Francine Redecorates

Summary
Francine and her sister Catherine have to share a room. But how do you decorate when one person likes bats and lizards, and the other's tastes run to lace?

Plot
Francine starts the show by saying everyone has their own personalities: D.W. loves to sing to Crazy Bus, Muffy loves shoes, Sue Ellen offers advice on diaries, and Binky likes macaroni-and-cheese. Francine doesn't reveal what she likes, because it's for her to know and them to find out.

After the title card, the Read family are having a yard sale, so Francine comes to their yard. Francine then gets a free red Ottoman (a footstool with a built-in foot-warmer and TV dinner tray) that was a wedding present that Arthur's family received, but hardly used, and then Francine takes it to her family's apartment.



When Francine comes home, she shows her sister Catherine the Ottoman that was previously owned by Arthur's family. However, Catherine reacts and suggests that Francine should stop getting anymore stuff that she considers "revolting junk".

The other three items Francine brought into their room despite Catherine's objections included an ice cream cone lamp that she purchased from Tastee Cone shortly before it shut down, a volcano-like alarm clock which Catherine refers to it as an "ugly lava alarm clock", and a green reptile perched on a tree-like podium.

Catherine then shouts out that the madness should stop. However, Francine retaliates her sister by calling her lacy stuff "ugly" including lacy curtains, lacy plush cats, lacy pillows, and lace around everything else including a roller chair.

The debate denotes the fact that Catherine's a girly-girl with much more feminine interests while Francine's much more tomboyish and not into girly stuff like lace. Catherine states that lace gives a "unifying" theme to a room, but Francine gets back saying that lace is rather a "nauseating" theme.

Catherine then calls Francine ignorant, but then Francine suggests that Catherine should wait until her feet get cold, and then she should apologize for what she said about Francine's things.

While their mother Laverne is working on the cupboards, Catherine suggests they should have a sign on their room door that would say "TOXIC TASTE DUMP". Laverne tells her daughters that their room is due for a paint job.

Francine suggests she wants red and purple, but Catherine suggests mauve and gray. However, Laverne says that things would rather go with white that the two girls wouldn't expect.

Francine then goes to her friends' residences: Muffy, Sue Ellen, and Fern, but none of those decorations were preferable to Francine.

Back at the Frensky's apartment, the girls show their parents Oliver and Laverne their drawings on what their rooms might look like: Francine suggests having to shoot hoops from her bed, but Catherine suggests a flowery room with the grandfather clock as a substitution for Francine's bed.

Francine then tells her family that all her friends have their own bedrooms, and she can't stand sharing a room with her sister Catherine, thus calling her a "frillanoid." Catherine then agrees to move out of the room, and Francine decides she wants to move out also, but Catherine called it out first.



Catherine's bed and her lacy stuff get moved out of the bedroom she shared with Francine and into the living room, and a curtain is put on the line between two coat racks to make her bed and lace her own personal space. Catherine suggests it was like having a loft.

Laverne says that the living room sofa is not part of Catherine's room, but Catherine says it's shared space and needs a unifying theme. Francine gets back once again by calling Catherine's lace as bacteria that spreads everywhere and taunts "Lace! I need lace!" in an alien-like dialect and then heads to her room that she now has to herself.



Back in Francine's room, all the lace is removed to please Francine, and it only has Francine's decorations and her bed in a now rather plain bedroom. However, the room appears to look larger than before, and the following sequences show her decorations being moved around. Francine then finds her room to look empty, due to its plainness and that only about a third of it looks occupied.

The next day, in Arthur's yard, Francine then reveals to Arthur that she now has her own bedroom, and Arthur says it's like Catherine has moved out of the house. But D.W. still shares her bedroom with her sister Baby Kate, and suggests that she should have her own room herself, so that Kate does not bother her anymore, which is the garage. Francine tells Arthur her room looks too empty, and Arthur suggests she needs some more stuff.

Francine then goes to the Elwood City Dump and then finds a discarded bat-mobile. Later at night, she shows it to Catherine, but Catherine objects once again and quickly heads back to her room, which is the loft.

Francine then goes to bed and with the bat-mobile on her ceiling, she has a nightmare where they all come to life and form together into one enormous bat and scare her, until she finds out it wasn't real.



The next day, Francine brings in a box of tea stuff, and runs into Catherine who is carrying a sack with the clown toy (previously Arthur's) in it. Francine then explains that it wasn't very fun having her own room, and Catherine explains that it wasn't fun having a loft, either.

Then Francine helps Catherine move her bed and her lacy stuff into their real bedroom they both share. When Oliver and Laverne arrive home from the grocery store, they are surprised to see that Francine and Catherine have moved Catherine's stuff back into their real bedroom. The parents then find out that Francine and Catherine finally agree with each other's decorations, plus lacing some of Francine's items as well and having co-ownership of each other's possessions.

Francine then invites her friends Muffy, Sue Ellen, and Fern over to see the decorations in her and Catherine's room. They are glad to see such a beautiful room. But when Catherine finds out that Francine and her friends have their feet on the furniture, Catherine calls out to them to get their feet off. Then Francine and her friends start laughing and the episode finishes.

Characters

 * Francine Frensky
 * Catherine Frensky
 * Laverne Frensky
 * Oliver Frensky
 * Arthur Read
 * D.W. Read
 * David Read
 * Jane Read
 * Muffy Crosswire
 * Sue Ellen Armstrong
 * Fern Walters
 * Ethel (cameo)
 * Billy (cameo)
 * Doria Walters (mentioned)

Trivia

 * Francine and Catherine's room decorations have subsequently appeared in some later episodes such as "Francine and the Feline.” However, these decorations have since been abandoned, thus reverting their room to its standard look with the sliding curtains which are usually green whilst the walls yellow and vice-versa.
 * Moral: Don't like Lace themed rooms for your benifits.

Cultural references

 * While Francine brings the Ottoman into her and Catherine's room, the book that Catherine is reading is called  by.

Episode connections

 * At Arthur's garage sale, D.W. attempts to sell Arthur's video game "Fish Finder 6 (With Improved Graphics),” however, in the episode Sue Ellen's Little Sister, which aired later in the season, Arthur says that the game is new.
 * D.W. listens to Crazy Bus in the intro, from Play it Again, D.W..

Errors

 * After Francine and Catherine's room decorations became combined, the cord to the ice cream lamp is missing, which the lamp cannot function unless the cord is plugged in (see screenshot above).
 * D.W. listens to Crazy Bus on an MP3 Player through headphones that look like the exact same headphones Arthur gives her in Buster Baxter, Cat Saver, but in Play it Again, D.W., she says that they broke.
 * However, it's possible that she got new headphones that look like the headphones from "Buster Baxter, Cat Saver".
 * When Francine says "Mom look", she says it in Arthur's voice.

Home Video
DVD:
 * Arthur: The Complete Series 3
 * Arthur: Brothers and Sisters