In 'Lloyd Changes His Mind', Francine and Lloyd switch bodies after she attempts to use her telepathy on him while he was wearing a helmet from Douglas to prevent her from doing that. Now, an obvious scenario would be that Lloyd, who is in his sister's body, would be able to use her powers instead and be thrilled at the prospect of reading minds and all that junk until he realizes that some things are better left unsaid... errr unread and that Francine's powers are way more of a curse than he initially thought. But no, despite Lloyd showing no psychic prowess, Francine is able to still use her powers in Lloyd's body, despite it still being... Lloyd's body, and nobody, aka Eddie, Kurt, and Douglas, ask any questions whatsoever despite Lloyd never using powers before. While it can be argued they switched brains, and psychic powers are brain-oriented, it is still an entirely different body, plus with the fact that it's implied that male Verdigrians don't HAVE powers like that, there should still be a gender difference with that, regardless. Unless they do have powers.
Like, maybe Verdigrians have powers, but much like the myth that we only use 10% of our brain, Verdigrians, specifically males or adults, since Nora did state Francine would lose her powers as she got older, are unable to reach it normally. Maybe these kinds of powers just become harder and harder to remember how to use as you get older, or, if born male, you simply don't know how to activate them, maybe since Francine is so used to using these powers, she's able to activate it on command, which explains why Lloyd is unable to use those powers. He never used them before, doesn't know how to, so why would he just suddenly know now?
IMO, there's the rare Verdigrian who is AMAB that is able to unlock these powers, but cases are exceedingly rare and are chalked up as more 'mutations' or 'abnormalities' than anything else.
Eddie is a complex character that some would describe as, other than being snarky and witty, having a slight ego problem, being one of the cockiest characters out of the core four. However, as shown in Day One, he apparently has insecurities which he uses his 'ego' to deflect, as, without Lloyd around, he turns into an anxious, nerdy geek. The conclusion here is that Eddie created his ego in order to impress Lloyd since he didn't feel worthy of being the commander's son's best friend. If the show continued past season four, we ultimately would have gotten confirmation of this via an episode that involves his ego literally splitting away from him and going on the rampage, all thanks to either one of Douglas' inventions, some other invention that has gone on the fritz, or his ego having enough of being 'meek'.
Either way, it's an episode of 'Ed', Eddie's ego and supposed 'bad half', rampaging around Intrepidville and 'Ward', Eddie's 'good half' who turns out to not be SO good, attempting to converge with Ed once more. The reason why Ward, who is reflective of Eddie's Day One self, is not as good as it first seems, is because he's too submissive. He has not even a scrap of dignity to his name, let alone any self-respect or ability to put his foot down as Eddie can. He does whatever is asked, even if he does not WANT to do it.
The show goes on to explain a moral, that the two 'confronting forces' are like the yin and the yang. Both Ed and Ward are bad on their own for different reasons because they are out of balance with one another. Eddie NEEDS his ego, his Ed, like he needs his good side, his Ward. Trouble is, Eddie's been letting Ed rampage for too long because he's worried about letting his Ward show his feelings and then being perceived as weak and uncool by Lloyd and the others. When Ward, who actually still Eddie in a sense, more so than Ed, tells Lloyd this, he's quick to correct him.
"I never wanted this! I just want my Eddie back!"
"But your idea of Eddie was never real."
"Yes, he was! You think you're so smart, don't you? You don't think I ever caught on?"
"Caught on? You mean... You KNEW I was faking it all along?!"
"Duh! I mean, what kinda guy doesn't notice when his friend changes all of a sudden? I just didn't want to say anything and make you upset. But... maybe I should have."
Either way, the two 'opposing forces' make up and refuse, giving Eddie massive character development as he realizes he doesn't need to change himself for anyone and that he's good enough as he is.
- As part of this theory, the uplifting process is looked down upon and since humans have enacted it multiple times, it's used as fodder for the Fantastic Racism they're shown.
- "One Day" would probably also get referenced as part of The Reveal of why Eddie feels he has to hide his true self, with Lloyd affirming that Eddie is his friend no matter what.
While Lloyd constantly mentions being grounded as something he feels would happen, Nora never outright tells him he's grounded for anything after The Big 1-3. In fact, she usually gives him alternate punishments, such as waxing down every ship in the docking bay (The Hero of Urbit Knarr), wiping down every window in the station (Thrilla in Intrepidvilla), or even community service in the wormhole episode. She doesn't ground him in 'Nora's Big Date' and instead talks out the situation with Lloyd, explaining exactly WHY he feels the way he does about Herb and that they should express their feelings more.
The reason? Most of what Lloyd 'did' in that episode wasn't even done purposely by him when the other things were a direct cause of his actions. He was put in those situations by adults who he's supposed to be able to trust, all because he wanted to know what it means to be a man, an entirely innocent objective. However, for whatever reason, Nora SNAPS at Lloyd for things that weren't even his fault or that he was pushed into by, again, adults whose judgment he thought he could trust. She grounds him for a month and even threatens to push it to two when he attempts to explain himself.
Considering that this is the same Nora who didn't ground Lloyd for the other things (at least not on-screen), maybe once her anger subsided, she realized how badly she screwed up when faced with the realization that it was the OTHER ADULTS that she should have blamed. Station should have known better than to take her son to a robot poker match, Leo should have taken Lloyd fishing somewhere else if he absolutely had to, and Eddie's dad should NOT have allowed a 13-year-old to drive. Since Station was a witness to all of this, he probably filled her in on what actually happened, either that, or she finally let Lloyd explain what went wrong. Needless to say, she felt awful about ruining her son's 13th birthday even further by chewing out the actually innocent one. Not only did she proceed to properly chew out all THREE of the people actually responsible for manipulating her son and his trust, but then decided to not ground her children anymore, as that's not the way to go about it unless VERY specific standards are met. Lloyd is either unaware of this entirely or aware but unaware of what standards she means, so he automatically assumes grounding as a punishment.
Even when Nora is at home and tending to her family, whether it be day or night, Dunkirque is usually the one to contact her when there's something happening that needs her attention, while he's still back on the bridge. The station logically needs someone to look after it day AND night and be able to spring to action and actually do something if trouble comes up since Station is, technically speaking, an eyeball on a cord with no hands or arms. While there are other staff members seen, Nora, Dunkirque, and Larry are the most notable staff. It could be argued that, as Nora's second, Dunkirque has taken it upon himself to look after the station during the night, getting little to no sleep. Naturally, aliens probably need different amounts of sleep, so while his sleeping schedule might leave a normal human a bumbling, hallucinating mess from the lack of sleep, if not outright DEAD, he only gets... mild symptoms of sleep deprivation, aka the markings.
While most of the show's characters have human-style names, such as Lloyd himself, despite being aliens, there are some aliens with alien-style names or names you wouldn't normally see used in real life. Names like Frontok and Zeptar are a few of the examples, along with Dunkirque, since the spelling is usually 'Dunkirk' and is mostly used to describe the city, the WWII event, or a surname, not as a first name. However, Nora seems like a typical normal name for a human, and there are some names that are technically forms of Nora, such as Honora or Eleanor. However, in The Hero Of Urbit-Knarr, Frontok addresses Nora by none of these, instead calling her Nora Li Nebulon. If her name was a shortened version of say, Elenor or Honora, wouldn't Frontok use her full name, since he included her middle name as well?
Since Leo, her father, is big on Verdigrian culture, given on how adamant he is on celebrating Theerlap and how disappointed he is in Lloyd for lying about and appropriating the holiday, it would make sense that he'd name Nora after a Verdigrian-style name, instead of a 'common' or 'Earth' name like Lloyd, Francine, or even his own name for that matter. Maybe Nora was the name of some heroic figure in Verdigrian mythology, or even a former queen, long back before space travel or interplanetary contact was possible, which fits perfectly with Nora's status as being a competent Commander and leader of Intrepidville.
On the topic of names, isn't it weird how Eddie has a whole bunch of family members whose names rhyme with his (Eddie) but Frank's name doesn't? And given how close Frank implies he was to his father, Eddie's grandfather in the first episode, this implies they had some sort of special bond that none of his brothers or sisters had. What if his father's name was also Edward and he was named after him?
But why would he change it to Frank, then? Probably because his siblings would mock him excessively for being 'daddy's little boy', since why was HE allowed to drive the police cruiser back home on his thirteenth birthday when none of his other siblings were given that opportunity? It'd make sense that he'd change his name to get away from it and the 'you're dad's favorite' treatment.
Since Eddie mentions his grandmother but never his grandfather, then perhaps he died before Eddie was born, prompting Frank to name his son not after himself, but his dear old dad. Despite all the heckling from his siblings, it goes to show how much Frank cared and loved his father. Now, if only Eddie didn't hate his name as well...
With this theory, any inconsistencies are neatly explained away as us happening to look into an alternate timeline where for-want-of-a-nail, to any degree, is in effect.
Larry is certainly an interesting character, but there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding him. Most notably, how did he even get hired to Intrepidville? He straight up says in 'A Place For Larry' that he quote-unquote "doesn't know how to find a job". Then how in the observable universe did he get hired to such an important military position on the space station? It would be one thing if someone got him a job at a fast food joint, but he was in charge of Intrepidville's bridge communications. How exactly did THAT happen? It seems hard to comprehend. But maybe he was sent there by Nora's superiors.
That'd make sense, send Larry to a possibly backwater space station in order to get them out of their 'hair' or skin, ala Invader Zim. But what if he wasn't just sent there just to be sent there? What if he was sent there to be a spy in order to give Nora's superiors reason to shut Intrepidville down?
That's right, Larry is The Mole.
But how could he do something like that, which takes an incredible amount of skill and effort to pull off, when he's generally incompetent at a lot of things? Easy, he's ACTING to be incompetent via Obfuscating Stupidity. Throw Nora, Dunkirque, and whoever else off their game and off his back by pretending to be SO incompetent that there's NO WAY that he could be anything but innocent. When in reality, he's playing everyone for fools.
Lloyd, along with the rest of his friends, is said to be thirteen, right? What if he's only thirteen in a different kind of year-set and not Earth years? Year length differs between planets, with the main factor revolving around how long it takes for the planet to orbit around the sun. While it's not feasibly possible to calculate or determine what kind of length that would be, as the year length difference goes from 88 Earth days (Mercury) to a whopping 248 years (Pluto), there's nothing saying that the system follows Earth's system. In fact, Lloyd and the others don't sound or look a lot like thirteen-year-olds, they look more like the Recess characters, who are canonically nine in the series. (not counting the movies). What if they're technically ten or eleven, or even nine, in Earth years, but the years have a shorter length? Like that of Venus, which is 225 days? 225 x 13 = 2925, while 365 x 9 = 3285, which are relatively close numbers.
They could also be OLDER than thirteen, maybe fifteen or sixteen in Earth years, if the years are longer than on Earth.
253 days a year, given some calculations, would make sense as that renders Francine around three years of age, not five or six. She physically appears to be the height of a three-year-old and also has the temper tantrum-throwing temperament of one as well.
Also, other than Lloyd's antenna-projection puberty, we don't see any of the four going through the other effects; such as growing taller (Or smaller, in Kurt's case. He's the same size he was when he met Lloyd and Eddie), voices cracking, facial hair, acne, etc. While puberty has a massive range concerning age, it can start at the age of NINE, they should be in their acne-ridden heydays by this point. Or at least Eddie should be, considering he's the Token Human.
Since the show uses ranks such as Ensign, Lieutenant, and Commander, it is safe to assume that the show goes off one of the Navy/Coast Guard ranking schemes. It makes sense, considering how Intrepidville is meant to be represented as the equivalent of a giant commercial Navy ship. Planets can be thought of as the 'land' and space as the 'sea', with space stations being 'military ships', with the only major difference being that civilians live on them, unlike actual military ships.
Either way, following Commander, the typical ranking scheme goes Captain, Rear Admiral (Lower half), Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, and Admiral. Considering all the Admirals included, it feels only natural to shrink it down to just being two ranks; Captain and Admiral.
And since the color scheme goes from yellow (based on some workers we've seen) to red to blue, it also makes sense for Captain and Admiral to have their uniforms be different colors as well. Green would work best for Captain and purple would work best for Admiral since purple is thought of as a royal color and Admirals are the top of the top.
In the episode 'Lloyd Changes His Mind', Francine is able to use her powers while in Lloyd's body. And while it can be argued that it's because psychic powers are mental, aren't there still a few biological, physical processes that Francine would have to activate in order to do so? And wouldn't Lloyd's body not have access to them due to them being a Gender-Restricted Ability? For example, his head had the same bright blue vein-thing that Francine does whenever she uses her psychic powers, so it clearly isn't just 'all in the head', pun unintended. Because if it was all in the head and not physical, then his forehead should not have glowed.
Unless he just so happened to HAVE the powers that are supposedly female only, that is. One more thing to note is that Lloyd never used Francine's powers in the episode. It'd make a lot more sense if the episode involved Lloyd learning the downside of Francine's powers while Francine suffered from a remix lesson of 'Francine's Powertrip'. So, perhaps it was intentional on the show's part. But why?
The definition of intersex states that the person has a combination of male and female biological traits and doesn't fit the gender norm or 'notion' for either gender. So what if Lloyd is a version of intersex? And while he resembles a male (such as going through a male puberty) and identifies as one overall, he IS capable of using psychic powers despite the fact that it shouldn't be possible. He just doesn't realize it.
It'd explain the body-swap episode because it's a lot easier to know to use powers you've used all your life versus trying to use powers you have but never used before and don't even know you have.
What is currently a mixed bag in real life, with some being against it and some being for, the act of hitting a child for any reason, regardless of the 'intent', is considered a form of child abuse in whatever time the show it set.
It'd explain why Lloyd's dad is hardly mentioned in the show. Lloyd doesn't like to talk about his dad because he fears his dad hurt his mom when they divorced when it was nothing of the sort, but because he's thirteen and in that teenager mindset, he doesn't bother trying to figure out the truth and doesn't tell anyone this is how he feels.
It'd also explain why he dislikes Herb beyond the surface-level reason of 'I want to protect my mom' because he's afraid Herb will hurt Nora all over again, which is a perfectly valid fear to have in response to trauma. He never mentions his dad as one of the reasons why, it could have easily been 'I don't want him replacing dad', but it's not. It's the secret reason of 'Dad hurt you, and I'm afraid Herb will hurt you too'.
Keep in mind that Eddie said 'With your dad not being around and all' and not 'With your dad being gone and all'. Considering Eddie's admittedly blunt personality and how this show has broached the topic of death with Lloyd constantly being at risk of dying in several episodes, the word choice here seems far more intentional than it should be.
"The Big Feud" shows that the Tsktskians wore metal armour. This goes with Brittany being a cheerleader, which requires physical fitness and willingness to risk injury. It would also explain Brittany's Alpha Bitch personality, she is proud and likes to take charge, like a general.
