"Mime for a Change" is the 22nd episode of Season 1 of The Powerpuff Girls.
It was produced in 1998 and first aired on Cartoon Network in the United States on February 3, 1999.
Synopsis[]
The Townsville Clown is turned into a Mime, and proceeds to suck all the colour and sound from the city. The Powerpuff Girls restore the city by singing `Love Makes the World Go Round'.
Plot[]
At the beginning of the episode, happy and ever-colorful Rainbow the Clown is entertaining a group of kids for a birthday party (which is hosted for a boy named Jim). He sings a song, making the kids laugh and cheer. In the end, he dances to the road, only to hear a bleach truck approach. The bleach truck notices Rainbow and flops on its side, and safely goes around Rainbow. Despite the near-miss for Rainbow, the tipped truck's trailer bursts and spills bleach out all over him. The bleach makes Rainbow's colors disappear and his joy drain out, turning him into the evil Mr. Mime. The truck driver asks if he is okay and, horrified by the sight of color, Mr. Mime drains the color from him, as well as his voice. A boy tries to speak, but the clown drains his color and voice, too. Demonstrating his new form, Mr. Mime then stomps on the ground, reducing the area to black and white. He then moves onto the rest of Townsville.
Meanwhile, the Powerpuff Girls are heading to school on a bus. Bubbles is singing and coloring. When she is done, she holds up a picture of them. Blossom nods, and Buttercup stares. She complains to the bus driver about how close they are, and he says they have one more stoplight to pass. However, with the stoplight being colorless, the bus almost collides with a car when the girls intervene to save both vehicles. Once they snuggle each other, Bubbles yells "WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE COLOR?!".
Sure enough, Townsville is two-toned, looking somewhat like an old-time movie. Bubbles frantically starts to color Townsville with her crayons, as Blossom and Buttercup search for clues. They finally find Mr. Mime, stripping color from people and objects alike, and chase him into an alley wherein he disappears. Just when the girls do not see him, Mr. Mime goes behind them and drains both their color and movement. Meanwhile, after her coloring spree, Bubbles comes to notice her sisters' absence. Passing by everything that now lacks color and motion, she looks for them and is so horrified at their comatose, colorless bodies she starts to cry... until she gets the idea to recolor them with her crayons.
Bubbles' horrified look when her sisters have no color.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
She tries the approach, but to no avail; Blossom and Buttercup are still black and white, and comatose. Realizing that her beautiful crayons cannot help them recover, citing that they are not magic, she drops them to the ground and screams "NOOOOOOOOOO!" until she gets another idea.
The girls' lack of color.
Bubbles sets up drums on a big stage, and Buttercup and Blossom up as well, holding a Hofner bass guitar and V-shaped electric guitar, respectively. She begins to play, and the second she starts drumming color starts returning. Her sisters wake up and start playing their guitars and then Bubbles starts singing lead. They sing the song Love Makes The World Go Round to show everyone that happiness is all in the colors. All the color returns, and with it the happiness and life of the people of Townsville. During the song, Mr. Mime, furious as can be, bears witness to this recolorization and attempts to turn the girls black and white again. Blossom begins her guitar solo and notices Mr. Mime approaching. Blossom shoots magic waves from her guitar and zaps Mr. Mime, restoring Rainbow and his colorful, cheerful personality.
The girls save the day with their music.
At the end of the song, Rainbow sings his gratitude to the girls, who, in return, beat him up and throw him in jail, most likely for draining Townsville's color as Mr. Mime. The narrator announces the day is saved once again, and the girls continue performing from there. At the end of the episode, the narrator is heard singing the girls' song and humming along to it, not knowing he has gotten it stuck in his head after he danced along to it in the background, and found it quite catchy.
Quotes[]
- Bubbles: (angry) (picks up the car) HEY! YOU CAN'T PARK NEXT TO A FIRE HYDRANT!!
- Driver: I didn't- (Bubbles tosses the car far away) KNOOOOOOOOW!
- Bubbles: (to her sisters): Don't just stand there! START COLORING!
Characters[]
Songs[]
Trivia[]
- Along with "Just Another Manic Mojo", this episode does not include the Utonium Residence
- Bubbles is the only character shown who is never touched by Rainbow's dark corrupted persona, Mr. Mime.
- This is the first episode to include a song.
- Rainbow and the bleach truck driver are once again seen in "Birthday Bash".
- George Jetson from The Jetsons makes an appearance in this episode.
- It has been rumored that the episode was originally going to have a happier ending where Rainbow is let off the hook by the girls, but the executives decided to change the ending to what is seen in the episode. When asked about this, Craig McCracken stated that the final ending is the original ending, but nowadays he would not make a gag like that in his future work due to how mean-spirited the gag was.[1]
- Before the recording of "Love Makes The World Go Round" , Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken warn Tom Kenny (the voice of the Narrator) that if he hears the catchy song, it won't get out of his head and it might get into trouble. Kenny takes no notice and listens anyway. At the episode's recording, he gets the song stuck inside his head and sings it during his last line.
- Mr. Mime is the name of a Pokémon from the Pokémon series. However, in August 2021, Craig McCracken confirmed that this was a coincidence.[2] Also, Mr. Mime is supposed to be Rainbow's "Mr. Hyde", where he turned from a colorful, good-natured clown to an evil color-hating black-and-white mime with the ability of turning everybody and everything black-and-white-and-gray and silent.
- This is the first and only episode seen wherein the girls are playing instruments; Bubbles being the drummer, Buttercup as the bassist, and Blossom as the lead guitarist, which is quite ironic since both Buttercup and Blossom's instruments require finger coordination which they lack in their physical properties.
- The girls are shown in a band again in the reboot episode "Electric Buttercup", but as a harder and trashier band. Also, in "Trouble Clef", first making a terrible song recorded as a video, and then wearing retro 80's clothes up against Princess Morbucks.
- According to the iTunes compilation The Best of the Powerpuff Girls (Classic), this is one of Craig McCracken's 10 favorite episodes.
- Jim is Jim Worthy, a background designer on the show. As an inside joke, some storyboard artists started inserting him into episodes when they needed a random character to appear. Jim did his own voice in "Him Diddle Riddle".[3]
Goofs[]
- If you look closely when Blossom is ready to fire her guitar ray at Mr. Mime, her left leg is bare.
- During the sequence where the girls are on stage as their band, they seem to be missing a keyboardist.
- During the line "Hear the birds and bells and you will have a brighter day," Blossom's guitar is white instead of red.
- During the simultaneous harmony, if you look closely, you can see Blossom isn't actually singing her line, she is actually mouthing Buttercup's line. Also, in the final scene of the harmony, both Blossom and Bubbles are mouthing Buttercup's line instead of singing their own.
- Right when the color starts spreading from the drums, there is a gap between Bubbles' body and the drum set, where the background is visible.
- When the girls sing the last line, Bubbles and Blossom sing each other's entrances instead of their own.
- When Bubbles is frantically trying to color Townsville, she isn't carrying a box of crayons with her and her crayons appear to come out of nowhere.
- During Happy Birthday Jim, Rainbow puts a crown on Jim's head, but after the second verse, it disappears magically and never returns.
Production Notes[]
- Although this episode premiered in the United States on February 3, 1999, it was actually produced in 1998 according to the credits.
- This episode was finished in November of 1998.[4]