| “ | Yeah, suck it, spy! | ” |
"Radio No You Didn't" is the twentieth episode in Season 13, being the two-hundred-and-fifty-eighth episode overall.
Plot[]
Bob tells Linda and the kids the story behind an old, broken radio that used to belong to his grandmother Alice and the part it played in her discovery that a German spy lived in her building.
Full story[]
At the Belcher apartment, the kids are in the master bedroom while Linda goes through the closet. Bob comes back from a shower and wants to dress before asking Linda what she is doing. Linda says she is cleaning out the closet, after a pile of stuff fell on her. She wants to get rid of stuff, like a heavy antique radio, which Bob says was his grandma Alice's. Linda wants to get rid of the radio, as they had already taken it to a shop that said it was unfixable, but Bob says they cannot get rid of it, as it is a family heirloom, although the kids are unimpressed as it no longer works. Bob asks if the others has told them the story behind the radio, which they barely recall, except that Tina recalls something about a spy, to Louise's interest. Bob admits it's been a while since he told the story, and he begins to retell it to the family.
It was the summer of 1941, during World War Two. Bob's grandmother Alice lived in Red Point, Brooklyn, with her mother, Bob's great-grandmother Gertie. They lived near the Schoffield shipyard that was assembling submarines, and Alice was a new mother to Bob's own mother, then-six-month-old Lily. Alice's husband and Bob's grandfather Billy was fighting overseas. Lily would wake up and cry a lot, but would fall asleep with a very specific shortwave radio frequency of static on. One night, Alice was doing just this to try and get Lily to sleep when Gertie got up for water. Gertie refuses to leave the radio on the static, and it is too heavy to move into her room with Lily's crib in it, when the pigeons respond to Lily's crying. Bob explains that Billy kept a pigeon coop on the roof of the apartment building, and the two women were taking care of it. Gertie tries to shut a window, but Alice refuses due to the heat, before finally finding the right radio static to soothe Lily.
Gertie goes to bed as Alice tries to sing a song to get Lily to sleep, singing about things she sees out the window, such as her neighbor Rolo taking trash out late at night, and another neighbor, Mr. Miller, leaving food for stray cats. She also notices her other neighbor Peter coming home late from a likely second shift at the shipyard, but Lily is finally asleep. A few hours later, however, Lily wakes up again, and as Alice takes her to the living room for the static again, it stops, and Alice can hear someone speaking German on the radio. Alice recognizes the shipyard's name in the transmission. But Lily started to cry again because of the lack of static, and Bob explains, Lily's cry echoed over the radio, and then the flutter of the pigeons on the roof because of Lily's crying. Alice realizes to her horror, that there is a German spy on the roof of her apartment building.
The Belchers are intrigued at this development in the story, as the most they had were squirrels in the attic when the kids were babies, before Bob continues the story.
Alice, either being brave or sleep-deprived, decided to put Lily back in her crib once asleep to check on the roof. She goes to check, but finds it empty except for the pigeons, until she notices part of a shoe print in the poop right near the coop. Heading back downstairs, she bumped into Peter, who seemed nervous. He asked her what she was doing on the roof, and she asked back before passing it off as a joke. She asked why he was leaving early, and he said that he was working a double shift that day and trying to work as much as possible. She tries to go back to her apartment, but he catches her checking his shoes for pigeon poop and pretending her back went out.
Alice had trouble sleeping that night, and at breakfast told everything to Gertie, who didn't believe it and suggested Alice might just be exhausted (given she had poured coffee in her oatmeal without realizing it). Gertie goes to the store with Lily for groceries so that Alice can take a nap. After the nap, Alice folded laundry in the living room, when she noticed Peter coming home from the shipyard in the middle of the day, and then meeting with a guy she didn't recognize who gave a small package and then followed Peter into the alley. Alice went down to see but the alley was empty by the time she arrived. That is when Gertie, with Lily in the stroller and Mr. Miller helping carry groceries, spot Alice. Gertie ran into Miller at the store, who was talking about the flowers that he planted which math Gertie's eyes (or to her, her varicose veins). The two flirt before Gertie asks why Alice is in her bathrobe, and Alice says she saw their neighbor Peter get a package form another guy, but Gertie again dismisses the spy stuff to Miller as needing more sleep, when Rolo takes out his trash again to Alice's surprise, and Gertie's disbelief at her daughter keeping tabs on everyone.
That night, the radio static is on even though Lily is awake, as Alice wants to see if another spy broadcast comes on, and Gertie leaves her and Lily to it to play cards with Doris and her other friends. Alice notices Peter walking home again, but he looks up and sees her in the window, causing her to freak out and hide before checking and seeing he is gone off the street. She is even more nervous when there is a knock at the door. But it is only Mr. Miller, who had brought Gertie some flowers he bought at a shop (as there would be no flowers that he planted if he picked those), as Alice assures him it is the "perfect amount of corny." She lets him in for a drink, and he offers to hold the baby in the kitchen, as Alice makes tea on the stove.
Alice asks Miller if he ever noticed Peter down the hall act strange and cagey, when Lily drops her rattle under the table. Alice gets down to pick it up, but then sees something shocking: pigeon poop on Miller's shoe. Alice tries to play off her surmised sound as the being from the kettle, but Miller notes it only started whistling AFTER she was startled. Alice asks for Lily back so she doesn't spit on Miller again, but as Alice gets the tea, Miller looks and sees the pigeon poop on his shoe and realized Alice saw it. Alice however, while sure he is the spy, didn't know if he knew she knew. After her hand trembles setting down a tea cup, Alice makes up an excuse about changing Lily's diaper to leave the kitchen to call the police department in her room. But the police officer on the other end of the line doesn't believe her, and hearing Lily thinks Alice is tired, and hangs up on her as Miller enters the room.
Alice tries to make up a lie that she was calling her mother to pick up baby powder on her way home, before Miller notices there is baby powder right behind Alice. Miller gets down and pulls out the phone's cord, to Alice's horror. Alice tells him the police are on the way, but he could tell form the call that they weren't, and he apologizes as he turns the phone cord into a garrote between his hands and backs Alice into a corner, telling Alice that Gertie will take care of Lily. As he got closer, with the only possible weapons being bottle nipples and rectal thermometers, Gertie came back home, having walked all the way to Doris' and back because she forgot her wallet. She sees Mr. Miller, and at first is dismissive of Alice calling him the spy, before seeing him with the phone cord and an angry expression.
Alice saw a chance, and used her free arm not carrying Lily to push the radio onto Miller's foot, hurting him, and she, Lily and Gertie ran off. Miller managed to grab Alice's leg, but Gertie's spiked heel on his arm released his grip before they ran down the stairs.
Bob explains that Alice and Gertie got away, got help, and the police were able to track down and arrest Mr. Miller, (whose real name was something in German, but Bob cannot remember what), in the process finding the transmitter and stopping a Nazi spy ring, which got Alice in the newspapers. The kids all want to inherit the radio, before Louise asks about Peter from the shipyard. Bob explains that Peter was planning to propose to his girlfriend, and his brother was a jeweler who handed him the ring, and as Peter's girlfriend lived on the same block, so he didn't want her to see it and spoil the surprise. Louise then asks about the guy with the trash, and Bob said he just had a lot of garbage. Linda says she forgot how great Bob's grandma was, and apologizes for wanting to get rid of the radio, and Bob seconds that Alice was amazing, and that holding onto the radio keeps the story alive.
Having decided to not get rid of the radio (and after Louise thinking they will all get a chance to take down a Nazi spy), Linda asks about the other stuff, but after some failures (like Gene loving the travel pillow they never use, and the duck feet slippers she wanted to get rid of having been her birthday present from Tina the previous year), the Belchers decide to just put everything back in the closet.
External links[]
- "Radio No You Didn't" on IMDb
- "Radio No You Didn't" press release via The Futon Critic
- "Radio No You Didn't" script via Springfield! Springfield!
References[]