Spar for the Course

"Spar for the Course"
Season/Series:	19 (AUS)
Number in season:	3B
Original Airdate:	January 20, 2016 June 10, 2015 May 1, 2015
Credits
Written by:	David Steven Cohen Raye Lankford
Storyboard by:	Jeremy O'Neill
Episodes
Previous "Arthur's Toy Trouble"	Next "Carried Away"
Read transcript

"Spar for the Course" is the second half of the third episode in the nineteenth season of Arthur.

Summary

Muffy, Buster, and Binky must agree on an idea for a new 18th hole at the mini golf course.

Plot

The episode opens with Muffy at Crosswire Motors. She talks about cooperation and opens the hood of a car, only to find Buster. Buster takes him and Muffy to a planet that is lightyears away, where Binky body slams an alien and changes the location to a professional wrestling ring.

Spar for the Course

At a golf course, Binky fails to hit the ball through a windmill. Muffy tells him to hit it harder, and although Binky complies, the entire windmill breaks. However, the golf ball still rolls into the hole.

Ticket stand

Mr. Shank now has to buy a new windmill. Binky, Buster, and Muffy point out that windmills are overused, and the hole should use something "radically different." Mr. Shank agrees, and gives them a week to design a good course, or else he's still going with a windmill.

At The Sugar Bowl, Binky, Buster, and Muffy struggle to think of ideas. Buster gets annoyed by Binky's pencil tapping, and Binky responds that he's tapping to the tune of a song. He then gets the idea for a musical 18th hole, where the golfer bounces the ball off of drums, cymbals, xylophone keys, and a triangle to get it to land in a clarinet.

Buster then suggests his idea, which is a Moon-themed 18th hole. The golfer has to avoid moon rocks and aliens to hit the ball into a UFO's tractor beam. He then adds the idea of an anti-gravity dome over the hole.

Binky doesn't like the idea, saying that his course is better. Buster comments that Binky's course would be too hard to build, and Binky responds, "Oh, but we can build an anti-gravity dome?" Muffy then says that they'll have to compromise, and tells them about her course. The golf ball goes into a car, drives through a Swiss Alp, parks in front of a castle, and is dropped into the hole by a robot butler.

Nobody can agree on which one idea is the best. Muffy suggests that they all race and tell Mr. Shank their ideas, and the first one there gets their course built. However, Mr. Shank only wants one good idea and not three completely different ideas. Muffy, Binky, and Buster all agree to combine their courses to make "a big musical castle on the Moon."

The kids make a model of the course, and slowly add and modify things until the course is possible to complete. They show the model to Mr. Shank, who likes the course, but wants to add something.

The episode ends with the final course. It matches the model, but now has a windmill in it, which Mr. Shank says was his idea.

Characters

• Muffy Crosswire
• Buster Baxter
• Binky Barnes
• Mr. Shank
• Bailey(cameo)
• Rivets (cameo)
• James MacDonald(cameo)
• Kyle(cameo)
• Maria Pappas(cameo)
• Cisely Compson(cameo)
• Arthur Read(mentioned)

Trivia

• Timeline: The kids build their model on the same workbench that Muffy and her Dad used to build the derby car in "Muffy Takes the Wheel."
• The last movement from Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture is heard at the end of Binky's imaginary golf course, and in the windmill in the final golf course at the end of the episode.

Episode connections

• The episode's general plot and many of the problems the kids encounter are similar to "Castles in the Sky."

Cultural references

• The episode name is a play on the term "spar" and the idiom "par for the course".
• Muffy, Buster and Binky's lack of teamwork and too much ideas is simliar to The Loud Kids lack of teamwork in Cooked
• Binky (sort of) drums Max Roach's drum solo from Cherokee on the table. The original is one of the most acclaimed solos in jazz.
• Buster mentions astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the second person and first American in space, and the fifth person to walk on the moon.
• While Buster floats in zero gravity, The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II plays. The tune is often associated with space scenes, since it was used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.