| “ | (stammers) I'm sorry, did you just take french fries out of your armpit? | ” |
"Fingers-loose" is the seventeenth episode in Season 11, being the two-hundred-and-eleventh episode overall.
Plot[]
Tina faces a hall-monitor crisis when she falls in love with a new underground trend at Wagstaff that Mr. Frond is trying to squelch. Meanwhile, Bob and Linda try to come up with a way for Teddy to sneak food into a movie theater.
Full story[]
It is Open House Day at Wagstaff. Tina is running the AV table for the assembly when she presents a hand in a dress dancing on the screen, to Frond’s distress. In flashback, Tina begins explaining.
As a hall monitor, Tina tries to be helpful while on duty, such as giving kids chewing gum unwrapped pieces for the end of the day, while having Gene and Louise, known troublemakers, in her family. But something was different that week, a mysterious new craze that was leaving behind things like little scarves. But she has bigger things to focus on, such as helping make the banner and preparing for Walk On Into Wagstaff, an all day open house Frond is preparing for parents and the superintendent, which Frond desperately wants to go perfectly to get to go to a counseling seminar. In his office, Frond asks Tina a favor. The open house is in several days, and lately kids are distracted and mixing outside of their usual groups, and he wants whatever it is to stop and add to the ‘no-no list” so the superintendent thinks the school is run well. So he wants Tina to find out what the students are up to so he can ban it. Tina agrees.
Tina’s search for clues does not go well. Her siblings are not talking, there is nothing in lost and found, and discreetly searching an open locker causes the contents to fall out. Taking a break at lunch in the cafeteria, she notices a “popular”(Chloe) and a “regular” leaving together and follows them to the boiler room. There, she finds a mess of students all watching a show: a hand in a red dress dancing, with the hand belonging to Gene under the name “Mavis Middlefinger”. Tina instantly feels driven by something seeing it dance. Louise as MC asks the crowd for donations, and while Regular Sized Rudy’s hand performs, Tina tries to act clam around Louise, who notes they have a “no hall monitors” rule but allows Tina to stay as long as she stays quiet. After school, Tina learns more about the finger dancing or “handy prancing” from her siblings: after seeing it online, Gene started doing it one day at lunch with mustard pants and tater tot shoes. Ms. LaBonz yelled at him to cut it out, but soon the craze hit the school, and got so large that the scene went underground to avoid being banned by Frond for being “distracting.” Gene is the best at it and Louise is making money, and Tina wants to go back the next day but promises to not tell Frond about it, although she feels bad about how she is not telling them the whole truth.
Tina is distracted while working in the restaurant. Teddy comes in in a panic, explaining that he has a date with Kathleen in a couple of days at the movies, but the show time is at 5:30, which is dinnertime, and he promised to bring along burgers form them, but he was caught the last time he tired sneaking in food. Linda offers to figure out a way to sneak in the food. Meanwhile, Tina is still thinking about how free and wild Gene’s hand was while dancing. The next day at school, she bumps into Frond, and leis that she has found nothing so far. That night, Tina makes a handy-prancing outfit out of old Equestranut toy clothing and starts the dancing. Tina feels free doing handy-prancing but is caught by Gene and Louise. Louise offers to let Tina go on stage the next day, but Tina is hesitant and they all go to dinner in the kitchen instead. At the kitchen table, Linda shows off her old armpit hairnets, which she is adapting to hold burgers for Teddy, despite Bob’s insistence that armpits are gross and the burgers would get smashed. Tina continues playing at handy-prancing, and overhears her siblings loudly whispering about how in over her head she is and suspecting she works for Frond. At school, frond says Tina is not good at her job due to finding nothing, and Tina storms out after lying that she found nothing. At lunch in the boiler room, Tina debuts her new hand dance persona, Holly Monitors.
As Tina performs with her hand, she feels a freedom but also conflict as it was her job to stop the scene, now living a double life of busting kids. In the halls and busting moves in the hand dress. In the restaurant, Teddy is unsure about Linda’s armpit hairnet idea, while Bob demonstrates his idea: eight plastic bags taped inside a vest, each containing a burger ingredient, but the bags keep falling out and it’s hard to tell which is which when pulling them out. Teddy is freaked out by Bob and Linda trying to get him to take their items and runs out. In Frond’s office, Frond tells Tina he needs something before the open house as kids are still acting weird, and threatens to take away Tina’s vest as he can tell she is lying. While Millie performs in the boiler room under “Fing-Lise Belcher” (to Louise’s discomfort), Tina rushes in to warn Louise, but Frond comes in and finds the performance. Louise accuses Tina of telling him, but Tina denies it, but Louise doesn’t believe her. Frond bans the handy-prancing effective immediately.
The scene over, Tina goes back to life as a hall monitor, her siblings either giving her the cold shoulder or acting hostile. While back on the “right side of the law” she feels wrong about it and is unable to sleep the night before the open house, and gets an idea.
At the Wagstaff open house opening assembly, Frond speaks to the audience and instead of playing the video as asked, Tina uses her tablet’s camera to film a video of Holly Monitors performing, to Frond’s distress. Bob and Linda are in the audience, having snuck in food, Linda’s burger getting smooshed while Bob keeps getting the wrong bags out. Several other students start handy-prancing on stage, having been called before by Tina, and Gene and Louise are proud of Tina. In Frond’s office, Tina and her parents are brought in, expecting Tina to be in trouble, but Frond explains that the superintendent said it was the first creative thing she’d ever seen him do, so he took the credit for it. Tina is not in trouble but Frond threatens something about seeing the handy-prancing again before noticing Linda taking a French fry out of her armpit to eat, but frond declines the Belcher’s clothing food. That night, Tina finishes writing in her diary when a knock is at her door. It is Mavis and gene, who comes in and explains that he was the one who told Frond: he was starting to wear out doing handy prancing every lunch while Louise was making money, so when Mr. Frond interrogated him, he told everything. He is sorry for not telling Tina or Louise, and the two do a handy prance together as Holly Monitor and Mavis Middlefinger.
Videos[]
External links[]
- "Fingers-loose" press release via The Futon Critic
- "Fingers-loose" at the US Copyright Database
- "Fingers-loose" on IMDb
- "Fingers-loose" script via Springfield! Springfield!
References[]