Mo and Sam! Sibling Hero Duo!
50/50 Heroes is a 2022 French cartoon produced by Cyber Group Studios in association with the French national public television broadcaster France Télévisions and the French version of Disney Channel. The brainchild of Romain Gadiou and Chloé Sastre, the series was originally created for France 4, but has aired internationally on the likes of CITV in Britain, Disney Channel in the rest of Europe, Cartoon Network in Asia, and Discovery Kids in Latin America (with an English dub being produced in Canada, despite the show not having a North American release).
The series follows two half-siblings, 11-year-old Mo Goldfinger and 9-year-old Sam Budarren, the owners of the magical Spectral Scepter, passed down through their family, thanks to their great-great-great-grandmother, who once dated a mysterious, unnamed superhero. Nobody in their family had believed the story was true until one day, Mo and Sam ended up unlocking the powers of the Spectral Scepter, allowing them to temporarily acquire any superpower they ask for!
There is one catch though: anytime one of them asks for a superpower from the Spectral Scepter, they only gain half of that superpower. The other 50% of the requested superpower is transferred to their half-sibling, regardless of whether they wanted it or not. The only way Mo and Sam can use the granted superpower in its full capacity is by holding each other's hand!
And so, Mo and Sam navigate their way through life with their strange little partnership. Whether at school, at home, or just around town, the pair find all kinds of reasons to ask the Spectral Scepter to grant them a superpower, in turn making their lives difficult for each other as they discover the specific twist to every request. But regardless of the challenges that come with their new powers, the pair will always find a way to make the most of it!
Tropes:
- Accidental Public Confession: In "Battle of the Thrones", John-Cedric accidentally exposes his lie when he forgot he was wearing a microphone.
- Asleep in Class: Mo sometimes sleeps in class.
- Aspect Ratio Switch: When Mo and Sam go to the past in the Time Travel episode, the aspect ratio switches from 16:9 to 4:3 with black borders.
- The B Grade: When Sam gets a B+ on a test, she's devastated that her average will go down to an A-. Inverted with Mo, who celebrates his C+.
- Bad Liar:
- Sam briefly wonders if Mr. Brick would believe Mo has an Evil Twin.
- Sam is such a bad dancer she once tried to get out of a school-related dance event by asking her mother to tell the school she lost her toes.
- Birthday Episode: "The Thought That Counts" is about Sam's desire to find out what her grandmother will want as a birthday gift.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: Mo and Sam activate the scepter by saying "By the power of the Spectral Scepter" and stating which power they want at the moment.
- Captain Superhero: One of the superheroes featured in the movie Mo and Sam want to watch in "Brother and Son" is called Captain Responsible.
- Celebrity Lie: In "Battle of the Thrones", John-Cedric pretends to be a celebrity's cousin.
- Cliffhanger: Season 1 ends with Mo and Sam wiping everyone's memories of them being superheroes, including Lenny and Stella, and then the hand of some (so far) unknown figure who has a conspiracy symbol on their hand and is implied to have somehow been unaffected by the amnesia power grabbing Mo's mask off the ground during the Iris Out.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: When teleporting at half power Mo and Sam not only don't appear in the exact place they want, their clothes are left where they were before resulting in this.
- Companion Cube: Mr. Brick calls his wig "Jacqueline" and talks to it.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Mo and Sam once became shapeshifters so they'd spend a weekend with each other's father. In the end, they tell their fathers how they feel about the fathers' plans and acknowledge they could have done that from the beginning.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Sam's father spends so much time indoors that, when he steps outside, sunlight hurts his eyes.
- Did You Get a New Haircut?: When Mo is turned into a giant, Lenny's first reaction upon seeing him is to ask if Mo is wearing a new cap.
- Dodgy Toupee: Mr. Brick's toupee isn't even of the same color as his remaining hair.
- Dreadful Musician: Amber's singing voice is so terrible that, when she decides to sing the whole time, silencing her is the first power in the series both Mo and Sam wish for.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The English theme song has different lyrics for the first eight episodes.
- Epic Fail: The school the main characters attend is considered so bad a school that is half underwater is deemed better.
- Everyone Has Standards: When Mo gets zits, he's desperate enough to wish for the power to make them disappear and, even when the best he can do is to pass one zit to each person he touches, he won't pass any to his best friend.
- Exact Words: When John-Cedric accuses Mo of being jealous for not having his own courtiers, Mo says he'll be super mad when he finds out what "courtier" means. The next scene shows Mo reading a dictionary and saying he's super mad.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "Sam Plays with Time", Mo and Sam realize how far they went back in time when they see a poster for the first Captain Responsible movie announcing its debut at "next Wednesday" and Mo says it can't be because the movie is ten years old.
- Failed a Spot Check: When Mo is turned into a giant, practically everyone is too distracted by their cellphones to notice. One of those distracted people is a woman whose walking doesn't lead her anywhere because she doesn't realize a tree is blocking her path.
- First-Name Basis:
- Mr. Brick and Ms. Uptight call each other by their given names and that's the kids' first clue to the fact they know each other. They're revealed to have known each other since at least Junior High.
- Sam and her half-brother's father call each other by their given names.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Sam is initially portrayed as more responsible than Mo about how they use the Spectral Scepter and more concerned about studies than him but later episodes show that she can be as selfish and reckless with the scepter.
- Foreshadowing: When Mr. Brick allows the students to bring scale models of the solar system, Amber says she has a scrumptious idea. Her idea turns out to be using lollipops to represent the planets.
- Forgotten Birthday: Roger the cat is upset Sam forgot his birthday.
- Gaslighting: To get Mo out of detention, he and Sam use the power of phasing through walls to go back and forth between the detention room and Mr. Brick's office. Believing that Mo was serving his detention at the time convinces Mr. Brick that he was hallucinating the constant break-ins and therefore probably hallucinated the thing he put Mo in detention for.
- Gender-Blender Name: One of the main characters is a girl named Sam.
- Given Name Reveal:
- Mr. Brick's given name (Horace) is revealed in the thirteenth episode.
- Mr. Witherspoon's given name is revealed to be Peter.
- Sam's father was revealed to be named Percy.
- Gone Horribly Right: When Mo is chosen to represent the school on TV, John-Cedric decides to become a bad student thinking it'll get him the fame Mo is receiving. He's so good at being bad Mr. Brick assigns extra tutoring for him for the rest of the year.
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In the cartoon's present time, Mr. Brick is a balding man who wears a wig that doesn't hide his baldness. Ten years before, he had way more hair. It's the first thing Mo and Sam see when they go back ten years in time.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Mo and Sam usually take some time before learning how the halfway powers work.
- Hypocrisy Nod: When Sam wishes for the power to enter computers so she can change her grade, Mo says he'll do "the same" to his own grades and she tells him it's cheating. He points out it's just as wrong for her to do it and she acknowledges the fact.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: When Sam wishes to become a sizeshifter, she turns out to be unable to grow back without Mo.
- Inside a Computer System: When Sam gets a B+ instead of her usual A's, she wishes for the power to enter computers so she can enter Mr. Brick's desktop computer to alter her grade. The world inside that computer is dusty to illustrate how old it is. Lenny's smartphone is portrayed as a clean and more organized world and has an antivirus that treats her like a virus unless she's combining her powers with Mo's.
- Irony:
- Mo is chosen to represent the school in an ad in spite of being the one student who didn't apply.
- Hoping to improve his grades so his mother will return a game she confiscated from him, Mo stole a sculpture she made and passed it as his own for arts class. To his dismay, school rules say all arts projects belong to the school and Mo's mother hid the game in the sculpture.
- It's All About Me: John-Cedric is so self-obsessed he uses his own name as his computer's password.
- Left the Background Music On: There's a violin song being played while Mayor Goldfinger says what he'll do to discipline his son. Victor is revealed to be the one playing it when the Mayor tells him to stop.
- Mad Libs Catchphrase: Mayor Goldfinger says phrases that start with "The reason I'm Mayor" or some variation and ends with either something he claims to have helped him to become Mayor or a goal he hopes to accomplish using his position as Mayor.
- When Mo and Sam go ten years back in time, Mo tells their mother and Sam's father they're on City Hall business and uses that kind of speech to convince them. The town's flag even appears on the background as it usually happens when the Mayor talks like that.
- Not So Above It All: The first episodes show Sam berating Mo for using the Spectral Scepter for his own benefit but it's later revealed she's not above doing the same.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Mo's real name is Maurice Goldfinger, Jr. but he's rarely called that.
- Parental Favoritism: Mo believes Sam to be their mother's favorite when he finds two tickets to a show he wants to watch. It turns out a client of hers gave her the tickets and she later bought a third one so she can take both Mo and Sam. She has no favorites.
- Posthumous Character: Mo and Sam's great-great-great-grandmother is mentioned in one episode.
- Power Incontinence: Some of the powers Mo and Sam receive are harder for them to control when they're not touching each other.
- The Reveal: Siblings cannot use the Spectral Scepter to obtain power over one another. Mo and Sam's grandmother says it's the rule number 1.
- Reverse Psychology: At the end of "The Invisibles", Mo pretends to want to pet John-Cedric's cat to avoid being forced to.
- Right Behind Me:
- In one episode, John-Cedric starts a food fight and frames Mo. John-Cedric eventually brags about it to Mo while Mr. Brick is right behind him.
- When Sam wishes for the power to bring anyone she wants. When not in full contol of that power, everyone Mo or Sam insults appears right behind them.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Mo and Sam's mother realizes a sculpture she made is missing, she assumes Mo stole it because he figured out the videogame she confiscated from him is hidden there. While Mo did steal the sculpture, he only intended to pass it as his own for a school project and didn't know she hid the videogame there.
- Rise of Zitboy: Mo's face becomes full of zits at the very same day he's supposed to appear on a School Play. He uses the Spectral Scepter to wish for the power over zits.
- Rule of Three: In the first episode, Mo and Sam want to watch a movie featuring three superheroes as the protagonists.
- Sarcasm Mode: When Sam asks Mo if being able to talk to animals is the best superpower ever, he sarcastically says he's in doubt between hearing a pigeon talk about poo or being indestructible.
- School Play: Sam wrote one about Anthropomorphic Food.
- Secret-Keeper: Mo and Sam's secret is known by their grandmother and two of their classmates: Lenny and Stella.
- Shout-Out: The balloon clown from he flashback that explains John-Cedric's fear of clowns resembles Krusty the Clown.
- Stable Time Loop: A Time Travel episode reveals Sam to be the person after whom her father decided to name her.
- Stumbling in the New Form: When Mo and Sam get each other's regular shape, they initially have trouble walking since Mo's legs are usually longer than Sam's.
- Technologically Blind Elders: When Mo is turned into a giant, nobody who doesn't already know his and Sam's secret notices because they're too focused on their cellphones. The only exception is Ms. Rose, an elderly lady described by Larry as being "unlikely to own a cellphone" but fortunately her eyesight wasn't good enough to keep her from mistaking Mo for a tree.
- Two-Teacher School: Mr. Brick teaches practically everything not related to gym at his school.
- Unfortunate Names: Mo's surname is "Goldfinger".
- Uptown Girl: Sam wrote a school play about a fancy cup of jam (the girl) and an expired yogurt(the boy) in love. The jam's parents don't approve it.
- Working Through the Cold: Mr. Brick did it during an episode.
