| “ | So, name-wise, I'm thinking Boaty Boaty Bo-Boaty, Banana Fana Flo-Floaty Me My Mo-Moaty, unless another member already has that name. | ” |
"What About Blob?" is the seventeenth episode in Season 9, being the one-hundred-and-sixty-seventh episode overall.
Plot[]
Gene convinces Tina and Louise to help him save a misunderstood plankton blob from being destroyed by a yacht club.
Full story[]
The Belcher kids are walking home from school, with Gene frustrated at how he got in trouble: during lunchtime, he began banging on the metal under a table in trying to create a “revolutionary sound” but Frond called a ‘major disturbance.” The three go to the beachside oyster bar before heading home, Gene having found that having several oysters helps him mellow. They notice a giant green blob out near boats in the ocean, finding it ugly, but the bartender tells them it is the most important stuff in the ocean, being plankton that props up the rest of the food web.
At the restaurant that night, Gene is banging a mop handle repeatedly against two stools to replicate his sound, which annoys everyone else and drives off Mort. At hearing that the sounds are annoying his family, a frustrated Gene walks out for some air, and Bob tells Louise and Tina to go with him as it is getting dark. Down at the beach, the girls sit on rocks as Gene vents about how people find his sounds annoying and kicks a small rock into the sea, which suddenly glows for a second. Surprised, he throws another rock, and finds the water glowing again. Louise skips a rock, and soon they see the water glowing in the small waves.
The next day, Bob returns from grocery shopping when Trev tries insulting him from across the street, but it doesn’t work. Trev says he is in charge while Jimmy is on vacation, and tries talking to Bob more, who is weirder out and goes inside. Linda says he misses Jimmy, as he told her, and Bob doesn’t feel too bad for him, before finding out the kids are at the oyster bar again to see the glowing water.
At the beach by the oyster bar, the kids are looking for the blue water but only see the green plankton blob. Charles the bartender tells them that it was in fact the same blob, as some plankton glow at night in bioluminescent, and are sensitive to such things as lights and sound. Gene is fascinated, feeling a kinship with the blob that’s also found “Annoying”. However, he overhears two delivery guys, who are picking up oysters for the Glencrest yacht club, talking about how their boss wants the plankton blob bleached if it does not go away before the upcoming regatta, and is horrified.
Later, Gene dresses in a jacket and ascot (really one of Bob’s dish rags), and explains to his parents his plan to talk to the yacht club people to not destroy the plankton blob. But there are several holes in said plan, so Linda tells the girls to go with him, as he’s already upset about everyone being on his sounds and they finally go to avoid cleaning the restaurant. At the Glencrest club, the kids walk in and talk with a maitre’d , who points out to Gene that “Glen Crest” is the club, not an individual. The see the club president and walk up to him. Gene brings up the plan to bleach the plankton blob in the marina, and the club president tells them it is an option, as the blob blew into the marina but will not blow out. he dismisses Gene’s threat to tell the story to Olsen Brenner and tells the kids the blob is full of toxins that kill shellfish, and says he will order a study of the plankton to see if it is dangerous or not. This, along with free samples from the buffet and sodas, placates them.
The next day, Trev walks into the restaurant, and says Jimmy would have made fun of Bob for not having customers. Trev says Jimmy is “the best”, which Bob disagrees, and Trev says sometimes he wishes Jimmy and himself didn’t pick on Bob as much, but still tries to high-five Bob for a non-existent insult, while showing that jimmy mocks Bob in their text messages. Linda tells Trev that he is a nice-ish guy and Jimmy turns him into a “meanie weenie”, which Trev denies and storms out.
At the club, the kids walk right in and approach the president, who forgot about the other day and hastily tells them the “study” showed they lob was harmful, but keeps it away from the kids and points to someone outside as an “oceanographer” who did the study to tell them. Outside on the pier, the man tells them the plankton had bad stuff in it and walks off. Louise points out that bleaching the water may everything else in the water as well, but the president tells them it is an eco-friendly process of sprinkling bleach powder before the regatta, before forcing the kids out of the club.
Outside the marina, Gene looks at the blob from the railing, when Tina notices the “oceanographer” in a red waiter’s vest bringing champagne to a boat. Gene is outraged that the club lied to them, and wants to call Channel Six News, before Louise suggests a new plan: the club does not know that they figured out they were tricked. So, the club will let its guard down, and the kids can do a plan Louise thinks up, that requires someone with knowledge of yacht clubs and would love to take Glencrest down in the next day’s regatta.
That night, the trio head to Kingshead Island, and talk to Sasha and Duncan outside the island yacht club. Louise proposes that they help keep the plankton blob in the Glencrest marina, but Sasha says no and Tina gets distracted by Duncan’s ankles. Gene says that Glencrest is only looking to destroy the blob in time for the regatta, and Sasha realizes that if the blob is still there, then Glencrest will look like slobs. Gene and Louise tell them that the next morning, the Glencrest hench people will try and sprinkle bleach on the blob, but they need to replace it with something that won’t harm the ocean. Sasha suggests pinko breadcrumbs, which as a yacht club member he can get in large quantities. The deal is made, the blob will be saved, and Glencrest will be humiliated.
Trev comes into the restaurant to apologize for freaking out the previous day. Linda apologizes as well, and Trev admits he wasn’t ready to admit his only real bond with Jimmy is making fun of Bob, and he wants to be nicer. Linda notes that while he can’t stop Jimmy from insulting Bob, he can stop high-fiving. Linda decides to role-play and pretends to be Jimmy, making insults at Bob as he stands next to her, to get Trev to not high-five every time. Teddy comes in and joins in, and each time Trev keeps giving high-fives, to Bob’s frustration, including when Linda says he has a birthmark near his “peehole” that makes it look like he has two. Trev however, manages to not high-five on that.
The next morning, Sasha, takes his boat, the Cha-Ching, into the Glencrest marina and claims to be new, distracting the hench-people from going out to bleach the blob by claiming to need a new name decal. Once they leave, the kids and Duncan hop out of the yacht and take the buckets of powder bleach to dump into trash bags and replace with the breadcrumbs. They manage to get back and hide in the boat before Sasha comes back, and take off as the yacht club workers start spreading the breadcrumbs. However, the crumbs attract seagulls, and the staff soon realize what happened. Louise tells Sasha to go faster, but he refuses to make wake in a marina due to etiquette. The boat is stopped by a rope put up across the marina entrance by the president.
The club president chides them, and Gene tells him back about lying about the plankton study. The president calls the blob ugly, which infuriates Gene, but soon they are boarded in order to get the bleach back. The kids manage to flush it into the boat’s toilet tank before the staff can reach them, which angers the president who tells them to go to the store and get more bleach. gene tells him they will tell the world he bleached the bay, which he shrugs off as being bale to deny, as well as calling the blob bad again. He lifts the rope and tells them to leave, and that the Cha-Ching is forbidden in the Glencrest marina.
Duncan is upset that the bad guys won, but Gene still wants to save the blob, and Louise suggests sneaking in using the plastic kayaks for rent at a nearby booth. They manage to bribe/annoy the booth worker into letting them rent the kayaks, when Tina points out that they would be recognized at the yacht club. Louise asks if the kayak rental booth has a lost and found, which it does, and proceeds to get used clothes and accessories to disguise the five.
In their disguises, the five quietly paddle under the marina pier to get inside as the regatta crowd is present, when they see the hench-people with new bleach buckets, and form a line under Gene’s direction between their boat and the blob. The president sees them and orders them out of the marina and the bleach spread out. Gene keeps banging his paddles against the kayak in protest, which Louise notices makes the blob move away. Gene remembers what Charles said and tells the others to start banging their paddles on their kayaks (to Sasha’s annoyance, as the whole plan was to keep the blob in the marina to embarrass Glencrest, but he is turned by Gene’s speech on giving the blob a second chance). The blob continues to move away from the sound on its own, as the hench-people stand and watch. The president watches this and wonders if he was “the beast” than “the beauty” before turning his attention to the regatta.
Jimmy gets back from his vacation, which Bob and Linda see from across the street. Trev tries to talk to Jimmy about their dynamic, but Jimmy gives him a “sexy lady” bottle opener as a souvenir, before making a wisecrack about Bob, which Trev at first seems to high-five before holding back and saying his hand is sick. Bob tells Linda that he didn’t expect that and Linda may have helped Trev grow up a little. Just then, Jimmy yells to bob across the street about the “peehole birthmark” Trev told him about, while Linda tries to defend Bob but the other two are already inside.
The kids manage to get the blob out to open water, and Gene hopes the blob will I’ve in peace, right as a school of fish begin eating at it. Finding the sight hard to watch, Gene yells to any surviving plankton that he hopes to see them inside an oyster.
Videos[]
External links[]
- "What About Blob?" on IMDb
- "What About Blob?" press release via The Futon Critic
- "What About Blob?" script via Springfield! Springfield!