Subtract the literal gremlin, and this is just a standard night in Times Square after a Jets game.
Production Code: 116
The "wedding of the century" between two soap opera stars, which is being catered by Jake's mother, comes under the threat of a gremlin that Jake accidentally let get out of control.
Tropes
- Foreshadowing: At the beginning, Jake refers to the Hubba-Hubba Hula song as "elevator music". When he sings it at the end to get the gremlins to sleep, it also winds up rekindling the love between Thad and Jasma, as it was the song playing in the elevator they first met in.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Jake's full name gets revealed to the audience when the mess the gremlin makes in the kitchen makes Susan so angry that steam shoots out of her ears.Susan: JACOB LUKE LONG!Jake: (softly) Oops.
- Griping About Gremlins: Gremlins are the antagonists of the episode, and Jake has to stop them from ruining his mom's catering gig.
- Living Drawing: When the original gremlin gets stuck in a fax machine, its copies become living gremlins themselves, albeit in grayscale.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Gremlins don't destroy things to intentionally cause chaos; rather, they're merely interested in learning how things work. Unfortunately, their playful personalities cause them to view "breaking" as a form of "learning."
- Parents in Distress: A non-fatal example, where Jake dragons up and comes to his mother's rescue when the gremlins' shenanigans are about to cost her job.
- Soap Within a Show: Thad and Jasma are the leads on a popular Soap Opera, and the episode makes frequent mention of all the insane, over-the-top scenarios they've acted out over the course of the series.
- Self-Duplication: Happens when the gremlin gets caught in a copy machine.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Gremlins fall asleep by listening to Elvis Kamehameha's "Hubba-Hubba Hula" song.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Fu employs the old injured pup routine on a subway platform to distract the commuters so Jake and Lao-Shi can hunt the Gremlin.
