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Recap / Dinosaurs S 03 E 18 Dirty Dancing

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Robbie has dreams about a girl he likes from school, where he keeps dancing around her. He tells Spike about this, and Spike informs him that he's having dreams of doing the mating dance with her. When Robbie talks with that girl, he uncontrollably does the mating dance in class, much to the horror and disgust of everyone else, and is embarrassed. After Fran hears about this, she wants Earl to have a talk with Robbie, but Earl is uncomfortable talking about it. Fran goes to Robbie's school to suggest that the school educate students about the mating dance. Since no teacher will teach about the mating dance, Fran comes into Robbie's class to educate students on it, and when she decides to pick Robbie as the first student to show the dance, Robbie gets embarrassed. Fran later decides to talk to Robbie at home, but walks in on him as he's doing the dance while watching television. Robbie runs away from home as a result, and he and Spike go to a dancing house to pay a woman to dance with him. Although he's about to dance with someone, Robbie decides that he can't go through with it. At home, Earl still refuses to talk about it, but after watching a television show about a father who neglects to pay attention to his son, Earl decides to talk about it. He finds Robbie and they have a discussion. Earl admits that he doesn't really know much about the mating dance and tells Robbie that his body is ready for something his mind isn't, but tells him that Fran probably knows more on the subject. He also adds that whatever Fran teaches Robbie, he should then tell him.

Includes examples of

  • Big "NO!": Robbie screams in horror after being chose by Charlene making him embarrassed even more
  • Bumbling Dad: Aside from Earl, as usual, many of the shows on TV feature one, notably "Totally Ineffectual Dad", a show about a father who ignores his kid's injuries, as well as ignoring his wife telling him to check on their kid.
  • Caught with Your Pants Down: Robbie's embarrassment at his mother catching him doing the mating dance in his room is reminiscent of this trope, especially since Robbie's habit of doing the mating dance is treated as a metaphor for masturbation as well as sexual attraction and Fran tries to calm down her son by assuring him that what he's doing is normal.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Oh boy, does this episode take this trope up to eleven! For starters, Robbie has dreams of the mating dance, performs it uncontrollably around a girl, uncontrollably does it again when Charlene says things about the girl in question, a film strip on mating dance safety points out that people should only perform the dance in a monogamous relationship but if one really wants to do the dance with a stranger to wear special protective footwear (and there's an unshown image of what an unprotected mating dance injury would cause), Robbie does the dance while watching a sexy female dinosaur (the prehistoric version of a sex worker) on television, and he goes to a special dance hall to pay to do the mating dance with a stranger.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: In the Mating Dance film Fran shows the science class, the scene shifts away from a gruesome injury a soldier got from performing it, back to the class's horrified reactions.
  • Follow the Leader: In-Universe, a TV station advertises titles of back-to-back shows built on the Bumbling Dad premise, with such titles as "Father Knows Nothing" and "Dad's a Moron". Lampshaded by Earl.
    Earl: That's why television stinks. When one show becomes a hit, the networks put on a hundred more like it, with the same basic characters and settings and premises.
  • On the Next: The episode of Totally Ineffectual Dad! that Earl watches ends with talk of the son at risk of drowning. The narrator tells viewers to tune in next week for the funeral episode.
  • The Talk: Earl was dreading this because he expected it to be awkward. He admits to Robbie that the whole thing is very confusing (what with the body being ready for something that the mind isn't) and that he doesn't have all the answers. The best advice Earl can give is suggesting channeling all the energy into sports, saying from experience that Robbie'll be so exhausted that he won't be able to think of anything else.
  • Your Television Hates You: Earl would rather watch TV than have an awkward talk with Robbie about the mating dance. The show he watches is Totally Ineffectual Dad!, wherein the main character won't get off the couch to do anything about the horrible things happening to his son. It ends up rattling Earl enough to go find Robbie to have that talk.

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