All the Numberjacks, with the exception of Zero and Seven, are playing in the control room. Then, Five reveals that it's time to go on holiday. So, Nine, One, Eight, and Two get launched out. Three is grumpy because she isn't going, but Four tries to console her by saying that Zero also isn't going. Three retorts by saying that Zero likes doing nothing, so he doesn't count. The vacationing Numberjacks land on house numbers.
In the Cosy Room, Three plays with two floating mirrors called "Shimmer Sheets", admiring her reflections. Four comes in, she insults him, and he chastises her for "being cheeky" and points out that her backwards reflection looks weird. Three retorts that that's how the mirrors work and uses them on him. He admits that backwards reflections look strange, but still admires himself.
Then, the alarm sounds, so the two head to the control room. Agent 39 just says that things are fine and hangs up, much to the confusion of Three, Five, and Six. Then, Agent 91 calls in, but he doesn't have a problem either, and leaves, saying he has better things to do. Meanwhile, Three actually wants there to be a problem because she's bored.
Five then has a notion as to why the agents are acting peculiarly. She puts Agent 39 onscreen and has Four zoom in, where it's revealed she has slime on her shoulder and therefore must have been blobbed. Four checks Agent 91 and sure enough, he's been blobbed too.
After a moment of stunned gaping, Six decides to deal with the situation and he is launched (with Jasper on the couch) and lands on Agent 20's house number. He walks up to her, taking a nap outside, and she wakes up, but she doesn't recognise him. Not only that but she's never heard of the Numberjacks and claims to like things going wrong. As it turns out, she's been blobbed too.
Four sees the Problem Blob nearby, who has been blobbing people and making them do the opposite of what they usually do: a janitor is littering instead of tidying up, a waitress is taking people's food away, and a jogger is jogging in slow-mo backwards.
While Six searches for un-blobbed agents, Five imagines balloons becoming heavy while people float, monsters becoming small and cute while babies become huge and scary, and the sun making things dark and cold.
Agent 121 calls in with an idea: make people do the opposite of opposite. They send brain gain, which puts everybody back to normal, but when Six tries to hit the Problem Blob, the Spooky Spoon shows up and deflects it. She gloats, then she and the Problem Blob fly away.
Five has another fantasy sequence, imagining Spooky and the Problem Blob flying around and blobbing a crowd. Eight, Nine, One, and Two call in to say that they're having fun, and the others consider asking them for help but don't want to spoil their holiday.
Then, the newbie agent 122 calls in, reporting a lot of trouble at the beach. Spooky Spoon and the blob are flying around blobbing things. They make a deckchair smaller, a girl's plastic spade bigger, a tether-ball bigger, a towel shrink, and some candy grow. Agent 20 claims it's more opposites, but specifically with size. The two meanies then make an umbrella and pencil grow, a shovel shrink, two cups shrink, candyfloss grow, a hat shrink, a toy car grow, and a boat shrink.
Six wants assistance, so Five sends out Three and Four. Four lands on a door, but Five can't find a three, so Three disappears. The agents advise the Numberjacks to make more brain gain, and Six hides in an old boot. Five tries to tell Four where to meet up with Six, but the screen is glitching and turns off when she tries to tell him where the boot is. Meanwhile, Zero has wandered into the control room with the mirrors.
Four finds a green sneaker and jumps into it to look for Six, but then a man puts it on. The agents suggest sending another Numberjack, but Zero is too young and the rest are too busy, so they suggest Seven. Five contacts Seven, while the man takes his sneaker off, so Four goes off and is united with Six.
Meanwhile, Five and Seven are looking and calling for Three but to no avail. Seven suggests that she is someplace underground, such as a cave. It turns out that she is in a cave, and feeling lonely. While Seven goes to search the cave, Three explores and finds an area full of diamonds hanging from the roof and what appears to be shapes sculpted out of glass. She also finds a cylinder that glows and changes the direction it's pointing depending on what she says.
However, then, she hears evil laughter and the Shape Japer flies in... then she flies back out. Three, with the help of the voice-activated cylinder, looks for something to help her escape. She sees a triangle, and considers using it because triangles have three corners and sides.
Seven goes into the cave after Three and spots the Shape Japer, who goes towards Three. Three uses the glowing cylinder to shine onto the glass triangle, which creates a rainbow that shines in the Japer's face. Seven spots the rainbow, assumes it's a signal, and goes in. With Seven and Three together again, they prepare to escape with the cylinder but the Shape Japer shows up and chases them while changing the shape of the glass shapes. Luckily, the two numbers escape and the Japer gets trapped with her own sphere.
Seven tells Five to make brain gain to correct the shapes, then the Shape Japer comes back with several cube-shaped rocks. The agents identify them as cubes and Five sends brain gain to make them disappear. The same thing happens with pyramid-shaped rocks and sphere-shaped rocks, but after the spheres, the Shape Japer gives up. Three, Seven, and the floating cylinder (whose name, as it turns out, is simply "Cylinder"), set off, with "Cylinder" looking at other cylinders.
Back in the control room, Eight and Nine report that One and Two are unaccounted for, and Agent 20 reports more chaos— the waitress splats a woman in the face with an eclair, the cleaner is stealing trash and stuffing it in his boiler suit, and the entertainer is floundering all over the show. Agent 20 notes that these people seem unable to control their hands. A woman tries to draw but her hands go haywire, and a boy has trouble with his toy helicopter.
The agents suspect that the Numbertaker is the cause of this trouble, as the people's fingers, of which there are ten, are affected. Sure enough, he walks by. Five alerts Four and Six, and prepares to make brain gain, telling Zero to retrieve Buddy Blocks. Agent 91 reports that people are being forced to dance. It turns out that the Numbertaker is affecting their toes now.
To make matters worse, the Puzzler shows up! He starts to gloat but he also gives a solution to all of the problems: find five ways to make ten in five minutes. Luckily, One comes back and Five realises that nine and one make ten. Five has Zero organise Nine and One's Buddy Blocks, then realises that eight and two also make ten. Seven and Three show up and Five realises they also make ten.
Six and Four, the next two numbers needed, unite by riding the helicopter and the shoe again respectively. After some puzzling, everybody realises that the fifth way of making ten is five plus five. Five sees the mirrors and then realises she could use them to make a copy of herself. However, the reflection is backwards. Luckily, the agents decide to make it the opposite of opposite. Thus, they have the five ways of making ten and convert it into brain gain, defeating the meanies.
Everybody goes home and we get a montage of all the problems correcting themselves, set to a song about the numbers making ten. In the Cosy Room, it has turned out that Zero has adopted Cylinder as a sort of pet and the other Numberjacks wonder what would happen if the Puzzler chose a different number instead of ten.
This episode provides examples of
- All-Knowing Singing Narrator: Sometimes, offscreen voices will sing what's going on to the tune of the launcher song.
- Amnesia Episode: When Agent 20 has been blobbed, she doesn't recognise the Numberjacks at all.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Five imagines a baby growing very large.
- Baby See, Baby Do: When Five mentions brain gain, Zero copies, "Brain gain."
- Beach Episode: Downplayed. The vacationing Numberjacks are on the beach, and a lot of the trouble happens at the beach, but not the whole episode and it's not played for fanservice.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Three is bored due to not getting to go on the trip, so she hopes that something will go wrong. When it does, however, things go extremely wrong, including blobbed (and in 20's case, amnesiac) agents and later Three herself disappearing.
- Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head:
- When Four comes into the Cosy Room, Three says, "That's what I don't like to see!".Four: "Don't be cheeky, Three!"
- When Four tells Three she looks funny in the mirrors, Three responds with, "You look funny all the time!".
- When Four comes into the Cosy Room, Three says, "That's what I don't like to see!".
- Big "YES!": When Seven and Three get out of trouble, Zero says, "Yes!".
- Blinded by the Light: The Shape Japer is dazzled by the rainbow-coloured light that hit the glass triangle.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Six says, "Anything could happen" instead of Five, though he doesn't have an imagining.
- Buffy Speak: Three calls the floating cylinder a "torch thing".
- Calling Your Nausea: Downplayed. Two says he's going to be sick but he doesn't vomit.
- Card-Carrying Villain:
- Spooky calls herself naughty.
- The Puzzler self-identifies as a meanie.
- Character Catchphrase: Three says, "Me, me, me" but this time, it's not because she wants to do something— it's because she sees herself in real life and in two mirrors.
- Chekhov's Gun: The mirrors that Three and Zero play with later come in useful when Five needs another five.
- Damsel in Distress: Downplayed for Three, who goes missing and needs to be tracked down but she's not in immediate danger.
- Delayed Reaction: When Agent 39 says that things are fine, Three says, "But not for—" but then realises what 39 said.
- A Dog Named "Dog": The floating cylinder is simply named Cylinder.
- Enfant Terrible: Five imagines a baby becoming menacing and scary.
- "Eureka!" Moment:
- Five realises that nine and one make ten when she sees Nine and One together. Then, the same thing happens with Seven and Three.
- Five realises she can use the mirrors to make another five upon seeing Zero play with them.
- Evil Gloating: When the Puzzler shows up, he brags about how the Numberjacks are having a bad time with the five meanies.
- Evil Laugh:
- When Spooky Spoon shows up, she and the Problem Blob laugh maniacally.
- The Shape Japer laughs evilly in the cave.
- Flight: "Cylinder" can fly.
- Forced Sleep: The slime makes Agent 20 fall asleep, then when she wakes up she has amnesia. She then falls asleep again, still under the effects of the blob.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: There are many ways in which this episode is different from usual:
- It's a lot longer than standard episodes.
- It begins in the control room.
- Nine, Eight, Two, and One go on holiday.
- When an agent calls in, it's simply to say that things are fine.
- Three agents get blobbed. Usually, agents rarely get affected, and it's usually one agent at a time.
- The mission ends with a song instead of a recap.
- Happy Dance: When Two lands, he jumps about and says, "Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!".
- Incredible Shrinking Man: The monster Five imagines shrinks to the size of a baby.
- Involuntary Dance: When the Numbertaker affects people's toes, they start dancing.
- Irony: When the agents call in to claim things are fine, it's actually a sign that things are worse than ever.
- Nightmare Fetishist: The amnesiac Agent 20 says she "like[s] things going wrong".
- Not So Above It All: Four may be a grounded Numberjack, but when he looks in the mirror, he calls himself handsome.
- Oh, Crap!:
- The Numberjacks instantly feel worried when they realise that the agents have been blobbed, since this is a different sort of problem than usual. They have stunned expressions, and Four says that he doesn't like it.
- When the Spooky Spoon shows up, Five says that if she and the other meanies start working together, they're in real trouble.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Agents usually call in when something is awry, so ironically, when they call in to say that nothing is, it means something is even more awry than usual. In this instance, it's because they've been blobbed.
- Agent 20 is apparently a very diligent agent, has known the Numberjacks for ages, and is one of their best agents. When she gets blobbed, she takes a nap in the middle of the day, doesn't recognise the Numberjacks, and claims she likes it when things go wrong.
- When the adults get blobbed, they do the opposite of their jobs.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Seven sees the rainbow light and correctly assumes Three made it but incorrectly assumes she's signalling her, when really she made it to scare the Shape Japer.
- Self Botched Catchphrase: Three says, "But not for— wait, what?". Justified, as she was realising that Agent 39 had said, "Things are fine", so adding, "But not for long" would sound blatantly cynical.
- Signature Laugh: Pointed out when Three says, "I know that laugh!" about the Shape Japer's Evil Laugh.
- Sleepyhead: Invoked by the Problem Blob, who blobs Agent 20 and makes her want to take a nap.
- Sticky Fingers: The waitress, once blobbed, steals people's food.
- Subverted Catchphrase: Usually when an agent comes in, they'll say, "Something's gone wrong" or "Things are going wrong". Agent 39, however, says, "Things are fine" instead.
- Tempting Fate: Three says there probably won't be any more problems, but then Agent 122 reports another problem.
- Vacation Episode: Downplayed. The B-plot of this episode is about One, Two, Eight, and Nine going on holiday.
- Weird Sun: Five imagines a sun with a face which takes light and heat away instead of adding it.
