Muffy Misses Out

"Muffy Misses Out"
Season/Series:	21
Number in season:	4a
Original Airdate:	February 12, 2018 February 13, 2018
Credits
Written by:	Matt Hoverman
Storyboard by:	Allan Jeffery
Episodes
Previous "Sue Ellen & the Last Page"	Next "Arthur Takes a Stand"
Read transcript

"Muffy Misses Out" is the first half of the fourth episode in the twenty-first season of Arthur.

Summary

When Muffy's ideas are ignored when she goes on a trip, she starts to wonder if she really matters.

Plot

Mr. Crosswire wants to take Muffy on a one-week trip to Italy. Muffy is worried because she is in charge of organizing a bake sale to raise money for a theater curtain. She imagines her friends as helpless little children.

Muffy Misses Out

Muffy and the bake sale committee, made of Ladonna, Sue Ellen and Binky, walk through school and plan the sale. When Binky suggest Chinese dumplings, Muffy instead suggests selling Italian pastries. She wants Ladonna to bake, Sue Ellen to decorate, and Binky to play Italian opera music.

After school, Francine tells Muffy that Catherine has backed out of going bowling with her. Muffy suggests that Francine should ignore Catherine in order to make her change her mind.

Muffy and her dad have a good time in Italy and take many pictures.

After the trip, Muffy oversleeps because of jet lag and arrives at school when the bake sale has already started. She is horrified to see that the others have changed the theme to New Orleans. Ladonna has baked beignets, Sue Ellen has decorated the stand with Mardi Gras masks and Binky plays Dixieland jazz. The sale is a huge success, but Muffy calls it a disaster and walks off in tears.

Muffy wants to tell Francine her worries, but Francine is eating a beignet while listening to Dixieland jazz over earphones. Angrily, Muffy asks Mr. Ratburn to let her show the presentation she had to do in exchange for missing a week of school. She shows the pictures, but keeps making angry comments about the bake sale. She also announces doing her own bake sale the next day.

Muffy and Buster sell cannoli at an Italian themed stand, but the sale is a failure. Francine thinks the cannoli taste stale and Buster has spent all his money on beignets. He does want a cannolo for his food collection, though. Muffy is depressed that the others did not need her to do a successful bake sale. Francine assures Muffy that she needs her, but when she tells Muffy that she solved her problems with Catherine by talking to her, Muffy breaks out in tears.

The next day, Muffy stays in bed sick with her toy elephant Waldo. Her friends wonder where she is, so Francine calls her. Muffy is melodramatic about not being needed. The kids discuss Muffy and find that they did use some of Muffy's suggestions. Muffy had suggested a regional cuisine theme and that Binky should play music. Francine admits that talking to Muffy had made her realize she had to talk to Catherine. The kids want to talk to Muffy and Francine suggests adding a little drama.

That afternoon, Sue Ellen, Ladonna and Binky visit Muffy and stage a fight about how to decorate the new theater curtain. Muffy quickly goes back to normal and takes charge of the committee.

Characters

Major

• Muffy Crosswire
• Binky Barnes
• Ladonna Compson
• Sue Ellen Armstrong

Minor

• Buster Baxter
• Francine Frensky
• Ed Crosswire

Cameo

• Millicent Crosswire
• Prunella Deegan
• Slink
• Arthur Read
• Waldo
• George Lundgren
• Molly MacDonald
• Brain
• Bailey
• Rattles
• Kiefer
• Francis Haney
• Nigel Ratburn
• Jenna Morgan
• Alex

Mentioned

• Catherine Frensky
• Chip Crosswire (indirectly)

Trivia

• The airline ticket shown at the intro has a flight number "TH894" which the code TH is the IATA code for Malaysian cargo airline Raya Airways.
• The closing credits for this episode include a cover of Believe in Yourself performed by Chance the Rapper, Peter Cottontale, Nate Fox, Donnie Trumpet and Stix for Social Experiment.
• Timeline: Mr. Haney wears a face mask when he takes a beignet from the bake sale. This is the same mask he wears at the Halloween party in "Arthur and the Haunted Tree House."
• Moral: Don't overreact for your own benefits.

Episode connections

• Muffy previously went on a trip to a foreign country (Costa Rica) in "Muffy and the Big Bad Blog."
• In the scene where Muffy pretends to be sick, Waldo is shown physically as a stuffed animal, but in "The Friend Who Wasn't There," he is shown to be imaginary when Muffy talks to him at the end.

Cultural references

• The scene of Muffy and her dad eating pasta resembles the pasta scene from Lady and the Tramp.
• In Italy, Muffy visits:
  • the church Il Redentore in Venice
  • the Lion of Venice pillar on St. Mark’s square in Venice
  • the Colosseum in Rome
  • Michelangelo’s David in Florence
    • In Arthur's world, David is a sheep. The real world David used to be a shepherd.
    • The David statue is naked, which is why Muffy's head is always blocking its pelvic region. This is apparently a common trend in kid shows and shorts (such as in No Time for Nuts where Scrat ends up in front of the sculpture blocking the pelvic region.
  • the Leaning Tower of Pisa
• Muffy mentions Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment. She claims that no one believed Galileo, but in fact, while the experiment contradicted Aristotle, the idea that objects fall independent of their mass was older than Galileo.
• Muffy and her dad use some real Italian words like ciao, arriverderci and pronto, but boffo and paisan are in fact colloquial American terms.
• Cannoli are a Sicilian dessert, made of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet cream.
• Beignets are a kind of deep-fried choux pastry from New Orleans. Sue Ellen has made Mardi Gras masks and Binky plays Dixieland jazz.

Errors

• When Muffy is giving orders in the hallway at Lakewood, the room numbers are backward (i.e., the background is flipped horizontally).

Gallery

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