Summary: SPLASH! When the school district’s “Cookies for Bookies” program creates wacky problems, Grandma introduces Ethan and Emily to economist Frederich Hayek, and takes them under the sea for a mermaid “Shellebration”!
This episode contains the following tropes:
- An Aesop: "When the few plan for all, problems come to call."
- Age-Stereotypical Food: Ethan cites this as the reason it is impossible for kids to resist cookies when they're offered.
- Art Shift: When Gabby's friend Kali illustrates her cobra story, the animation style shifts to her paintings.
- Bait-and-Switch: A shark is drawn to Queen Megan's undersea party by the scent of blood, but when she arrives, instead of eating anyone, she confronts Megan about being required to wear a specific outfit at random royal parties, while Megan herself wore white to her shark friend's wedding because she felt like it.
- Didn't Think This Through: Superintendent Gloria doesn't stop to think about the possible downsides of rewarding kids with sweets for reading. As a result, Kevin is on an endless sugar high, Copernicus is losing teeth to cavities, the Roundabout softball team is too sluggish to play, and the Intersection Kids Club can't sell any of their cookies to raise funds for their medical bills.
- Fate Worse than Death: Emily considers being eaten by a shark to be preferable to being confronted at one's own party.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Ethan's starting to pick this habit up from his mom and grandma. He tells Emily to "cálmate" (calm down).
- Gross-Up Close-Up: A fish shows the audience how his shellfish allergy has made his face puffy, causing Ethan to mistake him for a pufferfish.
- Historical Domain Character: The twins meet Milton Friedman's teacher, Friedrich Hayek.
Young Milton is also there. - Hurricane of Puns: Queen Megan of the mermaid kingdom loves making shell puns.
- Ironic Name: Kali is an artist, but is named after the Hindu goddess of destruction.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Emily is starstruck to be in the presence of a Princeton grad with a science degree.
- Shout-Out:
- When Derek is dismissed from teaching Hayek's class, he bites his tie in protest. Milton stands up and cries, "O captain, my captain!" before shoving his own tie in his mouth.
- The mermaid dimension provokes plenty of references to The Little Mermaid (1989).
Emily: Holy thingamabobs-a-plenty!- The Intersection Kids Club kids find an audiobook that is basically The Twilight Saga with minor spelling changes to the characters' names.
- Shown Their Work: Kali paints cobras without hoods. Cobras only hood up when they're curious or nervous, not when they're calm or hunting. The cobras in Kali's story are not shown in any danger (despite being bred specifically for slaughter) and thus have no reason to have their hoods displayed.
