| Season 1 Episode 11b | |
|---|---|
 | |
| The Trial | |
| Original Airdate | March 29, 1992 |
| VHS release | Tales From the Crib (Paramount release only) |
| DVD release | Season 1 |
| 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 episode overall of Rugrats.
Characters
Synopsis
Someone broke "Mr. Fluffles" (Angelica calls it "Mr. Fluffle-Luffles"), Tommy's clown lamp, and Angelica wants to find out who. The fingerpointing, however, eventually points back to her.
- - Description from Klasky Csupo.
Plot
While Tommy is being fed in the kitchen by Didi with Betty, there is a crash in the living room which turns out to be "Mr. Fluffles", a lamp with a clown face that was Tommy's favorite. Once in the playpen, Tommy laments the loss of his lamp, and demands to know who is the culprit, and why they did it. Chuckie, Phil, and Lil go on trial because they were in the living room at the time. Angelica, who was napping, is not a suspect and is allowed to be the "persecutor" (prosecutor) while Tommy is the judge.
Phil and Lil go first. The twins say they played tag first, then decided to ring-around-the-rosie around the lamp. Angelica accuses them of knocking the lamp when they let go, which caused it to fall. Phil and Lil admit they did accidentally knock it, but not hard enough to make it fall and break. Angelica says they're guilty, but Tommy believes their innocence.
Chuckie goes next. Chuckie wasn't playing with Phil and Lil, and didn't know if they knocked the lamp or not when they ran off. What he does know is a rabbit monster (Angelica wearing a rabbit mask) chased him, and he hid from it. Angelica insists this is a cover story, because Chuckie's scared of clowns. Thus, Chuckie pushed the lamp and knocked it down on purpose. Chuckie admits that while he was scared of the lamp and hated it, he would never have broken it on purpose because Tommy's his friend.
Tommy declares Chuckie innocent as well, but still doesn't know the real culprit. After Tommy points how none of them could've done because Chuckie was hiding in the couch, the twins were on the other side of the room, Tommy 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 question how Angelica could've known what was going on in the living room if she was taking nap at the time, which makes them realize that Angelica was the one broke Tommy's lamp.
Angelica then admits the truth: she wasn't napping, but was looking for a crayon so she could draw on the hallway wall to get Tommy in trouble. She looked in the living and saw Tommy and the twins playing together, and found Tommy's rabbit mask from Halloween. Angelica put on the mask to scare Chuckie with (successfully) while the twins were unaware. After the twins moved away from the lamp, Angelica looks at it and concludes it to be an extremely awful lamp, so she knocked it over on purpose and fled.
Angelica gloats and taunts the babies because they can't talk and thus tell the adults. But Didi and Betty overhear Angelica saying this. Angelica tries to defend herself by saying that she didn't do it, but Didi and Betty point out that they heard everything she said, and they take her into the kitchen until parents come to pick her up. Her punishment: the (high) chair! Because of this, Tommy guesses that the "persecutor" is the "poopetrator" (perpetrator) this time, and a "spirit" of Mr. Fluffles appears and smiles at the babies.
Quotes
- Angelica: (coming out of nowhere with a blankie, sounding sleepy) Wh-what happened? I was taking my nap and I heard a loud sound.
- Didi: Oh, honey, one of the babies broke the lamp Uncle Stu made for Tommy.
- Angelica: Aww, Mr. Fluffle-Luffles?
- Didi: I'm afraid so, honey.
- Didi: (overhearing everything with Betty) ANGELICA!
- Angelica: Oops. I didn't do it! I DIDN'T DO IT!
- Betty: We heard the whole thing Angelica!
- Didi: So YOU broke the lamp young lady! Well you can just sit in the kitchen with us until your father gets back.
- Tommy: Yep, I guess the persecutor's the poopetrator this time.
Trivia
- This episode is one of the first episodes to only feature Spike as a cameo character.
- This is the first episode in which we learn of Chuckie's coulrophobia (fear of clowns).
- This is one of the few episodes where Angelica is wearing a diaper.
- When Angelica referred to the teddy bears as "The Jerky", Phil and Lil said "the Jury", yet Angelica told 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, the show was cancelled before the episode went into production.
- Tommy's theme cry effect has one of its biggest roles yet.
- This is the only time Angelica is sitting in Tommy's highchair as her punishment when she broke Tommy's lamp "Mr. Fluffles".
Gallery
