Mom! Stop! is the eighteenth episode in season 1 of Bizaardvark. It first aired on January 13, 2017 to 0.95 million viewers.
Plot
Paige has mixed feelings when her mother hires her and Frankie to sing while they wait tables at the family restaurant; Dirk becomes trapped in his lair in an avalanche of props.[1]
Story
In the cafeteria at Hollander Prep, Paige and Frankie are opening up their lunch bags. Frankie's lunchbag contains latex gloves, a tube of hand sanitizer, and a pamphlet on the dangers of food-borne illnesses, but no food. Paige does get food, but also gets an extraordinarily affectionate love note from her mother Gina, which she reads aloud. While she reads her kisses, a group of students gang up to laugh at her, but Frankie shoos them away. To make matters worse, Paige reveals the addition of a musical greeting card, which starts with the sounds of her mothers kisses, and then leads to a song she made up praising her daughter, something that was discovered when she tried to dispose of the card.
After the theme song, Paige and Frankie are at the Vuuugle Studio working on a new-wave style song about the pitfalls of having P.E. as their first class, when suddenly Paige's mom, Gina Olvera bursts through the door, lavishing them with applause. Paige tries to remind her that she wanted to be picked up from the nearby mall down the street. Gina tries to reassure her daughter that she didn't do anything to embarrass her, but a flashback reveals that she showed the rest of the Vuuuglers a picture of Paige from back when she wore headgear. A second flashback exposes her on the rock climbing wall in the lobby admitting she didn't shave her armpits before coming to the studio. A third flashback shows that she did the tango with Horse Face Guy. After the flashbacks are over, Gina reveals that the reason for her visit is to urge her daughter and her friend to work at her restaurant, with the promise of being able to perform some of their songs at the end of their shifts.
Meanwhile, Dirk's latest dare involves piling all his props on one side of his lair. After he's finished, he removes one that he planned to use for an off the grid personal retreat that involves him writing haikus. Before leaving he retrieves his inspiration journal from the pile, but when he tries to retrieve the suitcase needed for this retreat, he gets himself trapped in his lair in an avalanche of props.
At Gina's restaurant, which is called "Mama's," Gina introduces Paige as her new waitress to the customers. The introduction includes embarrassing stories about her early childhood, which includes excessive pre-pubescent hair growth, and her childish name for macaroni and cheese dinners called "nonnies and yum-yum sauce." Frankie proves to adapt quite well to her work as a waitress. She memorizes the order from each member of a table of five, one of which includes an order of "nonnies with yum-yum sauce." After taking their order, Paige brings Frankie off to the side, and reveals that Gina is still continuing with her streak of telling embarrassing stories about her. Frankie reminds her that it'll be worth it when they have get the chance to perform, however Paige revealed that her mother put up an old picture of her from her hairy childhood days, which Frankie incorrectly believes is a picture of the Olvera's family dog.
Back at the Vuuugle studios, Dirk is still trapped in the prop pile, and shooting a video of his ordeal. Suddenly, his cell phone rings, and he uses it to shoot a video of his ordeal from a different angle, but doesn't think of making a phone call with it.
Paige and Frankie finally get the chance to perform. They start to go into a live version of "Bad Hair Day," when Gina interrupts them on stage, overcome with emotion about the talent of her daughter, revealing just enough about a not-so-proud moment when she first heard her sing. The two girls step aside while she makes her speech and Paige tells Frankie she's about to quit, until Gina becomes more emotional about her daughter, making her decide to postpone her resignation until the next day. As part of her effort to get her mother to fire her, she tries to pass herself off as a bad employee. However, Gina misinterprets this as an attempt to combine her and Frankie's video skills and make a commercial for the restaurant.
Again at the Vuuugle studios, Dirk is still trapped in the prop pile, and shooting a video of his ordeal. During this video, he reveals that he found a bullhorn that he can use to improve the sound quality, but once again doesn't consider using it to call for help. Later on he starts getting hungry, and then finds some food, claiming he's so hungry he'll eat anything. However, once he finds out that it's mainly food he doesn't like, he screams in frustration. One hour later, he doesn't even realize he was the one screaming, and begins hallucinating, convinced that the punching bag man is alive, and can actually save him.
On the day the commercial is supposed to be shot, Frankie walks into the restaurant with a giant pancake costume that she "borrowed" from an elementary school theater department. In the meantime, Gina comes in from the kitchen and urges her daughter to wear a childish looking one-piece baby pajama suit. Gina reveal that her idea for the commercial will involve declaring her restaurant the "home of Mama's little waitress," and then Paige would declare herself Mama's little waitress in baby talk. Frankie suggests having her dressed in the pancake costume with a camera zooming in on her, followed by a screen caption for the restaurant. Gina rejects the idea, and sticks with her own. She declares that people will be talking about it forever. Suddenly, Paige starts fantasizing about her adult life as a music teacher at Hollander Prep, where she's also reluctantly married to Bernie Schotz. A student recognizes her from the commercial she made with her mother as a pre-teen and insists she blurt out the catch phrase. From that point on the kids feel she no longer deserves their respect as a teacher. After the flashback is over, Paige decides it's too much and refuses to do the commercial, and begs her to back off with the embarrassing stories, as well as the excessive affection. Still recommending her pancake idea, Frankie suggests a substitute catch phrase, specifically "you'd butter believe it." Unfortunately, Gina is too heartbroken over her daughter's revelation to consider any idea and runs into the kitchen in tears.
The next day at Hollander Prep, Frankie storms into the lunchroom, revealing the work she did, claiming that she created a character and a full back story for her role in the pancake costume, but in reality simply includes three hours of footage of her spinning around, hooting and hollering in the costume. Paige is still depressed over the argument she had with her mother, and says she was waiting for her to apologize. Frankie reveals that she tried to get her father to put notes in her lunch bag, but they were far from affectionate. In fact, they were criticisms over her misspellings in a birthday card. Paige opens her own lunch bag, and finds that this time she doesn't have a note, which doesn't make her feel so great either.
That night, the two girls decide to get back on stage and announce a music video for the song "Notes In Your Lunchbag," a crudely drawn mostly animated music video with only Paige, Frankie, and some props as live action figures. The video is a humorous take on her mother's excessive love note delivery methods in a mock-horror fashion, and Frankie plays as a twisted version of her mother, or at least what they seem to view as a typical mother. After the video/song which is enjoyed by all, Paige and Gina reconcile their differences.
Still trapped in the Dare Lair, and cracking up in the process, Dirk listens to the Punching Bag Man reveal his plans to help rescue him from the rubble pile, all of which are ridiculous, all of which include going out for chicken parmesan after his ordeal is over, and all of which end in him revealing the fact that he can't move. Eventually, Dirk gets frustrated with the dummy's ideas, and tells it to give up. In response, the dummy tells him he should rely on himself to solve his problems, since he often promotes himself as being such a master dare head. Finally, he dares Dirk to break out himself, and he succeeds with excessive bombast. Still in his psychotic state, Dirk thinks the punching bag man is recommending eating out at a restaurant that serve chicken parmesan. Just then, Paige and Frankie walk in to see him dancing around the lair with his dummy. Paige thinks they should get him some psychiatric help, but Frankie wants her to hold off and see how weird this incident becomes.
Cast
Main Cast
Absent Cast
Guest Cast
- Tessie Santiago as Gina Olvera
- Rebecca Bloom as Katie
- Casey Campbell as Punching Bag Man
Trivia
- This episode, along with the other January episodes, aired at a new (possibly temporary though) day and time.
- Casey Campbell, who plays Punching Bag Man, had previous roles on Mighty Med & Bunk'd as Key Keeper and Murph.
- This episode proves that Dirk does not have very high intelligence as he had a phone and a bullhorn he could have used to escape but used them to video himself instead.
- In her early childhood, Paige referred to macaroni and cheese dinners as "Nonnies and Yum-Yum Sauce," and diarrhea as "gross-gross sauce."
- Bernie does not appear in the episode, but is reference as a reluctant future husband in Paige's nightmare vision.
Goofs
- When Gina encouraged Frankie to do a drumroll before making her big announcement, Frankie reminded Paige's Mom that she plays the keyboard instead. However, the type of electronic keyboard she plays more than likely has hundreds of sound effects, therefore a drumroll would not necessarily be out of the question.
Gallery
 |
To view the Mom! Stop! gallery, click here.
|