The eleventh episode of the third season of Rugrats (1991).
Home Movies
While the adults watch some of Stu's home movies, the babies go off and draw some of their own.
The Mysterious Mr. Friend
Stu comes up with a new toy, which the babies find creepy instead of endearing.
"Home Movies" provides examples of:
- Amateur Film-Making Plot: Stu shows his family and friends home movies at Angelica's house, boring them to tears. This inspires Angelica to make her own home movies by drawing pictures on her parents' office papers. Tommy and Chuckie join in, and the home movies they and Angelica make are drawn crudely in crayon due to their young ages (Tommy's is the crudest of all, since he's only one year old). At the end of the episode, the grown-ups are all very impressed with their children's home movies.Stu: May I have your attention, please; may I have your attention, please? Welcome to Stu Pickles's cinema domestique.
(Everybody groans) - Ambiguously Jewish: During Stu's home movies, Chas Finster groans, "Oy, gevalt!"
- And I'm the Queen of Sheba: This line occurs when Angelica sees Tommy as a weird version of Superman in Chuckie's home movie:Angelica: If he's Tommy, then I'm the Queen of English!
- Art Shift: Angelica, Chuckie, and Tommy's home movies are all very badly drawn in crayon due to their age, especially the latter, since he's just a year old and hasn't developed all of his motor skills yet.note
- Boring Vacation Slideshow: This episode revolves around Stu doing this with his group of friends after his family's awful vacation to the Grand Canyon, which had happened over the course of one episode earlier in the show's run. The audience is, predictably, bored, though various issues prevent him from continuing and at the end of the episode, by the time he's fixed the issues, everyone else is engrossed in the crayon art that the kids have drawn, including, eventually, Stu himself.
- Call-Back:
- When the babies try to figure out what home movies mean, Lil thinks it means moving to a new home, like Susie did in her debut episode.
- One of the home movies that Stu shows to his family and friends is the time he and his family went on vacation to the Grand Canyon.
- Digital Destruction: With the exception of its inclusion in the Thanksgiving VHS tape, there are four audio cuts in the episode, in modern reruns, the Season 3 DVD and digital copies:
- One where Stu says the second "May I have your attention please?" before beginning the home movies.
- One where Angelica says "Come on, cottonheads," as she's about to lead the babies into her room.
- Two before and while Stu says "There's us pulling out of the driveway."
- Driven to Suicide: When Stu bores everyone with his home movies, Grandpa Boris calls Dr. Kevorkian
, an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide. - Hollywood Heart Attack: Grandpa Boris feigns a heart attack to get out of watching his son-in-law's home movies. He even feigns a Dies Wide Open.
On a kids' cartoon! - I Should Have Done This Years Ago: The first time that giant Angelica is about to stomp on the babies in her home movie, she gets prevented from going any further. When the same giant Angelica from her home movie steps in during Tommy's home movie, she says, "I'm gonna do something I should have done a long time ago."
- Oh, Crap!: Drew's appropriate reaction when he finds out what the "home movies' are drawn on.Drew: THE BAXTER ACCOUNT!
- Stu has a similar reaction at the beginning of the episode when the film in the projector gets snagged and bunched up, causing him to shriek in horror.
- Personal Raincloud: During his home movie, Chuckie draws himself and Chas with these flying over their heads. (Keep in mind that Chuckie is only two years old.)
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Stu at the beginning of the episode when the film in the projector gets tangled up.
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Technology Marches On: Near the end Drew panics about "the Baxter account" when he sees that the babies' home movies were drawn on business documents and charts, something that seems pretty quaint today when such info would be accessible primarily online. Of course even in 1993 when the episode first aired it's quite unlikely that any business wouldn't have a digital backup of important documents and info. - Two Decades Behind: Stu still shoots his home movies on Super-8 film and projects them in front of family and friends, something more commonly done in The '70s and '80s, at least before home video recording became more affordable and portable for the average consumer. The home movies are even silent (even though Kodak was still making Super-8 film with magnetic soundtracks at the time the episode first aired), with instrumental music accompaniment on a record player.
"The Mysterious Mr. Friend" provides examples of:
- Bowled Over: Phil uses a ball to knock over some advancing Mr. Friend dolls.
- Brick Joke: At one point in the episode, the babies get rid of the original Mr. Friend doll by having him go through the loose board in the fence, and it walks into the road, narrowly avoiding getting hit by traffic. At the end of the episode, Angelica is revealed to have found the original Mr. Friend doll.
- The Cat Came Back: No matter what the babies do with the Mr. Friend doll, it keeps coming back to them: Throw it down the laundry chute? Didi finds it while doing the laundry and puts it back outside. Bury it? Spike digs it up. Make it get lost by going through a loose board in the fence? Angelica ends up finding it.Chuckie: Tommy?
Tommy: Yeah, Chuckie?
Chuckie: I think Mr. Fiend is going to be with us for a very, very long time. - Dull Surprise: Lil's reaction to the army of Mr. Friend dolls is priceless.Lil: Boy, this is really one of those days, huh?
- The End... Or Is It?: The episode appropriately ends this way when it seems like no matter what, the original Mr. Friend doll will keep coming back.
- Evil Laugh: The credits end with Mr. Friend's creepy laugh.
- Failed a Spot Check: Stu tests his army of Mr. Friend dolls, only to turn them off when he finds out they still have a few mechanical problems. He misses one that strayed behind the boiler, and it ends up turning the rest of the Mr. Friend dolls back on.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Just before Stu presents the babies with Mr. Friend, Chuckie is reluctant to see a Jack-in-the-Box pop out, an indication of how the babies feel about Mr. Friend.
- Informal Eulogy: Parodied when the babies bury an immobile Mr. Friend in a grave.Chuckie: Shouldn't somebody say a few words?
Phil: Like what?
Chuckie: How 'bout..."Hinkle, finkle, dinkle, doo!"
Phil and Lil: A-hen! - Jump Scare: When Tommy accidentally turns on Mr. Friend during the night, the doll zooms right into the camera as he starts speaking and glitching...Mr. Friend: "RISE AND SHINE YOU SLEEPY HEAD, IT'S NO FUN TO STAY IN BED, IN BED, IN BED, IN BED, IN BE-E-E-E-E-E-"
- Literal-Minded: When Tommy tells Phil and Lil that Stu said Mr. Friend is full of bugs, Phil and Lil think he was talking about insects and fight over Mr. Friend to see if he has any inside him.
- Malaproper: The babies constantly refer to Mr. Friend as "Mr. Fiend".
- Only One Finds It Fun: Mr. Friend manages to scare the babies, but Angelica likes him.
- Pet the Dog: Angelica is uncharacteristically nice to the babies in this episode. Not only does she give them a friendly greeting when she arrives, but she actually offers to let them play with her new toy. While the babies do run away terrified, her disappointed/confused expression imply that she didn't think Mr. Friend would scare them and actually thought they'd like him.
- Repetitive Audio Glitch: Mr. Friend constantly suffers from this, which is one of the reasons the babies find him scary.Mr. Friend: Stay away from squiggly worms, they're full of dirt and yucky ger-er-er-er-germ... germs.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Many of Mr. Friend's fun phrases involve him talking in rhyme. Unfortunately, Stu programmed some pretty lousy limericks.Mr. Friend: A word of caution, if you please. Don't kiss the cat when it has fleas!
- Saw It in a Movie Once: While coming up with ideas to get rid of Mr. Friend, Chuckie mentions how King Kong was defeated by being knocked off the Empire State Building. Since that would be too difficult for the babies, they choose to bury him instead. They still credit Chuckie with the idea, though.
- Shout-Out:
- The creation of Mr. Friend at the beginning of the episode seems straight out of Frankenstein, complete with Stu shouting "It's alive!".
- Chuckie mentions having seen King Kong (1933), (with Chuckie referring to as King Krong) and how the titular ape fell off the Empire State Building (referred as the Entire State Building).
- Tempting Fate: After the babies get rid of Mr. Friend, Lil comments she hopes she never sees another toy like that again. A few seconds later, Stu's entire line of Mr. Friend dolls start climbing out of the basement window.
- Victory Pose On Person: When Chuckie realizes that he broke a toy, he puts a foot on it and throws his arms in the air in victory.
- The World Is Not Ready: After the babies defeat the Mr. Friend army, Stu and Didi find the backyard littered with destroyed toy parts, not knowing the kids broke them. Stu is devastated at the destruction, while Didi suggests that the world may not be ready for Mr. Friend yet and offers to help him design a new toy.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: Upon hearing some of Mr. Friend's fun phrases, Didi tells Stu to hire a professional writer.
