by SpiderBraids
So we open at some coffee shop where Angelica is looking for "beauty in the strangest places" (read: has her face pressed up against the window). OK, cheap gag over.
Title sequence. I don't know about you, but that gum better be sugar-free...
Ep title: "Truth or Consequences". I'm half-expecting one of the Sutherland brothers to show up. Okay, all joking aside, especially with that cheap gag out of the way, Angelica is waving around a piece of paper about some student film contest. It's a local contest to meet some guy named Martin Costomiris. Who the heck, you ask? Here comes some clunky expositionary dialog: "He's my favorite director ever! I worship him! In a healthy respectful way, not a weird creepy stalker kind of way." Gee, no thanks for that image, Tommy. Thanks to even more clunky expositionary dialog, we learn that Tommy has had a natural talent for filming since he was 37 months old. I don't know about you, but he must be some kid if he can operate a camcorder at the age of three...
Anyways, when did Betty DeVille become so superstituous? Did she have an accident on Friday the 13th or something? "Must be the hormones talking." Well, the hormones say Mercury's "retrograved or reversed or something -- point is, it's not going in the right direction", so no one's supposed to be doing anything.
So the family is eating grape-tomato-peach-bratwurst shish-kebabs. Yes, you read that right. Stu is probably making a mental note: "Stop asking Dil for ideas for dinner". Also, Dil's asking dad for his John Hancock, er, Button Gwinnett, for a permission slip. I dunno know about you, but I can Google up quite some info on Gwinnett, so wouldn't Dil's claim that he's "the only unidentified signature on the Declaration of Independence" a bit wide off the mark? By the way, the permission slip's for... not a field trip, but a trip to the vice principal's office. Apparently, he "thinks I'm all [...] interesting."
Dil didn't us to say much on Rugrats, now he's saying stuff like "What's up T?". I understand that the spinoff is trying to be hip (heck, the incidental music is trying to be hip too), but guess what? It's not working. Anyhow, Tommy is looking for inspiration, and he's getting nowhere fast. Idea one: Spy flick. Hey, I think Frankie Muniz, Daryl Sabra and Alexa Vega have the market cornered on spy kid flicks already, I don't think the world needs another one.
Idea two: Musical. "We don't have diamonds..." And you don't have much singing talent either. Okay, except for Susie. Idea three: Murder mystery. Dead Dil needs to pee. Yawn...
An aside on that last idea: It's hard for murder mysteries to be successful these days. Sure, there's "Memento", but seriously, how many people are going to remember "Taking Lives" and "Twisted" come 2014? Heck, I must be the only person in my neighborhood who still remembers the mystery-comedy "Radioland Murders" (plot: it's the opening day of a radio station in 1939 and people are getting killed... your amateur sleuth: radio drama writer Brian Benben... BTW, it's George Burns' last flick, where he cameos as, what else, a 100-year-old comedian, and there's a brilliant, in the sense of "not feeling labored", gag involving a bunch of cops being occupied by a prototype of a television).
Back to the topic. So Tommy's brilliant idea is science fiction. Phil and Lil as really lame two-headed alien (even "The Phantom Menace" had a better two-headed alien... then again, if you've got CG skills, you can make anything look good, actually), and someone has just farted in the costume. Speaking of which, I hope they asked for permission from their mom to use her old Rugrats clothes for it. "It is biologically impossible for girls to fart." Um, Lil? I think Phoebe Hyerdahl would like to beg to differ with you about that [Hey Arnold!, "Phoebe's Little Problem"].
OK, Finster is complaining about playing the "whiny, boring human" (his words, not mine). He'd rather play the alien robot with the rotating head. Tommy's offer: "I'll kill you off in this movie and bring you back as the alien robot in the sequel." As if there's a chance in heck there's gonna be one. And Dil, I don't think your big brother's film needs to have a green filter all over it.
Susie, if you don't quit it with the gratuituous singing, I might have to consider stopping calling you a talented singer. I know "it's a choice", but Tommy says it best: "Make another one."
Filming continues, bickering continues, and Tommy is stuck in his chair, so we head over to Vice Principal Pangborn's. So I gather that this is after school? Anyways, it's one thing that he used to do pro wrestling, something I already find hard to swallow. Now, he's saying that he earned masters in child psychology. Exposition dialog time as we run down what Dil's been doing this past week: "eating exclusively green foods, hopping to class on one foot and wearing [his] clothes inside out." Yep, Dil is weird. Time for an ink blot test, and Dil's describing what sounds like a scene from some crappy Medieval era fantasy. You'd be banging your head too if you heard that...
Lest we forget about the hormones and Mercury, a normally reliable coffee machine breaks down at the coffee shop and Betty's putting her head in ice over wildly swinging temperatures. Okay, that's enough, as we head back to the film shoot that seems to have gotten nowhere. "This is hopeless..." No kidding, Lucas wannabe. Your mean cousin wants to play a nice alien, like that's gonna happen, and your twin neighbors don't understand how to play a depressed two-headed alien. Or what the heck "artsy" means.
So if you can't film any decent science fiction, what's the best recourse? Pick another genre, I'd say, and Tommy picks... non-fiction. Angelica and Susie talk about going to some party by some teen named Savannah (hmm, where have I heard about her before? [All Grown Up!, "Lucky 13"]), Chuckie is threatening to tell everyone about stepsister Kimi's Dummi Bears obsession, and Phil and Lil are talking about getting a D+ on a math test. Gripping stuff, ain't it?... But it's not as gripping as the aftermath of Tommy filming it.