The fifth episode of the second season of Rugrats (1991).
Angelica's In Love: Angelica gets a crush on a cool neighborhood boy named Dean.
Ice Cream Mountain: Stu and Drew take the babies to visit Fun Land, a childhood favorite miniature golf course of theirs, on the way to get the kids some ice cream. The babies are awestruck by the "Ice Cream Mountain" hole, which is shaped like a giant plastic sundae and sits at the last course. Anyone who makes a hole-in-one on the mountain gets a free game, but Fun Land's owner, Earl Skaggs, has rigged it so it's impossible to beat. While Stu and Drew go on their trip down memory lane, the babies try to get to the mountain of ice cream... and in the process, inadvertently uncover Earl's rigging scam.
"Angelica's In Love" provides examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: The first episode in the show to focus primarily on Angelica, with Tommy and the other babies in a fairly minor role.
- Continuity Nod: When Dean first meets Tommy, he tells him that a kid from daycare told him he almost broke out once, referencing the events of a previous episode, "The Big House".
- Cool Bike: Or trike, anyway. Dean is almost always seen riding on his tricycle.
- First Kiss: Angelica and Dean almost have one, but it's interrupted by Dean's mother coming to pick him up.
- Greaser Delinquents: Dean looks and sounds more or less like a preschool-aged Arthur Fonzarelli.
- Here We Go Again!: After Dean leaves, Angelica declares that she'll never love again... only to begin crushing on a new French arrival to the neighborhood at the very end of the episode.
- Kindness Ball: This episode and "Ice Cream Mountain" humanize Angelica quite a bit. The worst she gives the babies are noogies at the end of "Angelica's In Love", which is pretty tame compared to her usual behavior.
- Nice Guy: Dean comes off as this, being a Big Brother Mentor to the babies and having a fairly sweet little relationship with Angelica. Even when he dumps her, he does so gently and a later episode implies that they're still friends.
- Puppy Love: The premise of the episode is that Angelica gets a crush on the cool new neighborhood kid Dean.
"Ice Cream Mountain" provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Stu and Drew are so caught up in their game (and fighting with each other) that they never wind up catching on to the fact that the babies are roaming Fun Land all by themselves. The other adults are mainly upset that Stu and Drew are making them wait in line.
- An Aesop:
- Always keep a promise to your kids.
- Scamming and cheating your customers will eventually come back to haunt you.
- Remember your goal of coming to a certain location.
- All That Glitters: The babies think that the eponymous Ice Cream Mountain is literally made of ice cream, up until they actually reach it and discover that it's just a hollow fiberglass sculpture.
- Break the Haughty: Happens to Earl when the last hole is unrigged.
- Continuity Nod: When Chuckie refuses to walk past the giant gingerbread man who pops out of a hole, he tells Angelica that it's scarier than the dog that lives next door and the guy on the oatmeal box.
- Credits Gag: The sound of the babies happily eating their long awaited ice cream at the end of the episode continues on through the credits, ending with someone burping directly before the ending logos.
- Hypocritical Humor: Drew offers to gamble with Stu $5 per hole before they start their mini-golf session. Stu calls him out on it at first... and then asks to double the wager.
- Inelegant Blubbering:
- Earl is in tears when his plans to cheat the golfers out of their free games are (unwittingly) foiled by the babies.
- Angelica is also in tears by the time she and the crestfallen babies catch up to Stu and Drew, though in her case, she's cranky and hungry for ice cream, which is justified for toddlers their age.
- Jerkass: Earl, who rigs the last hole on his golf course so customers will keep playing and he'll earn more money. That is, until the babies go on a quest to find a mountain of ice cream.
- Kindness Ball: Angelica takes it in this episode. She is not only fully willing to join forces with the babies to find Ice Cream Mountain, she also has no problem with sharing and even lets the babies eat before her (at least until they find out that the mountain is just a hollow fiberglass structure).
- Mini-Golf Episode: Played with in that it's the adults who are playing mini-golf, while the babies are more interested in finding the titular Ice Cream Mountain.
- Scary Jack-in-the-Box: Inverted. When a hole-in-one is scored at Ice Cream Mountain, a friendly looking jack-in-the-box pops out of the mountain and sings, "Hole-in-one! Hole-in-one! Fun Land is a world of fun!"
- Spanner in the Works: In their mission to get the ice cream at Ice Cream Mountain, the babies, thinking the edible part of the mountain is on the inside, find a door leading into it and inadvertently un-rig the last hole. This results in Stu, Drew, and a number of other golfers scoring hole-in-ones at the hole and getting free games, much to Earl's chagrin.
- Take That!: The writers basically use Drew and Stu to swipe towards the then current ice cream trends.Stu: We better find an ice cream parlor soon or these kids will start to riot.Drew: Used to be one on every corner. Not so much now.Stu: Back then, ice cream was ice cream. Not this "frozen yogurt" "gelato rice" stuff.Drew: And they had real flavors, too, like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, not this "meatloaf chunk" or "avocado swirl".
- Unwinnable by Design: Ice Cream Mountain was meant to be this. Things change when the babies find it.
