WordGirl

“Rhyme and Reason, Parts 1 and 2”, Season 8 Episode 12

Requested By

WordiGirl on Discord

What do I know about this series going into it?

I’d never heard of it before the request. It seems to be a PBS kids show about a word-themed superhero.

Every source seems to list the episodes in a different order. Wikipedia claims this is the last episode and says it’s season 8 of episode 12. Amazon puts this as the 10th episode of season 9 and lists another episode after it - but the latter has an earlier airdate, so that can’t be right. JustWatch does that thing where it lists a dozen blank episodes with no names or descriptions, just to mess with your head.

This is probably the correct finale. Probably.

Recap

According to the opening credits, Wordgirl is a superhero from the planet Lexicon, with the powers of flight and a large vocabulary. It’s not quite clear how she uses this vocabulary to defeat villains. Her pet monkey, “Huggy Face”, is also superpowered.

The narrator, Chris Parnell, sets the scene: WordGirl is at Violet’s house, and the latter has set up automated cameras in her backyard to take photographs of nature.

Meanwhile, at a bank across town, we are introduced to a pair of supervillains named Rhyme and Reason. Rhyme is the mastermind of their crime spree: they steal expensive stuff (like gold bars) and then steal something that happens to rhyme with it (like old cars). Rhyme is very much into the rhyming shtick - but Reason is not very enthused. “We never get stopped stealing the first thing!” he complains. “And then we go steal something that isn’t even valuable, just because it rhymes, and it doesn’t help that you announce what it is in advance!”

As he tries to reason (ha!) with her, he doesn’t notice, the bank teller activating the Wordgirl Signal.

WordGirl, detecting the signal with her superpowers (perhaps super-hearing?) makes her excuses to Violet and heads into the backyard - but Violet’s automated cameras capture her taking off.

WordGirl arrives at the bank and the battle begins. The villains’ tactic: Reason says something that rhymes with what he thinks Rhyme should do (like ‘breezy’), and Rhyme uses a related superpower against WordGirl (like ‘breath that is freezy’, i.e., freeze breath). WordGirl complains: You’ve got super strength and freeze breath? What does that even have to do with rhyming?

For a moment I consider that Rhyme’s true power is to develop any superpower that she can claim to have on the basis of a rhyme. But eventually Reason explains that, no, she just has a couple of superpowers, and he’s just helping her realize when to use them. He himself has no powers.

At some point Wordgirl stops fighting for a moment to explain, at length, what the word ‘harmony’ means. This had been mentioned earlier by the narrator as one of the two key vocabulary words in the episode. It doesn’t help her defeat them, though; for that she uses her super strength and speed.

When Wordgirl comes back to Violet’s house, she calls her “Bob” and then “Becky” for some reason. After that, however, she sticks with “Becky” so I will too.

“Are you keeping secrets from me?” she asks.

“Of course not,” says Becky.

“Are you sure?” she asks again.

Becky, not getting the hint, denies it again. Violet asks again: “Not even one?” and again and again and again.

She has read the dictionary from cover to cover, but she can’t read a room to save her life.

Finally, Violet reveals the photographs.

Having been picked up by the police, Rhyme is still rhyming everything in the back of the police van. Reason is completely fed up: “I can’t do this anymore!” Rhyme interprets this as a prompt to break through the floor of the police van, which she does, extricating herself and her partner successfully. But Reason still walks off: “I quit.”

“But you’re my best friend!” she says sadly.

Meanwhile, back at Violet’s house, WordGirl is attempting - badly - to salvage the situation.

“Clearly those pictures were photoshopped!”

“I’m only going to ask you once,” says Violet. “And whatever answer you give me, I’ll believe it. Are you WordGirl?”

Becky admits it, although I would’ve given a lot to see if Violet genuinely would’ve believed another denial. The WordGirl told her to reject the evidence of her eyes and ears…

Violet cries. But now that Becky has admitted it, she says she’s not mad; they just aren’t friends anymore, if they ever were friends. “All you’ve ever done is lie to me.”

Becky leaves, sadly, and the narrator is as flustered and worried as she is. Maybe she’ll team up with Reason, who never wanted to be a criminal anyway, and have to defeat Rhyme and Violet?

Next we go to the set of a game show called “May I have a word”; I briefly think this takes place inside the WordGirl universe, but it’s actually external to the show: the characters have to define the meaning of a word based on representative clips from the show, in this case the word “wedged”.

Part two of the episode begins with the narrator exhorting Rhyme and Reason and Becky and Violet to get out of their funk and do something to continue the story, but they’re all sitting around depressed that their friendships have ended.

Later, on a playground, Becky gets up the courage to approach Violet, but an idiot gets in the way: “Help!” he shouts. “There’s a girl I don’t recognize, wrecking stuff!” Violet has to explain that he’s on a playground, not in a police station, which seems to take him by surprise.

The wrecker is of course Rhyme, who’s abandoned the idea of rhyming and just wreaking havoc, furious that Reason has left. WordGirl tries to stop her, but Rhyme is far too powerful.

So WordGirl realizes her only hope is to find Reason and hope he can talk some himself into Rhyme. But he could be anywhere in the city…

Like coincidentally driving right past her.

He doesn’t want to cooperate, but she arrests him for possession of stolen goods (the car) and brings him to Rhyme. He has apparently changed his mind on the way over, though, and tries to prompt Rhyme as usual: “I’d like to start up this car, and drive away really…” But she petulantly refuses to go along with it.

“I never had a problem with the rhymes,” Reason tells her. “I just hated the pointless stuff that we kept stealing, like those mules we stole after stealing jewels. We spent so much money feeding them we actually lost money over all!¹”

They hug and make up, after which they resume their prompt-and-attack stratagem against WordGirl.

“Thanks for helping us get back together!”

They even defeat the monkey, whose name it seems isn’t just Huggy Face but Captain Huggy Face.

But Violet, who was in the crowd of civilians watching the mayhem, sneaks past the police and approaches the big pit of destruction in the street, where she deliberately ends a sentence with the word “Purple”. Rhyme stops beating up on WordGirl. She’s at a loss: she can’t find a word that rhymes with it²!

As she agonizes over the lack of a rhyme, powerless to continue, WordGirl breaks free from the ice and arrests them. They continue trying to search for a rhyme from the back of the patrol car.

“Why did you come back?” WordGirl asks Violet. She isn’t sure. “Can we be friends again?”

“I have to think about it,” says Violet.

The next day, Violet approaches Becky on the playground and introduces herself as if they’d never met. “I thought it would be nice if we started over,” she explains. “Who are you?”

Becky introduces herself as Becky, and Violet’s face falls, until Becky adds, “I also sometimes fight crime as WordGirl.”

“Whaaaat?” cries out Violet. “That’s a crazy thing to tell somebody you just met!”

“Because I feel like we’re giong to be best friends,” Becky explains.

As they walk off together, a giant robot starts attacking the city. Violet nods at WordGirl and she takes off to save the day.

“Since we’re coming clean,” Violet says to Captain Huggy Face, “I always knew you were a monkey.”

What.

Before the credits, there’s is a bonus round of “May I have a word”, where a contestant wins a two-person rocket-powered trapeze. The host, Beau Handsome, is disappointed that he never gets to try out or win the cool prizes himself.

Lingering questions

• What was Violet pretending she thought Captain Huggy Face was, if not a monkey?

• How old is Becky supposed to be? From scene to scene my guess shifted repeatedly from 9 to 35 and everywhere in between.

Ratings

I evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. This will likely differ greatly from how the episode works in its proper context. And it should go without saying that the following does not apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.

The rating system is from 0 to 10, where 5 is considered average for television. These are intended to be measurements, not judgements; a low rating may reflect low quality, but it may also reflect a deliberate choice. For example, a strong character piece may have no plot, or a finale may intentionally provide no closure - neither of which makes an episode bad.

Story: 7/10. A simple story elevated by a thematically appropriate subplot and a truly original approach to a villainous pairing. No notes.

Writing: 7/10. I loved the metahumor and the winking at the audience. I loved the way WordGirl actively mocks the villains for the way they got caught, and the way Reason kept pointing at her and saying to his partner, “See? See? This is why we have to stop with the rhyming nonsense!” I laughed out loud at least five times - no small feat in a half-hour episode! Even the bank teller was hysterical.

The matching of the Rhyme-and-Reason breakup with the Becky-and-Violet one was perfectly executed. The two plots really did complement each other well.

I really wanted to give this higher, but I think the vocabulary lessons were too didactic. They felt shoehorned in, which is ironic given that they’re the whole reason for the show; technically it’s the rest of the dialogue that was shoehorned in.

Also, it felt kind of odd that it was Violet’s vocabulary that saved the day. WordGirl’s main superpower is that of a great vocabulary and it was the one thing she didn’t use!

Production: 7/10. Pretty standard (maybe even a little bit substandard) animation, but it’s more than made up for by the good comedic timing and the excellent voice acting from literally everyone involved: Rhyme, Reason, WordGirl, the bank teller. I have no idea why Violet talks like the creepy owner of the motel in front of which your car broke down during a full moon, but I’m here for it.

“…that I found in the attic from the 1870s? I appear in all of them.”

Characterization: 4/10. Becky’s a bit of a nonentity, but I got to know the guest characters and Violet pretty well. There are a few inconsistencies, like how Reason turns on a dime from being enthusiastic about crime to fed up with it and back, or thanks WordGirl for her help and then immediately directs Rhyme to attack her mercilessly.

Accessibility: 9/10. I’m still not clear on how WordGirl actually uses vocabulary to fight crime, because in this episode she didn’t; it was Violet who did that. But other than the brief moment when Violet called her “Bob”, I was never really lost. Was that just a random name she chose, a way to hint that she’s about to accuse Becky that she doesn’t really know her?

Closure: 7/10. The reveal of the secret identity to the best friend is not often a series finale, more often a season finale, but it’s momentous nonetheless. And I’m given to understand this is the only two-parter they ever did, so it deserves an extra point just for that.

Do I want to watch the series now?

It’s genuinely hilarious, though marred by the awkward vocabulary asides. I don’t think my kids would appreciate it, as it’s not quite their taste, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to them if it were.

Is there a series finale you’d like me to try? Join our Discord or leave a comment below.

1. Reason is a fool. I’ve looked it up. A single mule can sell for anywhere between $1,600 and $15,000!

2. It seems Rhyme isn’t a fan of Susie Dent, or she’d know about ‘hurple’.