- “Whatever you're thinking about doing with that banana and those plums, don't!”
"Go Tina on the Mountain" is the fifteenth episode in Season 8, being the one-hundred-and-forty-fourth episode overall.
Plot[]
The Belcher kids go to Outdoor Education only to have it rain, but Tina doesn't let the inclement weather get in the way of her having a nature-iphany, with the help of a hermit living in the woods. Meanwhile, Bob and Linda experience what it's like to be empty-nesters.
Synopsis[]
At the Belcher apartment kitchen, Tina is watching a promo video on the family laptop for the outdoor Education Center, which describes how kids learn everything from animal leavings to teamwork to get to the top of a local mountain called Mount Windygap, and how the experience leads to powerful “nature-iphanies”. Tina is enthralled, hoping to reach the mountaintop and have a nature-iphany, while Louise is glad to be having four days away from school at the camp, even if the teachers are there. Tina however believes it will be life-changing, and fantasizes about climbing the mountain with other students and bonding with a giant eagle to become known as “Teagle”. Louise however brings up that Tina already has a nickname at school; Tina refuses to say what it is to Linda.
Gene reveals it is “Fluffy Butt”, and Tina reveals why: She was in the girl’s bathroom one day, thinking she was alone, and started singing the jingle from the Cloud Fresh toilet paper song, a take-off on “Lollipop” with “fluffy butt” substituted. Unfortunately, Tammy was in the bathroom as well, and she called in a bunch of girls to listen and then laugh at Tina. Tina is mad, as now she has to hear it in class, in the halls, and on the morning announcements. Bob tries to assuage her fears by saying nicknames don’t last forever, but also to be careful, as fighting nicknames makes them stick, and he “knew a kid” who was nicknamed “Bobby Belchbottoms” who had to change schools because of it, although Linda and Louise catch on it was him. Tina however chides him for talking about “some random kid” from his past, and explains that she thinks Outdoor Ed will change everything and this is the last time anyone will hear “fluffy butt”.
Unfortunately, on the bus ride there, everyone except Tin is singing the “Fluffy Butt” song, including an oblivious Mr. Frond. After arriving at the outdoor center and camp, the students are in the mess hall listening to Ranger Carl talk about outdoor health and survival tips, as well as reports of a mysterious “Windygap Hermit” in the woods nearby, along with some missing items such as hatchets. Carl also tells them that things will be different that week, due to rain being forecast for the next few days, meaning indoor education, to everyone’s groans. Tina asks if they will do team-building on the ropes course she saw in the online video, and if they can hike to the top of Mount Windygap, but Carl tells her it’s too dangerous in the rain, especially the mountain, which has a steep notch in last quarter-mile of the trail which he call the mountain’s rain gutter. Tina continues to badger him about if the rains stop before Friday even though it is not forecast to. Although Louise tries to cheer Tina up by saying they are blowing off school, Frond announces to the students hey still will have regular schoolwork plus nature education, to their anger.
At the restaurant, Teddy tells Bob and Linda that they have three nights alone, and is bothered that Bob hasn’t made any plans nor excited for “couple’s time”. Teddy and Linda brainstorm while Bob dismisses Teddy’s suggestions (including watching hockey with him). Linda says the couple will get crazy, btu the two wake up on their couch, having fallen asleep after eating cheese.
At the outdoor center mess hall, the schoolkids are eating breakfast, while Tina complains about not being around nature and instead being cooped up. After Zeke uses a variant on her unflattering nickname, Tina storms outside with her raincoat. Wanting to go on a lifechanging nature hike, despite not being allowed due to the rain, she, Louise and Gene all go out on the hike. After going off-trail and poking at fox scat with a stick, Tina is disappointed and the three head back. However, they lose track of the trail, and stumble on an area with tarps hanging up, before recoiling in terror at a lady holding an axe. The woman, however, is more upset that they barged in, and explains that she just uses the hatchet to throw at trees as sport. Tina asks if she is the Windygap Hermit, which she has not heard of and is upset over, having hoped to be called “Wonder Woman of the Woods”, and how she hates labels, before doing an inhale-exhale exercise. Gene asks what she did, and she says it is a cleaning ritual she made up, and Louise wants to learn to throw the hatchet.
At the restaurant, Teddy bursts in and asks what Bob and Linda did, but is frustrated to hear they fell asleep on the couch and how this is time to reconnect with each other. Linda says they will make up for it that night, and Teddy warns them that he will come in the next day, and he better be “dazzled” by their date.
While Gene and Louise practice hatchet throwing, Tina asks the woman, Martha (or now by an unintelligible “wind name”), how long she has been out there, which Martha does not answer. She does, however, tells Tina that she has to “level up”, and tina says she hoped to but cannot because they cannot hike Mt. Windygap or do the team-building ropes course in the rain. Martha mocks the “team building”, saying that teams are “dumb”. Gene and Louise want to leave for lunch, but before they leave, Martha asks them not to reveal her presence in the woods to anyone. Back at the mess hall, they encounter Ranger Carl, who has brought a stuffed weasel for the “famous weasel song”.
Inside, as Carl tries to get the kids to pay attention for the weasel song, Tina sits down next to Jimmy Jr., who asks where she was, and is confused by Tina’s “level up” talk. When Tammy calls her “F-Butt”, Tina snaps back but calms using the exhaling-and-“Labels” exercise she saw Martha do. Tammy is shocked, thinking she is being called “labels”, and tells Tina it is not nice to call her names, even as Tina points out that’s what she’s been doing.
At the apartment that night, Bob and Linda sit on the couch and put on their date night clothes and are prepared to go crazy, but fall sleep on the couch before they can leave.
In the woods, Gene and Louise continue to practice with hatchets, while Tina says the cleansing ritual did make her feel better, before the kids started over. Martha asks why she cares so much about what the other kids think, and Tina isn’t sure, she just does. Martha tells Tina that she is living her life for other people, which Tina considers. Martha says of how in her previous life, she had a one-bedroom apartment, a leased car, and a job at a brand management company in an office park, but once she left society, she doesn’t care what people think. Tina is amazed, but still wishes she’d gone to the top of Mt. Windygap. Martha insinuates about the mountain, and reluctantly answers Tina’s questions that she went to the top of the mountain by herself, and Tina thinks she is a hero.
At the Belcher apartment that night, Bob is waiting for Linda, who comes out of the bedroom in her dress but with a very orange spray-tan all over her. After Bob says she looks like she has jaundice, she sprays some of the tanning formula on his forehead. When it doesn’t come off, she sprays him all over with it. She gets some of Bob’s old clothes out of the closet, despite his reluctance, but soon he finds himself loving how he looks with the spray tan and a white sport coat (to the point he’s not sure how she looks because he cannot take his eyes off himself).
In the girl’s bunk cabin at the camp, Tina tells Tammy she doesn’t think if what other people think about her, which Tammy and Jocelyn test with new versions of the nickname, and slightly frustrate her.
At The Lucky Lizard, a bar and nightclub, Bob and Linda arrive for dancing. Bob is skeptical, asking if they can go to a place “more from the present’. The bartender compliments Bob, and serves them Long island iced Teas. Later, Bob and Linda dance on the disco floor in the back of the bar, and drink more Long Island iced teas. The bar later closes, but the Belchers say their kids are out of town and they take a bunch of the drunken bar patrons back to party. The next morning, the two walk up on the couch disheveled. They remember bringing people back, and are excited that they might be cool now, until they see the mess left in the kitchen by the drunks drinking and eating then leaving things around.
At the girl’s cabin, tina writes in her diary that she will never stop caring about what people think of her if she is too afraid to “level” up, and decides to climb Mt. Windygap alone like Martha (along with a dream where Jimmy Jr. and Zeke switched heads). In the mess hall, Ranger Carl is leading another sing-along no one else is following, so gene and Louise decide to go back to Martha’s to throw hatchets. They note Tina is missing, and check the bunk bed cabin to find it empty. Finding Tina’s diary, they are shocked to find out about Tina’s plan to climb the mountain herself (as well as seeing she is having the head-switch dream again).
On the base of Mount Windygap, Tina is unsure she can do it but continues climbing. At Martha’s camp, Gene and Louise find it deserted before hearing something in a tarp tent. They open the tent to find Martha sitting in an easy chair, playing a game on her phone, surrounded by items like a TV, boombox, fan, microwave, hot plate, towel warmer, coffee maker and more. She is shocked to see them, and Gene accuses her of being a “glamper”. “Level up” is revealed to be a phrase from the phone game she was playing, she also has a DVD “Letting Go: Cleansing Rituals for Divorced Men”, which is where she got the “cleansing ritual”. Louise asks where she got all the stuff, and Martha admits most of it is form the ranger’s cabin. Louise says they believed her, and Martha says she was excited and though she was the Wonder Woman of the Woods at first, but lasted half a day before getting hungry, then stealing food from the Outdoor Ed center, and then a microwave to cook it, and a Wi-Fi router.
Louise calls Martha a fraud, and Martha chuckles when she admits she never climbed Mt. Windygap by herself. An angry Louise, however, points out that her sister is now trying to climb that mountain by herself due to believing Martha’s lies. Martha asks what she could do as Tina was staring at her. Louise tells gene they need to find “real” grownups to help. In the mess hall, the other students are working on arts and crafts. Louise and gene approach frond for help, but he doesn’t pay attention as he is “swamped”, trying to keep the kids from misbehaving while others are locked in and out of their cabins, and ignores them telling hm that Tina was led astray and is now going up the mountain. Behind the mess hall, the two meet up with Martha when Tammy, Jocelyn, Jimmy Jr. and Zeke approach them in their raincoats, as they cannot take it inside anymore and asks what they are doing. Gene tells them they’re going to save Tina’s life, and they all leave to find her.
At the restaurant, Teddy is looking inside as the restaurant is still closed past opening time. Linda and Bob call to him from the living room window, and eventually manage to get him to look up. He gets a strong scent of vomit, and they explain they went to the Lucky Lizard and some “lizards” followed them home, so the place is trashed. Teddy is proud of them while saying they managed to stink up the block.
At the outdoor center mess hall, Frond remembers that Belchers wanted something but cannot find them, while Ranger Carl asks if he is okay, and Frond offhandedly tells him about them looking for their sister up the mountain and the hermit. Carl is concerned about the hermit, and walks out into the rain to find them and Tina. As Tina climbs up the mountain’s rock pile on the path, she hears a rushing sound and narrowly avoids being swept away by the rainwater.
In the rocky mountain gully, Tina is trapped by the rushing water, with the rock walls too steep to go forward, and the trail below covered in water, she calls for help. Carl catches up to the group in the woods, and is surprised that Martha is the person he’s spent the last two weeks trying to catch, before Louise tells him to wait, as they need to rescue her sister, which the ranger agrees to, while saying afterwards that Martha will get a citation for illegal camping and stealing their microwave. They finally reach Tina, by climbing on the upper rocky area of the trail that was not washed out. However, a second surge of water comes in, causing them to hug the wall tighter, with Tina, Zeke, Jimmy Jr. and Ranger Carl on one side, and Tammy, Jocelyn, Gene, Martha and Louise on the other.
Carl tries to radio in for help, but the walkie-talkie slips out of his hands into the water. Tina says she is no warrior hermit like Martha, and Louise gets Martha to talk, who admits that she never climbed Mt. Windygap alone, and that she wasn’t really a hermit, she just seemed like it because she was throwing a hatchet, to Tina’s shock since it all sounded true. Martha tried being a hermit, but found it was so hard, as well as boring ,wet, and cold, but she could not go home because of her own team-building issues and label issues, like when her brand management company expected her to run a small team with a coworker named Brian, who kept interrupting meetings with “Brian no likey” and she was somehow seen as the mean one. After Carl says they can talk about it later as they need a way down, Tina suggests the only way they can go is up (while Tammy and Jocelyn soon get distracted and begin discussing Jocelyn’s jacket).
At the Belcher apartment, Linda is washing dishes and happy someone ate her leftover linguini in the kitchen while Bob cleans but he asks if they have to, instead of moving or something. Linda says the kids cannot know what happened, as if they, the parents, get busted for having people over, then they will never be able to tell the kids not to do dumb things like they did. She does, however, chide for throwing everything including plates away.
In the mountain trail, Carl notes the rain will wash them away, and Gene asks why “Outdoor Ed” has forsaken them. Just then, Tina gets an idea. Remembering the outdoor ed video ropes course, which had people leaning at each other and climbing by pushing their hands against each other in a “two-man steeple” formation; she suggests they lean out to the person across form them and grab hands, and then sidestep. Tina does this first with Tammy, and then the others follow, with Louise hanging onto Martha’s shoulders as she is smaller than the rest and without someone to lean on. They all mange to sidestep out, and then climb to the top of the mountain as the rain stops. They all look out at the landscape in awe as Tina happily thinks they are having their nature-iphanies. Tina tells them she realizes one cannot “level up” on their own, but also cannot rely on other people to make you feel you feel the way you want to feel, teamwork and alone stuff. So she. Does not care if people call her “Fluffy Butt” or “teagle”, when a crow flies by and repeats “fluffy butt” in its caws. Ranger Carl then awkwardly hits on Martha.
At the Belcher apartment in the evening, the kids arrive home as Bob and Linda, tired and still spray-tanned, sit on the couch asking how the trip was. Louise smells beer and puke, which Bob tires to pass off as Linda’s perfume, but Louise asks if they threw a party while the kids were out of town. Linda denies it, but then Gene finds a middle-aged lady (one of the bar attendees) in his bed, who asks if there is any linguini left as Louise points at her parents in a happy accusing tone.
Videos[]
External links[]
- "Go Tina on the Mountain" on IMDb
- "Go Tina on the Mountain" press release via The Futon Critic
- "Go Tina on the Mountain" script via Springfield! Springfield!
- "Go Tina on the Mountain" review at The A.V. Club