The Magic School Bus Spins A Web
Original airdate: September 28th, 1996
Subject: Spiders
Focus Student(s): Phoebe, Carlos
The class are on a normal field-trip, to Arnold's relief, watching an old-fashioned horror movie at at a drive-through theater involving a giant praying mantis battling with an army General. When Phoebe remarks that the mantis ought to be trapped rather than eradicated, Ms. Frizzle decides to take a field trip into the movie. About ten minutes later, when the General captures Liz as praying mantis bait, the class has to learn from the world's greatest trapper— spiders— to mount a rescue mission.
Producers Segment
The male producer gets a phone call from a viewer and then receives a visit from General Araneus.
Tropes
- Big Eater: The Praying Mantis. It interrupts a barbecue to eat the hamburgers.
- Body Horror: The bus's slow transformation into a giant spider with pure black eyes invokes this from the crowd.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: After getting caught in his giant praying mantis trap, the General glances at the audience and wearily asks them if they saw this coming.General Araneus: You knew this would happen, didn't you?
- Chekhov's Gun: The three spiders that the class encounters in the real world end up aiding them in their strategies to catch the General and the Mantis.
- Children Are Innocent: In the film, a boy shows no fear when the Mantis approaches him. He only tosses his ball, gets it returned deflated, and plays with that instead.
- Comically Missing the Point: When the Spider!Bus accidentally captures a pizza truck instead of the General, Kesha asks what they learned from this experience. Carlos replies, while eating a pizza they took from the driver, never to order a pizza with mushrooms and anchovies.note
- Continuity Nod: The General tells the producer than he and his family still talk about the episode where they went inside Ralphie.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Tim! He saves Keesha and Phoebe from an orb spider by cutting the lines binding them, and tugs away Ms. Frizzle from a hungry Dinopus spider.
- Cutting the Knot: Tim literally cuts anchor lines on a spider web to save Phoebe and Keesha.
- Damsel in Distress: Liz for this episode, due to the General planning to feed her to the giant mantis.
- Didn't Think This Through: Phoebe when asked how to stop the giant mantis realizes that she doesn't actually have a plan when she had said the mantis ought to be trapped.
- Family-Friendly Firearms: Despite featuring the military in a 50s B-movie monster flick, the in-universe Stand by Your Mantis film never has actual weapons like firearms and bombs. What the military uses are an oversized blindfold, an oversized bug spray mounted on a tank, and an oversized mousetrap with a fly swatter.
- He Who Fights Monsters: The General starts off as wanting to save the town from the Mantis. By the end he has a Villainous Breakdown over the class taking back Liz, his "bait," despite the fact that they trapped the Mantis and saved him a heap of trouble.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Phoebe knits a net for the General to catch him before he takes away Liz, but she ends up catching herself instead. She lampshades it.
- The General while throwing a temper tantrum at the end sets off his own fly-mousetrap which ends up knocking him out.
- Homage: This episode is a love letter to those who are fans of old monster movies.
- It's Personal: Although the Producers Segment implied the General capturing Liz was part of the script, Liz tries to return the favor with a net covered in black ink. She ends up catching the producer insteadProducer: Forget the web, Liz. You need better timing!
- I Was Just Joking: Arnold says this when his comment about one needing a big spider with a big web to catch the general sparks a "Eureka!" Moment for Phoebe and Ms. Frizzle to turn the bus into a giant spider.
- Literal-Minded:Phoebe: You can't kill the praying mantis!General Araneus: Don't be so negative. I'll get it.
- Logical Weakness: When Phoebe and Keesha are trapped in a spider web, the class can't break the anchor lines on the ground with their bare hands. Tim then climbs until he can find weaker anchor lines, and cuts them with a scissors.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The mantis just happens to be big and hungry. It doesn't actually mean to cause all the damage that it does.
- Oh, Crap!: Keesha, when the mantis attacks the burger stand.Keesha: Oh, bad! Oh, bad, bad, bad!
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Lampshaded by the General when he tries out several of the bus's buttons, changing it and the class into various shapes, and asks if Central Command knows about it.
- Shout-Out: Phoebe remarks that the film characters can surely catch the mantis instead of killing it. The film's general on-screen then says "There is no other way, and don't call me Shirley".
- Villainous Breakdown: The General suffers one when the class and the spider-bus catch the Mantis and save Liz. He wants his "bait" even though Liz belongs to the class and the mantis is no longer a threat.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Carlos has a phobia of spiders, which dogs him for most of the episode. By the end he admits that he can respect them at the least.
