In order to deal with the issue of writer's block, Nora, Moog, and the band go on a rustic camping trip. However, a bag of expired marshmallows leads them on a night of hallucinations and self-discovery.
Tropes:
- Berserk Button: When Floyd snarks at Weird Al over only writing parody songs, Weird Al actually notes pretty quickly that despite his reputation for seemingly never writing original material, he actually has over 80 original songs on soundtracks of his.
- Cactus Cushion: Floyd ends up cuddling a cactus he thinks is called Davis.
- Declaration of Protection: Animal's hallucination sees him holding his baby-self who tells him that he's drawn to Nora because they were both abandoned at a young age. He wants to protect her from being hurt again.
- Elongating Arm Gag: In classic Muppet fashion, Dr. Teeth's arms start stretching when Moog tries to help him stand up.Moog: Are they supposed to do that?
- Eyes Always Shut: Averted when Lips opens his eyes during his hallucination.
- Fatal Flaw: Janice, Floyd, and Dr. Teeth all show off one that hinders their music writing process:
- As discussed in previous episodes, Janice's need to help other people with their problems is to avoid having to look inward and deal with her own, but it also makes her too focused on said problems to write music. Her clones in her hallucinations encourage her to love herself as much as she loves others around her, which will help her and the band "get there" with their music. This inspires Janice to come up with the title and chorus for "Gonna Get There".
- Floyd has a perfectionist streak that makes him shoot down any suggestions for their song as "not good enough", which he admits to Weird Al is out of a desire to not let everyone down. Weird Al encourages him to not keep worrying about what everyone thinks and just focus on writing songs that make him and the group happy. He later starts up the writing process for "Gonna Get There" in the van.
- Dr. Teeth has issues with commitment, something strongly hinted in the next episode to stem from a fear of being forever trapped in a life he doesn't enjoy like when he almost resigned himself to being a dentist at his parent's wishes. This not only makes it impossible for him to stick to a melody or song riff during a jam session, but previously cost him his romance with Penny. A hallucination of Penny responds that she never wanted or expected him to see their romance as something he had to stick with forever; she just wanted him to be able to commit to it or something else in his life for once. He later decides to fully commit to their romance at last by loudly proclaiming his love for her during a song meeting and declaring that he wishes to share it with the world. This not only fully rekindles his and Penny's romance, but gets her to basically cancel any and all due dates for the band's album.
- G-Rated Drug: The bag of expired marshmallows is enough to get Nora and the band sans Zoot (who doesn't eat sugar) to experience hallucinations of such grand proportions, you'd think they ate a whole tray of pot brownies each. Moog's panicked reaction upon discovering the marshmallows' expiration date implies that expired marshmallows really are a strong drug in this setting.
- Me's a Crowd: Janice's hallucination sees her meeting a crowd of copies of her who tell her she needs to love herself.
- Medium-Shift Gag: Dr. Teeth's hallucination is done via stop-motion animation instead of the usual live-action puppetry.
- Mushroom Samba: Nora and almost all the members of the Electric Mayhem (except for Zoot, who doesn't eat sugar) eat marshmallows that they don't realize expired in June 1992. This turns the marshmallows into a G-Rated Drug that causes them to have strong hallucinations, most of which relate to their hidden insecurities.
- Mythology Gag:
- The Swinetrek from "Pigs In Space" can be seen flying around during Lips' hallucination.
- The band camping out in the desert — which they say is how they wrote "Can You Picture That?" — is reminiscent of the desert scenes in The Muppet Movie.
- Real After All: Zoot somehow manages to get photographic evidence of all the bizarre things the band members hallucinated about while tripping out on expired marshmallows.
- Running Gag: Zoot taking a picture of his bandmates while they're in the middle of hallucinating and saying "You two make a great couple".
- Sleep Cute: After returning from the desert Animal curls up next to Nora when she's getting ready for bed. He even mumbles her name in his sleep.
- Shout-Out: "Weird Al" Yankovic appears to Floyd as a cloud in the sky like Mufasa appearing to Simba in The Lion King (1994). They both lampshade the reference.
- Spock Speak: Animal's baby-self speaks this way, which contrasts with Animal's usual Hulk Speak.
- Way Past the Expiration Date: The band hallucinates as a result of eating marshmallows that expired in June 1992.
