The Trial

The Trial	Gallery	Transcript

Season 1 Episode 11b
The Trial
Original Airdate	March 29, 1992
VHS release	Tales From the Crib (Paramount release only) Volume 2
DVD release	Season 1 Mysterious Messes Complete Series
Previous Episode	Touchdown Tommy
Next Episode	Fluffy vs. Spike

"The Trial" is the second segment of the eleventh episode of Season 1, and the eleventh Rugrats segment overall.

Characters Present

• Didi
• Tommy
• Angelica
• Betty
• Phil
• Lil
• Chuckie
• Spike (cameo)

Characters Mentioned

• Stu
• Drew

Summary

Someone broke "Mr. Fluffles" (Angelica calls it "Mr. Fluffle-Luffles"), Tommy's clown lamp, and Angelica wants to find out who. The finger-pointing, however, eventually points back to her.

- Description from Klasky Csupo

Plot

While Tommy's being fed in the kitchen by Didi with Betty, there's a crashing noise in the living room. Lying broken on the living room floor, much to Tommy's distress, is "Mr. Fluffles", a lamp with a clown face that was made by Stu and was Tommy's favorite lamp. Angelica comes in, claiming that she was taking a nap, and asks Didi and Betty what happened. Once Didi and Betty put Tommy and his friends in the playpen and clean up all of the broken glass pieces of Mr. Fluffles, Betty mentions seeing a lamp like it at a store and discusses with Didi about calling to see if they still have it in stock so the broken lamp can be replaced. She and Didi go off to do this.

Tommy laments the loss of his lamp, and demands to know who is the culprit, and why they did it. It is decided that they should hold court to figure out who actually did it. Angelica, who claims that she had been taking a nap at the time, isn't considered a suspect and is allowed to be the "persecutor" (prosecutor) while Tommy's the judge. Chuckie, Phil, and Lil are each called to the stand. Tommy's squeak hammer serves at the "gravel" (gavel), used for calling for order if unnecessary bickering takes place.

Phil and Lil are called to the stand first. The twins say they played tag first, then decided to play ring-around-the-rosie around the lamp. Angelica accuses them of knocking into the lamp when they let go, which caused it to fall and break. Phil and Lil admit they did accidentally knock into it, but not hard enough to make it fall and break. Angelica insists that they're lying, but Judge Pickles believes that they're innocent.

Chuckie goes next. Chuckie wasn't playing with Phil and Lil, and didn't know if they knocked into the lamp or not when they ran off. What he does know is a monster which looked like a rabbit scared him, and he hid from it under the couch. Angelica insists this is a cover story; since Chuckie has a fear of clowns, Angelica figures that he must've destroyed the lamp on purpose due to his hatred of clowns. Chuckie admits that while he hated the lamp and wanted to break it, he couldn't bring himself to do it, since Tommy's his friend and he knew that Tommy loved the lamp.

Like with Phil and Lil, Angelica insists that Chuckie's lying, but Tommy believes that Chuckie's telling the truth. They still don't know the real culprit. Judge Pickles goes on to point out how none of them could've done it: Chuckie was hiding in the couch, the twins were on the other side of the room, he himself was in the kitchen and Angelica was taking a nap… but then Tommy realizes that Angelica had already taken a nap before she came over to his house. He, Chuckie and the twins begin to cross-examine Angelica on how she could've known what was going on in the living room if she was taking a nap at the time, which makes them realize that Angelica was lying when she said she was sleeping and that the reason she did is because she is the one who broke the judge's lamp. Angelica gleefully admits it. Tommy asks her why she did it, and she gladly decides to do so.

Angelica then tells her story: she was looking for a crayon so she could draw on the hallway wall to get Tommy in trouble for it. She looked in the living room and saw the twins playing together. Jealous, Angelica found Tommy's rabbit mask from the previous Halloween and put on the mask to successfully scare Chuckie with it (revealing that the rabbit monster from Chuckie's story was Angelica wearing the rabbit mask that Tommy wore for Halloween before this incident) while the twins were unaware. After the twins moved away from the lamp, Angelica looked at it and concluded that she hated the lamp. So she knocked it over on purpose and fled the scene.

Angelica gloats about her actions and taunts the babies because they can't talk and thus can't tell the adults, but she then hears Didi shout her name, and then looks up to see her and Betty glaring at her angrily. Angelica attempts to declare innocence, only for Betty to tell her that she and Didi heard everything Angelica said, from her admitting that she planned to draw on the walls and get Tommy blamed for it, to her scaring Chuckie with Tommy’s old bunny mask, and finally, to how she both is the one that broke the lamp and did so on purpose. Didi is furious with her niece for destroying her son’s favorite lamp and trying to get her son and his friends in trouble, and she and Betty take Angelica into the kitchen and put her in time out, by seating her in Tommy's highchair (much to her humiliation) until her father comes by to pick her up. Because of this, Tommy guesses that the "persecutor" is the "poopetrator" (perpetrator) this time. The episode ends with a "spirit" of Mr. Fluffles appearing and smiling at the babies.

Trivia

• This is the first episode where Angelica says "Uh-Oh".
• This episode is one of the first episodes to only feature Spike as a cameo character.
• This episode features Angelica's very first main antagonist role.
• This is the first episode in which we learn of Chuckie's coulrophobia (fear of clowns).
• This is the first episode Angelica appears without her parents.
• This is one of the few episodes where Angelica is wearing a diaper.
• When Angelica refers to the teddy bears as "The Jerky", Phil and Lil say, "the Jury?", yet Angelica tells them that they are called "The Jerky". This could mean that Phil and Lil are saying it correctly this time around rather than using a malapropism like normal.
• "The Trial" was going to be the name of an episode of another Nickelodeon show called Invader Zim. However, that show was cancelled before the episode went into production.
• This is the only time Angelica is sitting in Tommy's highchair.
• This is the first episode focusing on every Rugrat that had previously appeared.
• Although Drew and Stu are mentioned, Didi and Betty are the only parents seen in the episode.
• The plot of the episode is very similar to that of an actual court trial.
• This episode shares its name with a novel by Franz Kafka.
• The act of referring to a court prosecutor as a "persecutor" is repeated in The Fairly OddParents! episode "A Wish Too Far!", when Jorgen Von Strangle acts as the Fairy Court's prosecutor/persecutor.
• Nearly 18 months after the original air date, another TV show called Beavis and Butt-Head aired an episode of the same name.
• 5 Years, 7 months, and 8 days later, Disney's Recess aired an episode with the same name.
• A clip from this episode appears in the trailer for the 1998 film The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey. The scene of Tommy crying can be seen on a TV as two security guards are channel surfing.
• This episode marks Angelica's first punishment for her bad behavior.
• The episode was later remade in the 2021 short "The Lamp".
• Morals:
  • Be honest and don't blame someone else for your mistakes or wrongdoings. In a court of law, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
  • Don't gloat about your actions, because they might come back to bite you.

Video Clip

Angelica On Trial Rugrats NickSplat