This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Looney Toons: Is having a bio class kill its own frogs for dissection all that common? When I went to high school in the late 1970s, all our critters for dissection were pre-killed, with colored latex injected into their veins and arteries by the supply house to make it easier to identify them. The teacher didn't seem to regard this as all that unusual or special, either.
LTR - Well, we did have to kill our biology class project, but they were fruit flies, the kill was accomplished by pumping the storage bottles full of ether.
Airbud: Throughout high school and college, I've dissected cats, fetal pigs, cow eyes, and worms. All were pre-killed. It might be more common to use mammals these days because they are more similar to human physiology. Frogs may have fallen out of favor as of late due to recent widespread amphibian population declines. By the way, wasn't there a Free the Frogs scene in E.T.?
Tzintzuntzan: I actually don't remember a Free the Frogs episode where the students had to kill the frogs themselves. What happens in all three examples in the entry is that the science teacher kills them on school grounds before the students get to see them -- which allows Our Hero to sneak into the school lab and make off with them. (That's still not true to life; most frogs are shipped to schools already dead.)
Flapjack: I'm fairly certain that the scene in E.T. inspired all of the ones listed here.
Keenath: "The amazing thing about a Free The Frogs plot is that it is one of the few High School plots where the mandatory moral doesn't automatically follow the basic idea." Does anyone know what that means? I can't make sense of that last phrase.
Paul A: I understand it to mean that a standard High School plot usually has a standard moral to go with it, allowing the viewer to foresee the end as soon as they've identified the standard plot; but Free The Frogs plots have had all kinds of endings, supporting all kinds of morals.
Tzintzuntzan: I wrote that line, and Paul A got it. Most High School plots can end only one way without the audience's jaws dropping. If a kid is In with the In Crowd, the moral is always "the in-crowd are scum, and my unattractive, unpopular friends are better." Any other ending would be a notably Subverted Trope even for those who don't memorize tropes like we do.
But if kids are dissecting frogs, there are four potential morals that won't surprise anyone: learn to do scary things, you shouldn't have to do scary things, stand up for what you believe, don't impose your beliefs on others. It's a remarkably flexible plot, as High School plots go.
Washington213: Actually, the Anvillicious "stand up for what you belive in because Science Is Bad and animals should never be killed, now pass me my hamburger", plot is used so often, aren't the others just subversions? It's starting to become a discredited trope these days, but the variations hardly ever come up.
