On their return trip to Dreamland via steamboat, lovelorn Elfo winds up in an unusual relationship while Bean gets close to Mora the mermaid.
Tropes:
- Big "NO!": Or more accurately, various Little "No" followed by a Big No when Elfo sees his boat sinking by the end of the episode.
- Bottle Episode: Downplayed. While many locations are featured, a vast majority of time is spent on the steamboat.
- Brick Joke: Back in season 2, Bean had an earlobe-nibbling session with one of the mermaids, which gets brought up by Mora's sister here.
- The Bus Came Back: The mermaids of Mermaid Island return.
- Cargo Ship: Invoked; Elfo, due to still being lovesick after his failed romance with Edith the Fortune Teller from last episode, develops an unhealthy rebound relationship with the steam boat.
- Casual Kink: Elfo has a butt-slapping fetish.
- Closet Key: Bean realizes she's bisexual after bonding with Mora.
- Commitment Issues: While she kissed a lot of men in the past, Bean never truly committed herself out of fear of not being loved back.
- Continuity Nod:
- Bean mentioning that Elfo was pissed off after she helped him to escape from Hell (conveniently forgetting the parts where she had chosen not to resurrect him and where she had pushed him to be driven out of Heaven leading him to Hell in first place), and the time they kissed together on drug.
- Back in "The Dreamland Job", Elfo brought up how he was once tied up by his dad and slapped on the "bum-bum". While Bean questioned why he was bringing that up, now we see why - it turns him on.
- Convenient Escape Boat: Played with but not averted. They do find a ship and escape with it, them not understanding Steam land technology, let alone a boat that size may have more than one knot tied to the dock nearly doomed them.
- Crazy-Prepared: Alva has no less than three different means of reaching his steamboat. Bean smashes them all anyway.
- Cryptic Background Reference: When Mora explains the story of one of the mermaid queens, she mentions Mermaid Island isn't their original homeland, but one they had to go to after losing the first.
- Foreshadowing: While escaping, Bean and Elfo are in too much of a hurry to notice the boat they're stealing is on a private dock reserved for one A. Gunderson. Sure enough, he contacts them after they do steal it.
- Hall of Mirrors: Bean and Elfo utilize one to their advantage to take down one of the bots chasing them.
- Humiliation Conga: An almost literal example, as the mermaids have an "I told you so" ceremony who consists in a beach party intended to humiliate the ones who left the island and returned without having accomplished their objectives. Subverted as Mora is too happy about Bean's presence to feel humiliated.
- Idea Bulb: Mentioned by Elfo; when the lightbulb robots reactivate themselves, and the bulbs that are their heads light up again, Elfo warns Bean that "they are getting ideas".
- Just in Time: Mora coming back to untie their boat from the dock.
- Love Hurts: Elfo doesn’t take his breakup with the seer in the previous episode so well. At the end of the episode, even Bean gets a taste of it.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Mora discusses this trope when it's shown Elfo is on a rebound with a boat, and tells Bean a story about how after her ex broke up with her, she carved a piece of driftwood to look exactly like her... before bashing it to pieces and setting the pieces on fire. YMMV on the catharsis factor of said creation and destruction.
- Made of Iron: If taken literally, the robots obviously. But they are rather fragile and don't fit the trope. As for this archetype, it’s not obvious, but Elfo. He is able to repair the boat’s lighted boiler by bare hand, exposing himself to heavy and/or burning metal parts, and fumes without injuring himself or burning himself badly. During the repair, he does feel the pain of some incidents, like getting the wrench or burning smoke in the face, but beside that he ends the operation unscratched.
- Mood-Swinger: As Mora notes with some alarm, Elfo tends to go through extremes. Bean assures her there's no real middle ground.
- Noodle Incident: Evidently Zog did something that causes the mermaids to murmur when it turns out Bean's his daughter.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Apparently Mora declared to the other mermaids she'd get herself a yacht. Despite, y'know, being a mermaid. Apparently they constantly tormented her about this.
- Something We Forgot: In the previous episode, Bean and Elfo let everyone in the Freak Show loose... except Mora. It's only in this episode after a few minutes of running that Elfo remembers her.
- Talking to Themself: Apparently Bean has the habit to monologue about her Commitment Issues.
- That Was Not a Dream: The ending reveals the necklace Mora gave Bean laying on the beach.
