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Full Recap
The episode begins in the morning with Anne telling the Planters that she got a message from Dr. Jan, but as they just left the house to go to the museum, she is told by her parents that they will go to the Thai Temple, much to Anne’s disappointment, but Mrs. Boonchuy makes a deal with her that if Anne stays for at least an hour, she could go to see Dr. Jan. Anne reluctantly agrees, then chases away 2 SJMS vloggers Desi and Rico who are curious about where she was for 5 months. Mr. Boonchuy then explains to Hop Pop about Market Day and at the Thai Temple and what they do there.
When they arrived, everyone greeted Anne warmly and were overjoyed to see her again. The Plantars take an intent in Thai Culture; Hop Pop falls in love with a traditional khon dance, Sprig turns out to be a natural at the Sepak takraw, and Polly impresses everyone with how fluently she can speak Thai language.
After getting impatient, Anne uses her phone to call Dr. Jan to tell her she is on the way as she decided to sneak away and offers a lady that looks like her 5 bucks to be her, not knowing that Andrias' Cloak-Bot intercepted her call and sends a bunch of dragonfly-like UAV drones to her location. Anne sees how much the frogs are enjoying themselves and gets caught trying to leave by Mrs. Boonchuy and then reveals that she was returning dishes to the neighbors who were comforting her during her disappearance which fills Anne with guilt.
Just then the UAVs attack; Anne lies and says they were sent by Vloggers to spy on her as she and the Plantars engage in battle. To their surprise, everyone helps them fight the mechanical dragonfly swarm and even after seeing the Frogs without their disguises, they still accepted them and promise to keep their secret.
After cleaning up, Anne sees Dr. Jan who just arrived by her truck at the Thai Temple to give the hidden message that was on the vase. Anne, using Marcy's journal, translates the message from Amphibian Alphabet to English "Seek the Mother of Olms she will guide you to your destiny", but nobody knows what that means as the episode ends.
When they arrived, everyone greeted Anne warmly and were overjoyed to see her again. The Plantars take an intent in Thai Culture; Hop Pop falls in love with a traditional khon dance, Sprig turns out to be a natural at the Sepak takraw, and Polly impresses everyone with how fluently she can speak Thai language.
After getting impatient, Anne uses her phone to call Dr. Jan to tell her she is on the way as she decided to sneak away and offers a lady that looks like her 5 bucks to be her, not knowing that Andrias' Cloak-Bot intercepted her call and sends a bunch of dragonfly-like UAV drones to her location. Anne sees how much the frogs are enjoying themselves and gets caught trying to leave by Mrs. Boonchuy and then reveals that she was returning dishes to the neighbors who were comforting her during her disappearance which fills Anne with guilt.
Just then the UAVs attack; Anne lies and says they were sent by Vloggers to spy on her as she and the Plantars engage in battle. To their surprise, everyone helps them fight the mechanical dragonfly swarm and even after seeing the Frogs without their disguises, they still accepted them and promise to keep their secret.
After cleaning up, Anne sees Dr. Jan who just arrived by her truck at the Thai Temple to give the hidden message that was on the vase. Anne, using Marcy's journal, translates the message from Amphibian Alphabet to English "Seek the Mother of Olms she will guide you to your destiny", but nobody knows what that means as the episode ends.
Tropes:
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The Plantars happen to be fascinated by Anne’s Thai culture, and aren't in any hurry to get to Dr. Jan.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Mr. Boonchuy happily shows Anne some baby pictures of her that are quite humiliating, and teasingly suggests that they show her spying classmates these. An anguished Anne chases him trying to get them to delete those, which he refuses.Anne: Dad, oh my gosh! Stop!
Mr. Boonchuy: (Running away with a smile on his face) Never! - Art Shift: When Anne realizes with horror that the Plantar family are now in front of many eyewitnesses without their disguises, a quick zoom-in of their faces shows them with more realistically drawn amphibian features.
- Attack Drone: The Cloak-Bot deploys a swarm of dragonfly drones to hunt down Anne after intercepting her call to Jan. Anne lies to the community saying they're from a neighborhood gang.
- Avengers Assemble: The entire Thai Community joining the Boonchuys' side and helping them fight the dragonfly drones and destroy them.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Hop Pop joins some khon dancers using his signature moves, they stand there in stunned silence. It seems like they'll feel like his dance moves mock their culture, only for them to praise his dance moves and invite him to join them. Hop Pop cries Tears of Joy.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Mrs. Boonchuy's reasons for participating in the temple festival along with returning the tupperware was because the community members provided emotional support for her and her husband during Anne's disappearance. The members even join Anne's side and help her destroy all the dragonfly drones, and accept the Plantars as they truly are when their disguises fall off.
- Big "NEVER!": Mr. Boonchuy has this response when Anne demands that he delete the baby photos of her on his phone.
- Bilingual Bonus: The only Thai that isn't translated with subtitles comes from Anne's usage of Ba (crazy), calling all the elders who surround her the "Ba train".
- Broken Masquerade: The Plantars' disguises fall off while fighting the drones, resulting in the entire Thai community discovering that they're sentient frogs. The Thai community still accepts them for what they are, however, and agrees to keep their true nature a secret.
- Chekhov's Gun: Before leaving for the temple, Anne's parents see members of her school trying to get photographs of her from afar, with Anne explaining that the school's gossip line have been trying to get info about her for her mysterious disappearance for five months. During the assassin's robot drone attack, Anne claims the robots are spy camera drones from the school trying to get pictures of her to excuse their presence and give a valid reason to trash them.
- Continuity Nod:
- Given this takes place the morning after "Fight at the Museum", the assassin still has the damage it sustained from clashing with the Plantars, and as it's too badly damaged to properly hide itself, it opts instead to send robot drones after Anne while it works on repairing itself.
- Anne is able to translate the frog script on the jar because she has Marcy's diary, which contained her notes on translating a dead language used in the temples.
- Contrived Coincidence: How Anne has Marcy's journal is a mystery. Given how scatterbrained Marcy is, it's possible Anne was holding onto it for her, with her backpack being the best object for keeping their stuff together the three had, or Marcy intentionally let Anne hold onto her research notes because she was still planning on having Anne adventure with her throughout Amphibia.
- *Cough* Snark *Cough*: When Polly displays her newfound knowledge of Thai language, one student coughs the word "showoff".
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: A Thai relative is covering the eyes of a fellow Thai girl when they gaze upon the Plantar family.
- Determinator: The assassin is still too badly damaged from its last outing against the Plantars the night before to personally fight them again, so once it identifies Anne's location, is deploys a swarm of robot drones to attack her while it continues to repair itself.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the close up on Dr. Jan's message to Anne, you can see that her phone's autocorrect accidentally sent "surfing" instead of "something", which she angrily corrects in a follow-up text.
- A Friend in Need: Anne's mother reveals this about the Thai community: they always look out for each other, without needing to be asked and without expectation of reward. From providing emotional support for Anne's parents when she disappeared, to helping Anne fight off robot drones, to accepting Anne's strange frog family.
- Frying Pan of Doom: One of the temple residents tosses a frying pan at a drone.
- Get Out!: While Anne doesn't really say something along the lines of this to the gossip bloggers, the tone in her voice makes it clear that Desi and Rico aren't welcomed near her.
- Hidden Depths: From Anne's perspective, Thai culture seemed to involve a lot of nosy elders who expected her to be polite no matter what (which chafes against her American Bratty Teenage Daughter tendencies), drab traditions and tedious responsibilities (like helping with the restaurant or "suffering through" Thai school), but seeing how much fun and fulfillment the Plantars find with different aspects of Thai culture, and seeing how much the Thai community look out for each other, makes her see them in a much better light.
- Humans Are Ugly: Inverted. In a contrast to Anne's own experience with this trope in Wartwood, when the Plantars get exposed to the Thai community as anthropomorphic frogs, they decide to keep the truth hidden just because the Plantars are Anne's friends, even if they do find them amazingly ugly to look at.Hop Pop: Ouch.
Sprig: It's funny, but it still stings.
Polly: They're talking about you too. - Identical Stranger: Anne finds a look-alike of her from behind to take her place at the stand while she heads off to get the information.
- Immediate Sequel: This episode takes place the day after "Fight at the Museum".
- Improvised Weapon: The temple residents gather up whatever they can to fight off the drone swarm, from barrages of snacks to cookware.
- Instant Expert: The Plantars all instantly master different aspects of Thai culture: Polly has learned fluent Thai from watching Anne's mom's Thai romcoms when Anne herself was formally taught and can still barely string a sentence together; Hop Pop can do khon dancing with the best of them thanks to his love of drama and dancing lessons he received back in Wartwood, especially his freestyle; finally, Sprig is really good at Sepak Takraw, despite having never played it before, since it's pretty similar to Bugball and Sprig's been shown in previous episodes to play around the Boonchuy house with a football, so he's got experience with the necessary athleticism required to play it.
- Irony: The Plantars take to Thai culture like fish take to water, while Anne can still barely string Thai sentences together and finds Temple day to be a bit of a drag despite being immersed in Thai culture since infancy.
- Jerkass Realization: Anne says she feels like a jerk for not caring much about her Thai community that have looked out for her parents and love her.
- Learnt English from Watching Television: Polly has learned fluent Thai by watching Thai romcoms. Anne laments that she can barely string a sentence together after years of instruction.
- Not So Above It All: Mr. Boonchuy's idea of warding off Anne's classmates trying to get photos of her for the school newspaper is to show them her baby pictures.
- Pun-Based Title: The title is a play on "temple dogs".
- The Reveal: The hidden message discovered by Dr. Jan in the previous episode is translated. Unfortunately, no one knows what it means at the moment.
- Seamless Spontaneous Lie: Anne convinces her mom and the temple community that the dragonfly drones were sent by the journalism club from her school. It helps that earlier two members were shown trying to catch Anne on camera.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: When Anne sees the swarm of dragonfly drones appear at the temple, she pretends they're from a gang of paparazzi at school who's come to take her picture and is trying to avoid having her cover compromised because of the promise she made to not tell her parents about Andrias' invasion. Mrs. Boonchuy goes right with it. Naturally, this is the last time she has to lie to them before it's time to tell the truth.
- Tears of Joy: Hop Pop bursts into delighted tears when some khon dancers praise his dance moves.Hop Pop: I love it here!
- Wham Line: The message on the jar tells the reader to "Seek the mother of olms. She will guide you to your destiny." The meaning of this isn't clear, as Anne and the Plantars have no frame of reference other than presumably knowing what an olmnote is.
- [Verb] This!: Anne and her father say "sample this" when attacking the dragonfly drones.
