One day, the students at Helen's school are watching a ballet in the auditorium. T.D. and Helen are excited, but Alice thinks it'd be boring. Mrs. Clusky tries to convince Alice that ballet requires coordination so it's essentially a sport, but she's not convinced. However, when she actually watches the ballet, she enjoys it.
After the ballet, Helen says that lots of athletes also do ballet, which inspires Alice to want to learn it herself. She imagines dancing ballet with some (clumsy) athletes, which causes her to dance in real life. When Helen notices, Alice lies that she's trying to reach her swimming goggles.
At dinner, Mrs. Boxwood asks Alice about the ballet, and Ronald starts teasing Alice for "going gaga" over it. He then teases her for being too uncoordinated to do ballet. Alice tries to prove she can be coordinated by dancing, but then she falls over. Ronald teases her by shouting, "Here come the dancers!", but Alice says that just because she likes ballet doesn't mean she wants to do it. That night, however, she draws herself in a tutu, wishes aloud to Nelson that she was graceful, and dreams about being a ballet dancer.
Later, Alice and her friends play ice hockey together while enthusing about the ballet, but they're all very bad at it except Alice. However, Alice does still fall over once, prompting Ronald (in the audience) to heckle her with the "Here come the dancers!" taunt again. On the way home, Helen, T.D., and Carolina consider taking ballet classes to improve their coordination, and they spot Alice looking through the window of a ballet school. The kids try to copy the students' dance moves, except Alice, who pretends to have a Charlie horse in her leg.
Later, Alice tries to do her homework, but she's preoccupied with ballet, so she watches a ballet show instead, and Ronald starts teasing her for watching it. She goes to the store and finds some ballet shoes, then imagines herself wearing them and dancing competently. When the saleswoman sees her, Alice tries the shoes on, but unbeknown to her, Ronald is watching. She goes home and starts practicing ballet in her room with the curtains drawn, wearing her new shoes and a makeshift tutu. She has a bit of trouble, and then Helen walks in.
In the Lorraines' backyard, Helen asks Alice why she is being so secretive about ballet, and Alice explains that Ronald would never let her live it down if she took a ballet class. Helen and Martha tell Alice to try to learn ballet anyway, saying that everybody is bad at things on the first go, and embarrassment shouldn't spoil her fun.
At dinner, Alice tells Mrs. Boxwood that she wants to take ballet classes. However, Mrs. Boxwood and Ronald are understanding and give her leotards (even though Ronald's reads, "Danger - I make wide turns").
This episode provides examples of
- Academic Athlete: Implied. Alice, a sportsgirl, has a book about chemistry in her room.
- Acting Out a Daydream: Alice starts dancing after her imagination sequence of her as a ballerina.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Alice picks up some ballet shoes, a woman's voice says, "Look at you — I bet you're quite the dancer!". The audience and Alice are led to believe that she's talking to her, but really she's talking to a younger girl.
- Ballet Episode: The episode focuses on Alice wanting to learn ballet after watching a ballet.
- Blatant Lies: Alice lies that she's trying to reach her swimming goggles, despite the fact that she's not planning on swimming.
- Blind Without 'Em: Zigzagged. Alice bumps into a wall after swapping her glasses for swimming goggles, but it's unclear if it's because she has a strong prescription on her glasses, or if it's just her usual clumsiness.
- Continuity Nod: Helen remembers T.D.'s "You can't let a little thing like total public humiliation stand between you and a good time" from "Martha Gives Advice".
- Dream Ballet: At one point, Alice dreams that she is a ballet dancer, but she is still clumsy in the dream and falls over.
- Embarrassment Plot: The episode focuses on Alice trying to keep her aspiration to learn ballet a secret, since she's embarrassed to admit she wants to be a dancer, because she's so clumsy she feels it's a pipe dream.
- Episode Tagline: Ronald keeps teasingly shouting, "Here come the dancers!".
- Exercise Exucse: Inverted — Alice is dancing, but is embarrassed about liking ballet, so she lies that she's trying to reach her swimming goggles.
- Failures on Ice: Alice's classmates keep flailing around and bumping into people when they try to ice skate. Downplayed for Alice herself, who's a much better ice skater than her friends, but still falls over once.
- Fantasy Sequence:
- When Alice tells T.D. that his dancing looks more like a counting horse than ballet, he imagines owning a counting horse.
- Upon learning that some athletes do ballet, Alice imagines herself doing ballet with athletes who are even clumsier than her.
- When Alice sees the ballet shoes, she imagines herself dancing well with them on.
- When explaining that she fears being scorned by Ronald, she imagines graduating, getting married, and being old, with Ronald chanting, "Here come the dancers!" all the while.
- Hesitation Equals Dishonesty: Alice says, "Uh..." whenever she lies.
- Innocently Insensitive: T.D. tries to compliment Alice's ice skating skills by saying that she's only a klutz when she's on her feet.
- I Resemble That Remark!: When Ronald calls Alice uncoordinated, she tries to prove she can be coordinated by dancing... and then falls over.
- Mocking Sing-Song: Ronald teases Alice by singing, "Here come the dancers!" to the tune of Ring Around the Rosy.
- No Animals Allowed: In T.D.'s imagination, Mrs. Clusky tells him "No horses in the classroom".
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Discussed when Alice imagines taking a ballet class, only to be teased by Ronald for it even when they're old.
- Prank Injuries: Alice pretends to have a Charlie horse as an excuse for not dancing.
- The Pratfall:
- A rare female example — when Alice tries to sit in her chair at the table, she falls on her butt.
- When Helen, Carolina, and T.D. try to do ballet, Carolina and T.D. fall on their rears.
- Alice falls on her backside again twice when she practices in her room.
- Real Men Wear Pink: In Alice's imagination, the ballet-dancing athletes are all muscular guys in sports uniforms, but they're wearing pink tutus over their uniforms.
- Scratchy-Voiced Senior: When Alice imagines Ronald as an old man, he has a very croaky voice.
- Tempting Fate: Alice thinks she'll find the ballet boring, but not only does she enjoy it, it makes her want to be a ballerina herself.
- Unexpected Kindness: Alice thought Ronald would mock her for wanting to be a ballerina, but instead, he buys her a leotard (albeit one with a joke slogan).
