When Cavendish and Dakota stop Milo from destroying a pistachio plant, they change the future. Pistachio plants become sapient and take over the planet, so Cavendish, Dakota and Milo must race through time to save the future.
Tropes:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Dakota tousles Milo's hair after Milo manages to hotwire the transport they're using.
- Anti-Climax: Played for Laughs. After spending a few episodes believing Milo is an agent sent to counter their efforts, Cavendish takes Dakota's advice and simply asks if that's the case. After learning that Milo had no intention of messing with their missions and it's just Murphy's Law at work, his animosity toward Milo simply ends, and the two intend to go their separate ways, until Milo gets dragged along.
- Bad Future: After Cavendish and Dakota save the mutated pistachio plant, the future is changed to having been taken over by sapient pistachio plants, led by the one they saved.
- Cassandra Truth: The events of the episode are so hard to believe that when Cavendish and Dakota report it to Mr. Block, he thinks they invented everything to try to get out of the pistachio assignment.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Milo uses the llama incident to distract the Pistachions.
- Dakota grabbed a bag of clocks to use as a weapon but managed to get away instead. Later, when a Pistachion latches onto the time limo, he uses it to bash it off, which also puts all the clocks in the timestream.
- Milo laments not having the three gardening scissors he usually keeps inside his backpack. During the climax, Zack, Melissa and Sara get them and they break when they try to use them. Such an unlikely event taking place clues them to Milo's return.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Because Milo didn't tell Diogee to go home, Diogee returns at the fight in the schoolyard to kill the mutated pistachio plant right as King Pistachion has Milo in his clutches.
- Companion Cube: Scott the Undergrounder apparently keeps a milk carton with a face carved into it, whom he calls "Mildred", as companionship.
- Continuity Snarl: The episode flashes back to "The Substitute" to explain how the Pistachio Plant survived Cavendish and Dakota's original failure, however Dakota's line when the sentient blob grabs his foot; "Arg, it's got me!" is replaced with the line "The sentient Blob's got my foot!", presumably to explain things to casual viewers who haven't seen the prior episode.
- Cutting the Knot: Dakota does this by just asking Milo about all the weird occurances that happen when their paths cross.
- The Family That Slays Together: King Pistachion's minions are also his children.
- Floating Clocks: Lampshaded and Justified. The timestream has lots of clocks, which Dakota says was probably someone's idea of a joke. Later on, he ends up causing those clocks to be there in the first place.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Sara delivers one to Diogee Ex Machina Murphy.
- Gone Horribly Right: Dakota and Cavendish finally manage to succeed at one of their missions, and pistachios survive into the future… only they become sapient and take over said future.
- Internal Reveal: Milo and co. learn about the time travelers (and their mission to save the pistachios) and Cavendish & Dakota learn Milo isn't an enemy agent and their mission failures are a result of Murphy's Law.
- Meaningful Name:
- Time Travel will be invented by someone named Professor Time. It's theorized that he changed his name for branding purposes.
- One of the places Milo's friends look for him is Bull's China Chop.
- Overly Long Gag:
- Cavendish and Dakota arguing about how Dakota originally acquired the peach if his past self retrieved it from his current self.
- Brick and Savannah using their car key to hear where their car is… and hear it from two separate locations, seeing the front part of their car in shambles and the back part of their car thrown against the school wall. Brick keeps pressing the unlock button despite the duo already knowing now that their car is wrecked, prompting Savannah to snark that keeping it up will definitely fix the car in no time.
- Poor Communication Kills: Averted. Before harming Milo for supposedly sabotaging their efforts deliberately, Dakota suggests to Cavendish that they just ask him if this is actually what he's doing, since Milo has proven to be a Nice Guy that has no motive against them that they know of. Milo explains Murphy's Law, and in addition, Cavendish and Dakota explain to Milo of who they are and what their mission is. Both sides take these reveals pretty well.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Mr. Block doesn't remember the Bad Future due to the way it fixed itself, but all the main characters do, as does Sara.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Eliot takes one look at the time portal and runs for it.
- Sequel Episode: The mutated plant from "The Substitute" grows to become this episode's main villain.
- Sequel Hook: Milo still has to go back to 1965 at some point per Stable Time Loop so he can give his letter to Doctor Zone. And unbeknownst to everyone, the Pistachion that was knocked off the limo survived the erasure thanks to being trapped in the timestream when it happened and has emerged in 1955…
- Spanner in the Works: Diogee of all beings is the one that King Pistachion misses, allowing him to pee on the king's sapling form and stop him.
- Stable Time Loop:
- At one point, Cavendish is hit by a peach, which warns him, Dakota, and Milo that there are Pistachions coming their way, and he gives it to Dakota. Later, after traveling back ten minutes to figure out what happened, Cavendish realizes he needs to warn himself about incoming Pistachions, and Dakota gives him the peach. Played For Laughs when Cavendish then realizes that it doesn't make sense for the peach to be there, seemingly to only exist for said loop to be in place.
- When Milo learns how his sister and his friends knew where and when to be for the climax, he tells them he still didn't leave the message. He decides to send the very same message instead of bothering to write it in the first place because it seems to work with peaches.
- Stalker Shrine: Melissa has a room filled with pictures and past belongings of Milo. It was originally meant to help her find a counter for Murphy's Law, but she kept it even after realizing Milo wouldn't have wanted that.
- Stating the Simple Solution: After Cavendish spent the last few episodes suspecting Milo to be sabotaging their mission, before trying to bring any harm to the boy, Dakota just points out they just could ask him if he's doing it on purpose or not. Milo explains it's Murphy's Law and the duo accept the explanation without raising any animosity that could have occurred if they decided to go with Poor Communication Kills instead.
- Tempting Fate: Brick says that there's no force on Earth that would get him and Savannah to lend Cavendish and Dakota their time-limo… then Milo bikes up and they fall off of a cliff into the sea.
- The End... Or Is It?: The ending, with the note Milo left for his friends in the past not yet left there, and a surviving Pistachion in 1955…
- Victory Dance: Cavendish and Dakota do one after they succeed in saving the pistachio plant.
- Walk This Way: When Scott tells Melissa and Zack to "Run this way!", Zack starts imitating his run until Melissa yells out what he just meant for them to follow him.
- Weaksauce Weakness: King Pistachion's species of pistachio plant is extremely vulnerable to uric acid, a key component of dog pee.
- We Will Meet Again: As he fades from existence, King Pistachion swears to Milo that the latter hasn't seen the last of him.
- When Trees Attack: The mutant pistachio plant eventually becomes sapient, uproots itself and, naming itself King Pistachion, spawns an army to take over the world.
- Write Back to the Future: Milo somehow manages to appear in the lost Dr. Zone episode. While investigating how it happened, Sara, Zack and Melissa find out Milo left a message from The '50s to Orton Mahlson.
