This week’s Big City Greens takes us into Cricket’s (albeit limited) Knowledge Bank, while Tilly discovers what it means to be a “Bad Kid.”
Trivia Night
Green + Gloria Cafe is holding their first ever Trivia night, hosted by Gloria, and a lot of recurring characters are on different teams taking part in the big game.
Nancy is even spending time with the family, and highlights everyone’s strengths as a trivia team….until Cricket pipes up and everyone is silent knowing Cricket might not be the strongest player on their Squad.
When asked what the Capital of Mexico is and Cricket answers “M,” he realizes Geography was his only category to play. The family suggests that he just be the designated buzzer presser. Cricket knows he must know something of use, so he searches his mind by literally shrinking down and going inside it to meet his memories and thoughts, or his “Brain Crickets.”
When Cricket gets to his knowledge bank, he realizes that he must have all the knowledge to prove he is not dumb. He meets the very first fact he ever learned, that dogs cannot spit, collectively known as “Spitty” around Cricket’s brain. His knowledge bank is full of different vaults that are just full of random facts about different things. One vault is food facts, and another vault is specific knowledge about the family dog, Phoenix.
Outside his brain, the game continues, but Cricket is lost in his head and can’t ring the buzzer, therefore the Green family’s early lead is disappearing.
Locked in a vault of pain facts, Cricket discovers a treasure chest of “Real Smarts” that Spitty saves from the painful facts, allowing Cricket to get away before being attacked himself.
When he gets back to the trivia game, he realizes his real facts are useless and few in number. However, after a run in with archrival Gregorian, the angry neighbor throws something at the Green family, misses, and breaks the coffee foam machine.
From there, Cricket’s assortment of knowledge, including that coffee foam can be consumed without filling you up, comes in handy as he tells the crowd to just drink the foam. Using these immediate callbacks, the crowd is able to escape and answer the last bonus question which is worth five times the points. Luckily, Ole’ Spitty has been saying the answer to that question the entire half of the episode.
Big Trouble
Bill is cleaning photos (and the rest of the house) when he dusts and polishes a family photo and calls Tilly his sweet little angel. Then, he looks at Cricket and even says one good kid out of two isn’t bad. Having finished cleaning the house, Bill steps out into the living room and hallway to discover a home covered in mud and dirt.
Immediately, Bill thinks it was Cricket’s fault but it turns out that heavenly angel Tilly was responsible for the mess since she brought Melissa the goat inside for her tap dancing lessons.
For the first time, Tilly has been punished, and realizes she is no longer the perfect child, she is now a “bad kid.” When Bill goes to let her out of her room, Tilly comes out wearing a new, darker, more goth outfit and has fully embraced her new bad kid persona.
She threatens to drink milk out of the carton and says she’s going to head out to a place called Nunya, in Big City’s Business district. When Bill realizes that she is saying “nunya business,” he threatens to revoke her extended TV privileges. Cricket catches on and realizes that being good has perks, like extended TV privileges, and he too decides to change his persona becoming a good kid.
Tilly heads out on the town with her friend Andromeda and tries to cause trouble in Big City (with minor inconveniences) and ends up doing more good than bad, including causing an impromptu meet-cute that results in an almost immediate marriage.
Fed up, she goes to the Sip and Snak and steals a candy dispenser to prove she is a bad kid, but eventually snaps and turns herself in.
At home, Cricket is the new golden child (in Gramma’s eyes) and is receiving all the positive reinforcement for being a good kid. Finally, Tilly comes home and Gramma explains to her that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, including her brother and her dad, but it doesn’t make them a bad person.
One thing I like about Big City Greens is their ability to subtly get the moral and message of each episode across. However, this episode is a bit more in your face in that regard when compared to the usual fare. If anybody is introduced to this series through this episode, they will likely think it's stereotypical kids programming when Big City Greens typically has much more to offer. Regular viewers will enjoy this episode, but may not come back to it as frequently.
This episode of Big City Greens is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW app. You can catch up with previous seasons on Disney+.