The sixth episode of the fifth season of Rugrats (1991).
Fugitive Tommy
A one-toothed kid harasses the McNulty boys, who mistakenly blame Tommy.
Visiting Aunt Miriam
The babies visit Aunt Miriam while she and her friends play poker, and after they call Chuckie "cute enough to eat", he thinks they're going to eat him.
"Fugitive Tommy" provides examples of:
- Anti-Villain: Gabriel's motive for popping the McNulty ball was not for any truly malicious reason, as he just needed something to chew on since he's teething. However, Tommy tells him that it's no excuse for pushing around other babies, though Gabriel makes clear it was an accident. When Teddy begins to grow a tooth of his own, he begins to empathize with Gabriel and defend him from his brothers.
- Clear My Name: When Tommy is wrongfully accused of popping the McNulty ball, it's up to him to find the real culprit and prove his innocence.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you look closely when Tommy goes down the slide, Terry and Teddy are shown climbing the ladder to the play structure having apparently fallen far behind Timmy and the twins during the chase.
- Hypocrite: Conan McNulty complains to Lou that Mr. Laskey cheats, even though Conan himself has been known to cheat on several occasions.
- Identical Stranger: Like Tommy, Gabriel is a one-year-old baby dressed in a light blue t-shirt and a diaper. This leads to Teddy accusing Tommy of popping the McNulty ball.
- Passing the Torch: On Teddy's first birthday, Timmy gives Teddy the ball that has been in the McNulty family since he was two years old, and it will be his to play with until a new McNulty brother is born.
- Pet the Dog: When the older McNulty boys intend to punish Gabriel for stealing and popping their ball, Teddy stops his brothers explaining he knows how Gabriel feels as he has a tooth growing in too and it hurts a lot.
- Potty Emergency: Ty has one when Timmy tells his brothers to block off every exit in the park so Tommy can't escape. Timmy tells Ty to check for Tommy while he's in the restroom.
- Trouser Space: When the McNulty brothers trap Tommy's fingers in a finger trap, he reaches into his diaper to pull out his plastic screwdriver to poke through the hole, only to find it isn't there. His screwdriver is revealed to have fallen in the sandbox after he escaped from the wagon, Ty finds it, and Timmy thinks it is what Tommy used to pop the ball.
- The Unapologetic: The McNulty gang spend the whole episode pursuing Tommy and refusing to listen to any of his explanations. When Gabriel comes clean, Timmy realises Tommy was telling the truth....and rudely shoves Tommy out of the way to chase him instead.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To the 1993 Harrison Ford movie, The Fugitive.
"Visiting Aunt Miriam" provides examples of:
- Brutal Honesty: When Chuckie suspects that Tommy, Phil, and Lil are acting strange when they're not trying to look for him in their game of hide and seek, Tommy tries not to tell Chuckie why, but Phil outright says that Miriam and her friends are trying to eat him. This earns Phil a Death Glare from Tommy.
- The Bus Came Back: Aunt Miriam from her namesake episode returns in this episode after being absent for three seasons.
- Counting to Potato: To keep Chuckie from finding out that Miriam is trying to cook him (and also to keep Miriam from finding him), Tommy, Phil, and Lil decide to play a game of hide and seek with all three of them as the seekers. As they're all one-year-old babies, their counting is atrocious, and they include words like "peanut", "potty", "macaroni", and "puppies".
- Covered in Kisses
- Happens to Tommy. When she sees Tommy with Lou at the door, Miriam puckers her lips before planting a kiss on Tommy's cheek, leaving a giant red lipstick mark that an uncomfortable looking Tommy wipes off with his arm.
- Later, during the card game, Miriam's friend finds Chuckie and is quite taken by how he cute he is. By the time the scene cuts back the two five seconds later, Chuckie's face is already covered in red lipstick marks, and Sheila continues to shower the amused toddler with more kisses.
- Fattening the Victim: When Miriam brings the babies snacks, Tommy, Phil, and Lil believe that she did that to fatten Chuckie so she could cook and eat him.
- Here We Go Again!: When Miriam accuses Lou of cheating (the babies actually put the cards in his lap to help him win the poker game), she admits that she really did cheat 60 years ago and now they're even. She then asks Lou if he's interested in another poker game next week, and Lou tells her that she's invited to Tommy's house next Thursday, as Stu and Didi will be out then. The babies suddenly worry upon hearing this.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The babies believe Miriam and her friends to want to cook and eat Chuckie.
- Literal-Minded: When the babies overhear Miriam saying that she has a big pot (as in jackpot), they believe it to be a pot to cook something in. When they overhear her friends saying they could eat Chuckie up, they believe that they're trying to cook Chuckie and eat him.
