Season 5, Episode 12
The Balls
Marina joins the group to plot their heist, which thanks to some unorthodox methods is going to result in random bouts of singing. Meanwhile Penny and Julia pay a visit to his mother so they can work out a way to spare Julia the problems she had.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- All for Nothing: Even if Marina-23's heist had gone according to plan, The World Seed wasn't where she thought it was so it wouldn't have worked out.
- Crotch Shove: In need of an alternative way to carry the World Seed when the warmth bag is damaged, Fen improvises as best she can under the circumstances.Fen: It's fine!Margo: But where the hell is the fucking Seed, Fen?Fen: I've fucking got it, Margo!
- Bag of Holding: Pete has an enchanted suitcase with enough internal space to hold the heist crew, allowing him to sneak them all inside.
- Blade Enthusiast: George has an impressive collection of blades, but gets a little disturbed when Fen compliments them.
- Blessed with Suck: Being pregnant with Penny and in his presence afterward gave his mother temporary Psychic Powers that had extremely adverse effects on her mental state.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Anna doesn't like having a sociopath for a girlfriend, Marina-23 doesn't like having a girlfriend who isn't happy with who she is and wants her to fundamentally change herself.
- Briar Patching: Kady gets Fogg-17 to drink from a flask poisoned with Archie by claiming she needs it, which is true in a sense.
- Call-Back: Fogg-17 seeing a flask, drinking it without being suspicious and suffering the consequences may be a call back to the fact that Quentin was able to truthie him the same way in numerous timelines.
- Chekhov's Gun: The World Seed has to be kept at a temperature of 99 degrees. When the group needs a way to transport it without a temperature-controlled container, Fen realizes there's another place really close to that temperature, albeit a rather uncomfortable one.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Alice gets Santa to pull a rooftop rescue when the plan goes sideways.
- Cue the Sun: During the "Don't Give Up" number.
- Emotion Bomb: When Alice's emotion bottle breaks, her emotions all flooding back in at once overloads a golem bellhop. The team repeats this a few times to get rid of other hostile golems.
- Emotion Suppression: To keep from breaking into song randomly, the team hits upon bottling their emotions for the heist.
- The Empath: The golem bellhops at the Nave have been enchanted to be this, in order to pick up on potential dangers. Unfortunately for them, it means they can be overwhelmed.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Marina-23 really does love Anna.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: Eliot pulls this with Alice and Kady when the Couple walk by, since they'd recognize both women otherwise.
- Funny Background Event: During the "Cruel to Be Kind" number, cuts to Fen and Zelda show they're the ones having a blast singing and dancing, whereas Margo and Marina-23 are visibly annoyed throughout the whole song.
- Golem: The Nave Hotel uses golems as bellhops, since they double as bouncers and are designed to read emotions.
- Hearing Voices: Penny's mother starts telepathically picking up peoples' thoughts after she reunites with Penny. Since she works in a mental hospital, that's even more not okay than usual.
- Heroic BSoD: Alice has one after her emotion bottle is broken and she flashes back to her torture and Fingore. Eliot talks, well, sings, her through it after a sip of his own emotions.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The pig man tries to enlist Julia's friends in assassinating her. After a bit of random singing, Josh lies that he'll do the deed to get him off their backs, giving his word "as a devout Catholic" (he's Jewish).
- Humble Goal: The Couple don't have any desires for world domination or anything so grandiose, they just want to have children and can't do so without making a new world because of a curse placed on them by their enemies.
- Impaled Palm: Margo shoots the male half of the Couple in the palm, in the process shooting the Circumstances panel so they can't use it.
- Impossibly-Compact Folding: Marina's model of the Nave Hotel is kept inside a children's story book yet unfolds into an entire scale model of a four-story hotel that is several times larger than the book.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Margo deliberately shoots the male half of the Couple in the hand.
- Internal Reveal: Penny's mother learns magic is real and why she kept going crazy.
- Involuntary Dance: The Conductor Spell has the side effect of making everyone sing and dance in coordination if they get too emotional, due to the out-of-whack Circumstances making the spell unstable and being designed by a musician.
- Loophole Abuse: The Nave Hotel is warded up the wazoo to stop all forms of communication, both magical and muggle. However, the Conductor Spell, which is designed to sync musicians that can't see or hear one another, is subtle enough that the wards won't block it.
- Love Cannot Overcome:
- Penny's mom loves him, and is regretful, but being around him re-awakens the temporary psychic powers she had while pregnant, and she just can't handle going through that nightmare again.
- Marina-23 puts her foot down and tells Anna to accept her for who she truly is or leave. Anna leaves.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Anna accuses Marina-23 of sleeping with "the hot librarian". Zelda assures her that's not the case but appreciates the compliment.
- Model Planning: The Nave heist is planned out using Marina's scale model of the building.
- Motive Rant: Enforced. Fen forces The Couple to explain their motives as part of the conditions for activating the World Seed.
- Musical Episode: This time justified as the only way the team can communicate during a heist. Thanks to the spell being unstable, random singing abounds.
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Fen as a Fillory resident recognizes that The Couple is translating the World Seed manual incorrectly.
- Noodle Incident: This gem from Eliot:Eliot: So repress the overwhelming urge to sing while stealing shit? Eighth grade all over again.
- Oh, Crap!: Eliot looks mostly bemused/irritated when Sir Effingham pleads that his world's at stake if they don't kill Julia, but when the pig-man says "control your spinsters", his eyes fly open and his jaw drops.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: The "Cruel to Be Kind" number functions as one of these.
- From Effingham's perspective, he's explaining that killing Julia (a cruel act) will save Fillory.
- From the perspective of the main characters the land of Fillory must be destroyed (a cruel act) so that the dead won't overwhelm every other world and the living beings of Fillory can be saved.
- Parental Abandonment: Penny's mom was forced to abandon him so the Psychic Powers he inadvertently gifted her with didn't drive her insane and cause her to hurt him.
- Rage Breaking Point:
- It's bad enough Sir Effingham wants Julia assassinated, when he tells the men in the gang to "control their spinsters", the only thing that stops the ladies from having bacon and country ham for days is a sudden song breaking out.
- After repeated questioning from Anna about her motives, Marina finally snaps that she wants Anna to love her for who she is rather than having to bend over backward to be a better person for her.
- Skewed Priorities: The Balls give Pete an extra half hour to sell them on his connections when he mentions he's got a highly excellent vintage of wine decanting.
- Spanner in the Works:
- Fogg-17 shows up to throw a wrench in the heist, catching Fen, Josh, and Margo. Kady has to take a detour to rescue them.
- Anna shows up at the loft to confront Marina, having placed a locator spell on the heist book just in case Marina fell into old habits. She breaks the baton maintaining the Conductor Spell, thereby leaving the team in the dark for a few minutes until Zelda can repair it.
- The warmth bag for the World Seed gets torn in a struggle with the golems, resulting in a Mexican Standoff with the Couple since it can't leave the rapidly-cooling room.
- Spotting the Thread: Margo's fashion sense lets her identify bag Paloma Ball is wearing as unfashionably standing out against the rest of her impeccable couture, and the team realizes that it must be an incubator bag of some sort.
- Teleportation: When dosed with Archie, Fogg-17 vanishes into the Etheric Realm.
- Temporary Super Powers: Penny's presence reawakens the psychic powers that nearly drove his mother insane while he was gestating and whenever she tried to raise him.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The big plan Marina-23 needed to Harmonic Convergence to pull off was a robbery of the Nave Hotel. It was already in action when the moon got moved, and things went to hell.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- All George and Paloma Ball want is to start a family. They've been cursed to only be able to do it on a different world.
- Sir Effingham wants Julia assassinated to save Fillory.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Eliot assures Alice of this during the "Don't Give Up" number.
