"Dream Scheme" is the ninth episode of Season 2 (and the 33rd episode overall) of The Powerpuff Girls. It first aired on Cartoon Network in the United States on September 24, 1999.
Synopsis[]
The Sandman, who makes sure everyone in the world falls asleep at night, wants to get some sleep. Yet, he cannot as long as half the world is awake regardless of the time of day. He builds a machine that puts everyone to sleep, leaving it to the Powerpuff Girls to fight the Sandman in his dreams to make him wake up and undo his work.
Plot[]
In this variant of the 1998-2002 animated episode outro, the falling gold stars are not seen at all.
The Narrator introduces the city of Townsville at nighttime, when the citizens are getting ready to go to sleep. He introduces the Sandman, whose job is to put everyone in the world to sleep by sprinkling a magic sand into their eyes. The Sandman finishes putting everyone in Townsville to sleep, and prepares to get some sleep himself. He is reminded by an alarm to make people in another part of the world fall asleep as their nighttime approaches.
Every time the Sandman is done, another part of the world is ready to sleep - meaning the Sandman cannot get any of his own, making him fatigued and longing for rest. To make his duty easier, the Sandman builds a machine that will sprinkle the whole world with his magic sand, putting everybody to sleep at once - forever. Meanwhile, the Powerpuff Girls are playing in their bedroom, with the Professor telling them it is time for them to go to bed, to which they respond they are not yet tired.
Soon after the Sandman tries to sleep again, his alarm goes off once more, alerting him that the Powerpuff Girls are still awake. The Sandman confronts the Girls in their own bedroom, letting them know that he has put the entire world to sleep and that they are the only ones he needs asleep. Before they try to fight him, the Sandman knocks them out with his machine and goes back to his lair to get some sleep.
The Powerpuff Girls are seen in a dream while sleeping; it is a dream they are experiencing together. At the suggestion of Bubbles, the Girls enter the Sandman's dreams to frighten him. The Sandman is having a peaceful dream, suddenly encountering the Powerpuff Girls, who are suddenly gigantic. The Sandman begins running from them down a stripy hall, beginning a psychedelic chase sequence with the Girls taking the form of chickens, chasing and pecking at the Sandman.
The Girls are then seen in their normal forms and size, attacking the Sandman with pillows. The Sandman suddenly appears to be in bed, with the nightmare gone; but the bed grows long legs and begins wobbling. The scene dissipates, transforming into an ocean with the Sandman on a raft. A gigantic Bubbles with pointy teeth emerges and swallows the raft whole.
The Sandman ends up inside an hourglass, then as the bell on a clock. He is hit by the clock's striker when the clock reaches 12:00. This awakens him from his nightmare. The Sandman, in his defeat, promises that he will never sleep again and finally wakes everybody up. However, the Girls also wake up from the Sandman's spell. Feeling tired from the dream fight, they decide to simply go to sleep.
Characters[]
Major Roles[]
Minor Roles[]
- Professor Utonium
- Santa Claus (debut; cameo)
- Japanese family
Trivia[]
- Moral: While sleep is important for good health, it is not advisable for one to sleep in a way that defies the time of daylight (as would have occurred if everyone slept at the same time, as the Sandman wanted). As with undersleeping, if a person oversleeps or defies their circadian rhythm, they could become unresponsive and too tired to do anything.
- The girls wear their regular clothes instead of their nightgowns for this episode, even when they go to sleep and appear in the episode outro wide awake.
- Also, in this episode, the Narrator says his usual episode-ending catchphrase differently: "Oh, Professor, perhaps you'd better turn around because while the rest of us were sleeping sound, the Earth was saved, just as it twirls, thanks again to The Powerpuff Girls!".
- During the 1998-2001 animated episode outro, when the girls appear, the falling golden stars do not appear at all. This was because the animators tried to find the cell of the falling stars but realized it was missing, so they decided to let the cell of the girls in their normal poses establish itself just a little more and leave the girls with nothing falling behind them.[citation needed] This variation remains in subsequent episodes until "Slave the Day".
- In this episode, all of the dialogue rhymes (including the title).
- It could be a reference to the lyrics of the songs by the British girl group the Spice Girls.
- The second time the Girls became any kind of animal since "Monkey See, Doggie Do", though in this episode it only happened in the Girls' dreams.
- Both this episode and its successor, "You Snooze, You Lose", involve falling asleep.
- On Netflix in the Netherlands, this is the only episode to have the credits theme dubbed in Dutch, the credits theme is in English on all other episodes there. It's unknown if the credits theme was shown dubbed for all episodes on Dutch TV airings.
- This episode aired on Day 3 of Toonami's Trapped in Hyperspace event. Swayzak, the main antagonist of the TIE who watched the shows with TOM in between episodes, liked this one specifically because of the Sandman's nightmare and the line "It seems like they're going to bed in Ukraine." (even though Swayzak has a New Zealand accent.)
- When the Narrator says this line, he speaks in a Russian accent, rather than a Ukrainian accent.
- In MsMojo’s “Top 10 Darkest Powerpuff Girls Episodes” list, “Dream Scheme” was ranked at #8.
References to other media[]
- There is a reference to The Princess Bride in this episode; when the Professor says, "No 'but's, and I mean it", Bubbles asks, "Does anybody want a pean-it?". In The Princess Bride, when Vizzini says, "No more rhymes now, I mean it!," Fezzik asks, "Anybody want a... pean-it?" In fact, the main character in The Princess Bride is named Buttercup.
- The Sandman's ditty is set to the tune of the nursery rhyme "I'm a Little Teapot", and has a similar rhyme.
- During the Sandman's nightmare scenes, stock footage from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s can be seen in the background. Some of the footage was from a Omega Experimental film, which was found in 16mm and shared online with the said print.
- Also during the Sandman's nightmare, Bubbles acted like the shark from Jaws at one point, parodying the movie's most well-known scene.
Errors[]
- As the Girls float to their bed, Blossom's and Bubbles' pink and blue blankets are on the left and middle of the bed respectively. As they lay their heads on their pillows, the colored blankets switch places.
- When the Professor opens the Girls' door, it is pink, but then it changed to white in the next shot.
- As the Sandman is about to go to bed, clocks depicting the times in various countries and cities around the world can be seen in the background. Many of the locations have spelling errors, including Seoul, Tokyo, Hawaii, and Washington.
- When the girls come back and go to sleep, Buttercup has bags under her eyes.
Home Videos Released[]
Production Notes[]
- Although this episode and "You Snooze, You Lose" were produced before "Beat Your Greens" and "Down 'n' Dirty", those episodes aired first.
- This episode was finished in March of 1999.[1]