| Grandpa's Date | Gallery | Transcript |
|---|
| Season 2 Episode 8b | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Grandpa's Date | |
| Original Airdate | October 25, 1992 |
| VHS release | Grandpa's Favorite Stories Volume 2 |
| DVD release | Mysteries The Best of Season 2 Season 2 Complete Series |
| Previous Episode | Family Reunion |
| Next Episode | No Bones About It |
"Grandpa's Date" is the second segment of the eighth episode of Season 2, and the forty-first Rugrats segment overall.
Characters Present[]
Characters Introduced[]
Synopsis[]
Grandpa Lou's long lost love Morgana pays him a visit after 40 years. When he tries to hide the fact that he's now a grandpa, will Tommy and Chuckie spoil his date?
- - Description from Klasky Csupo
Plot[]
Stu is with Tommy, testing out his latest invention: a remote-controlled adjustable sofa. However, the sofa starts going haywire, bouncing around and shaking Stu up. Tommy takes the remote and manages to get the sofa under control while Didi and Grandpa Lou enter with Chuckie. Didi asks Lou if he will be okay to watch the babies while she and Stu attend a party. Lou assures her, telling her it will be a "boy's night in", with lots of videos and ice cream. Didi advises him to not mess with the remote-controlled sofa, and she and Stu leave.
Lou shows the babies the videos he rented: a pair of Reptar movies for them, and "Lonely Space Vixens" for himself. But, he is interrupted by the phone ringing. Lou goes to answer, and a woman named Morgana picks up. Hearing her name, Lou flashes back to 40 years earlier:
He runs towards a departing train with a bouquet of flowers in hand. The conductor stops Lou for not having a ticket. Lou tries to explain that his girlfriend is on that train and if he can't stop her, she will leave forever. The conductor ignores Lou's pleas and the train pulls away. As Lou chases the train, a young Morgana looks back at him, but does not even wave goodbye as the train departs. Lou drops his bouquet in defeat.
In the present, Morgana tells Lou that she will be in town that evening, and would like to pay him a visit. He tries to reschedule, but does not tell her why. Morgana says she will only be in town that night, so Grandpa tells her to come over in 15 minutes.
After hanging up, he swiftly bathes the babies, "reads" them a story, and puts them to bed. Tommy and Chuckie are confused as to why they are in bed when the sun hasn't set yet. Tommy persuades Chuckie to get out of the crib and see what his Grandpa is up to. They sneak into his bathroom, where they see him spraying smelly cologne on himself. Then, Lou puts on a toupee, which causes Chuckie to panic and try and run away. Lou doesn't notice the babies until he accidentally trips over them. He quickly puts them back in bed and explains that they need to stay in the crib because he wants to impress "his old friend." He goes downstairs to finish getting ready. Tommy gets right back out of the crib, but Chuckie protests. Tommy says that Lou won't impress his "friend" by wearing someone else's hair and smelling funny. Tommy decides to help by bringing toys to Lou and his guest.
At that moment, Morgana arrives. Lou lets her in, thinking she is just as lovely as she was 40 years ago. She compliments his house, but while her back is turned, Tommy and Chuckie come downstairs with lots of toys in their arms. Lou quickly scoops them all up and hurries back upstairs. He puts the babies in the crib and tries explaining things again: He is trying to hide the fact that he is a grandfather from Morgana because he wants her to see him as the same Lou he was in their youth. Lou realizes that the babies probably don't understand what he means anyway, and goes back downstairs. Tommy and Chuckie then hear Grandpa's old-timey music, and decide to put on something better to listen to.
Lou asks Morgana to dance with him, and she agrees. They both dance together while the babies sneak back downstairs with a cassette tape. Tommy inserts the tape, and it starts playing the Dummi Bears theme song very loudly. This causes Lou to drop Morgana in shock and whisk the babies upstairs before she can see them. He puts them in the crib yet again, begging them to stay there. He promises to buy them an ice cream truck and even put them both through college if they don't leave the crib again. Grandpa goes back downstairs, and Morgana asks him to sit on the couch with her. She shows him a photo album that's full of shots from the good old days. While they look at the album, Tommy and Chuckie sneak back downstairs with a flower for Morgana.
Lou asks Morgana what happened to make her board the train and leave for 40 years. She tells him that she broke up with him over his alleged affair with another woman named Trixie McGee. She says she saw the two of them kissing in the park. Lou is surprised, and clarifies that he was not kissing Trixie; he was giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because she was having an asthma attack and had fainted. Now knowing the whole story, Morgana wants to give Lou a kiss that had been waiting for 4 decades. The two of them lean in...and plant kisses on each of Tommy's cheeks. He had popped up between them while their eyes were closed. Morgana screams and jumps back, bumping her elbow onto the remote for the couch. It starts hopping around, bucking Lou off. He rushes back onto the couch to help, with Tommy and Chuckie joining in. Morgana admits that the mechanical bull of a couch is kind of fun, and the four of them play with it for a while.
Later, Tommy and Chuckie are resting on Lou and Morgana's laps. Morgana is impressed that Lou is so good with kids and wonders why he didn't tell her that he was a grandfather. Lou admits that he didn't want her to think he was an old man. Morgana comforts him, saying he will always be the same Lou Pickles (1991), no matter how old he gets. She kisses him on the cheek and gets up to leave, but promises to visit him again when she comes back to town. But, before leaving, she asks Lou for a favor: stop wearing the toupee. Lou happily obliges as she makes her way down the sidewalk.
Lou comes back inside and tells the babies that Morgana was one of the few women he ever loved, aside from Grandma. He adds that he doesn't regret what happened in the past, since things are going so well for him now. He asks the babies if they agree. Tommy just triggers the remote controlled couch to flip again, and the three of them all laugh together.
Trivia[]
- Morgana is also mentioned in the episode "When Wishes Come True".
- While Lou is showing Tommy and Chuckie the VHS tapes of Reptar Come Home and Reptar Redux, he also pulls off an innuendo by showing them his personal favorite, Lonely Space Vixens. He chortles and says that "that's for after you go to bed".
- During Lou's recollection of Morgana leaving him, the engineer yells out that the next stop is a town called Willoughby. This is an allusion to a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone titled "A Stop at Willoughby", which was also referenced in the previous episode.
- Despite being taller than their height, it's never shown how Tommy and Chuckie got the bedroom door open when they first escape despite Grandpa Lou clearly closing the door the first time he puts them to bed.
- Young Lou looks very similar to Groucho Marx.
- Phil, Lil, Chas, Betty, Howard, Drew, Angelica and Spike are absent in this episode.
- First appearance of "Sing a Happy Happy Song", which would later become the theme song for the Dummi Bears.
- Moral: Don't try to hide your true self; you can be respected for being just the way you are.
