- "All New! In Terrifying Meat-Vision!"
Produced 2003, aired in U.S. on 4/3/04
Production order: 1 (1-1)
14-year-old Danny Fenton — son of professional ghost hunters, freshman at Casper High in the lovely suburban town of Amity Park — has gained ghost powers. He can fly, turn intangible, turn invisible, sense when a ghost is nearby, and who knows what else. The problem is he's still having trouble controlling them. And keeping his parents, nosy older sister Jazz, and everyone at school from finding out ("If somebody catches me, I go from geek to freak around here!"). To make matters worse, his best friend — the Goth and extreme Soapbox Sadie, Sam Manson — has convinced the school to switch to a vegetarian menu, something that both his other best friend — Gadgeteer Genius Tucker Foley — and the ghost of a lunch lady are not happy about. It's up to Danny to stop the ghost and save his school... while stopping his friends from fighting, staying under his parents' radar, dodging the persistent school bully Dash Baxter, and serving the punishments handed out by Vice-Principal Lancer for the all the trouble he gets blamed for. Having super powers is a great responsibility, all right.
This episode provides examples of:
- Asleep for Days: Parodied.Danny: What happened?Tucker: You passed out. We took you home. You've been asleep for four days.Danny: Four days?!Tucker: (laughs) Nah, it's only been a couple hours.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:Jazz: (to her parents) You've ambushed me, suffocated me with smoke, and worst — I was pulled away from Spike before he had his breakthrough!
- Battle Discretion Shot: Danny's very first ghost battle of the series in the Cold Opening is this. The audience only sees him leaping offscreen and the flash of his transformation, followed by the sounds of a fight, with Danny only reappearing onscreen when he changes back to human, keeping the reveal of his half ghost status for the subsequent theme song and episode proper.
- Bittersweet Ending: Danny may have stopped the Lunch Lady and discovered his purpose as a hero, but he and his friends end up in trouble with Lancer and have to clean up the mess the Lunch Lady caused. Fortunately, Danny gets the last laugh on Dash by using his powers to turn a dumpster containing meat intangible, causing it to bury Dash in meat.Dash: Fenton, a little help?
Danny: Whatever you say, Dash. (To the camera) Whatever you say (his eyes glow green as Iris Out) - Chekhov's Gun: The Fenton Thermos, which Danny retains for the rest of the series.
- Comes Great Responsibility: After capturing the Lunch Lady, Danny decides, "I think I've finally figured out what these powers are for..." and begins his career as a ghost-fighting super hero.
- Disgusting Vegetarian Food: The "ultra-recyclo vegetarian" cafeteria menu consists of grass and dirt. Everybody but Sam finds it gross.
- Everyone Can See It: According to Dash, it seems to be common knowledge among the Casper High student body that Just Friends Danny and Sam are a couple.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Sam and Tucker begrudgingly put their feud aside and make up once they have more important things to deal with, like helping Danny fight a psychotic, obsessive-compulsive ghost.
- Food Fight: Danny starts one to create a distraction so he can sneak off to fight the Lunch Lady.
- Gilligan Cut: After Tucker and Sam storm off, both angry at each other, Danny muses that hopefully things would be back to normal the next day:Danny: (The following morning, when Danny sees the clashing protests his friends were having) Or not. Maybe it'll be worse.
- Granola Girl: Sam to a ludicrous extent; she's such a big vegetarian she literally eats grass and mud, and forces the rest of the school to do the same by relentlessly bugging the administration until they agree.
- Group Hug: Danny has Sam and Tucker do this to hide him while he transforms.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Danny is still getting the hang of flying, turning intangible, and even transforming, often falling out of the sky or phasing through walls without meaning to.
- I Just Want to Be Normal:Danny: If my dad could invent something that accidentally made me half-ghost, why can't he invent something that turns me back to normal?
- In the end, however, he decides to use his powers for good.
- In Medias Res: There's no Super Hero Origin episode — the Freak Lab Accident that gave Danny his powers happened a month ago. The series begins with the first ghost he fights and his decision to use his powers to catch evil ghosts.
- Insistent Terminology:Tucker: Thanks again for making us eat garbage, Sam!Sam: It's not garbage — it's recyclable organic matter.Tucker and Danny: It's garbage.
- Laser-Guided Karma: While Mr. Lancer turns a blind eye to Dash's antics and punishes Danny and his friends for the food fight the latter started, the Jerk Jock does get a comeuppance at the end; while he's laughing smugly at their predicament, Danny retaliates by using his powers to turn the dumpster intangible, burying Dash in the meat and forcing him to beg Danny for help getting out.
- Masquerade: Danny struggles to keep his powers a secret because he doesn't want to look like a freak. He doesn't tell his parents because, like a typical teenager, he doesn't think they'd understand.
- Meat Versus Veggies: The main theme of the episode. Sam manages to change the entire cafeteria menu to an "ultra-recyclo vegetarian" one, which consists of grass and topsoil, infuriating the other students, especially Tucker, who only eats meat. It also enrages the Lunch Lady ghost, who's extremely conservative about the cafeteria menu and makes huge speeches about the importance of meat. Sam and Tucker even organize protests in front of the school defending their positions on the matter.
- Misplaced Retribution: Dash takes it out on Danny when Sam's menu change results in him getting literal mud pies.Sam: Actually, that's topsoil.
- Mundane Utility: While fighting the Lunch Lady, Danny uses his powers to catch dishes and safely set them down. He then muses that if being a superhero doesn't work out, he could have an exciting career as a busboy.
- Never My Fault: After stating his carelessness almost got Danny killed, Tucker quickly reminds Sam that the only reason the Lunch Lady attacked was because she changed the menu and took the meat away, justifying his decision to start a campaign to get it back.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:Tucker: We've gotta find Sam. For some reason, I feel like I got her kidnapped...Danny: Maybe because you told the ghost she changed the menu? How about that?!
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Danny may have been able to stop the Lunch Lady, but thanks to the food fight he created as a distraction, ducking out of Lancer's office to save Sam, along with the mess caused by Tucker and Sam's protests, he and his friends end up in hot water with Mr. Lancer when all is said and done.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently, within the past month, Danny's powers had caused him to drop thirty-four beakers, and was therefore permanently banned from handling all fragile school equipment.
- Ordered Apology: Danny already was annoyed with Sam and Tucker over the campaigns, but once the Lunch Lady attacks, he finally forces the two to reluctantly forget the dumb school menu.Danny: Guys, time to makeup. Now!
- Parental Obliviousness: Jack and Maddie are professional ghost hunters but are completely oblivious to the fact that their son is now half-ghost. When one of their gadgets designed to detect ghosts actually tells them he's a ghost, they conclude, "That can't be right!" To their credit, they do eventually suspect one of their children is a ghost... their daughter Jazz.
- Post-Victory Collapse: Danny's second battle with the Lunch Lady leaves him unconscious, something that will happen less and less as the series goes on.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Parodied the final time Danny confronts the Lunch Lady.Lunch Lady: (Seeing the Fenton Thermos in Danny's hand) NO! Soup's not on today's menu!
Danny: (Defiantly) I'm changing the menu...Permanently! (Meekly to himself) Please work. - Selective Enforcement: Mr. Lancer punishes Danny, Sam, and Tucker for the Food Fight, ignoring the fact that Dash started the whole thing by throwing food at Danny in the first place. When Danny points this out, Lancer states that Dash gets a free pass because he's the star quarterback.Danny: Dash started it! He threw-
Lancer: Four touchdown passes in the last game, is thereby exempt from scorn. You two, however, are not. - Serious Business: The Lunch Lady is really pissed off when Sam changes the menu.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: This series-long Running Gag begins when Dash blames Danny's "girlfriend" for changing the menu, along with the series-long Ship Tease between Danny and Sam.Danny: (surprised) She's not my girlfriend.Sam: (annoyed) I'm not his girlfriend!
- Shout-Out: Danny's school is named after Casper the Friendly Ghost and his hometown after Amityville. Given that Butch Hartman pitched the show as "Ghostbusters meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the wealth of Shout Outs to The Real Ghostbusters in the first episode alone are hardly surprising:
- The Fenton Thermos is a cylindrical Ghost Trap.
- The Fenton Finder has a similar design and the exact same function as a PKE meter.
- Just like their predecessors, Jack and Maddie became professional ghost hunters despite the fact that, prior to the events of this episode, they've never seen a ghost.
- Sam and Tucker each respectively bear a strong resemblance (physically and in personality) to Extreme Ghostbusters Kylie Griffin and Roland Jackson.
- Being turned half-ghost by an explosion also happened to Egon Spengler in the Real Ghostbusters episode "Egon's Ghost":Egon: It would seem that the energy backlash has completely destabilized my molecular structure.Peter: In other words... you're a ghost!Egon: Not technically, since I'm still alive, but for all practical purposes — yes.
- For now, except for the ability to fly, Danny has the same powers Egon did. Intangibility and invisibility you'd expect; one power, however, stands out in particular.Egon: Put that away, Ray — you won't need it. I can sense where the ghost is.
- The Lunch Lady does with meat what the ghost in the Real Ghostbusters episode "Station Identification" does with television sets — turns into a giant meat/electronics monster by surrounding themselves with the stuff, forming a giant battle suit. The materials swoop in around them in the exact same manner.
- The Lunch Lady's personality, going from sweet and calm one minute to angry and crazy the next, could be a reference to Annie Wilkes from Stephen King's Misery.
- Split Personality: The Lunch Lady shifts between a calm, sweet old woman and a furious, hulking monster with flaming red eyes.
- Starter Villain: The ecto-pusses and the Lunch Lady are challenging opponents for Danny when he's just starting out as a hero, all right, but they'll seem like child's play before the season is halfway through.
- Straw Vegetarian: The episode cements Sam's position as an "ultra-recyclo vegetarian". She somehow unilaterally changes the school cafeteria menu to nothing but grass and mud, while getting enraged about this upsetting the other students and the Lunch Lady because she's "thinking like an individual". She also claims that ultra-recyclo vegetarians don't even cook their food, which is far from true regarding real life vegetarians.
- Supernatural Aid: The Fenton Thermos — Danny's able to defeat the Lunch Lady once he obtains it (which he wouldn't have done if not for his courage and determination to fight).
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Tucker smells meat on Lancer, the teacher claims that the rumors about the Teachers' Lounge having a new all-steak buffet were completely unfounded.
- Threshold Guardian: The Lunch Lady functions as this — once Danny figures out how to defeat her, he's able to assume his proper role and proceed on his journey of becoming a hero.
- With Us or Against Us: Sam and Tucker try to pressure Danny into picking either side in their Meat Versus Veggies quarrel.Danny: Don't you guys think this is a little extreme?Tucker: No choice, buddy! You're either with me...Sam: Or you're against him!Tucker and Sam: SO WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?!(Both give Danny a Death Glare as they await his decision, but the sound of the Lunch Lady's Evil Laugh quickly changes their expressions to Oh, Crap! / This Is Gonna Suck as the area begins to rumble with her arrival)
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Dash is furious at Sam for changing the menu, but instead of going after her, he goes after the guy he thinks is her boyfriend.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Sam says this word-for-word when she sees the manner Tucker intends to free her from a pile of meet: namely, cutting and eating it piece by piece.
