| Touchdown Tommy | Gallery | Transcript |
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| Season 1 Episode 11a | |
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| Touchdown Tommy | |
| Original Airdate | March 29, 1992 |
| VHS release | A Baby's Gotta Do What a Baby's Gotta Do Volume 1 |
| DVD release | Season 1 Mysterious Messes Complete Series |
| Previous Episode | Incident in Aisle Seven |
| Next Episode | The Trial |
"Touchdown Tommy" is the first segment of the eleventh episode of Season 1, and the eleventh Rugrats segment overall.
Characters Present[]
Characters Introduced[]
Summary[]
After being inspired by their dads watching a football game, Tommy and the other Rugrats use the living room for a little grid-iron fun of their own... keeping Angelica from stealing their chocolate milk.
- - Description from Klasky Csupo
Plot[]
Stu, Drew, Lou, and Howard (with a reluctant Chas, who would rather watch chess) plan to watch the Ultra Bowl, the ultimate event in football, with a split decision on which team should win. The problem is that Didi doesn't trust Stu and the others to watch the game after she overreacts from Tommy bumping his head on the coffee table while trying to get a balloon. Stu, however, quickly creates a baby helmet for Tommy that convinces her the babies will be fine while she and Betty go shopping.
The men arrive (with snacks and a massive TV), and the women leave. Before the game starts, Stu puts his makeshift helmets on all the babies plus Angelica. The other men soon tell Lou to give the kids their bottles shortly after the game begins. Lou hands out bottles to Chuckie, Phil, and Lil (Angelica refuses, saying that bottles are for babies and she's not a baby). Lou gives Tommy his bottle, saying that he has fixed up something special compared to the others. Tommy reveals this when he happily exclaims that he got chocolate milk, while the others got plain milk instead. Everybody else is envious, especially Angelica.
Angelica chases Tommy. The chase is shown in the manner of a football game, with the babies throwing the bottle to each other to keep it away from Angelica, not realizing the chocolate milk is spilling out at the same time. While this goes on, commentary from the game matches with the game of keep-away. Angelica eventually manages to grab the bottle, but forcefully shoots it out of the bottle when she catches it. Angelica wails that the bottle is empty just as Didi and Betty return. Didi is furious about the chocolate milk all over the living room, and that the men failed to notice what was going on right behind them. Chas adopts an "I-told-you-so" attitude when he says they would have been better off watching chess tournaments. The Rugrats sit innocently in the middle of the floor covered with chocolate milk. Spike walks to Angelica and licks her. The others then give each other high fives and fall on the floor.
Trivia[]
- This is the third episode in which Chas appears, but the first episode in which he talks on-screen, having only said his son's name once in his first appearance.
- Here, Chas has a noticeably darker hair color than in his later appearances.
- The Ultra Bowl is a reference to the Super Bowl.
- The late Chick Hearn was the commentator of the game. In real life, he was best known for being the play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.
- The jerseys that the fathers are wearing of the teams playing in the game are of two actual official teams. The solid white, with red and blue stripes on the side, with an oil derrick logo in the center jersey, closely resemble those of a defunct NFL football team, which at that time was called the Houston Oilers. The team is now called the Tennessee Titans. The other jersey which is solid navy blue with small white stripes belongs to the Dallas Cowboys. These observations can further be supported when the commentator of the game, reveals the location of the stadium is played in the "Lone Star State", which is Texas.
- This is the first appearance of Fluffy, Angelica's pet cat.
- Michael Bell voices Howard in this episode, rather than Phil Proctor. This is most likely because Howard does not have any individual lines in this episode; any time he speaks it's alongside one of the other guys.
- This was used as a bonus level in the Rugrats: Search for Reptar video game, where the same tactic is used.
- In the minigame's cutscene, Tommy is given a bottle of chocolate milk by his dad while they watch the game. Angelica makes fun of Tommy and his bottle until he drinks it and declares it's chocolate milk as opposed to the regular formula milk. Angelica demands the babies hand it over.
- The mini-game is a keep-away game as the player controls the baby holding the bottle and must either drink some of the milk or pass it to another Rugrat. The game ends once all the milk is gone or if Angelica gets the bottle.
- If Angelica wins, she gets the bottle and laughs at the babies, gloating.
- If the player wins, Angelica will get the empty bottle. Upon finding it's empty, she begins to cry and the adults come and admonish her.
- This is the first episode where somebody gets in trouble by saying the culprit's two names as opposed to the three names. It's where Didi comes back from shopping and finds the house in disarray. She yells "Angelica Pickles! What in the world is going on here?!"
- Angelica mentions that she learned to stand on her head in ballet lessons, which implies she's currently taking ballet lessons. If this is true, she was taken out of ballet lessons after only two days of it as mentioned in a later episode, "Angelica's Ballet". Angelica has also mentioned to be taking ballet lessons in another later episode.
- The old Rugrats Nickelodeon site lists this episode as "Touch-Down Tommy".
- Big Bubba Nagurski is a reference to Bronko Nagurski, a fullback who played for the Chicago Bears in the 1930s.
- Spike is shown at the end of the episode licking the chocolate milk. However, human chocolate is toxic to dogs. Chocolate could either injure or kill them.
- Angelica's house is briefly shown in one scene (just the living room), and it bares no resemblance to its retconned look in Season 2 and beyond.
- Moral: Always be aware and pay attention to your kids like a responsible adult. Failing to do so is possibly an accident waiting to happen.
Goofs[]
- In the scene when Stu jokingly calls Lou a galloping geezer and the men laugh, there is a chocolate milk stain on the wall, but that is before the kids get their milk.
- Stu is holding some helmets when he says, "And best of all, each kid gets one". But in the next shot, Chuckie, Phil, Lil and Angelica are already wearing helmets while the dads leave to go to the TV.
- While talking to Stu in the basement, Grandpa Lou is seen taking a large handful of popcorn from a bowl. In the very next shot, he is never actually seen chewing it or putting it in his mouth, and carries on with the conversation as if he never helped himself to any.
Clips[]
