Grunkle Stan tells the employees of the Mystery Shack that they should clean the bathrooms while he's out. (Soos: "Yes, sir!" Wendy: "Absolutely not")! Wendy instead decides to show Dipper and Mabel the ladder that goes to the top of the roof, giving Soos a case of nerves. Wendy and Dipper hold a pine-cone throwing contest. Wendy gets a bullseye, and Dipper hits a car, causing her to high-five a smitten Dipper. However, Wendy's friends come over, so she decides to leave Dipper and Mabel by jumping on trees down to the van. Mabel suspects Dipper of having a crush on her. Dipper is defensive, stating that he does not lie awake thinking about her.
But, it turns out that he actually IS thinking about Wendy at night. "Uh, oh".
The next day, Wendy and Mabel are having a dance party "for no reason". Dipper is pretending to write something on a clipboard while watching Wendy when she suggests he join in. Mabel reminds him about an old dance he used to do, the "Lamby Lamby Dance". Dipper asks Wendy if they can tag along with her on her hangout with her friends. To do this, he lies about his and Mabel's ages (stating that they are both 13, "technically teens."). Her friends come over, and Dipper meets this eccentric cast of teens: Lee and Nate, Thompson, Tambry, and Robbie. Forced to sit in the back with Mabel, they take off in Thompson's beat-up, heavily graffitied minivan for an abandoned convenience store that is supposedly haunted. Thompson timidly informs his friends that his mom doesn't want them punching the roof anymore, whereupon they start punching the roof in unison while chanting his name. ("Thompson! Thompson! Thompson!")
Meanwhile, back at the Mystery Shack, Stan is watching TV, but he cannot find the remote and refuses to get up to change the channel, even though it's on the "Black And White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie Channel". He has to watch "The Duchess Approves", a film about the life and loves of British aristocracy. He does not take this well at first, but quickly gets absorbed into the plot of the movie.
After arriving at said convenience store (Dusk 2 Dawn), Dipper has difficulty climbing the chain-link fence, making him look bad in front of Wendy. To make up for this, he figures out how to break into the locked convenience store after Robbie fails to get the door open, and is rewarded with praise from Wendy's friends. The store is in surprisingly good condition for having been abandoned for so many years, with fully stocked shelves, electricity, and even an arcade dancing game. The crew promptly goes nuts, eating expired food, putting mints in soda to see it explode, and having fights with bags of sugar. Mabel stumbles across a display of "Smile Dip", which has been banned in America for years, and immediately consumes far too much of the stuff. This causes her to have strange hallucinations, including two huge dogs with "candy paws" and riding a four headed dolphin with hands in its mouths and mouths on the hands. ("ONWARD AOSHIMA!") Dipper is told to go get more ice for Nate and Lee to dump down Thompson's pants ... and winds up seeing a recreation of the nervous system. In monster form. Freaked out, he distracts the teens with "Dancey Pants Revolution" ("the game that tricks you into exercising!"). He attempts to call Grunkle Stan, who's too engrossed in the movie to hear the phone, and then asks Mabel for advice, only to realize she's high on the Smile Dip and completely delirious. Dipper then stumbles across the outlines of two bodies on the floor. Nate and Lee start daring each other to lie down in them, and Dipper, already knowing that something's not right in the store, asks everyone to reconsider "what if this store is really haunted". He is laughed off and earns the title of "Captain Buzzkill" from all of the teens, including Wendy. Enraged at the accusation of cowardice, Dipper lies down himself.... only for the outlines to disappear.
The store is, in fact, haunted. Tambry is trapped in the security camera feed (with her screams being recorded in her cell phone), Lee is put on a cereal box IN THE CEREAL while a Toucan Sam-esque mascot tries to eat him alive, and poor Thompson is forced INTO "Dancey Pants Revolution" and frantically tries to dodge the falling arrows. Then a ghost possesses Mabel, who tells them that they can leave if they apologize. Dipper apologizes, and the ghost tells them that hot dogs are 50% off. However, it was a trick, and Nate is turned into a hot dog. The store is turned upside down, and Wendy and Dipper have to hide out in a squishee machine. While trying to work out why the ghost is attacking them, Dipper realizes that this was because the ghost may be irritated by "what teens do" (texting, playing video games, being sarcastic) and decides to out himself as 12 years old.
Upon hearing this, Mabel is released from her possession and the ghosts reveal themselves: they are Pa and Ma, the elderly proprietors of the convenience store who, in the 1990s, were so irritated by teenagers that they banned them from the store. When some of the local teenagers retaliated by blasting "hateful" rap music in their parking lot ("Homework's whack and so are rules, tucking in your shirt's for fools!"), they were so horrified that they had fatal heart attacks on the spot. When Dipper asks them if there's anything he can do to free the others, Pa asks if he knows any cute dances. When Dipper asks if there's something else he can do, he's met with a furious refusal. He reluctantly performs the "Lamby Lamby Dance" that he was forced to perform during his younger years, complete with a lamb costume that Pa magics up for him. The teens are freed, Mabel gets off her sugar trip, and Wendy thanks Dipper, and tells him that they should hang out more often. She is the only one who witnessed his humiliating dance, and tells her friends he attacked the ghosts and fought them off instead, which thoroughly impresses them.
Tropes in this episode:
- Acid-Trip Dimension: Mabel’s hallucinations are these.
- Affably Evil: The convenience store ghosts. They're such a sweet, old couple that you could easily forget that they're also vengeful and sadistic spirits who inflict horrible punishments on the teenagers who broke into their haunting grounds.
- Air-Vent Passageway: How Dipper breaks into the store.
- Balloon Belly: Mabel has one after eating too much Smile Dip.
- Big "NO!":
- Grunkle Stan's initial reaction to being stuck watching The Duchess Approves.
- Pa's response when Dipper asks him if he may do something else than dance to save his friends, a la Voice of the Legion.
- Pa's reaction to rap music in the flashback.
- Brick Joke:
- During the first car ride, Mabel scratches out the words "You Stink!" and writes "You look nice today!" beneath them, claiming that it will blow someone's mind. At the end of the episode, she looks at it again, all sick from the Smile Dip, and mutters, "What kind of sick joke is this?"
- Mabel offhandedly mentions the "Lamby Lamby Dance" and shows a photo of Dipper in a lamb costume. Dipper actually has to do the dance, complete with lamb costume, to free his friends.
- Chekhov's Skill: The Lamby Lamby Dance.
- Chunky Updraft: With convenience store items, after Mabel is possessed.
- Cool Big Sis: Wendy acts as this to Mabel and Dipper.
- Cut a Slice, Take the Rest: How Mabel eats Smile Dip for the first time; she uses the dipping stick to take a small amount of Smile Dip, then looks at the bag and starts pouring the rest of it into her mouth.
- Cuteness Proximity: Wendy gets a huge grin on her face when she sees Dipper doing the Lamby Lamby Dance.
- Cutting Back to Reality: Mabel ends up getting high on Smile Dip, resulting in one of the strangest sugar highs depicted in animation. At one point, she finds herself meeting two giant backwards-talking dogs in a psychedelic landscape and tries to eat their candy paws... only for the narrative to cut back to reality, where she is still slumped in a corner, chewing on nothing. Later, when Dipper tries to ask her for advice, we see her riding a flying dolphin with muscular arms that grows another head opposite the first one, another arm growing out of each, with another face on each of the four palms that shoots rainbows while the creature makes a sound like a car alarm... then we see Dipper, having realized his sister is tripping balls, trying to shake her out of the world of nonsense she's trapped in and asking how many packets she ate.
- Demonic Possession: Mabel gets possessed by the ghosts of the convenience store owners, causing her to to get Powers via Possession.
- Disney Acid Sequence: When Mabel uses the Smile Dip, she gets hallucinations.
- Eaten Alive: Lee is teleported into a cereal mascot's bowl, who expresses a desire to eat him before it is undone.Toucan: I'm bonkers for eating you alive!!
- Eleventy Zillion: Mabel manages to eat "bleventeen" packs of Smile Dip in a single sitting, which causes her to see some crazy stuff.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Baby Dipper in a lamb costume.
- Evil Sounds Deep: While Mabel is possessed by the ghosts, she speaks with the deep voice of Kevin Michael Richardson
- Exorcist Head: Mabel possessed makes one.
- Expy: The cereal mascot that tries to eat Lee is pretty obviously Toucan Sam, though his "catchphrase" ("I'm bonkers for eating you alive!") is closer to Sonny the Cuckoo Bird's.
- Faux Horrific: The "shocking and tasteless" rap lyrics that gave the elderly convenience store owners fatal double heart attacks.
- Fingertip Drug Analysis: Parodied when Mabel takes a big lick of the substance coating the take-a-penny tray. "Yep! It's dust."
- Gilligan Cut: When Mabel claims Dipper has a crush on Wendy, he denies it, since it's not like he's "awake all night thinking about her". Cut to Dipper doing exactly that.Dipper: Uh oh.
- Gory Discretion Shot: When Thompson and Lee suffer their fates in the dance game and cereal box, respectively, the camera cuts away before their injuries get too gory to show in a kids' show. Especially Lee.
- G-Rated Drug: Mabel is clearly high on Smile Dip. It turns out that the candy was discontinued, likely because of its high sugar content.
- Hallucinations: Eating too much Smile Dip causes Mabel to have these.
- Hate at First Sight: Robbie takes a near-instant dislike to Dipper after he embarrasses him in front of the rest of the group.
- Haunted House: Or in this case a haunted convenience store.
- I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: The Smile Dip candy, which is illegal to sell in the United States. It makes Mabel have a Disney Acid Sequence with brightly flashing colors and candy creatures.
- Laugh of Love: Dipper chuckles nervously while bidding Wendy goodbye as she leaves with her friends, which results in the following exchange:
- Mabel: Uh-oh!
Dipper: (defensively) What?
Mabel: (pokes Dipper in his cheek) Somebody's in lo-ove!
- Lost in Translation: Dipper claims to be thirteen and thus "technically a teen" but later admits to really being twelve and thus "technically not a teen". This doesn't work in the dubs of some languages because words for numbers don't follow the same pattern as in English. For example, in the Polish dub, after they find the outline, Dipper claims to be 13. When he says the truth, he claims to be ten because the equivalent of teen prefix starts in Polish at eleven.
- Lost the TV Remote: Stan can't find the TV remote and "refuses to stand up". Later, after watching several hours of an old movie and, to his surprise, absolutely loving it, his excuse for throwing the TV out the window when Dipper and Mabel return is that he couldn't find the remote. Close examination reveals the remote is wedged between the arm of his chair and the cushion.
- Mushroom Samba: Mabel while overdosing on Smile Dip.
- No, You: A variant where the original comment is metaphorical, but the retort is literal.Video game: You're a dance machine!
Thompson: No! You're a dance machine! - Objectshifting: The ghosts haunting the abandoned convenience store use their powers to transform Nate into a hot dog in the store's cooker.
- Overly Long Name: The cast of The Duchess Approves includes "Sturley Stempleburgiss as the Duchess, and Grampton St. Rumpterfrabble as irascible coxswain Saunterblugget Hampterfuppinshire." The movie is also airing on the "Black and White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie Channel."
- Powers via Possession: Mabel gets them when being possessed by the ghosts.
- Ragnarök Proofing: The old convenience store — abandoned since 1995 — still has electricity, all the food is unspoiled, and the ice in the freezers is still frozen, despite the power being turned off until Wendy turns it back on. Justified since it is haunted and possibly frozen in time.
- Reality Warper: Inside of the old abandoned convenience store, the ghosts of the store owners can trap trespassers in any of the objects within the store. This includes the security camera television, the dance machine, a cereal box, and the hot dog cooker (which physically transforms the victim into a hot dog). They also conjure up a lamb costume out of nowhere for Dipper.
- Real Men Wear Pink: While initially horrified, Stan quickly gets invested in the period piece and even cries over how much he relates to the main character.
- Running Gag: The credits cryptogram reads "RQZDUGV DRVKLPD!" When decrypted, it reads "ONWARDS AOSHIMA!", a line from Mabel's sugar-rush-induced Mushroom Samba.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: The first Flavor Pup in Mabel's Smile Dip hallucination is saying something unintelligible; played backwards, he is saying "Must distrust Grunkle."
- Shout-Out: Mabel doing The Three Stooges -style whooping while spinning on the ground.
- The name of the convenience store is Dusk 2 Dawn
- Dipper being surprised by a floating nervous system resembles a panel from Watchmen in which Dr. Manhattan does the same thing to a pair of scientists.
- Stealth Pun: Nate gets turned into a hot dog at one point. "Nate" makes up the first syllable of a famous hot dog company
. - Sudden Eye Color: When Mabel is succumbing to hallucinations caused by the Smile Dip, her eyes turn green for one scene.
- Teen Hater: The store owners hate teenagers and wholeheartedly believe that Teens Are Monsters, due to how they died. They'll torture any teenagers who trespass in their old store, but anyone who's under 13 is safe.
- Uncommon Time: For some reason, the first half of the Lamby Lamby Dance is in 5/4.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Robbie was never seen attacked nor transformed by the ghosts and it's unknown if he witnessed Dipper's Lamby Lamby Dance.
- Wink "Ding!": Punctuates Dipper's performance of the Lamby Lamby Dance.
- Worst News Judgement Ever: A paper from 1995 decided "Cheese crust pizza declared delicious" is more important than "War or something..."
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The convenience store ghosts would hurt teenagers, but you're fine if you're under thirteen.
- Your Mom: Nate calling out Lee for tossing Dipper.Nate: Good job throwing the kid off the fence, genius!
Lee: Your mom's a genius...
- RQZDUGV DRVKLPD! note
