After Truman, Alice, and Martha cheer for the vocabulary, Helen and T.D. are studying in the Lorraines' kitchen with the dogs nearby, when they hear a noise. Most of them think it's thunder, but Helen notices that it's sunny. They notice the noise is coming from the Oatley house and run over. Truman reveals that he and his parents are being "invaded" by Stanley, his cousin.
Everyone else enters to find Stanley, a teenager, watching loud TV. When he finds out Martha can talk, he's unfazed and simply calls it "cool". Truman finds Stanley annoying, since he calls him "Tru", has the TV on really loudly, and is "obsessed with movies". Truman then reveals that Stanley visits with his aunt and uncle (who are staying at a hotel but kicked him out due to loud TV) once a year. Martha and Skits, despite enjoying eating Stanley's spilled popcorn, find his TV too loud as well, but T.D. enjoys himself and starts watching the movie too.
Later, Helen, Martha, Skits, T.D., Truman, and Stanley take a walk, until Stanley reaches the hotel. The group then runs into what appears to be two androgynous-looking old women. As the main characters and Stanley enter the hotel, Martha notes that the two smell familiar. Then, she realises that they're actually the jewel thieves Louie Kablooie and Jimmie Gimme Moore (first seen in "Codename: Martha") in drag. Stanley then sees the two and notes that they appear too "burly" to be women.
He then beckons everyone else outside, where he points at the jewellery store next door, and notes that they're probably going to try to rob it again. He thinks they'll do it like in a film he saw, in which robbers drilled through the floor of a hotel while roadworks were being done to drown out the sound. As if on cue, a bulldozer arrives. Then, they find that the robbers are staying at room 146, which is the ideal room to stay in to rob the jewellery store.
However, they still don't know for sure that the two are doing anything bad, so they follow them to the junkyard. There, the two men in drag dump their bags, which are full of rocks, and Truman guesses that, just like in the movie Stanley saw, the rocks are part of a wall. Helen suggests they call the police, but Stanley says that the last time he did, it didn't work out: he saw Professor Monkey driving a go-kart, told the police that monkeys would take over the world (plus other similar crazy incidents), and wasn't taken seriously.
Back in the hotel, Stanley comes up with a plan: Helen and the dogs check into the hotel, Truman will observe the area and tell the rest what to do, then Helen, disguised as a maid, will signal T.D., who will go down from the attic and get caught, but that's part of the plan and he gets locked in the bathroom and signals Stanley, who climbs onto the roof, sneaks in, swaps the robbers' bags, saves T.D., and then they'll all leave and give the jewels to the police. However, the others are disappointed that Stanley does most of the dirty work and they only do minor things. Stanley claims the kids are too "scrawny" to be action heroes.
T.D. thinks Stanley is the scrawny one, so he goes outside to prove to them that he can climb the wall. However, he can't. Martha then realises that it's gone quiet, so the robbery must be underway. Helen suggests calling the police, but Stanley again vetoes it and decides to seek out the villains' "getaway car". He finds their van and Martha and Skits jump in to prevent the robbers (who have indeed stolen the jewellery) from getting away. They call the police, who come and arrest the crooks, surprised that Stanley was actually right this time.
This episode provides examples of
- Action Girl: Discussed when Helen wishes she would be the one to do the ninja-like stuff instead of Stanley.Helen: "Girls are athletic too, y'know!"
- Alien Invasion: Discussed when Truman says that he and his parents are being "invaded" and T.D. asks, "By aliens?".
- Brick Joke: When Stanley explains his plan, he says that Martha's job is to "say something funny at the end". At the end of the episode, Martha says, "I think I'm supposed to say something funny here".
- Call-Back: The main villains from "Codename: Martha" appear again as the antagonists of this episode.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Stanley believes that B movie antics can happen in real life, and when he plans to help stop a crime, he calls himself Action Guy.
- Comically Missing the Point: When T.D. is offended at Stanley calling him and the other kids "scrawny", he says, "Whaddaya mean scrawny!?". Helen thinks he doesn't know what the word means.
- Continuity Nod: In Stanley's flashback, we see Professor Monkey in his go-kart made of popsicle sticks, which first appeared in "Monkeyshines Martha".
- Crying Wolf: Defied. Stanley doesn't want to go to the police because when he talked to them before about various crazy , it was a false alarm (even though he didn't deliberately lie). He even calls himself the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
- Disguised in Drag: Louie Kablooie and Jimmy Gimme disguise themselves as (old) women.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Stanley calls Truman "Tru", which Truman hates.Truman: "—man! Tru-MAN! It's not as if my name is multisyllabic! There are only two!"Stanley: "Ah, c'mon, man!"Truman: "Ah, there's the second syllable. Now, if you would put them together?"
- Fear of Thunder: At the beginning, when Martha, Skits, and T.D. mistake the thumping sound for thunder, they hide
- Flashback: One scene we see shows a time Stanley called the police before and it didn't work out.
- Genre Savvy: Stanley knows how the thieves will rob the jeweller's shop because he's seen the exact same thing in a movie.
- Helping Granny Cross the Street: When the two robbers, still disguised as old women, walk up to a road, a man tries to help them cross the road, but Louie Kablooie says, "Hands off, you guttersnipe!".
- Heroic Dog: Martha and Skits accompany the humans in stopping a robbery.
- Hypocrite: As pointed out by T.D., Stanley calls the kids scrawny despite being quite thin himself.
- Instantly Proven Wrong:
- Helen thinks it would take a long time to find the villains' car, only for Stanley to find it right away.
- The crooks think they don't have to worry about the kids, only to be stopped by Martha and Skits.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: When Martha hears that the construction is over, she concludes that the robbers must have finished blasting through the wall, and thus are probably in the process of stealing the jewels.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Stanley watches TV too loud, won't stop calling Truman by his Embarrassing Nickname, and calls the kids scrawny, but he still helps them solve the crime.
- Kid Detective: Helen, T.D., and Truman try to stop Louie Kablooie and Jimmy Gimme Moore from robbing the jeweller's shop.
- Least Rhymable Word: In the intro, Martha has trouble rhyming "dexterity".
- Mr. Imagination: Stanley has mistaken various situations for outlandish, B-movie-esque scenarios before, and reported them to the police, who told him he had an "overactive imagination".
- No Full Name Given: It's never revealed if Stanley is the son of Truman's father's brother (making his surname Oatley), or his father's sister or mother's sibling, in which case his surname is unknown.
- Noodle Incident:
- Martha reveals that Truman got a chemistry set, and wonders if he blew it up "again".
- While we see the time Stanley reported Professor Monkey to the police, he also mentions that he once told the police something about a "blob" but was dismissed. We don't find out what this entailed.
- Only Sane Man: Or in this case, girl. Helen, throughout the episode, is the only one who considers calling the police. Everyone turns her down, until the end, where they do.
- Painful Rhyme: Alice feels a bit awkward in the intro, trying to rhyme "dexterity" with "vocabulary".
- Plucky Comic Relief: Discussed when Martha is disappointed that she doesn't get to do much in Stanley's plan, but he says her job (because she's a talking dog) is to "say something funny".
- Police Are Useless: Subverted. Stanley says that the police won't be any help because he's called them before and it didn't work... but then it turns out to be because he ranted to the police about crazy stuff like monkeys taking over the world.
- Punny Name: Jimmy Gimme's last name is revealed to be Moore.
- Running Gag: Truman keeps getting annoyed that Stanley keeps calling him "Tru" and "man", but never his entire name.
- Say My Name: Helen shouts, "Stanley!" when he falls off the drainpipe.
- This Is the Part Where...: At the end, Martha says, "I think I'm supposed to say something funny here" (referencing Stanley saying earlier that her job is to "say something funny at the end").
- Unabashed B-Movie Fan: Stanley loves watching horror movies and crime movies.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Stanley reveals that he's called the police due to thinking life was like a B-movie (mistaking Professor Monkey for being about to take over the world, for instance).
- You Watch Too Much X: When Stanley has called the police in the past about crazy things like thinking monkeys will take over the world, they've told him he watches "too many movies".
