“Whatever gets picked will be the school song for the next hundred years, probably. Should it really be about poop? Or whatever the hell Rudy's doing?”
"Wag the Song" is the fourteenth episode in Season 10, being the one-hundred-and-eighty-sixth episode overall.
Plot[]
Tina competes against Gene and Louise to write a new school song for Wagstaff but finds herself creatively stalled. Meanwhile, Bob and Linda battle blinding glare from Jimmy Pesto's new shiny steel awning across the street.
Synopsis[]
At Wagstaff, school photos are being handed out, but Tina is left out since every year on school picture day, she has always come down ill. Tina is frustrated and wondering what make or legacy she will leave with the school. Later at an assembly in the gym, Frond announces that the Wagstaff Whalers school song is being retired after decades, due to the graphically violent nature of the lyrics about hunting and slaughtering whales. As a result, an all-school song contest will be held that Friday, with students writing and performing their submissions, and the winner chosen by student audience applause. The winner's one will immortalize them and their name will be put on a plaque, which catches Tina's attention as she thinks of the possibility of her name being remembered in the school's future. Louise meanwhile is excited by how Frond has set up the rules so the kids both write and decide the songs, which she point out will result in "the dumbest, most offensive, most wrong for kids" song as the winner. She and Gene set out to write a song involving pee and poop, while Tina encounters writer's block and is unable to come up with nay words besides "Wagstaff."
Tina still attempts, despite Louise and Gene trying t ogre her to join them in creating the song "Pee Pee Poo Poo". In the schools' music room the next day, other students are writing and practicing songs, to little avail, and performing for Mr. Frond to judge. Tammy's song name-checks every student in the school (except Jocelyn at first); Jocelyn's is simply the word "whoa" over and over. Jimmy Jr. and Zeke's rock-style number includes inappropriate innuendo about being "inside" of the school; Courtney's song has a high "D" note which she fails to hit, and Rudy's is a "Love Shack"-style talking number. Frond outright tells the students their songs are terrible, and realizes to his horror that one of them will win, which would make another one of his proposals out to be a disaster (after "Bring A Stranger To School Day") and he will get fired. After everyone else leaves, Tina approaches to withdraw from the contest, and laments that she could not find the right words to the song. Frond hears her melody and starts writing lyrics down, coming up with nine verses and a bridge for Tina.
Tina is excited by how she 'wrote" the song with someone else writing it down, but Louise is suspicious of how fast she wrote the song, and how wordy it is. Less than 24 Horus before the contest, the students are still working on their songs, and Frond explains that the AV club is setting up the sound system while encouraging students to drop out of the contest. His use of the word "stalwart" however catches Louise's attention, as it was in Tina's song as well. She and Gene confront Tina about how she didn't write her song, causing her to run off. Tina goes to Frond's office and asks if she wrote the song or he did, and Frond admits he did while Tina wrote her name, causing Tina to feel like a fraud. Frond convinces her that the other songs cannot win, and they need applause to win, so Frond decides to get more applause to help set off a "Clap-o-tronic" he had bought earlier. Tina records at the boy's basketball game that night, and the tape is ready the next day for the contest by being hooked into the sound speakers. During the contest, Tina gets anxious de to her guilt at cheating, and she admits to Gene and Louise that the applause meter is rigged, and how she so badly wanted to leave her make on the school. At the microphone, she states that maybe legacy is not the most important thing and if future kids and robots think she is cool, how she is in the present, and starts singing her original song. Gene and Louise start performing their song in order to help her, but Jimmy Jr. and Zeke's song "Wagstaff, You're A School, I Want to Be Inside of You" is the winner.
Jimmy Pesto has the cloth awning from his restaurant replaced with a new shining steel awning, made from old Ferrari bumpers. Later, the restaurant is getting hotter, and Bob realizes it's from the awning across the street; with its curves and lack of paint, it is reflecting the sunlight directly into Bob's Burgers. Bob walks over to complain, but Jimmy and Trev do not care and mock his cooking and threat to call the city. The next day, Teddy holds up a piece of cardboard over the window to block the sun, despite offers to tape it up and Bob and Linda telling him to put odnw the cardboard as it warms, and the heat from the sun on the cardboard burns his hands. Another attempt is made by taping up newspapers over the windows of the restaurant, writing "Still Open" on it. Bob's fears of looking abandoned however are proven true, as a passerby enters to express his condolences at their closing, while a relator task about the amount of work needed to fix the place up before Bob tears down the newspapers in frustration. Bob, Linda and Teddy attempt to cover the awning in bird poop by throwing pieces of bread to attract seagulls, only for the bread to roll off due to not being wet. Finally, Bob rips the bathroom mirror off the wall and uses it in an attempt. to reflect back at Jimmy, but instead accidentally hits Trev due to Teddy's inability to make out differences between them with the sun in his eyes. The trio walk over as a blinded Trev gets back up, and Linda tries to call a truce to do something about the awning. Jimmy refuses, but Trev makes him admit that he doesn't actually like the awning: it's hot, echoey, and rain falling on it creates incredibly loud sounds. Jimmy was keeping it up only because it was making Bob miserable. He still refuses since it cost a lot, but Teddy's suggestion to take it down and use it to replace the crusty trough urinal in Pesto's men's room delights him as the "classiest thing" he's ever heard of.