Original air date: 2/26/2022
Production code: 113b
Mr. McGee receives an unwelcome visit from his bullying twin siblings, Billy and Jilly McGee, and the rest of the family tries to help him stand up to them, especially when his torment attracts a sadness-loving monster.
Tropes:
- Big Brother Bully: Billy and Jilly used to tease and bully Pete as kids, and still push him around and tease him even as adults.
- Color Failure: Those who fall under the sob-goblins' spell turn a dull, bluish-gray.
- Cute Is Evil: Scratch sees Pete being haunted by an adorable little ghost that's actually a "sob-goblin", a creature that feeds off and amplifies human sadness (and also multiplies like crazy and turns scary when threatened).
- Deadly Gaze: Downplayed. Another way to fall under the influence of a Sob-goblin is by looking them in the eyes. Molly almost learned this first hand, but thankfully Scratch was there to snap her out of it.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Billy and Jilly still refer to Pete as "Silly McGee".
- Emotion Eater: Sob-goblins feed on people's sadness and make them twice as sad.
- Emotional Regression: Pete regresses to the meek individual he was when he was a kid when his siblings come around and pick away at his confidence, which isn't helped by the sob-goblins. He even starts exhibiting a Boston accent at his emotional nadir.
- Exorcist Head: Scratch expresses a desire to try this trick on Pete's siblings, insisting he made it up on his own and "definitely didn't see this in a movie once".
- Fauxtivational Poster: To make herself sad, Molly takes out a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree branch, wearing glasses and looking at a laptop, with the caption "Hang in there. It's almost Friday." Later, the poster appears again and the kitten is gone, while "ERROR" appears on the computer screen.
- Group Hug: When the sob-goblins threaten to move on to a remorseful Uncle Billy and Aunt Jilly, Molly decides to spread enough cheer to drive them away for good with a group hug.
- Hypocritical Humor: Scratch complains about how annoying house-guests are, seemingly unaware that he's technically the McGee's house-guest (or maybe still convinced the McGees are his house-guests).
- Made Myself Sad: Invoked; Molly tries to lure the sob-goblins away from her father with things that make her sad.
- Odd Name Out: It turns out Pete has several brothers and sisters, and his is the only name that doesn't rhyme by ending in "-illy". They nicknamed him Silly to make up for it, and Darryl decides to take on the name "Chilly" to fit the name scheme.
- Papa Wolf: What finally gets Pete to have the guts to stand up to his siblings is seeing them be a bad influence on Darryl.
- The Runt at the End: Pete's siblings are all big and broad, with the boys having bushy beards, while Pete himself is scrawny and only has Permastubble.
- Sibling Rivalry: After Pete stands up to them, Billy and Jilly burst into Tears of Remorse and admit they bullied him so much because they were jealous of his success.
- Shout-Out:
- Scratch's description of the sob-goblin is accompanied by a look-alike of a card from the Pokémon card game. It's even purple, like Psychic and Ghost-type cards are in the game.
- Scratch all but flatly admits he stole the head-spin trick from Beetlejuice. His strangulated voice, from corkscrewing his neck, even sounds a bit like the ghost with the most.
- Wham Shot: On the newspaper article showing Pete becoming Brighton's new city planner, if you pause and look in the upper right-hand corner, you'll notice that a column mentioning that on "Page 2" they talk about "Revisiting The Disappearances Brighton City Planners", implying they just vanished one day without explanation.
- Wrong Song Gag: Scratch's boom box, intended to play a sad song to accompany Molly's dive into her sadness box, instead plays a happy tune first.
