| “ | I think I could Shining all of you if I had to. | ” |
"The Nightmare 2 Days Before Christmas" is the tenth episode in Season 14, being the two-hundred-and-seventieth episode overall. It is the twelfth Christmas-themed episode.
Plot[]
When the power goes out two days before Christmas, the Belchers must spend the holiday at Mr. Fischoeder's family's old hunting lodge.
Full story[]
The episode starts on the morning of December 23rd, two days before Christmas. Linda is yelling across the apartment hallway to Tina, Gene, and Louise in the living room, telling her children that she's putting laundry in the washing machine. As she puts the garments into the washer, Linda warns them again not to have anything else electrical on but the T.V., giving Bob the same warning. Her husband can't understand her since he's in the bathroom, but his dread makes him know what Linda's doing exactly. He tries shouting to her that he has the toaster turned on while he's in the bathroom, but Linda can't hear him. She turns on the washer, and all the power in the building goes off, even in the restaurant.
Bob and Linda call in an electrician and Mr. Fischoeder, and they go to the restaurant's basement to check the fusebox. The mechanic tells Bob and Linda that they're lucky they only lost power since the panel's wiring is subpar. Calvin gets offended at the mechanic's comments and dodges the man's questions when he asks who installed the fusebox. The repairman tells the pair he can fix it but won't finish for Christmas. Linda is overwhelmed, but the man tells her and Bob that as their landlord, Mr. Fischoeder should find a place for them to stay in the meantime. The Fischoeder resentfully agrees, and he and his tenants return upstairs to let the mechanic do his job.
In the restaurant, Bob is writing a sign to warn future visitors that the restaurant will be closed, and Linda is pacing around. Calvin is outside on his phone, and he returns inside and tells the Belchers he can let them stay in his family's old hunting lodge. He tells them about how his father used it to train his falcons, but all of them would fly away. Linda reluctantly agrees to Mr. Fishcoeder's offer only because she gets to bring the Christmas tree they already decorated and other Christmas-y things from their home. While he never wanted to be responsible for the Belcher's accommodations in the first place, he is relieved since he won't have to pay Mr. McCornick, the old caretaker of the lodge, while they're temporarily staying. Instead, he will only have to pay the Belchers for doing the house chores at a lower price.
Bob and Linda are loading the car, and they've already brought down the tree from their apartment. They've tied the tree to the roof and stripped everything but the tinsel. Tina, Gene, and Louise are in the car, and Gene is carrying the ornaments inside a container. As soon as they finish packing, Louise worries they won't receive any presents since Santa won't know where to find them. Her parents attempt to calm her down, and they leave the restaurant and head for Mr. Fischoeder's lodge.
It's already nighttime, and the Belchers have yet to reach their temporary residency. Louise is still worried that Santa won't find her, especially because she "had very reasonable stuff on [her] list, and [she] was exactly a reasonable amount of good." Tina and Gene aren't nervous since they believe he will find them despite everything. Linda stifles her children since Bob has to concentrate entirely on driving in the dark on the snowy, slippery road, and she tells them that if they fall into a ravine, they can eat her and their father. Gene gets dibs on his mom's legs.
They make it to the lodge, and the Belchers are astonished by its grandness and intimidating nature. They prepare to unpack the car, and as Linda gets out, she drops everything after seeing that their Christmas tree isn't on top of their car anymore. The mother is overwhelmed and tells her family they should try finding where the tree ended in the morning. Bob dissuades her because of how impossible it is even to get here. The family enters the dark building, and Bob navigates the darkness to find the light switch. When he finds the switch, Linda and her children are shocked to see a falcon fully preserved in front of their faces. They collect themselves and head to the kitchen to place some of their luggage. Louise is relieved to see a chimney since that's how Santa could enter and give her (and her siblings) presents. However, the family is horrified by a morbid painting facing the dinner table with a scene of multiple falcons ripping apart a rabbit. The Belchers all go upstairs (by riding a slow elevator) to find a bedroom in this large lodge to sleep in.
The following morning, the family is eating breakfast in the dining room. Bob still isn't over the horrifying painting, Linda isn't over losing the Christmas tree, and Louise isn't over the potential of missing presents from Santa. Louise brings up the cookies they always bake for Santa, and Bob remembers that they forgot to pack flour for the cookies, sending Louise into another panic. Gene goes to the kitchen to search for some flour, but all he finds is rum. To at least have a tree Santa can place presents under, Louise suggests her family go outside and chop a new tree down since coniferous evergreens surround them.
The Belchers follow Louise's plan, despite resistance from Linda, with Bob holding an axe that he isn't carrying well. Linda wants to get this over with and picks any tree. However, Tina asks her dad if trees die when people cut them down, and when he reminds his family that they do indeed die, they're suddenly hesitant about doing this and decide not to chop down a tree. Linda decides to go and look for the tree herself and buy flour for the cookies. Bob is uneasy, but his wife tells him it'll be safe because it's morning and it isn't snowing like yesterday night.
Linda is driving down the mountain, hyping herself up so she doesn't get dissuaded and give up on her search for the missing Christmas tree. However, she ends up at the bottom of the mountain before she knows it. She buys the flour at a nearby gas station and heads back to the lodge.
Tina, Gene, and Louise are in a snowball fight, but Tina notices that Louise isn't too into it. Louise is still worried about Santa and gets the idea to spell something out on the field in front of the lodge to get Santa's attention and presents, possibly with fire.
While Linda heads up the mountain to her family, she spots the Christmas tree from a distance, seeing that it slid down a slope when she and her family were driving to the lodge. She decides to call Bob to tell her that she found the tree (and to tell him "I told you so" a couple of times). The call fails because of the lack of reception here. Linda tries sliding down the mountain to retrieve the Christmas tree, but she falls on her butt and facefirst a couple of times to get to the tree.
Meanwhile, Bob leaves Linda a voicemail while brushing the lodge's bear head mount in the dining room (one of his tasks for Mr. Fischoeder), worried that something had happened to her. His children are still outside, and instead of using fire, they decided to use sticks to spell out a message for Santa. However, they run out of good sticks to use, so they start thinking of other things they could throw away for their beacon. Tina, Gene, and Louise return inside to find some items for their message, but they see their father putting a tarp on the painting to cover it, but it fails to stay up. Louise tries to steal Bob's tarp for their beacon but stops pestering him after Tina finds skis convenient for spelling out messages to Santa.
Linda tries dragging the Christmas tree back up to the car but keeps failing. She starts getting worried as the sun becomes obscure and it starts snowing. As Linda is about to reach the car, she falls again with the tree, sliding and tumbling down even further than where the tree initially was.
Bob leaves Linda another voicemail as he tries putting the tarp back up, this time with a broom. Tina, Gene, and Louise return inside, telling their father to look out the window at their message for Santa: "BELCHER." After seeing what his children made, he heads outside to find Linda.
Linda is still trying to pull the tree up, but she gives up once and for all. Linda tells the tree that she could have just gone back to the lodge and gotten Bob to help her, but she decided not to because she couldn't live with herself if both she and her husband died and left their children on their own. Linda gets a nearby pinecone and twig and puts it on the tree, calling them ornaments. As the Belcher tries to return to the car, her leg gets caught in the Christmas tree's branches. She shakes the tree off, abandons it, and drives back to the lodge before finding Bob cold on the road. He goes into the car, and while driving to their children, Linda tells her husband how she had to give up on retrieving the tree.
Linda and Bob return to the lodge, where their children anticipate their return. The pair find them in the kitchen, and Linda announces she has flour for Santa's cookies. Tina, Gene, and Louise hug their mother as she apologizes for being caught up on finding the tree instead of being with her family on Christmas Eve. Tina shows her the Christmas tree they made here, with sticks and skis they used for their Santa beacon and some ornaments they brought from the apartment. The Belcher children replaced the sticks and skis in the message with all the house towels. They also show Bob how they covered the graphic scene in the painting with tape, wrapping paper, and present bows. The parents are pleased with both of the things their children did. Linda tells her family they're going to be baking some cookies for Santa as soon as she digs all the snow out of her butt.
In the end credits sequence, Linda and her children go to the oven and look at the baking cookies as Bob is prepping frosting on the kitchen island. As he does that, the wrapping paper covering the rabbit falls off, showing the horrific image again and startling Bob.
Videos[]
External links[]
- "The Nightmare 2 Days Before Christmas" on IMDb
- "The Nightmare 2 Days Before Christmas" press release via The Futon Critic
- "The Nightmare 2 Days Before Christmas" script via Springfield! Springfield!
| Season 14 Episode Navigation | v • t • e | |
|---|---|---|
| Fight at the Not Okay Chore-ral • The Amazing Rudy • The Pickleorette • Running Down a Gene • Bully-ieve It or Not • Escape from Which Island? • The (Raccoon) King and I • Wharf, Me Worry? • Fraud of the Dead: Zombie-docu-pocalypse • The Nightmare 2 Days Before Christmas • Mission Impossi-Bob • Jade in the Shade • Butt Sweat and Fears • The Big Stieblitzki • The Right Tough Stuff • To Catch a Beef | ||
| ← Season 13 | See also: Episode Guide | Season 15 → |