Love Notes for Muffy

Summary
When Muffy tries to bribe the judges at the science fair, Francine and Brain seek revenge.

Plot
The episode begins with a school science fair, with everyone's projects being judged. Muffy's project, however, contains a secret oven that holds freshly baked pastries, which she uses to bribe the judges. Afterwards, a dejected Francine and Brain laments Muffy's bribery, with Brain swearing revenge against Muffy.

During class, Brain is busy drawing revenge plots against Muffy while everyone else is working. However, none of his ideas are satisfactory. Francine pleads for Brain to let it go, but he refuses... when they both overhear Muffy talking with Prunella, one of the judges. Francine decides to team up with Brain instead.

Francine later sneaks a love note onto Muffy's desk, which Muffy discovers. While reading it to Prunella, Fern, Sue Ellen, and Francine, she imagines a handsome, rich man writing the love note. Her classmates are disbelieving, but Muffy is convinced that someone likes her. Fern correctly guesses that Francine and Brain were behind the love note, and confronts her about it in the cafeteria. Fern reveals she saw Francine put the love note on Muffy's desk, and that she knew Brain wrote it.

As Francine and Fern walk outside, Muffy comes running to them. She is trying to figure out who her secret admirer is and while she has narrowed down to twenty possible suspects, she is not successful. Muffy hires Fern as her private investigator, causing Fern to glare angrily at Francine. This causes Francine to imagine herself and Brain as prisoners being put on trial and declared guilty by her classmates.

Francine tries to convince Brain to drop his revenge plans because Fern found them out, but Brain is too focused to listen. Francine starts imagining him as an incredibly petty mad scientist who fires missiles that ring her doorbell just to annoy her.

Fern meets up with Muffy to report her failure to locate the secret admirer, to Muffy's frustration. Both Fern and Francine direct their anger towards Brain, with Francine wishing the love note scheme never happened in the first place. Brain realizes his mistake, saying, "The thrill of revenge seems to be very short-lived." However, while he is rehearsing apologies to Muffy, Muffy comes up and tells them she found out who the writer of the love note is: it's Rattles. She even wrote a response and put it in his locker.

Fearing the worst for Muffy, Brain and Francine rush to get Muffy's response before it's too late. However, they find a torn bodybuilder poster, and are caught by Rattles himself. The threat of Rattles beating them up causes both Francine and Brain to confess to thinking up the love note plot... only to see Rattles and Muffy laughing at them. After Rattles leaves, Muffy explains that she overheard Fern talking to Francine and Brain, and then asked Rattles for a "favor" — which is making Brain and Francine confess to their crime.

Francine and Brain both apologize for deceiving Muffy. Mr. Ratburn comes in to announce the winner of the science fair. Thinking he is going to announce her as the winner, Muffy requests for Mr. Ratburn to give the 1st prize award to Brain. While Mr. Ratburn is impressed with Muffy's humbleness, he reveals that she didn't win the project — it was Francine, whose project was about the nutritional value of school lunches vs. bag lunches. Brain is dismayed at how everything turned out in the end.

Major

 * Muffy Crosswire
 * Francine Frensky
 * The Brain
 * Fern Walters

Minor

 * Nigel Ratburn
 * Rattles
 * Francis Haney
 * Arthur Read
 * Binky Barnes
 * Prunella Deegan
 * Sue Ellen Armstrong
 * 4th Grade Female Aardvark (Number 2)

Cameo

 * Mary
 * Alex
 * Jenna Morgan
 * Maria Pappas
 * Leah MacGrady
 * Helen
 * 4th Grade Male Rabbit
 * Miss Sweetwater
 * 3rd Grade Male Dog
 * 3rd Grade Female Aardvark
 * 3rd Grade Male Rat
 * Steve
 * 3rd Grade Female Cat (Number 2)
 * George Lundgren

Trivia

 * At the end of the 2000 rerun intro on PBS Kids before this episode, Arthur’s crashing sound changes to the Season 5 version.
 * Maria or Jenna can be heard laughing on the merry-go-round.
 * Long before it's announced who won the science fair project award the beginning of the episode implies that it's Francine because when the judges are checking Binky's, Arthur's, Brain's and Muffy's projects they are seen checking off their boards but when they check Francine's project they aren't seen checking off their boards.
 * This is the first episode to use the title card Binky Blows a Bubble.
 * Moral: Don't bribe people for your own benefits.

Cultural references

 * Francine makes a reference to the title character in the novel The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux when she says "Brain, you have to let this go or else you'll become some crazy guy living up in the school rafters dropping chandeliers on people!"

Production notes

 * Many program scheduling systems mistakenly label this episode as the previous episode, "Grandma Thora Appreciation Day/Fern's Slumber Party".

Differences from the book

 * The book begins after the science fair, and recounts Muffy's deeds as a flashback. In the episode, the science fair scenes were shown.
 * The Phantom of the Opera reference is replaced with Arthur telling Brain to be careful, or else his brilliant science career could be ruined before it even started.

Home Video
DVD:
 * Arthur: The Complete Series 3