"Feel the power, yo, and plug it in!"
From 2009 to 2011, The Electric Company (1971) received a Retool on PBS Kids Go! (often referred to as The New Electric Company) that introduced a cohesive episode-to-episode plot while still retaining the sketch comedy elements. The new series was based on a group named after/for the show, consisting of four (later five) teenagers using the power of the "Word Ball" to protect the neighborhood from the Pranksters, a group of small mayhem-loving teenagers. (See the "Characters" link at the top of this page for tropes relating to each character.)
Tropes:
- Aesop Amnesia: Expect the Pranksters to forget any lesson they learn by the start of the next episode. The Electric Company is guilty of this, too - no matter how many times it's proved you can't trust a Prankster, one of them will get suckered in again.
- Aliens Speaking English: The Skeleckians.
- Amusing Alien: The Skeleckians, with all their bizarre customs.
- Animorphism: In "Abracadabra Cadabra Ca-Green!", Calvero, Jessica and Danny all turn into reptiles: a snake, a lizard/half-lizard, and a turtle respectively. Calvero is transformed willingly as part of his magic act (though he ends up temporarily stuck in the form due to Danny stealing the magic book), and Jessica and Danny by accident (Danny had intended to turn Hector into a lizard, but Jessica read the incantation first, and Danny read out the incantation for the turtle without realizing he’d be the one affected). All of these are undone by the end of the episode.
- Art Shift: The "Prankster Planet" segments feature animated versions of Jessica, Marcus, the Pranksters, and Paul the Gorilla.
- The Artifact:
- The soft-shoe phonetics routine ("Wuh! All! WALL!"), used with much less frequency.
- HEY YOU GUYS!
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Twice in "The Incredible Return-A-Ball", Gilda in the first commercial playing a little girl character claims she likes the ball more than "candy, ponies, and candy ponies", and in the second commercial, her little boy character claims "it’s new, it’s improved, it’s new and improved!"
- Bungled Hypnotism: In "Electric Accompany", Annie hypnotizes Keith, Lisa, Hector, and herself to sing Sigmund’s advertising song, but a passing car horn compromises the trigger (usually a finger snap), leading to all four singing every time the car beeps.
- Call-Back: Keith and Marcus have the same reaction to their first word balls.
- The Cameo: Many celebrities pop up for a segment, including Jimmy Fallon and Whoopi Goldberg.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Francine can throw wordballs as her power, but they're purple.
- Comes Great Responsibility: The whole pilot, especially the pledge.
- Continuity Reboot: Almost everything associated with the 1970s version has been thrown out the window, including the cast.
- Delusions of Doghood: In "Scent of a Human", Hector is hypnotized into thinking he’s a dog as a result of Annie asking her hypnotist uncle Sigmund to sabotage his ability to star in a music video.
- Design Student's Orgasm: Just look at the logo.
◊ - Disproportionate Retribution: Danny Rebus. He takes offense at a lot of things and retaliates harshly.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the pilot episode, Hector mentioned to Keith that the Electric Company had a code that prohibited its members from lying, forcing Keith to use Exact Words when tricking Francine into giving him his power back. This never gets brought again in the overall series, plus some of the company members — including Hector — had told a couple of white lies on occasion.
- Enemy Mine: In "The Great Compromise", the Electric Company and the Pranksters have to cooperate to make a proposal for the Deputy Commissioner of Traffic so that all of their powers (and Manny's gadgets) won’t be taken away/restricted.
- Evil Gloating: Lampshaded in "Prankster Holiday". Turns out that blurting out the evil plan is a really bad habit amongst the Pranksters.
- Evil Is Petty: Very, very petty.
- Evil Is Hammy: The Pranksters. Special mention goes to Manny Spamboni.
- Evil Smells Bad: In "Franscent", Francine steals Lisa's hybrid plant for a science project, and she uses it for her perfume which is supposed to smell good, but fate has other plans when the perfume touches her skin, making her smell bad. Even when she tries to wash it off. Now that's a punishment!
- Falsely Reformed Villain: Francine acts like she's nice now in "A Whole New Francine". Nice try, but as we all know, you're always dishonest.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: Annie Scrambler causes Jessica to go through this trope in "The Potato Custom" by scrambling a Skeleckian sentence at the end of her Junior Ambassador speech to say something insulting. The Skeleckians are understandably not amused when Jessica says the sentence, not realizing it's been changed into an insult.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: The plot of "Scrambled Brains" has Annie's uncle Sigmund trick Lisa into willingly getting hypnotized, claiming his station would cure someone's personal flaw (such as her clumsiness), but in reality, it was a scam to lure Lisa to the area so she and Annie would be hypnotized to switch brains with each other, and Annie would use Lisa's body to try and damage the latter's reputation among the town. Although Lisa is able to make Annie want to switch back by secretly following Annie who trying to slander Lisa's reputation via scrambling/changing words to cause trouble for people, only for Lisa to scramble/change the word to a positive term and improve her reputation among town, which angers Annie that nothing she did would ruin Lisa.
- Friendly Enemy: The relationship between the Company and the Pranksters often boils down to this. Yes, the Pranksters may be committed to mischief, and the Company may be committed to stopping them, but they're also just as likely to help each other with school projects, share a plate of curly fries, or generally pal around with one another. There are even instances where the teams work together to overcome a problem that one group alone couldn't solve.
- Funny Animal: In an Affectionate Parody of 24, Special Agent Jack Bowser, a bipedal blue dog inspired by Jack Bauer, was always seen trapped in a factory of some sort (usually an Auto-Kitchen food factory), asking the viewer for help cracking the code to get out before the factory exploded (which would always happen in twenty-four seconds). The code consisted of a sentence or two, and reading it aloud twice opened the door.
- Giant Food: Jack Bowser would often be stuck in this at whatever factory he was locked in—for instance, in a big bottle of cola at a soda factory.
- Grand Theft Me: Annie Scrambler stealing Lisa's body in "Scrambled Brains".
- Halloween Episode: "Unmuffins".
- Hero vs. Villain Duet: Heard in "Limerick Slam".
- Hiccup Hijinks: Jessica gets this in "Skeleckian Hiccups", where she keeps blurting her private thoughts every time she hiccups.
- Human Aliens: The Skeleckians have no distinguishing physical features unique to aliens (at first glance) and look exactly like humans. Their only distinguishing features are their signature necklaces and their ability to emit toast-scented steam from their ears.
- Hypnotism Reversal: Annie Scrambler and her Aunt get to compete with two of the members of the Electric Company on a game show, "Friends or Aunts." They attempt to hypnotize the two members of the Electric Company, but they use mirrors, thus hypnotizing themselves. This causes Annie and her Aunt not to remember the answers for the game show.
- I Can't Hear You: "Count Vacula's a little loud!" "What?! I can't hear you. Count Vacula's a little loud!" Bonus points because it had a mute button the whole time.
- Incredible Shrinking Man:
- The Electric Company, Francine and Lisa's friend Dax in the episode "Lost and Spaced".
- And again in the episode "The Flube Whisperer", this time with Keith and Manny.
- A third time with Jessica, Marcus, and Manny in "Shrink, Shrank, Shrunk".
- It Can't Get Any Worse: Used by Hector in "Trouble Afoot".
- Jumped at the Call: Marcus can't wait to join the company.
- "King Kong" Climb: In "Lights, Camera, Beatles", Francine has a beatle named Preston, whom she stole from an upcoming birthday party, to climb a model of the Empire State Building.
- Last-Second Word Swap: Combined with Gosh Dang It to Heck! in the season three premiere.
- Local Hangout: The Electric Diner is a rare example of one being used as home base.
- Mad Scientist: Manuel "Manny" Spamboni is a teenage version.
- Made of Explodium: "I'm special agent Jack Bowser. And this place is about to explode!"
- Master-Apprentice Chain: Hector → Keith → Marcus.
- Meaningful Name: Annie Scrambler, Danny Rebus and Gilda Flip, who uses a flip phone. Annie Scrambler also sounds slightly like anagram.
- Mythology Gag: "The Slide and Drop" music sequence is done in 1970s-style costumes reminiscent of the original series.
- Ninja: Silent "E" is called "the ninja of the alphabet".
- Off the Rails: In "Madame President", Francine tries to cheat on the debate, by eavesdropping on Keith and Hector. Little does she know, they're both on to her as they talk about a twisted version of one of Lisa's favorite books, Little Women.
- Once an Episode: There will be a song in the main storyline, or possibly a rap. Usually tied to the moral of the day.
- Parental Abandonment/Missing Mom/Disappeared Dad: None of these parents of all members of the Electric Company were seen except Lisa's mother and Keith’s father. Ruiz sibling’s and Marcus’ parents were never seen and mentioned, Lisa has a mother but her father was never seen, and Keith’s father was seen but not his mother.
- Pet the Dog: Annie and Danny have occasionally done some good deeds (and are literally both dog lovers). Manny and Francine have done it only if personal gain is involved.
- Photographic Memory: Hector's superpower, in a more literal sense. He can actually call up any image he remembers, then manipulate it.
- Poke the Poodle: The Pranksters' deeds can only be considered evil in context. If PBS Kids took it any further than that, they'd be impressionable.
- Put on a Bus: In the third season, Lisa is accepted into a science program that takes her away from the city. She still makes minor appearances, though.
- Race Against the Clock: Jack Bowser would have twenty-four seconds to crack the code to get out of whatever factory he was trapped in before the place exploded, always making it out Just in Time.
- Remake Cameo: June Angela had one, but did not say anything.
- Retool: The third season, to an extent - new animated characters serve as "hosts" for the show, commenting on the plot and segueing to the segment breaks as well as their own shorts. The breaks are also much shorter and focus more on the practice of reading rather than reading basics (like letter sounds).
- Science Fair: The premise of the episode "Lost and Spaced".
- Showdown at High Noon: In the Mighty Knight episode Jessica and Manny have a parody of this even with a tumbleweed rolling between them.
- Signs of Disrepair:
- In "Dirty Laundry", Manny uses a letter steeling gadget to letters from every sign in the neighborhood. For example, he changes "Lemonade Fountain" to "Lemonade Ountain".
- In "He Ain't Heavy, He's Just Frozen", Annie scrambles the word "Completed" and removes the "L" to make the only word the Electric Company can find is "Competed", that way Keith can remain immobile for a very long time. Not a very nice thing to do. Is it?
- Status Quo Is God: At the end of the Unmuffin story, Danny and Manny eat the unbuns to go back to being pranksters. Jessica says they don't have to, but Danny says they do (with no further explanation).
- Stopped Reading Too Soon: The lesson taught in one episode is to read words all the way through to prevent yourself from misunderstanding what's being said. The "Pets Home Alone" segment in that episode features the pets making guacamole from a written recipe. When the pet in charge of reading the recipe gets to the part mentioning tomatoes, he somehow stops reading it too soon and thinks Tom the cat is one of the ingredients.
- Super-Speed Reading: Viewers at home are told to take their time reading, because a word or sentence might end differently than they expect.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: "Mighty Bright Fight" has Jessica, Manny, and a Skeleckian named Harper enter a competition hosted by the creator himself on who can bring the most authentic cosplay on his comic, and essentially bring it to life. However, the contest requires at least three people per entry, and when Manny eventually ditches his team for chance to be Stan Flea's assistant, Hector decides to take the position and help Jessica and Harper with the cosplay. However, considering that Hector wasn't a superfan of the comics like Jessica, Manny and Harper were, naturally he didn't have a lot of knowledge on how the characters would act and his role would simply drag the team down. The next transition to live-action reveals their team came in last place.
- The Punishment Is the Crime: In "Lost and Spaced", Francine traps Dax and Lisa in their science project. Moments later, she gets trapped inside too.
- The Teaser: Used to set up the conflict of the episode. One member of the company sees something going wrong and rallies the team with "HEY YOU GUYS!" This doubles as a Couch Gag.
- Timeskip: Between seasons 2 and 3.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Francine is often toxic to Danny. Take "Lights, Camera, Beatles" and "Oh Danny Boy" for example.
- True Companions: The four main characters.
- Tsundere: Annie on occasion; a villainous version.
- Villain Song: There are many, trust us.
- What You Are in the Dark: Several episodes have members of the Electric Company tempted to use their powers unfairly to win contests or overcome the Pranksters (on a few occasions, the Pranksters even deliberately try to goad them into cheating). Ultimately, though, they choose to do the right thing, even if it means falling behind in whatever problem of the week needs solving.
- Will Not Tell a Lie: The Electric Company has a code of conduct which forbids the misuse of the power of words, so, on principle, its members try not to lie.
