Buster the Myth Maker

Summary
''Buster, who's known for his outrageous stories, claims that dogs are disappearing because there's a tiger living in the state forest. Doubtful, Arthur sets out to get to the bottom of things.''

Plot
At the beginning of the episode, Arthur and Buster are the Sugar Bowl buying candy. As Arthur is paying for his Crinkle Chaw Bubble gum, Buster informs him they're made of grasshopper eyeballs from Japan or France. Grossed out, Arthur grabs Red Rovers instead but Buster tells him yet another gross fact about what it's made of, frustrating Mr. Manino, as he will lose customers that way, but Buster claims it is public information. So Arthur gets a grape drink instead, but again, Buster has a story to go with it.

Where does Buster get all this stuff from?

TITLE CARD

The scene shows a recording studio where an "ex" member of the band Mütakrüde was secretly replaced by his identical twin brother months ago. It then cuts to the Lakewood Elementary playground, where Buster was telling his friends the juicy rumor. But Brain is quick to doubt it’s true. Arthur claimed he had a good story too, about a man who went fishing and lost his ring, but later found it in the fish he ordered at a restaurant. However, no one seems to care for the “rumor”, as it’s not about a famous person or containing insider information.

Later that day, at Buster’s condo, he shows Arthur the websites he gets his information from, but when Arthur asks if the websites are true, Buster is appalled someone would lie on the Internet. So they set out to do some of their own research after Buster reads about the possibility of tigers in Turkey Hill Park. They visit news reporter Harry Mills, to ask him about the tiger rumor, but he says he has never heard evidence suggesting its true. Than Arthur brings up the fact that many dogs have gone missing near or in the park. So, Harry calls the park's ranger to ask if she can meet with the boys. At the park, the ranger says she has never heard about tigers in the park but Buster thinks she’s hiding something.

As Arthur and Buster ride their bikes out of the park, they get startled by the sight of a man dressed in a camouflage suit up in a tree. They all scream, causing the man to fall to the ground. They quickly rush home to Arthur's house, where they try to figure out what they saw. Buster is 100% sure it’s a tiger hunter, and that the park has tigers in it. But Arthur is sure there is another explanation. The phone rings and a voice, Mr. Deep Float, tells the boys to meet him at the Sugar Bowl because he has special information about the tigers.

At the Sugar Bowl, Arthur and Buster try to figure out who they're meeting, when they spot a person wearing a ski mask and a long jacket. He sits down and tells them all about the tigers, wowing Arthur and Buster. Mrs. Powers then appears, and accidentally blows the person’s cover, calling him Alan. Arthur and Buster reply with “Alan?”, realizing that the mystery person is Brain. Brain then takes off the ski mask and says that he asked her not to blow his cover. Mrs. Powers replies with “Oh, no. I forgot.” Brain admits he started the “tigers in the park” rumor as an experiment, just to see who would believe a completely false story; Mrs. Powers scolds him, saying that what he did wasn’t very nice. When Buster adds that Brain even hired an actor to pose as a tiger hunter and says “Wow”, a puzzled Brain asks “Tiger hunter? What tiger hunter?” (thus implying he doesn’t know what Buster is talking about). Arthur then explains that there was a guy in the park with a trap and asks “You didn’t...?” Brain is equally puzzled right before Arthur and Buster exchange looks.

The scene goes to a headline of the man Arthur and Buster saw with the trap; it turns out that he is a dognapper (not tiger hunter), and is arrested for stealing many dogs. The ranger tells a TV news channel that the owners should pick up the rather noisy dogs, and denies the tiger story was ever true — finally putting the rumor to rest.

Major

 * Buster Baxter
 * Arthur Read
 * The Brain

Minor

 * Carl Manino
 * Sue Ellen Armstrong
 * Francine Frensky
 * Harry Mills
 * Mrs. Powers
 * Clarice Bebert
 * TV2 News Reporter

Cameo

 * Prunella Deegan
 * Maria Pappas
 * George Lundgren
 * Jenna Morgan
 * Jane Read
 * Fern Walters
 * Kiefer
 * Dognapper
 * 4th Grade Male Dog
 * 3rd Grade Male Dog (Number 3)
 * 3rd Grade Male Cat
 * 3rd Grade Female Cat (Number 2)
 * Kieran Moody

Trivia

 * This is the first appearance of Buster's laptop in the Arthur series. It appeared before in Postcards from Buster.
 * Mr. Manino didn't actually deny the weird ingredients being in the candy, but simply asked Buster to stop talking about it.
 * The background music during "Snowboard Patrol" on TV is the same song that Muffy listens to in "Poor Muffy". It also plays at Muffy's party in "The Fright Stuff" and on the radio in "Buster's Carpool Catastrophe".

Cultural references

 * Brain calls himself "Mr. Deep Float," which could be a parody of Deep Throat, a.k.a Mark Felt, the secret source in revealing the Watergate Scandal. Brain also says,"Follow the monkeys," which could be a parody of Felt's dialogue in All the President's Men when he says, "Follow the money."
 * "Mr. Deep Float" may also be a parody of Deep Throat from The X-Files, a TV series centered around conspiracy theories, similar to this particular episode.

Errors

 * In the Ice Cream Shop, Mrs. Powers has a white complexion, but at one point, she has a brown complexion.
 * Siberia is in Russia, not in China.