Recap / Recess S 4 E 44 Tucked In Mikey

• Be Yourself: In the end, Mikey comes to realize that as nice as it is to be organized, his real self was meant to be poetic, natural, and emotional.
• Cruel to Be Kind: On paper, tricking your friend into publicly ripping up their poem before getting a chance to read it is a rather cruel trick. But in context, the poem was lousy in the first place, and it was all meant to snap Mikey out of his organizational mindset. Even Mikey finds himself publicly thanking his dear friends (and Menlo) for helping him rediscover the poetic side he nearly lost.
• Everybody Has Standards: Menlo seemingly approves of Mikey's methodical and organized poem, but when the Recess Gang confront with the cold hard facts that it's hardly even a poem, Menlo (organized Control Freak he is) admits he hated the poem as well.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A rather sober variety. When Mikey connects that it was his friends who set him up to tear up his organized "poem", he calls them out on such deception and is about to claim how horrible he feels... before he realizes to himself that he's put so much effort into being organized like Menlo that up until now, he's all but lost touch with his emotions.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Mikey was initially sent to Menlo to help organize his poems, but thanks to his tutelage, he learns to be organizational in general. This leads to him gradually trading off his natural and poetic side. It even gets to the point where he can't even write a good poem, writing it more like a methodical schedule report.
• Here We Go Again!: After Mikey breaks free from being organized like Menlo, the episode ends with Menlo (inspired by Mikey's return to his true self) having become a poet-loving mistrel.