The first episode of the seventh season of Rugrats (1991), and a precursor to Rugrats in Paris. This special originally aired as three separate episodes from November 7-9, 2000; "Diaper Change", "Fall Stinks", and "Don't Poop On My Parade". They would later be combined in 2001 under the aforementioned name.
As fall comes, many changes are happening in the babies' lives: Grandpa Lou moves out of the Pickles house for good, Chuckie's dad starts dating again, and Phil and Lil have to start wearing puffier diapers. The babies get the idea that if they stop fall from coming, things will go back to normal, so they try to stop a fall parade from happening.
This episode provides examples of:
- Accidental Truth: In the first part, "Diaper Change", Angelica tells the babies in fall lots of changes will happen to scare them. A lot of changes end up happening over the next 2 parts, which either go back to normal by the end of the third part or eventually be accepted by the babies.
- Badass Biker: In the second part, "Fall Stinks", Chas goes on a date with one. During their ride on her motorcycle, the bolt connecting the motorcycle and its passenger seat unscrews, causing Chas to roll away down a hill.
- Big Brother Instinct: In the second part, "Fall Stinks", Dil once again wakes up Tommy in the middle of the night. Instead of Dil doing so with his usual crying and screaming, Tommy hears him calling his name, and he and Chuckie rush to his bedroom. It turns out that Dil was having a nightmare, as Lou moving out means Tommy and Dil don't share a bedroom anymore.
- Bubblegum Popping: during a montage where Chas is shown dating a variety of quirky women, one of the ladies blows a giant bubble, which bursts on Chas rather than her.
- Butt-Monkey: Chas, especially during the montage of his dates with Betty's many single friends, roping him into activites they like, but he doesn't. It's no wonder he and Chuckie are happy to see each other again when the montage ends.
- Call-Back:
- Contortionist: The shy Chas is set up with one by the outgoing Betty. Apparently this date scares Chuckie too, but for different reasons.
- Crazy Cat Lady: During Chas' montage of his dates with Betty's many single friends, one of them has many pet cats. Chas turns down this date because he is allergic to cats.
- The Diaper Change: In the first part of the episode, Phil and Lil are seen having their diapers changed by Betty. What she puts them in are puffy diapers, which prevents them from even being able to stand up due to how bulky they are. In fact, the first part of the episode is even called "Diaper Change". Betty changes them back into their old diapers at the end of the third part of the episode.
- Even the Dog Is Ashamed: In the second part, "Fall Stinks", when Angelica once again sings off-key, Spike is seen holding his ears and wimpering.
- Extreme Omni-Goat: In the first part, "Diaper Change", a goat tries to eat Chuckie's sweater.
- Fearless Infant: In the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade", while falling from a lethal height due to being dropped by a Reptar float in a parade, Dil is not only shown to be unafraid, but actually enjoying it and laughing.
- Foreshadowing: This three-parter contains several plot points that will play a major role in Rugrats in Paris, such as Betty setting Chas up on several blind dates and Stu building a giant Reptar mech for EuroReptarland.
- Forgotten First Meeting: In the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade", in his youth during the Second World War, Lou met Lulu performing as a singer who kept forgetting the words to her songs. The two of them interacted and Lou offered her something to eat, then left before she could thank him.Lulu: I never was able to thank that man.
Lou: (smiling) You just did. - High-Pressure Emotion: After Stu accidentally caused an explosion in the basement that creates a hole in the kitchen floor whilst working on the animatronic Reptar, Lou's face quickly turns magenta with anger, which Chuckie and Phil point out, before he angrily tells Aunt Miriam to find him an apartment as he is moving out.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Angelica sings the song for the fall parade off-key, much to the ire of both the babies and their parents.
- Hyperventilation Bag: Chas hyperventilates into a paper bag when he hears that one of his blind dates is a contortionist.
- Injured Limb Episode: In the second part, "Fall Stinks", Lou falls trying to get away from the elderly ladies who want to dance with him, breaking his leg and spending the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade" with his leg in a cast. He meets Lulu, who works as a nurse, and falls in love with her, deciding he wants to stay in the retirement center after all.
- Laser-Guided Karma: In the first part, "Diaper Change", Angelica laughs at Chuckie when a goat tries to eat his sweater. After Phil bites off the loose thread, the goat turns its attention to Angelica's candy apple and eats it.
- Love at First Sight: In the first part, "Diaper Change", Chas tells Chuckie that he and Melinda first met each other this way. Chas tells also Chuckie that at that time, Melinda had saved him from an allergy he had.
- Mama Bear: In the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade", when Betty sees the babies riding an out-of-control pig, she tries to stop it.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade", Tommy tells his friends that back when he had his birthday, he wished really hard for Reptar. He got his wish, but as a result, Lou got mad and moved away, and eventually got hurt. In the same part, Stu blames himself for causing the accident with his animatronic Reptar that made Lou move out and get injured, resolving to give up his job at the Reptar Corporation and get a "Dead-end" job like Drew's just so Lou can come home.
- Never Say "Die": Melinda, Chuckie's mother previously seen in "Mother's Day" is deceased, and the first part of this episode does everything short of saying the actual word to indicate it, including showing her grave at the cemetery.
- Noodle Incident: In the second part, "Fall Stinks", Phil and Lil reminisce about the time they got a Time Out for gluing Angelica's pigtails together, but as a result, they found a delicious, juicy bug in the corner.
- Potty Emergency: At the beginning of the second part, "Fall Stinks", Chuckie has one as the result of drinking too much apple juice when Tommy watches Stu, Drew, and Lou load all of Lou's belongings into the back of a moving truck. As a result, this leaves Tommy alone and in tears.
- Senior Sleep-Cycle: In the first part, Lou is reading The Princess and the Pea to the kids from a storybook while on a hayride, only to fall asleep halfway through the story. In the second part, after Lou leaves Tommy's house to go to Withering Oaks, Tommy tries to act like Lou so that Dil won't miss him. This includes "reading" the same storybook before falling asleep. Dil is unimpressed with Tommy's impression, and Tommy admits it's not the same at his house without Lou. The third part ends with Lou taking another crack at reading the story, only to fall asleep in the same place, with Lulu taking over and actually managing to finish the story before falling asleep herself.
- Shout-Out: In the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade", when Tommy hears from Stu that even more changes are coming away, he paraphrases Howard Beale as a family friendly reference to the 1976 film, Network.Tommy: I'm mad, and I smell, and I'm not gonna take it no more!
- Status Quo Is God: Zig-zagged; Phil and Lil get their old diapers back and Chas turns down a date with Argenta to spend some long-overdue quality time with Chuckie, but Lou chooses to stay in the retirement center he moved into in order to be with Lulu.
- Tempting Fate: While comforting Chuckie about his blind dates, Chas says it won't last forever, stating that Betty couldn't possibly be friends with that many single women. Cue an entire musical Montage of Chas going on nearly a dozen dates, all of them going bad in some way. And even then, that's not the end of them.
- Toilet Humor:
- In the first part, "Diaper Change", the horse-drawn cart the babies and Grandpa Lou are riding in stops so that the horse can poop. When Phil sees a man scooping up the horse's poop, it gives him the idea of what he wants to be when he grows up.
- In the same part, Phil mentions that Betty changed his diaper more times than he could count in the morning, but Lil tells him that that happened because he ate her box of crayons the night before.
- In the second part, "Fall Stinks", Phil and Lil have had enough of wearing their new diapers and decide to take them off. They run through the hallway, shouting "Freedom!" as they wave their diapers in the air. When Howard sees them, he tries to re-diaper them before they have accidents, as he just cleaned the carpet.
- In the third part, "Don't Poop On My Parade", Stu tries to demonstrate his animatronic Reptar's steam feature to an executive from EuroReptarLand. When Didi presses a button, steam emits from the animatronic's tail, rather than the mouth as Stu intended.
- To say nothing of the episode's titles, whether it be as a full-length special or three separate episodes.
- Wham Episode: Lou chooses to move out and live in a retirement home, and falls in love with a woman named Lulu.
