Join The Club
When Manny is called by Mrs. Portillo to fix a hole in the floor of her grandson’s treehouse, he ends up having to solve a social issue involving her two grandsons and their friend Kyle.
Tropes in “Join The Club” include:
- An Aesop: It’s better to include people than exclude them.
- Doesn't Know Their Own Birthday: Squeeze performs a variation; when Quinn and Kyle ask her if she’s ten (for context, they were asking because they have a special club just for 10-year-olds; that is, themselves and not Alex), Squeeze says she doesn’t know how old she is.
- Mondegreen Gag: Pat mishears Kyle and Quinn’s club cheer (which is just them chanting “10! 10! 10!”) as them saying “Ted! Ted! Ted!”
- Overly Narrow Superlative: Mr. Lopart does a variation, claiming to have been the strongest person in… his high-school chess team.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: A marimba version of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 16 can be heard in the background when Dusty suggests the creation of “The Careful Club”.
- Secret Handshake: Kyle and Quinn have one for their “10 Club”, which they refuse to teach to Alex since he’s not 10. Alex also tries to create one for the Start My Own “Alex and the tools” club, but ends up being stymied by the fact that the tools don’t have hands.
- Start My Own: After being denied entry to the 10 Club, Alex decides to start his own club, with the tools as fellow members- Squeeze suggests they make “The Squeezing Club” (composed of herself, Rusty, and of course Alex), and after that gets shot down Dusty wants to make “The Careful Club” (herself, Alex, and Stretch). Meanwhile Pat, being Pat, wants to make “The ‘I’m A Hammer’ Club”. Alex ends up combining all of these into the unweidlily-long-named “The Squeezing Things, Being Careful, Hammers, Screwdrivers, And Boys Named Alex Club”.
- Treehouse of Fun: Quinn has one in his backyard, which is where the “10 Club” (him and Kyle) meets. Alex, Quinn’s younger brother, wants to be able to play in it but isn’t allowed due to not being in the “10 Club”, setting up the episode’s conflict.
- Vengeful Vending Machine: Mr. Lopart ends up having this problem with a coin-operated newspaper dispenser, which eats his coin but fails to open to give him a newspaper. He tries to wrench it open with brute force, and does end up forcing it open… but it closes again before he can get his newspaper.
Manny’s Sick Day
When Manny comes down with a cold, his tools try to nurse him back to health- with… unspectacular results.
“Manny’s Sick Day” includes:
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Felipe does this at the end of the episode, shushing the viewers while Manny and Dusty are sleeping.
- Covered in Gunge: Mr. Lopart ends up splattered with honey after Pat tries to hammer the lid off a honey container.
- "Everybody Helps Out" Denouement: At the end of the episode, the townsfolk of Sheet Rock Hills, who had heard Manny was sick and came to visit him, end up working together to clean up the mess the tools’ Nurse with Good Intentions antics made in his shop.
- Fun with Homophones: After Manny tells the tools that he has a cold, Pat suggests he get a jacket so he wouldn’t be “cold”.
- Hot Drink Cure: While sick, Manny asks for first some juice to drink and then, in the spirit of this trope, hot tea with honey.
- Illness Blanket: Kelly, after hearing that Manny is sick, shows up at his store to give him one of these.
- Invisible Anatomy: When Dusty catches Manny’s cold, she somehow sneezes despite lacking a nose.
- Knew It All Along: While in Kelly’s hardware store, Mr. Lopart improbably claims to have known where the enamel paint remover was all along, despite having just been unable to find it.
- Mondegreen Gag: Squeeze at one point mishears “enamel paint” as “animal paint”.
- Mustache Vandalism: Manny manages to do this by accident to a photo of him and the tools- he’d been trying to apply enamel paint to the photo’s frame, but a sneeze causes him to accidentally splatter the paint in just the right way for it to look like the photo of himself has a mustache.
- Nurse with Good Intentions: The tools’ attempts to take care of a sick Manny only end up making a mess of his repairshop- first the remote that controls Fixit gets bumped and she goes careening around the shop backwards, then an attempt to open a juice box (Manny had asked for some juice) leads to the spilling of a jar filled with nuts and bolts, and then Pat manages to spill a can of paint.
- Sick Episode: Manny has a cold, and the tools try to take care of him while he’s sick. Key word there being “try”.
- Sickness Equals Redness: While sick, Manny’s nose turns red. Later, when Dusty somehow catches Manny’s cold, the place where her nose would be if she had one also turns red.
- Sneeze of Doom: While painting a picture frame, Manny accidentally sneezes and gets paint on the frame’s glass, in just the right way that the picture of himself that was in the frame ends up looking like it has a mustache.
- Soup Is Medicine: Upon hearing that Manny is sick, Mrs. Portillo promptly turns up at his shop with a big bowl of chicken noodle soup for him.
- Telescoping Robot: It’s shown that Fixit can extend a robotic arm from inside her “head”, despite the fact that the place the arm extends from really ought to be full of her internal mechanisms and not have space for such a thing.
- We Sell Everything: Kelly’s hardware store apparently has Illness Blankets.
