Recap / American Dragon Jake Long S 02 E 13 Haley Gone Wild

Snitches get stitches.

Production Code: 216

Jake starts encouraging Haley to stop being such a good-two-shoes and break some rules. Shortly thereafter, Haley turns into a punk delinquent. Does Haley watching a show featuring a funny little puppet, that was forbidden by her father, have something to do with Haley's change of attitude?

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• Affably Evil: Though she's gone bad at this point, whilst watching a new episode of "Pooka Pooka Fun Farm", Haley genuinely invites Jake to come sit with her and watch the show with her.
• Bait-and-Switch: Played with. When Trixie remarks how unfair it was that Spud gave up all the convention toys and souvenirs he's collected for the past two days, Spud appears as though he's about to say what Sun says ("Material possessions are temporary, but a good deed is eternal.") Spud voices that what he meant to say was "Life's a bummer like that", but he doesn't argue that what Sun said is also true.
• Be Yourself: Basically the moral of the story. The conflict might not have happened if Jake hadn't pressured Haley into watching the Pooka's television show in order to prove she wasn't a "goody two-shoes". By the end, Haley and Jake admit that her being a "goody two shoes" is preferable to the bad girl she had become.
• Big "WHAT?!"/Double Take: How Jake reacts when Haley nonchalantly mentions robbing Lao-Shi's electronics shop.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: At the very end of the episode, Jake and Haley both shout out "Aw, man!" after their parents call them on the phone and ground them for sneaking out of the house and before the iris closes.
• Call-Back: Jake succeeds in making a chi replica from "The Doppelganger Gang" without the aid of enhancement powder.
• Continuity Nod: The Pooka talks with Haley about her also being in a band, in reference to the first season's "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune. She admits that all she does is play the tambourine and smile a lot.
• Creepy Doll: Jonathan is creeped out by the Pooka "puppet". It's one of the reasons he forbids his daughter to watch its show.
• "Eureka!" Moment: After Jake and Sun figure out what the Pooka really is and what he's up to, they try to figure out where he and the kids he hypnotized (including Haley) could be. That's when Jake realizes that they're most likely Hidden in Plain Sight at the video game convention.
  Jake: We gotta tell Gramps! There's gotta be a potion or something or switch those kids back to normal!
  Sun: There's no time. If Haley's gone, then the Pooka must already be gathering his hoodlum troops. We have to find them now!
  Jake: Couldn't be that hard. How could you not spot a furry puppet dude rounding up a huge crowd of kids? Unless… there already was a huge crowd of kids!
• Five-Finger Discount: Or Five-Claw Discount, as a transformed Haley calls it.
• Foreshadowing: While Jake is chasing Haley around town, a background event shows a kid about Haley's age shoplifting a Pooka plush toy. This hints that whatever is causing Haley to go wild is linked to the Pooka and his show.
• The Girl Who Fits This Slipper: More like "The Boy who fits this Gauntlet". The B-Plot for Trixie is to find the Kami-Kai cosplayer she met at the convention, and the only thing she has to identify him with is the gauntlet he accidentally left behind. She tries to fit the gauntlet on every boy who might've been at the convention, but it's only at the end she learns why it doesn't fit all the other boys: the cosplayer was a child wearing heavy pads, so of course the guantlet could only fit his hand. ...Trixie doesn't take the news well.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Whenever the Pooka's victims listen to its songs, their eyes start to glow an eerie purple.
• Good Girl Gone Bad: The backbone of the story is about Haley spontaneously going from a "goody-two-shoes" to a delinquent punk girl, and figuring out how her personality changed so drastically.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Jake attempts this at first to try to snap Haley out of the Pooka's control. It doesn't work, so he comes up with a better idea; he tattles on her.
• Implied Death Threat: Haley tells a 'story' with her oatmeal about "the Boy who talked too much" (Jake), ending it with smashing her oatmeal with a meat hammer.
• Insulted Awake: Jake's method of snapping Haley out of her brainwashing is to confess to their parents that they disobeyed them.
• Iris Out: The episode ends with this after Jake and Haley shout out their "Aw man!" Catchphrase.
• It Was with You All Along: As it turns out, Jake finally finds a way to snap Haley from the Pooka's spell: tell on their parents, despite Bad!Haley's threats.
• Mind-Control Music: The Pooka's songs aren't simply gibberish. They're spells meant to control anyone who watches his shows, especially if they've heard his songs in great doses.
• Mood Whiplash: After casually mentioning to Jake that she robbed Lao Shi's store, Haley threatens it would be an extremely bad idea to tattle on her. ...Then sweetly wishes her brother good night as though she didn't just threaten her own brother.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Upon hearing her parents' disapproval that she watched "Pooka Pooka Fun Farm" against their wishes, Haley panics at how much trouble she's in and how she's tarnished her reputation for never disobeying her parents.
  • Jake has a similar reaction after basically kick-starting Haley's Good Girl Gone Bad transformation.
    Jake: I took her too far, too fast! And now I don't know how to bring her back!
• Mundane Made Awesome: How does Jake break the spell the Pooka has over Haley? Calling up their parents and telling them how Haley disobeyed them. It's a simple solution, but hearing Johnathan call "Pooka Pooka Fun Farm" a "load of brainwashing" is effectively the wake-up call Haley needs to realize she's in the wrong.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Jake hadn't pressured Haley to do something bad (like watch "Pooka Pooka Fun Farm" against their parents' wishes), she wouldn't have been corrupted so quickly by the Pooka's spell. On the flipside...
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Had the Pooka not corrupted Haley, it wouldn't have lead to the chain of events where Sun and Jake were alerted to its presence, and Haley defeating it when Jake snapped her out of it (via telling their parents on her).
• Not So Above It All: During the epilogue, Haley tries to substitute "Pooka Pooka Fun Farm" with more educational shows. However, even she decides these are boring and prefers something low-brow but fun, like "Belching Monkeys".
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Sun has this reaction when she overhears the Pooka's Mind-Control Music while on the phone with Jake.
    Sun: Get Haley away from the television, NOW!
  • The Pooka also has this reaction when Haley snaps out of his mind control and is understandably furious at him.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Sun has a suspicion that something is amiss with Haley when the latter is late for dragon-training. This is what leads her to call Jake and overhear Haley watching "Pooka Pooka Fun Farm", learning what's caused the girl to go rogue.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Haley's eyes turn a purplish pink when she's about to fight Jake to protect her "master" the Pooka.
• The Stinger: With "Pooka-Pooka Fun Farm" canceled, Haley tries out more educational programming...and fails.
• Uncertain Doom: It is never shown what exactly Haley and Jake did to the Pooka as punishment, but if it's any indication, it is confirmed during The Stinger that his show was canceled.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: Downplayed. Sun finds that her meditation and appeals to the mind-controlled children that violence is the path of the "weak and cowardly" only results in a barrage of boos and thrown trash. Even Trixie insists she "go weak and cowardly on their butts". So instead, Sun just traps them in a wire fence, though it's not less pacifistic.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Inverted. Jake initially wanted Haley to be less uptight about pleasing her parents, only for her to go the other extreme where she's an outright jerk. And he wishes to himself he could somehow get back the old Haley.
• You Are Grounded!: Jake and Haley are both grounded for disobeying their parents and worse, they are not leaving the house ever again at the very end of the episode.
• Younger Than They Look: The boy in the Kami-Kai cosplay that Trixie is crushing on for most of the episode turns out to be a child wearing heavy pads. Trixie is understandably mortified and devastated, especially when he reveals that he's the younger brother of her crush, Kyle Wilkins.