (X-619): Is part of Pleakley's E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy group. He kicks off the fight when he fires plasma in response to the hit from Slushy's snowball.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Ash Face: Jumba gets this when the Evil-liminator explodes. Squeak also gets covered in ash, but it doesn't stop him from talking.
- Big "SHUT UP!": After a Beat on his end, Pleakley yells "Stop talking!" to Squeak after the latter gets zapped with the Evil-liminator but continues with his rambling.
- Brick Joke: When the family visits the museum to revise before the contest, all Pleakley "learns" is that the T-shirts from the shop must be washed with like colors. This turns out to be an actual question in the contest.
- Chairman of the Brawl: During the fight during Pleakley's therapy group, one of the experiments throws a table that nearly hits Pleakley. While demanding to know who threw it, he comments that it's supposed to be a chair that is thrown.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Mertle relies on Teresa to look up answers for her in order to win the contest. But once Lilo sends Spike to dumb down Teresa, Mertle finds herself giving goofy answers.
- Chekhov's Gun: During Lilo's attempt to teach the dumbed-down Stitch, she tries to have him listen to music from a portable CD player, but he decides to take the CD out, stick his nose through the hole, and pretend to be an airplane. He eventually gets it off halfway through the trivia competition, causing him to chase after it as it rolls away backstage. Lilo goes after him to get him out of backstage... where they find Teresa looking up answers for Mertle on a laptop.
- Childish Pillow Fight: Bonnie and Clyde have one during the brawl.
- Continuity Nod: Based on their little fight during Pleakley's session, Slushy and Splodyhead still have their Elemental Rivalry from Slushy's debut episode. Fortunately, Pleakley manages to help them settle it.
- Defeating the Cheating Opponent: Lilo and Mertle's families face off in a family quiz game where Mertle's family has been winning the first half. Thanks to Stitch, Lilo finds out that Mertle's been cheating by having Teresa, one of her friends, look up answers online and feed them through an earpiece. So Lilo stops this by having Spike "hug" Teresa since Spike's quills make his victim lose their intelligence. Come the second round, Teresa's acting too loopy to give proper answers, leaving Mertle without any advantages and allowing Lilo's family to catch up and win in a fair contest.
- Earpiece Conversation: Lilo discovers that the secret to Mertle's success was that she was receiving info from Teresa via this, so she has Spike give Teresa a "hug", causing Mertle to spout ridiculous answers.
- Everybody Cries: Spike begins crying at the E.A.R.W.A.X. therapy session, causing the other experiments to cry.
- Idiot Ball:
- This trope is what Spike causes to others; just replace "Ball" with... well, "Spike"! (Although the episode goes out of its way to avoid directly saying that his ability makes his victims dumb idiots and instead says that it makes them "99% silly".)
- Mertle never gets the idea to stop listening to Teresa when the latter's answers and voice tone have suddenly become very goofy. She could have started answering some questions without Teresa's "help" or let her aunt and mother finally try to answer some of the questions themselves (at least, based on what we see on-screen), but her stubbornness in trying to beat Lilo's family all "by herself" was likely clouding her judgment.
- Innocently Insensitive: The first question Moses asks in the trivia contest is a true-or-false question asking if there is firm evidence of aliens from other planets visiting Earth. Lilo, who lives with aliens, excitedly answers "true" and Yaarp gives her the first ten points. However, Moses, who is legitimately unaware of the existence of aliens on Kauaʻi despite having Yaarp under his employ, says her answer is incorrect, and a clearly indignant Yaarp is forced to take away the points he gave her.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Mertle mocks Lilo for being "dumb" and cheats during the trivia contest by having Teresa feed her answers. Lilo then sabotages Mertle by having Spike turn Teresa stupid, so she gives Mertle ridiculous answers, which causes Mertle to embarrass herself in front of the audience. Mertle then loses the trivia contest, and Spike hugs Mertle to try and cheer her up, accidentally turning Mertle stupid, too.
- Meaningful Name: As Jumba says, Lilo naming Experiment 319 "Spike" is very appropriate.
- Motor Mouth: Squeak. He talks a mile a minute.
- No-Sell: Played with—Jumba is hit by Spike's quills yet still seemingly keeps his intelligence intact. Jumba himself confirms, however, that he is affected by Spike's powers, it's just that he's such a genius that being reduced down to 1% of his usual intelligence is still plenty to work with.
- Noodle Incident: It's not known how or when Lilo and Stitch caught Squeak.
- Pain to the Ass: During the confrontation with Spike, Jumba ends up taking three Spike Shots to the rear. Even though Pleakley removes the quills and bandages him, Jumba comments he wouldn't be able to sit down for a bit.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Lilo learns that Mertle is cheating with Teresa's help, so Lilo decides to "cheat" back by sending Spike to hug Teresa, taking away Mertle's unfair advantage.
- Series Continuity Error: Aren't Nosy and Fibber supposed to be in Gantu's possession? And why are Bonnie and Clyde allowed at Lilo's house when they are clearly still convicted felons and are still wearing their prison jumpsuits? (For the record, Jess Winfield was made aware of this error on his TV Tome thread after the episode first aired, so he Hand Waved the error off by claiming that the episode takes place after "Snafu", which considering that "Snafu" didn't air until June 2006, would make this one of the most extreme cases of
Out of Order for a single cartoon episode ever.) - Shout-Out: Squeak's appearance and Motor Mouth tendencies seem to be based on Sniffles of Looney Tunes fame, a mouse who is known for being an incessant chatterbox.
- Sore Loser: Lilo almost becomes this when she's losing to Mertle in the trivia contest, as she nearly has Spike hug (and thus spike) Mertle to dumb her down, but Pleakley admonishes Lilo for considering using the experiment to cheat and prevents them from going forward with the idea. Ironically, as Lilo would find out soon after, Mertle wasn't playing fairly herself, allowing Lilo to take a different approach to improve her chances of winning and actually make everything fair at the same time.
- Spanner in the Works: Halfway through the competition, Lilo believed that she and her family were never going to beat Mertle. Had a dumb-downed Stitch not chased after the compact disc he was playing with, it wouldn't have led to Lilo discovering that Mertle was actually getting all the answers from Teresa.
- Tastes Like Chicken: One of the silly answers Mertle gives out, courtesy of a dumbed-down Teresa.
- Torment by Annoyance: The gist of Squeak's primary function through his Motor Mouth ability, though he seems to be a Nice Guy despite his endless talking.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Lilo almost considers sending Spike to give Mertle a hug in order to dumb her down for the competition, but Pleakley calls her out on this plan as it would essentially count as cheating. Lilo agrees with him, realizing that she would rather lose to Mertle's family fair and square, even though Lilo herself would learn that Mertle wasn't really playing fair on her own end.
- What We Now Know to Be True: To his annoyance, Jumba does poorly in the trivia competition because his advanced alien knowledge often contradicts what is believed to be true on Earth.Moses: At opposition, how far is Jupiter from the Earth: 6 million, 60 million or 600 million kilometers?Jumba: Ah-ha! Is tricksy many-choice question! Thanks to subspace fold in fabric of Solar System, actual distance to massive planet is 14 feet.
- Worf Had the Flu: Lilo planned for Stitch to compete with her in the trivia contest, considering his hypercognition. Naturally, he gets spiked by Spike to have his intelligence temporarily drop just before the competition happens, forcing her to sideline him.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: The moral of the episode. Lilo thinks she's not nearly as smart as Mertle. But once she learns Mertle's been cheating, Lilo has more confidence in herself.
- Your Size May Vary: In one shot of the E.A.R.W.A.X. fight, Splodyhead appears to be much bigger than he actually is. It's most likely due to a layering and perspective issue where he's supposed to be towards the bottom of the frame in the foreground, but his layer was positioned higher than it needed to be, making him look bigger.
