The seventh episode of the fifth season of Rugrats (1991).
The First Cut
Tommy cuts his finger on a thorny bush, and is scared of getting hurt again.
Chuckie Grows
When Chuckie's clothes shrink in the wash, Angelica tricks him into thinking he's becoming a giant.
"The First Cut" provides examples of:
- Afraid of Blood: Tommy develops this phobia after he cuts his finger on a bush, and he worries that if he gets injured again, all his blood is going to come out. When he gets another cut, Chuckie helps him get over it by showing Tommy that his original cut has almost healed. As the adults come over, upon seeing Tommy's bleeding hand, Chaz passes out.
- Brick Joke: Early in the episode, Phil and Lil cover themselves in Reptar bandages from Didi's box. Later in the episode, when Didi puts a new bandage on Tommy's finger, she finds the box empty, and says, "I thought they put more of these in a box".
- Catapult Nightmare: Tommy awakens this way after his nightmare.
- Continuity Nod: When Tommy talks to Phil and Lil about the bandage on his finger, he brings up the time he got his booster shot.
- Dirty Coward: When Spike is in the path of two bicyclists, Phil and Lil worry that the bicyclists are going to squish him. Tommy covers his eyes and doesn't even try to get Spike out of the way. Fortunately, the bicyclists travel around Spike, but Phil and Lil still call Tommy out for not rushing to Spike's aid.
- Dogs Hate Squirrels: Spike strays into a path that two bicyclists travel down to bark at a squirrel.
- Heroic BSoD: Tommy suffers one after he cuts his finger and Angelica tells him the story of how she got stitches. He doesn't want to play with Phil and Lil or anywhere on the playground, and cowers in fear when Spike is in the path of two bicyclists. It takes Chuckie rolling towards the thorny bush to get him to spring into action, and later showing him that cuts can heal to get him back to normal.
- Inelegant Blubbering: Tommy reacts to his first cut by loudly bawling (naturally), complete with Ocular Gushers.
- Malaproper:
- While telling the story of how she got stitches to Tommy, Angelica mispronounces some words, such as "Inflection"note and "Tangerine"note .
- Later, when Angelica is talking Didi into sewing a dress for Cynthia so she'll bring out her sewing machine in front of Tommy and freak him out, she says it's so Cynthia can go to a ball and meet Prince "Chairman"note .
- Nightmare Sequence: Tommy has one where he cuts his leg and endless amounts of stuffing pour out of the wound, as if he's a stuffed doll (this was inspired by a damaged teddy bear earlier in the episode).
- Noodle Incident: Angelica tells Tommy the story of how she got stitches on her knee as a result of playing on Charlotte's exercise machine against her wishes. It is unclear if this really happened or if it's just another of her fake stories to scare Tommy.
- Pet the Dog: The normally cowardly Chuckie is the one who winds up helping Tommy through his fears of getting cuts and scrapes by showing him that cuts heal over time and he won't lose all his blood from a tiny cut.
- Symbolic Blood: In a non-liquid variant, Tommy dreams about stuffing pouring out of a cut on his leg.
"Chuckie Grows" provides examples of:
- Contrived Coincidence: The babies believe that Chuckie grew taller than the pile of newspapers due to a combination of Lou shrinking Chuckie's clothes and Lou taking the top from his pile of newpapers to soak up the flood in the laundry room. The babies then believe that Chuckie shrank when Lou adds new newspapers to the pile.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Lou is devastated when he sees that Angelica destroyed the crookneck squash he was going to enter in a contest, but as he sets a stack of newspapers on top of his pile of old ones, he sees an article for rhubarb pie, and this gives him the idea to make crookneck squash pie.
- Here We Go Again!: At the end of the episode, Lou wins a trophy for his crookneck squash pie, which the babies mistake for another shiny toy. Tommy, Phil, and Lil look over at Chuckie, who tries to talk them out of playing with it, but to no avail.
- Human Ladder: The babies form one to get Lou's carrot-shaped trophy, believing it to be a shiny toy.
- Laser-Guided Karma: As punishment for cutting the faces off of family photos to trick Chuckie into thinking he squished everyone, Drew threatens to take away Angelica's Cynthia cappuccino machine unless she finds a way to make it up to Lou for destroying his crookneck squash.
- Shrunk in the Wash: Chuckie's clothes shrink after Lou washes them with an entire box of laundry soap and sets the dryer to Extra Hot. This leads the babies to believe that Chuckie grew.
- Something Itis: After the babies tell Angelica that Chuckie grew, she tells him that he's got a case of "Giantitis", a disease that causes the victim to grow to an enormous size.
