Can he prove he can win the Green family name?
Cricket VersusCricket is tasked to do the Green Family Rite of Passage where he must wrestle an animal before sundown to become a true Green, but there aren’t as many wild animals in Big City.
"Cricket Versus" contains examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: While Cricket is fighting Gramma and Tilly and Bill try to stop him, it seems as if Cricket is going to give up the fight and willingly fail the rite of passage, knowing he truly is a Green by heart. But then he tackles Gramma and pins her down with the quilt, admitting a true Green never lets his guard down, thus he completes the passage and becomes an official Green.
- Batman Gambit: Cricket pretends to surrender to Gramma and give up the fight to trick her into letting her guard down so he can pin her and complete the rite of passage.
- Broken Record: The first scene shows Cricket waking everyone up while shouting nonstop: "Today's the day! Today's the day! Today's the day!"
- Celestial Deadline: If a Green doesn't pin an animal before the sun goes down, they won't be a Green anymore and will have to change their last name to something else.
- The Chessmaster: How Cricket wins against Gramma. He tricks her into letting her guard down by pretending to give up the fight, so she is sentimental enough for him to give the final blow.
- Coming of Age Story: The Greens' rite of passage is all but stated to be this.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Cricket immediately loses to Keys' horse Buttercup in a matter of seconds, as one glomp to her behind scares her away and knocks him off without even pinning her down.
- Did You Die?: Asked by Tilly.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Gramma doesn't count Cricket's fight against a squirrel because she doesn't consider them "real-life monsters", unlike the time she fought a bear.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the first mention of the Greens' mother, and Tilly addresses her as "Mom"; in later episodes, she would use the term "Mama" when referring to her unlike Cricket.
- Ironic Echo: "Never let your guard down!" It is first said by Gramma the first time Cricket failed to wrestle an animal. Later when Gramma falls for Cricket's Batman Gambit and gets tackled, Cricket says the exact same thing to her.
- Loophole Abuse: The rules of the Green rite of passage are to pin down "the toughest critter around." After failing to find an animal tough enough to fight in the city, Cricket decides to fight Gramma, since she's the toughest around. Gramma allows it.
- Match Cut: After Cricket successfully pins Gramma down on three completing the rite of passage, the view dissolves from a shot of him standing heroically atop her to the same image sewn on the family quilt.
- Missing Mom: The first episode that mentions the Greens' mother.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: In his first attempt to wrestle an animal, Cricket removes all his clothes except his underwear; after Gramma warns him of the Celestial Deadline, she tells him to put his clothes back on as he looks hideous.
- Race Against the Clock: Cricket has until the sun sets to pin an animal down and complete the rite of passage, or he won’t be a Green anymore.
- Rite of Passage: The Green Family has one — find an animal, wrestle it, and pin it down for three seconds before sunset.
- Rule of Three: Cricket's attempts to fight an animal. First, he wrestles the horse Keys found, but is easily outmatched; second, he cannot fight a dog because it has a leash, and is thus not a wild animal; third, he wins a fight with a squirrel, but Gramma doesn't count such because she doesn't consider them "real-life monsters".
- Second Episode Morning: Being the first segment of the second episode, it begins with Cricket waking up on the day he is to take the Green family rite of passage.
- Shout-Out: While Gramma is thinking of last names Cricket should change his to should he fail the rite of passage, she suggests "Hawking" and "Einstein".
- Take Our Word for It: When Gramma shows the special quilt that shows the various Greens fighting their respective animals in the rite of passage, she shows patches of Tilly fighting a horse and Bill fighting a hawk. We don't get to see their mother's patch but we do get comments on it.
- Versus Title: The episode title itself.
- Wrestler of Beasts: As per family tradition, Cricket has to wrestle a fierce animal in order to earn the Green name.
Beware of the tater's curse!
Blue TaterWhile setting up the family food truck, Cricket finds a blue potato and believes the whole family has become unlucky because of it.
"Blue Tater" contains examples of:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: According to Cricket, when under the curse of the blue tater, the fridge in the Kludge would fall on someone, the deep fryer would burn their face off, and salt would get in their eyes.
- Big "NO!": By Gramma when Cricket touches the blue potato.
- Characterisation Click Moment: This episode marks the first time Tilly's Cool Big Sis background is fully established; she does not join her family in freaking out over the potato's supposed bad luck, and knew right from the start all the accidents and trouble the family experiences were indeed Cricket's fault. She even has a talk with him in the car that he shouldn't believe everything he hears and luck is not controlled in any way.
- Comic-Book Time: Actually averted here. This is one of few moments to mention the show's time period; the year 2018 is visible on Tilly's "lucky coin" (which is also the year the series premiered), suggesting this is when the current "date" is set.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the only episode that shows the Greens selling something that isn't under the name Green Family Farms, as that was before they officially opened their business in "Supermarket Scandal".
- Eye Scream: When trying to prove the curse of the blue potato to Bill, Cricket sprinkles salt which gets all over his eyes and stings them.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Tilly tosses her lucky coin in the air at the start, if you look closely you can see it has two heads on either side.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: Cricket has to decide whether to put the potato in the sour cream and supposedly end the bad luck, or make it into fries, and the bad luck would go on presumably forever. He chose the latter, and the resulting blue fries are seen by the customers as good luck.
- Noodle Implements: To perform the ritual to counter the effects of the blue potato, Gramma needs snake venom, dirt from a freshly dug grave, and sour cream. She already has the first two in her purse, but Tilly keeps eating the sour cream.
- Only Sane Man: Tilly, by the end of the episode, is the only one who doesn't believe in the blue potato's bad luck story. The others, sans grandma, don't believe it at first, but gradually become believers as the bad luck piles up. It only ends when Tilly finally points out that most of the "bad luck" was actually the Greens panicking and breaking things because they thought they were cursed.
- Record Needle Scratch: Heard when Cricket first discovers the blue potato.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Cricket is so convinced that the blue 'tater is going to give the Greens bad luck that he keeps jumping in and overreacting to the smallest thing. This keeps distracting the rest of his family, especially Bill, and causing an accident, which only makes Cricket more convinced that the family is cursed. It takes Tilly pointing out that all the problems they've had throughout the episode were due to Cricket's actions, not some curse, to get him to snap out of it.
- Superstition Episode: The episode revolves around Cricket and the Greens suffering bad luck, supposedly because of the blue potato. It becomes clear by the end that the potato is just a potato, and all the bad things happening to them was because Cricket thought they were under a curse.
- Two-Headed Coin: Tilly's "lucky penny" is actually two pennies glued tails side to tails side so that it always lands on heads.
