Left to right: Greggy C, Leggy P, Deep Chris, Creggy G and Chubby Z.
When Mabel discovers that Sev'ral Timez, her favorite boy band, is actually a bunch of imprisoned clones, she sets them free, only to decide on keeping them for herself; Dipper is convinced that Robbie plans to brainwash Wendy with a secret message.
Tropes in this episode:
- Aborted Arc: In the end, Dipper ends up upsetting Wendy by asking her out when she's left heartbroken after dumping Robbie...but they appear to be on good terms again in the episodes that followed. It's never shown or explained how Dipper made amends with her.
- Ambiguous Situation: It doesn't really matter in the long run, since he's being dishonest either way, but the episode doesn't make it clear if Robbie was actually trying to brainwash Wendy or if it really was an accidental result of him stealing the song. The demonic-looking CD case certainly doesn't help his argument.
- An Aesop:
- If you really care about someone, you need to let them be free to live their own lives rather than making them spend all their time with you.
- Exposing your love interest's boyfriend as a jerk so she'll break up with him does not automatically make her "available" for you.
- Angry Dance:Grenda: Oh, no! They're aggressively dancing at us!
- Artistic License – Law: Ergman Bratsman gets arrested for not having a rear license plate.
- Artists Are Attractive: A major part of both the A and B plots.
- Auto-Tune: The vocals of Sev'ral Timez are treated with this effect.
- Berserker Tears: As Wendy snaps at Dipper for asking her out immediately after her break-up, she starts crying as her voice breaks while yelling at him, Stan, and Robbie, and she storms off in tears.
- Bittersweet Ending: The A-plot ends with Sev'ral Timez free to live their lives as they want, but Mabel is left heartbroken (and as Candy lampshades, the boys may not even be capable of living on their own). The B-plot ends with Wendy safe and no longer together with Robbie, but Dipper jumps the gun on asking to hang out with her, leaving her mad at him as she walks off, albeit with Stan comforting Dipper in that she'll most likely forgive him for it (see "Aborted Arc" above).
- Born in the Wrong Century: Downplayed with Sev'ral Timez. "A century" is pushing it, but they still act more like they debuted during the late 90s or early 2000s than the modern day (though One Direction was quite popular at the time the episode aired in 2013). Dipper lampshades this by calling them "the boy band that came a decade too late".
- Boy Band: Sev'ral Timez is your typical band made up of five Pretty Boys with a ton of screaming fangirls. Also parodied, since any jokes about how boy bands are "manufactured" by the music industry are quite literal in their case since they're clones.
- Brick Joke:
- The goat eats the rear license plate of a limo just as it rolls off. The manager inside said limo is arrested because he has no rear license plate.
- Creggy G. wanting to kiss a tree. He gets his chance in the credits.
- The Cameo: Pacifica can be seen at the concert.
- Ceiling Cling: Mabel, her friends and the band do this when they're hiding from Stan. Pretty impressive for Grenda.
- Chairman of the Brawl: One of the girls fighting over Sev’ral Timez’s attention at the concert throws a chair at another girl.
- Comedic Sociopathy: When Dipper and Stan go to rescue Wendy, Stan is glad to finally have a good excuse to punch a teenager.
- Comfort Food: After learning that the show is sold out, Grenda resorts to eating peanut butter by the handful.
- Continuity Nod:
- Dipper thinks Mabel's dancing means she got into the Smile Dip again.
- Sev'ral Timez has a song titled "Cray Cray".
- Cosmetic Catastrophe: Grenda's attempt at putting on make-up for the concert.
- Crunchtastic: Grunkle Stan calls his canned brown meat "apoca-licious".
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Happens to one member of Sev'ral Timez during their First Time in the Sun moment.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The story of Mabel getting attached to Sev'ral Timez reminds of a kid taking in a hurt wild animal and then struggling to let go once the animal recovered.
- Dramatic Wind: Lampshaded by Sev'ral Timez during their song to Mabel, thanking her for holding up the fan while they are singing.
- Drowning My Sorrows: A G-rated version, with Dipper guzzling sodas with Grunkle Stan after his failed attempt to catch Wendy on the rebound.
- Dumb Blonde: The Sev’ral Timez boys. Justified considering they’re clones who have never experienced the world outside their tour bus.
- Dump Them All: Immediately after Wendy dumps Robbie, Dipper invites her to hang out with him and Stan. She is understandably furious (and perhaps sees through his attempt to hide his crush on her), and tearfully rejects him, telling all three guys to leave her alone.
- Early-Bird Cameo: A DVD of Sev'ral Timez was in the previous episode.
- Ear Worm: It's mentioned that the songs by Sev'ral Times are quite catchy.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Robbie's "catch you on the rewind" quip inspires Dipper to try playing the brain-washing song backwards.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Dipper is overjoyed when he realizes that there really is a subliminal message in Robbie's song for Wendy - until he realizes that Wendy is currently alone with Robbie and potentially in danger, and that she needs saving.
- Fangirl: Mabel, Grenda and Candy are crazy about Sev'ral Timez. The theme of this episode is the (to males) inexplicable effect of musicians on girls.
- Fantastic Vermin: A rather bizarre example. After Mabel releases her pet boy band out into the wild, one of them is seen rummaging through Stan’s trash like a raccoon.
- Finger-Snapping Street Gang: Mabel finds herself in the possession of boy band Sev'ral Timez and quickly grows possessive of them. When Grenda and Candy try to intervene, Mabel sics the band on them, and they proceed to Angry Dance their way towards the girls, snapping their fingers as they go, before ejecting them from the premises.
- First Time in the Sun: When Mabel lets Sev'ral Timez out into the wild, they see the sun for the first time.
- Foreshadowing:
- Near the beginning of the episode, Dipper and Wendy joke about how boy-band members are grown from pods. Little do they know how right they are...
- Stan is packing meat for a future apocalypse and tells Robbie to prepare for it.
- The younger Stan in this episode's flashback looks a bit different from the man implied to be his past self in "The Time Traveler's Pig".
- Hairpin Lockpick: Mabel opens the backdoor and the boy band cage's padlock with her hairpin.
- Handshake Refusal: Soos's high five is not reciprocated by Ergman Bratsman, forcing Soos to complete it himself.
- Hope Spot: When Dipper overhears Wendy breaking up with Robbie. His joy doesn't last long.
- Hypocritical Humor:Dipper: Ugh, girls!
Wendy: I know, right? - I'm Okay!: Candy says this after she accidentally walks into the vending machine.
- Innocently Insensitive: Once Wendy breaks up with Robbie, Dipper instantly asks her if she wants to hang out with him and Stan while she's still grieving from what happened. Wendy is obviously in no mood to spend time with him while she's so emotionally overwhelmed and his offer just makes her madder, so she snaps at him and runs off crying.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: When Mabel tells her brother that girls mature faster than boys, we get a shot of Grenda frantically kissing a magazine image of Sev'ral Timez.
- Ironic Echo: "If he loved you, he would set you free." Said by Mabel to try and convince Sev'ral Timez to run away. Said to Mabel (twice, by Candy) to try and convince her to set Sev'ral Timez free. Mabel herself eventually begrudgingly says it after Sev'ral Timez' Oblivious Guilt Slinging song causes her to realize what she's become.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: When Dipper begins playing Robbie's song to Wendy on a tape recorder, it sounds normal. However, before Robbie can raise the car's windows, Dipper manages to figure out how to rewind the tape and successfully plays the subliminal message for Wendy.
- I Will Show You X!:Robbie: Catch you on the rewind.
Stan: I'll rewind your face! - Justice by Other Legal Means: Ergman Bratsman is arrested, not for cloning and enslaving boy bands, but for driving without a license plate (which the goat ate).
- Laser-Guided Karma: Ergman Bratsman gets his comeuppance for imprisoning the Sev-ral Timez boy band, treating them like slaves, giving them rude thoughts, and for driving without a license plate.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Mabel, who was already in love with Sev'ral Timez, quickly grows attached to them and refuses to let them go even though their controlling manager is no longer a threat to them.
- Make-Out Point: Robbie uses his mind-control song to convince Wendy to go to the local make-out spot, Lookout Point.
- Mind-Control Music:
- Robbie's song to Wendy contains subliminal messages that put her under his spell. Of course, he claims that someone else wrote the song and he didn't know the messages were there, but it's ambiguous how much of that is true.
- Stan believes that his old flame Carla was stolen away by a New-Age Retro Hippie using mind-control music, hence why he's so willing to believe Dipper about it. Whether the hippie actually was using mind control is never elaborated upon.
- Stan also attempts this in the Shack, in that there's music followed by Stan shouting at the customers to buy keychains.
- Morton's Fork: Dipper revealing the secret message in Robbie's song puts Robbie in this position. If he takes credit for the song, it makes him look bad in front of Wendy for using mind-control to get her to go out with him. If he tells the truth that it's not even his song, he still looks bad in front of Wendy for stealing someone else's song and taking credit for it. Either way, it's a lose-lose situation where she breaks up with him over his skewed morals.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: One once came between Stan and Carla.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sev'ral Timez's manager Ergman Bratsman is based on Lou Pearlman, the sleazy record executive behind Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC.
- Non-Indicative Name: One of the members of Sev'ral Timez is named Chubby Z who doesn't appear to be chubby at all. Deep Chris is apparently considered "the fat one".
- Non-Standard Character Design: All members of Sev'ral Timez have colored visible irises while all the other characters only have black pupils. It wasn't until the episode "Soos and the Real Girl" who have those types of eyes. One is a Mystery Shack customer that was scared off by Soos
and the other is a clerk at Beeply Boop's. - Now Do It Again, Backwards: Dipper tries playing Robbie's record backwards, which in turn reveals the subliminal mind control message.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: The song Sev'ral Timez composes just for Mabel after she conspires to keep them to herself.Other folks we could never trust
But we know that you'd never lie to us! - Offscreen Teleportation: Mabel somehow teleports upstairs when Grenda and Candy are running to tell the band they are free.
- The One That Got Away: Apparently, Grunkle Stan once had quite the thing for Carla "Hot Pants" Makorkle.
- People Jars: Members of Sev'ral Timez are grown in pods.
- A Rare Sentence: Stan after chasing off Creggy G.Stan: Darn beautiful men! Always-always eating out of my trash...wait, what?
- Repulsive Ringmaster: Ergman Bratsman is the modern equivalent of this character type.
- Sanity Slippage: Mabel becomes more and more clingy and psychotic as her time with Sev'ral Timez increases.
- Shoo the Dog: Mabel beats Sev'ral Timez with a stick so they would go back into the wild, all while tearing up over their separation.
- Shout-Out:
- When Mabel sets the band loose, one of them says "Fuh-Ree?" exactly like one of the robots Dexter sets free in "Critical Gas".
- Also, pay attention to Robbie's CD case. That CD was never meant for the world of the living.
- When Ergman Bratsman tells the unborn clone to dance, the last part of it is a reference to *NSYNC's dance in their hit song "Bye Bye Bye."
- Skewed Priorities: When Dipper reveals the Mind-Control Music to Wendy and Robbie hastily denies ever writing it, Wendy dumps Robbie... for lying about writing the song.
- Sniff Sniff Nom: When examining Robbie's CD, Dipper sniffs and licks it.
- Spit Take: Double Subverted and lampshaded. When Dipper slows down Robbie's song, Stan takes a swig of soda, preparing for a spit take when the hidden message is revealed... but there isn't one. Dipper then gets the idea to play the song backwards, succeeds in finding the hidden message, and Stan finally gets to perform his spit take.
- Subliminal Seduction: In Robbie's song.
- Survivalist Stash: Stan is seen stocking a non-specific "Brown Meat", and later he reassures Robbie that his break-up with Wendy won't matter, because the apocalypse is happening soon.Stan: Bury your gold. [beat] You've been buying gold, right?
- Technologically Blind Elders: When Dipper gives Grunkle Stan the CD of Robbie's song, Stan mistakes it for a record, and tries to put it into a record player.
- They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Parodied.Robbie: Kid? Mister Pines?
Stan: That's Mister Pines to you!
Robbie: What? That's what I just said! - Title Drop:Grenda: Candy, we gotta get past Mabel. She's gone boy crazy!
- Totally Radical: All the members of Sev'ral Timez talk this way, dawg.
- Trail of Bread Crumbs: Ergman Bratsman found the Mystery Shack by following a trail of frosted tips.
- Twisted Echo Cut: We cut from Dipper telling Wendy to "hear this (recording)" to Mabel being told by Sev'ral Timez to "hear this (song)".
- Vanity License Plate: Ergman Bratsman has a "BIG MONEY" plate sporting on the rear of his stretch limousine. He later gets arrested by police for not having a rear license plate. Apparently, Gompers ripped it off.
- Verbal Backpedaling:Dipper: I could play this game forever.Wendy: What'd you say?Dipper: Coughing! I was coughing!
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's unknown what happened to the people in the pods after Ergman's arrest.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Wendy was quite rightful to be angry towards Dipper for jumping the gun after she dumps Robbie.
- With Catlike Tread: Grenda shouting "We're masters of stealth!"
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: Which explains the spelling of Sev'ral Timez.
