Grossology Fun trivia and fan theories (The City of Mad Scientists theory)

 

As you know, in science fiction there are often mad scientists, sometimes even several at once. But what would happen if almost all the characters were mad scientists? This is exactly what we're talking about here. Welcome to the City of Mad Scientists, which to one degree or another includes not only all the villains, but also the main characters, and their classmates, and even random city residents. Of course, it’s not officially “the City of Mad Scientists”, there are normal people among them, and most try to pretend that this is a completely normal city. However, while some naively expose themselves to danger, noticing only the good, others know how dangerous it is to trust local strangers, given how often the most unexpected individuals from various fields turn out to be evil and insane inventors. Moreover, everything in this city points to their connection with the grossness. It’s even emphasized in many of the names, like Ringworm Junior High and Mountain Cowpie. But besides the grossness fans there are also squeamish neaties, like the director of the Bureau of Grossology (whose name is Director). He uses the good lovers of grossness to fight the evil ones.

From this article you will learn more evidence for the theory that the city is an experiment in gathering mad scientists in one place, as well as new trivia about most of the villains, heroes and episodes.

Here, descriptions of the characters will be mixed with trivia about them, because after the article about WordGirl with that gigantic villain cast I hated introducing the characters. This article is mainly for fans of the animated series, so if you haven't watched it yet, be prepared for spoilers from the very beginning.

Ty and Abby Archer are the main characters, a younger brother and an older sister who are also secret agents for the Bureau of Grossology. Both are witty and resourceful, athletic and intelligent, with an interest in science, although Ty is more naive, while Abby cares about girly things. Some people know which of the two is better at chemistry and which is better at insects, but I don't see a clear preference. All I know is that Ty is better with gadgets, while Abby prefers brute force. Both love gross thing in the scientific sense and know a lot about them, but in the everyday sense they can be just as squeamish as normal people. As school students they have the typical problems and hobbies, but as secret agents they are incredibly physically fit for someone who uses little to no martial arts and instead solves problems with their brains.

You would think that they, like all other teenagers with double lives, would have difficulty disguising their secret activities, but here’s not the case. More precisely, the theme of blowing cover seems to be present, but it is given so little attention that one can only marvel at how poorly Ty and Abby hide their double life and still no one exposes them. It’s not even on the level of Superman with his glasses, or even WordGirl, where the obviousness of her disguise is constantly played out ironically. Everything here is thought out, but at the same time, not very well. 

Grossology uniform doesn’t change their appearance in any way; in it they are as recognizable as possible to everyone. And how they sometimes hide these uniforms – wearing them on under their regular clothes, which they then dramatically tear off, finding themselves in protective suits with gloves and boots, despite the fact that before that they were in clothes with open arms, ankles, or even an evening dress! 

Their lockers, through what they enter the secret lab, have the most obvious locks, different from the rest. And it’s not even difficult to guess the only way they need to be turned to open. 

Ty and Abby appear on television every now and then as grossologists, but the school never pays any attention to it. They are often caught by villains in their everyday appearance, but said villains never try to use their secret identity against them. 

You might think that they don't have any secret identity. But why then one day do they need excuse to the teacher that they need to leave for the most absurd reason? Why does the attempt to expose them become an entire story arc in the second season? So the explanation is this: everyone just doesn't care. 

When their classmates come across them in slime suits, they can only be asked what kind of “lame racecar driver outfits” they have. When they appear in their regular clothes in front of the villains, they see them as the same grossologists who are usually trying to stop them. When Ty and Abby show their fighting skills and hi-tech gadgets right at school, everyone is surprised at this as just a cool achievement that anyone could have. When they literally declare that “there are the professionals” and that’s “official grossology business,” everyone is usually too panicked about what’s happening to react. 

And the fact that their secret passage to the Gag Lab is located in the school corridor (but not why this corridor is always strangely empty), and that they constantly run away from classes and never get anything for it, is apparently explained by the fact that the principal is aware of their activities. The Director of the Bureau of Grossology, who first meets them in these lockers, was clearly in agreements with her. 

So what about the main problem with all characters who has a secret identity – will their enemies use their loved ones against them? Here it wouldn't really help grossologists, because the villains don't need to use their parents against them – they have something against the parents themselves. Ty and Abby's dad works at a water treatment plant, which the city's main dirty guy, Sloppy Joe, really doesn't like. And their mother works at an entomology university, which the local queen of insects, Insectiva, considers cruel to her people. So the parents of Ty and Abby are lucky that their children are in this secret organization. However, it turns out that they are only trying to hide it from them. And their main enemy is the one who made them secret agents, so he knew everything about them from the very beginning.

The main villain here appears surprisingly little in the first season (or the first half of the first season, depending on how you count), but then, like any main villain, he starts showing up everywhere. If you watched “World of Quest”, do you remember a character named Lanze Boil? So here his namesake was found. And his name is Lance Boil. It's all about a pun with such a medical term as “lancing a boil.” 

He wasn't always short with a giant pimple on his head. When he first met Ty and Abby, he was a normal person and the only agent of the Bureau of Grossology, who was secretly trying to take over the organization and, instead of fighting various gross things, cultivate them. Oddly enough, it was his own shrinking ray that got him into this state, which Ty had previously took apart and put back together. Once his betrayal was discovered, Lance Boil continued to try to take over the bureau or make the world a gross place without it in a variety of ways.

Unlike everyone else, he’s a very versatile villain. If the others specialize in one theme, then he covers everything that other villains don't have. He also shows self-awareness in accepting himself as the always losing villain. So it’s impossible to break him morally – he is proud of how he always returns with new powers and ideas after all the defeats. Also, Ty and Abby underestimate him more often than he underestimates them.

If you pay attention to the intro of the second half of season 1, Lance Boil is shown polluting the river with the help of his henchmen. And this is not just “early-installment weirdness,” as if the authors first planned it and then abandoned it. For some reason this was even carried over into the more elaborate opening sequence of the second season. 

Lance Boil never had so many henchmen, and he never polluted the rivers. Most often, he works alone, but if he has an assistant, there is always only one – the thug who looks like an orangutan. And then, if I remember correctly, that guy appears in only two episodes (“When you gotta go” and “Heave it or leave it”). Even while Lance was a grossologist in the bureau, he didn't have that many subordinates. They didn’t appear when he became a villain. So what this detail is for is not clear. And why are they polluting the river when it's actually Sloppy Joe's turf, who really doesn't like it when Lance Boil interferes with his business?

Sloppy Joe is a guy who never washes himself to the point that slop can change his skin color, hair color, and even the color of his eyes along with the sclera. Because in fact he is an anomalous albino who instantly becomes clean from any contact with clean water. This works, however, only with really clean water, otherwise he, on the contrary, will contaminate it himself. He clearly suffers from his albinism, so this is obviously the reason for his love for all things dirty. In addition, he grew up in an extremely poor family, so he couldn’t afford any sun protection, and apparently therefore used mud for this purpose.

In appearance and character, he is a typical stupid thug (in some cases with sweet side). Could you expect that he would also turn out to be a mad scientist? Well, he easily creates different stink bombs and a concentrate of the stinkiest substances for them. Also among his creations is a device for sucking snot from the nose and even a Frankenstein-like booger monster. 

With that snot-sucking device, he even really helped the city during pollen allergy season. But this is not the only case of his ambiguity. Sometimes he gladly helps the main characters without reforming – it just doesn’t conflict with his beliefs. He also unexpectedly turns out to be very successful in business. In one episode he successfully sells spiked (with stink) deodorants, and in another he opens a chain of fast food restaurants with really tasty food... and absolutely no catch! More precisely, the catch was that he wanted people to leave trash piles in which he would then play as if on a playground. And then at first he wanted the trash to be underground, so no one would bother him, and he didn’t even create the resulting trash geysers! This is Sloppy Joe – at first glance stereotypical, but in fact full of surprises.

Insectiva is the answer to the question of what would happen if Creepie, a girl raised by bugs, grew up to be like Yzma. Unlike Creepie from the animated series “Growing up Creepie”, Insectiva was a normal girl who loved butterflies as a child, and acquired insect-like traits after dropping out of university. But obviously she had nothing to learn there, considering that she became an expert in biochemistry and robotics on her own, created mutagens for insects, bred giant species with new adaptations, and also made giant robots in the form of insects so as not to always exploit them. 

She truly loves all insects and has a noble goal – to fight for their freedom. Despite the fact that she is right that people harm insects in every possible way, and this conflict is insoluble, her ideas about what insects need are too human. In one episode, she used an ultrasound generator to drive all the insects out of the places where they lived in nature in order to drive them all into the city where there was nothing for them.

Insectiva is repeatedly offered opportunities to develop towards the peaceful coexistence of insects and people: she once opened a successful spa, where no one had an repulsion to procedures that involved insects, and she could easily expand her influence in this field, but no. She definitely needed to take over the world for the giant insects. All attempts to reform her lead only to temporary alliance or pretense, after which Insectiva always takes up the old ways and begins to threaten humanity.

She controls insects using pheromones, which are either built into her suit or are part of her mutation. In most cases, insects understand her even from words and show unquestioning loyalty, but sometimes Ty and Abby manage to turn insects against her, playing on the fact that for the most part she is still human.

The number of episodes each villain appears in here directly depends on how much information can be squeezed out of their topic. So it's no surprise that Lance Boil, Sloppy Joe, and Insectiva are the main villains. They appear more often than others for the reason that there are incredibly many types of insects, ways to get dirty and exploit unpleasant physiological features. Also among the main villains are two who appear not so often, but have their own story arc.

So, no matter how bizarre the local villains may look, no matter what supernatural powers they possess, they were all once ordinary people. In this animated series there are no vampires, no aliens, no fairies, no humanoid plants, but there are humans who became them. In most cases they cause mutations in themselves, usually because they are mad scientists. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, some are proud of the result, some suffer. But one of them especially stands out from the others...

Fartor... is... a farting villain, but there's nothing funny about it. His theme is an example of how you can take a stupid children's prank and turn it into something so monstrous that it can easily traumatize the psyche. Really. I don't even want to talk about it, but I still need to speak out somehow, so I just won't mention the most terrible part about him. 

It was only the third episode, and I almost quit the animated series because of it. Because at that time I didn’t yet know what to expect from the authors, and if they allowed this to happen, who knows what else they are capable of. Fortunately, it didn't get any worse. Unfortunately, this storyline continued and it didn't get any better either. 

The position of the authors here is questionable. Do they know that they’ve gone too far? Sometimes they take Fartor's problem seriously and show how terrible everything is, but sometimes they make such tactless jokes that I wonder if they didn't think we were supposed to laugh at all the other terrible things that can be found ridiculous out of context. When in context there, even the most innocent jokes require a sick sense of humor. Or was it done on purpose to traumatically wean children away from that disgusting prank? In this case, I’m afraid it may have the opposite effect and only popularize it. After all, Fartor seems to be the most popular villain. I guess, out of morbid curiosity.

The worst thing is how the authors solved the problem itself, or rather, they felt that it didn’t really need to be solved, because the original criminal wasn’t punished at all, and everyone treats him better simply because he didn’t become a mad scientist! Fartor is simply the model of how not to do a tragic backstory. What was done to him, it seems, cannot even occur to a healthy person. The very idea of survivor of such monstrosity becoming a worse monster and unable to improve is abhorrent in this context. This villain, more than anyone, needs rehabilitation, not prison. Even the “happy ending” they gave him in the last episode is just delayed cosmic horror.

Also, simply skipping the episodes about him is not an option for everyone, because for some reason he was given such epic episodes (even if they are absolutely nauseating), and although the most epic story arc is not about him, he also appears in it quite a lot. Oddly enough, there he seems like one of the typical comic villains without a hint of the nightmare that is happening in the episodes about him. But if you know, it will hurt just to see him.

Roger Pinkeye (or Pink Eye) is the only one who wants to know about Ty and Abby's secret life. Considering how poorly they cover it, his emersion was expected. It’s even strange that it happened so late, in the middle of the second season. 

He’s another versatile villain who doesn't specialize in one type of grossness or field of science, but builds his plans around exposing Ty and Abby, as well as becoming a grossologist himself. It’s just unbelievable how he managed not to discover their extremely obvious lockers, considering that this is where he kept watch for them all the time. 

He's not an absolute genius like many of the villains here, but he's very advanced for a school kid. His inventions include a sentient super-mold (created by accident), a pheromone-spraying gun, hot sauce that burns through wood and metal, a feather-tickling robot, a force-feeding device combined with an iron maiden, as well as various traps and spy devices. 

He wants to become a grossologist because he is interested in all sorts of nasty things like making moldy cheese, breeding rats and growing stinking durians. But Ty and Abby don't want him on the team because he's vile and pathetic. However, Ty still treats him better because he knows that he’s not hopeless. And indeed Roger is one of the most, if not the most developing character in terms of personality and role in the plot. He resembles Lance Boil in many ways and this similarity is perfectly revealed and played out in his story arc.

Roger Pinkeye’s story arc is also the most interesting one. Moreover, this is the most epic thing that will happen in the animated series. It consists of six episodes, but their order, as always, was mixed up. Conventionally, the plot is divided into two parts, in the first – the episodes “Mold monster” and “When allergies attack”, after which Roger lies low in order to return to the end of the season, better prepared and technically improved. Between two parts are the remaining episodes, but the episode “Pussed off” should come before the episodes “Pinkeye and the Brain” and “Pinkeye’s revenge” in two parts. Otherwise, it turns out that at the end of one episode, Roger kidnaps Lance Boil, and then Lance is free, as if nothing had happened, pulls off several more plans before suddenly he is back in Roger's pet cage. These episodes definitely shouldn’t have been broken; I don’t know how no one noticed it. I'll come back to this story arc with more details at the end, because there's just too much interesting stuff out there.

Here I will only say one more thing about the origin of Roger’s pink eye. “Pinkeye” is the common name for conjunctivitis. Those who suffered from it in childhood know that it is easily treated and goes away quickly (and more serious forms are usually associated with age-related diseases). However, eye drops don't seem to help Roger. At least until his last appearance, he won’t get rid of it. So what’s the cause of his chronic conjunctivitis? 

Apparently, the matter is in the same super mold that he experimented with even before he started exposing Ty and Abby. In the episode “Mold monster” it was shown how indestructible and quickly reproducing that mold is. When Roger infects the cheese at the cheese factory with that mold, a cloud of spores flies out of his backpack and into his face, so it’s even strange that only one eye is infected. 

Also in that episode it was clear that Roger was ready to sacrifice his health to achieve his goal. He continued to recreate the mold monster over and over again, despite Ty and Abby telling him several times that he had black mold poisoning. Throughout the episode, he became paler and more disheveled, coughing more and becoming weaker, until he finally lost consciousness before he finally received medical attention. However, there must be at least one super mold cell left in the moist environment of his eye, so Ty and Abby should examine him in the lab to try to cure him permanently, as they suggested to another student-turned-villain.

Chester or Kid Rot is a character with a split personality. Chester was an unpopular school student who wanted to make friends in a typical city of (mad) scientists way – by making a great scientific discovery. He wanted to stop the rotting of food and solve the hunger problem, but as a result of his experiments, he accidentally created a microorganism that causes rapid rotting of any organic matter. Now it’s his nervous system parasite that circulates throughout his body and can control the brain and also change his appearance. Chester didn't mind because his parasite had protected him by giving him special powers so he could take revenge on his bullies. But he also created problems that made it difficult to make friends with other students. 

Ty and Abby, who loved nasty things and were considered weird themselves, became interested in him and, after finding out what his problem was, tried to make him normal. However, Chester didn't want to become normal, he wanted to learn to control his powers, and he did, only as a result his parasite took control of him.

When it turned out that he had finally found the solution to the problem of hunger, since his rot had become a great fertilizer, Chester began to come to his senses. Then the parasite decided to isolate him from society. Kid Rot hid in the forests for a long time, and by the time he was found again, he had switched to absorbing all the nutrients from the rot, leaving only harmful dead matter. Obviously, because he couldn't find enough food in the forest, he turned to another way of getting food.

Abby romanticized Chester as a tragic hero in the beginning, but Kid Rot became her creepy stalker who wanted to rot the world for her. Several times she tried to reach Chester, but on his second appearance, when he stopped showing signs that it was still him, she realized that that he’ll never be himself again.

Kid Rot’s story ends unclearly: he drowns in masses of rot, but a hand sticks out from there and catches a leaf without turning it into rot. Since there were no more episodes about him, this could mean that he died after all, and his hand simply moved in agony. However, there are enough hints that in reality it’s not. 

He appears in the opening sequence of the second season, despite the fact that there was not a single episode where he had a major role. 

At the beginning of the episode "Mold Monster", as if nothing had happened, Chester reappears in line at the school cafeteria and looks human. And I don't think it's just a reuse of a shot from his episode, because the other kids in the line and the cafeteria chef are positioned differently. Also notice Chester's different position relative to the serving line and the doors in the background.

Does this mean that he somehow returned to normal? Perhaps only his parasite died then. As if assuming that the human body would now die, the parasite tried to escape, but it turned out that such organism couldn’t live outside the body. On the other hand, perhaps Chester made a pact with him that they would return to their previous lifestyle, like Doctor Two-Brains with a mouse brain. But in any case, after everything that happened, Chester obviously decided not to attract any more attention to himself. 

However, it appears that Ty and Abby saw him and took note that he’s alive. During Roger Pinkeye's training, he is given a hologram of Kid Rot as a target for goop shooting, as if he were the enemy worth preparing for. This moment shows that the Bureau of Grossology, despite Chester’s supposed death or quiet return, doesn't write him off as a villain.

Then I remembered that I didn’t tell about the third main character, another important specialist from the Bureau of Grossology. Lab Rat is the gross analyst in the Bureau of Grossology, essentially a more active version of Wade from “Kim Possible” with Hermes the rat instead of Rufus the mole-rat. The fact that he was originally going to be fat would make him look even more like Wade, so it's a good thing they ended up basing him on the voice actor. 

Speaking of voice acting… In the first episodes he seemed kind of annoying to me, but then he didn’t, and I thought I just got used to him. But it turned out it was the voice. In the first episodes, his voice was strangely low and abrupt, and later changed to a softer and more natural tone. I've already had cases where voice acting completely changed the impression of a character, and this is one of them.

Compared to Wade, Lab Rat still has a much larger role in the plot. Although he talks more openly about his fear of open spaces, he can still get out of the lab and be a hero if necessary.

He is full of contradictions. He loves fast food and does not like to exercise, but on missions he is often found to be in good physical shape and capable of performing various martial arts stunts. On the other hand, when the plot requires it, he is demonstratively out of shape, can’t walk for five minutes and is ready to beg on his knees not to force him to exercise. 

Also in various episodes, he is known as a slob that can compare with Sloppy Joe. He doesn’t like to wash himself and doesn’t worry about his own smell. But sometimes he is obsessed with cleanliness and sterility, washes himself all the time and is afraid of getting infected. He even went through this change back and forth in the same episode, "Stinko". 

Sometimes Lab Rat doesn't understand Ty or Abby's hobbies, but when he has them, they are no different from theirs. He condemns genetic engineering in the case of Ty's fruit fly evolution experiment and Abby's fascination with genetically modified snakes, but then he himself created genetically modified, rapidly metamorphosing flies, that didn’t create a disaster in the ecosystem, apparently only because of their ultra-short life span. By the way, Abby then said about Lab Rat that “it is such a fine line between scientist and mad scientist.”

Lab Rat is the type of scientist who can create anything out of almost nothing in record time. Every time Ty and Abby need the most incredible means against the villains, Lab Rat will either do everything without question, or say that it can’t be done easily and quickly, but if they put pressure on him that otherwise he will have to look for "real" job, he’ll do the impossible. For example, he’ll get ten thousand snails and slugs in less than a couple of hours. Or invent an antidote against rapid aging. 

He has failed inventions, but even they come in handy. How a robotic dog that chews metal and destroys table legs ends up helping to clear a drain in a water reservoir. The situation where Lab Rat isn't really very useful is when he constantly puts off fixing grossologists' ride, giving priority to silly things like teach Hermes to dance, and when the ride becomes absolutely necessary, he offers a bicycle with flat tires.

Lab Rat's real name is Paul Squirfenherder, which he is embarrassed about and prefers to hide. That's why Lance Boil, while he was in the bureau, called him that way to irritate him. It’s not clear why, having become a villain, he stopped. 

Lab Rat demands that everyone call him only "Lab Rat", so when Ty and Abby mentioned him to each other at school, it made Roger Pinkeye suspicious, and he even guessed who he was as accurately as possible. And when Lab Rat was introduced to Chester, he thought that they meant a real laboratory rat, that is, Lab Rat's pet Hermes.

Hermes also poses a threat to the sterility of the lab, but Lab Rat doesn't do anything about it. Sometimes Hermes ruins his research, and sometimes he helps in unexpected ways, either way, his antics are usually important to the plot in some way. Hermes is not one of those supernaturally intelligent animals that appear in other cartoons. Most often, Hermes behaves like a simple animal, but occasionally he still shows the wonders of training, understanding commands such as not making noise, or pressing a certain button, or even driving a toy car with a remote control.

Well, and there’s the Director of the Bureau of Grossology. It seems that everywhere in parody or comedy spy or detective works, in secret organizations there is always a useless and suffering boss. This one is no different. However, if you wonder why Director is boss at all, the reason will be precisely what he is. Because he is so squeamish, he is one of the first to detect unusual activity of grossness in the city, and thus keeps a good eye on the situation. He can recognize grossness when it has not yet grown, by slightly off news and the like.

 The Director is the type of boss who does mostly paperwork, but also likes to take credit for Ty and Abby's accomplishments. Usually in such cases he always somehow makes himself look ridiculous, so that everyone can see that he greatly exaggerates his merits. And yet, in reality, this is not always a selfish act on his part, but may also be some kind of contribution to hiding Ty and Abby's secret identity. Of course, they themselves do not hide it well, but it can still be useful, as in the case of Roger Pinkeye.

When it’s revealed that the Director has a son, Clarence turns out to be just a very timid little boy who shows little to no personality. Clarence seems to be simply uninterested in anything and going with the flow, but for some reason Director begins to consider him first very demanding, and even scary in the Christmas and second Halloween episodes, respectively. But in those episodes, Clarence never lives up to his stated reputation. If he walks like a creepy shadow from around the corner, that doesn’t mean that he’s capable of something creepy. If he whispered about some action figure or simply pointed his finger at it in the store, that doesn’t mean that he demands it threatening to do something terrible. It feels like the Director either instilled this in himself, or is indulging the boy to grow up like this. Although, most likely, it's in his nature to fret over the child, and the fact that Clarence is so passive, in theory, should’ve save Director’s nerves, and not vice versa.

Here are some other important secondary characters.

Paige is the most popular girl in school, but compared to the typical glamorous beauties in pink, she strives to excel in everything from sports to school activism. Although she is shown to have a shallow interest in fashion, spending too much money on shopping and making fun of those who can't do it, she is also capable of making stylish clothes for herself and providing uniforms for school events. 

She usually can’t stand anything gross and sometimes zealously keeps order at school, but in order to win, Abby is ready to participate in a competition to see who drinks the most cocktails or even in the grossest game show. And just for the sake of being shown on TV, she’s ready to splash around in the swamp and tell how she was abducted by aliens. In general, Paige is both a rich bimbo and a strict excellent student and the best activist everywhere and in everything, as if she wanted to fill every possible archetype of the school bully. In any case, the plot rarely allows her to show herself in a different capacity.

Paige has an interesting relationship with Abby. They are like inseparable rivals and the two most active girl students who already have a lot of power in school life, but continue to fight for influence. They are often forced to work together, and although they protest at first, they end up working together perfectly every time. And everyone (or at least Ty) is surprised by this every time. The principal, however, knows nothing of their rivalry and is simply convinced that they are the perfect team. Moreover, it seems that this is really the case. 

Abby, unlike Ty, never makes friends at school because Paige is enough for her. In different episodes, she shows that she knows perfectly well her behavior and how to get what she needs from her. She even gets outraged when Paige doesn't notice her (while mind-controlled).

Paige has two unremarkable friends with whom she can have silly conversations, but she only talks seriously with Abby. The most notable case was in domestic technology class, when everyone had to team up to do each other's makeup, Paige chose Abby over one of her entourage, even though she knew Abby didn't know how to do makeup and would do everything wrong. Moreover, after Abby really does everything wrong, Paige says that she will not let her near her face until she learns how to do makeup properly. That is, even after that clown makeup, Paige doesn’t think that Abby’s just mocking her, and is ready to give her another chance. And then, it turns out, Paige herself wanted to put makeup on Abby and use it as another opportunity to propose friendship. It's just some kind of reference to the song "Popular" from the musical "Wicked".

In fact, Abby and Paige constantly beat around the bush with the idea of becoming friends. In the episode “New recruits” where it all started, Ty and Abby were those weird kids at school that no one really talked to until they were on TV. Then Paige approached Abby and invited her to her table, and Abby said that she felt that they would become best friends. Abby expressed hope for this then, and another time, after that home domestic technology class, she also willingly agrees to be friends with Paige. That time they were at odds with a fashion show, to which the principal decided to add an unexpected twist with an exchange of clothes. It seems that they also competed for the same handsome and very passive guy, but they were never interested in him as a person, more as an accessory or a status symbol. It’s more important for them to prove something to each other.

However, the way they are constantly attracted and pushed away, how they show excellent teamwork every time, how everyone is surprised to see them together and not fighting, all seem to hint that at some point they must realize that complement each other perfectly. They already know and accept each other’s shortcomings very well; their rivalry in school matters often helps them find the best option or get out of a difficult situation. However, it just stays that way for the entire series. Despite all the hints, their relationship doesn’t develop at all, although it clearly should. Paige could’ve been made more unambiguous if the writers really didn't want it. It felt like all this was the basis for the relationship to develop, but they just kept dragging it out, leaving it until the very end and just continuing in the same vein. Perhaps it's because they didn't know which season would be the last and were hoping for another one, just like with the failed return of Chester/Kid Rot. On the other hand, they rounded off Fartor’s storyline. Plus, just because Paige and Abby admit they're rival friends doesn't mean it's over. It's just that their relationship will change a little, but they can still tease each other and try to outdo each other with the best intentions – to help each other improve. In addition, some episodes even draw parallels between the relationship between Abby and Paige and the relationship between Ty and Naomi.

Ty and Naomi are a pretty non-irritating romantic subplot. Considering that I usually can’t stand straight romance, and sometimes I skip episodes because of it, and in the worst cases I’m ready to quit the entire series at any point. In this regard, I decided to figure out what makes this couple not annoying. I think the thing I hate most is gender stereotypes, but when they are simply reversed, it feels like a joke to me. In order to evade stereotypes in a very organic and realistic way, it is not even necessary to abandon general ideas about femininity and masculinity. You can just place the accents well. For example, here the romance is more important for Ty, but for Naomi it’s just a nice bonus. She invests less in relationships, has separate hobbies and her own social circle, even if she gets nervous or does something wrong, she doesn't make a big deal out of it and can usually admit her mistakes or share her doubts without any communication problems. Being a shy girl, she doesn't blush and run away or mumble with a trembling voice like in the anime, on the contrary, she is calmer and more confident when talking to Ty. Naomi has insecurities, but she doesn't think she can't be loved because of them, she is just careful about them when it becomes important. She does not romanticize her fragility, and certainly is not going to pretend to appear more feminine; on the contrary, she knows well what it is, and rather considers it to be her annoying and inconvenient trait. Ty in one episode thinks that he needs to be "macho" to like Naomi, but everyone in that episode makes it clear to him that this is called "acting like a jerk" and no one likes that. In the end, even though Ty saves Naomi from falling into the water, what touches her most is his tears and how sensitive he is. Ty does tend to be more nervous and worry a lot more about how to make things perfect, but Naomi doesn't need it to be perfect, she doesn't have high expectations, and she's definitely not the type to create drama out of nowhere. On the other hand, sometimes Ty tries to impress Naomi in a very ridiculous way, for example, saying that they fit together like a dog's intestines and a tapeworm (or something like that), then Abby has to urgently stop him. This adds to the comedy and doesn't make things seem too serious. It doesn't mean I like this romantic subplot. It’s just that if you can’t do without romance, let it be like that.

Andy is initially a minor character who gains importance over time. A stereotypical unpopular and socially awkward nerd who is invited by Ty to a toy fighting robot building competition along with another girl who will remain insignificant. However, Andy eventually becomes Ty's best friend and starts appearing more and more, sometimes in comical situations, once as a full-fledged competitor in a game show, once as a sidekick in the fight against a villain... and once as a potential villain. He was a fan of Lance Boil's work, but somehow didn't see him as a villain who harmed everyone, so he tried to follow in his footsteps. Of course, he figured it out and fixed everything at the end of that episode, and it didn't hurt his friendship with Ty. The most remarkable thing is that he was actually able to patent his invention. So they can do it there. It's not just my idea that the inventions of the mad scientists here could improve people's lives.

Back to the villains again. Most of them here are one-timed, since there is nothing more to squeeze out of their specific themes, and instead the screen time is given to showing more different ones. And since this is a City of Mad Scientists, there certainly won't be a shortage of them.

In fact, one of the two villains here who isn't a mad scientist appears in the second episode. Slim Slime Man was a sewer cleaner who loved his job and didn't like those who had fun on the surface. Mysteriously, he encountered a giant living mass of slime and became one with it. He was then able to control small slime creatures that multiplied and threatened to fill the entire city. Moreover, one would think that Slim's human body had dissolved into this slime, since in this state he appeared as a skull-shaped head inside an amorphous mass of transparent slime. Ty, Abby, and Lab Rat also thought he had been eaten at first. However, no. When he was defeated with the help of snails and slugs, that ate all the slime, in an even more mysterious way, Slim became human again. 

He was even able to reform by becoming a park cleaner, as was decided at the end of the episode about him and confirmed in the episode "Boogerman". The fact that this character was able to return to normal may be further evidence that Chester may have stopped being Kid Rot too. However, as in his case, it appears that the writers originally had something else planned for him, as he was going to be included in the opening sequence for the second half of the first season (or the second of four), despite the fact that Slim was previously happy with his new life and had no intention of trying to regain his slime-man form.

But where did this super slime come from if Slim is not a mad scientist and did not create it himself? There are two versions here. Both are due to the fact that this is, after all, the City of Mad Scientists. Not all of them are considered villains. Some simply produce canned food. These unknown individuals in the episode "Go fish" bred hagfish so that they were gigantic and would eat anything, including human trash. The giant fish became uncontrollable, climbed onto land and began to attack the city, so the grossologists had to fight them. However, creators of those fish were never found, or even looked for, suggesting that they were just harmless scientists with good intensions. 

And genetic engineering here, as it turns out, is available to anyone, even the ridiculous salesman of fake martian detectors and Bigfoot repellents. Well, remembering also Sloppy Joe’s booger monster and Pink Eye’s mold monster, it’s clear that such creatures are also easy to make here.

So, some of these unidentified mad scientists made this living slime mold, and poured it into the sewer, hoping to get rid of the failed experiment. And then they didn’t help fight the Slime Man in order to avoid responsibility. This is the first version. The second is all the same, only no one created the monster, the slime formed itself due to mixtures of mutagens that accidentally fell into the sewer as a result of the activities of the same crazy scientists.

One of Slim's complaints about the "folks up in sunny town" was that they were having fun in the sun while he was lonely in the gloomy sewers. But he wouldn’t be alone if, instead of slime, he, getting a little further into the sewer, had found another opposer of the sun, who also wanted to take it away from others, but because he himself could not stand it. Of course, then Slim would just become his sidekick, and there would be no giant slimer with the skull. 

However, these two are unexpectedly similar: not only in their lifestyle and desire to take over the surface, but also in their facial features and body shape, and also in their caring attitude towards their servants (slime creatures and nocturnal animals). Since Insectiva turned out to have a sister who is similar to her in everything, but essentially opposite, Slim Slime Man and Darko Crevasse could also be somehow connected.

Darko Crevasse is perhaps the most frequently appearing of the minor villains. He's a gloomy, aristocratic gentleman who can't stand the light and flies with a flock of bats... but don't even think that he's a vampire! in fact, for some reason no one ever mistakes him for a vampire. But he especially doesn't like being considered a goth, so what is his gothic-vampire style supposed to mean?

Basically, Darko Crevasse is just another mad scientist who is also a mutant with huge light-sensitive eyes the size of his sunglasses lenses. That’s why wants to plunge the world into darkness using various means to cover the sun. He uses octopuses to mass produce ink with which he can turn day into night. And he commands nocturnal creatures like owls and bats, which he can summon in such numbers that they block out the sun, simply swarming the sky. He also has raccoons, skunks, rats and other land creatures at his disposal, who continued to obey him even after death (becoming zombies). He explains this by the fact that he once worked as a part-time zookeeper. But it was clearly not his main profession. And his stature, agility and elegant leaping ability indicate that he was probably trained as a ballet dancer. This goes well with the fact that all of his defeats always involve falls. 

In any case, he was rich and first appeared as a mysterious benefactor who designed and donated to the city an observation tower with a solar-powered restaurant. In fact, from there he was going to spray ink into the sky. And it’s strangely typical of his plans to start from something exactly the opposite of his desire for darkness. In his second appearance, he does this in a particularly unexpected way. Using the blindingly bright swamp lights.

In the episode “Swamp gas”, he presented his intentions as if he had been left alone in the swamp, he wouldn’t have attacked the city. There you can even feel sorry for him, thinking that he was simply care about the swamp ecosystem and could happily live in the shade of overgrown trees. However, if you look at his laboratory under the swamp, and how well he was prepared for that attack, it becomes clear that he was going to attack anyway, just looking for the right excuse to make it look like he was right. In addition, he used an additional cover so that everyone wouldn’t know that it was he who was behind this, and not ghosts or aliens.

The episode where he uses roadkill zombie animals to stop the city residents from celebrating Halloween ("Night of the living road kill") is too crazy. I'll return to it at the end.

The Detective working with the Bureau of Grossology somehow especially likes to list his crimes to the arrested Darko Crevasse, and for some reason only to him. One day, Darko even escaped while the Detective was doing that. And another time, he was grateful to the Detective when he promised to throw him in the deepest darkest dungeon. Unfortunately, apparently, the prison took this into account and, on the contrary, placed him under several spotlights. Therefore, it is not clear how the Detective really feels about Darko: either he likes him more than other villains, and in his own way tried to do what was best for him, but the wardens ordered otherwise; either he didn’t like Darko the most, so he gave them that idea himself.

Getting back to Darko’s non-vampire look, it's worth noting that he's not the only villain here with a vampire aesthetic. Wiki says that he is based off Ozzy Osbourne. But there is one non-villain who also bears an incredible resemblance to a certain celebrity, and for some reason no one talks about it.

Emily is an extremely interesting case. A nurse who specializes in bloodletting using leeches, named Emily… I'm not sure if this could be a reference to Emilie Autumn, but there are so many things here that point to it. Similar facial features and physique, the voice is just as low and soft, with sharp intonations. Her name! Her stay in a hospital with outdated treatment methods. And also her fascination with leeches and treating them as suffering creatures, which is best revealed in Emilie Autumn’s book “The Asylum for wayward Victorian girls.” However, the book came out after this series. She has references to leeches in songs ("Miss Lucy has some leeches") and compositions ("Leech jar"), perhaps something was mentioned at concerts, so the Grossology creators may have known that detail. But all the same, if this is truly a reference, then it’s not clear who it is intended for. It seems unlikely that those who watch this animated series know her too. On the other hand, there is me.

Emily was the first pseudo-vampire in Grossology. She walked in a cloak with a hood, ran quickly, almost without touching the ground, flashed her fangs, recommended bloodletting and appeared in all places where there was an invasion of leeches. It turned out that she just wanted to return the escaped leeches without drawing attention to it. And the leeches began to multiply monstrously quickly, of course, thanks to the already mentioned mutagenic environment of the City of Mad Scientists’ sewers.

The third who resembles a vampire only in appearance, and the second only villain who is not a mad scientist, is opera singer Basso Profondo. But he is also some kind of mutant: he has a potent belch and he doesn’t really get fat, but only inflates like a balloon. Moreover, if the acidity of his stomach is neutralized, he won’t deflate like a balloon, but will simply return to his thin body. By the way, an interesting coincidence: both he and Slim Slime Man were not mad scientists and both were able to return to normal in the end.

Despite his name “Basso Profondo”, which means the lowest bass, his voice is a baritone, and he performed in a baritone trio without pretending to be a bass. Why was he called that then? I suspect that it just sounded spectacular and assumed that not everyone understood musical terminology anyway.

Basso Profondo wanted revenge for his shame at the concert when he tried and failed to perform "Aria of Doom" (which is actually Georges Bizet's Carmen overture). Although there was a tactless guy who laughed at him, no one kicked him out of the stage in general, and especially from his opera career. Some opera lovers, like Ty and Abby's dad, they sincerely did not understand why he disappeared from the trio, and were even glad to see him return, albeit as a villain. It was Basso Profondo who treated his fans poorly. So he himself came up with a reason for revenge and ruined his own life. At the end of the episode, he promised to return, but unlike Darko Crevasse (who promised the same every time), he never returned.

Another villainess who came up with a reason to hold a grudge and decided to take pointless revenge and ruined her promising career is Helena Globin, also known as the Scab Fairy. Even though she is human, she makes a better fairy than many of the supposed fairies from other cartoons. That's what a degree in folklore means! She based her image on an urban legend of the “scab fairy,” a local version of the tooth fairy invented to prevent children from picking scabs. She's acting unpredictably, her giggle easily turns into a cackle, she can help or harm, based on her own logic. She has truly magical powers, but she prefers to use them only to satisfy her whims. She draws strength from the strangest source, but how, people will never understand.

Helena Globin had degrees in immunology and folklore, invented instant healing of injuries by accelerating scab cycles, and created a fairy costume with real flying wings and a magic wand with partial telekinesis. She even invented an alternative energy source based on scabs, which she can produce in any quantity! But she also participated in beauty pageants, and that ruined everything. Because of one small scab on the pageant day she refused to participate, began to hide and decided from then on to spoil beauty pageants with her artificially grown scabs in order to prevent the participants from being more beautiful than her. 

She attributes her anger to her lost beauty, only she hasn't really lost it. This is subjective, but, in my opinion, she is even more beautiful than any participant in the pageant that she ruined. Of course, body dysmorphia will make anyone doubt their appearance, so this case is especially sad. I only hope that later she will redeem herself and advance medicine with her invention, or at least decide to conscientiously embody the legend of the scab fairy.

There is one disgusting chef in the school cafeteria, who follows literally no sanitary standards, but for some reason the school never fires him. And he is not a villain, although in the first three episodes I expected that he could turn out to be Sloppy Joe. In the third episode there was some strange plot about how exact copies of this chef began to appear all over the city, and then it turned out that they were Fartor's robots, but I don't remember the details and don't want to rewatch. The original chef remained for all the following episodes, so, obviously, he himself wasn’t a robot. 

In some episodes he gets better, although usually only until the next episode, and even then sometimes he goes too far, starting to treat everything, including food, with bleach. He also encourages "who can drink the most cold cocktails" competitions, which ultimately results in the cocktail machine exploding.

Why, despite that and the constant threat to the health of students, does the school principal still tolerate him? Apparently because he's not a mad scientist. And if the school managed to find one, they need to hold on to him. I don't see any other explanation. But I can tell you about two more school employees who turned out to be mad scientists and created even more serious threats.

The more harmless guy of the two, Mr. Fowler is a mechanic and janitor who got tired of fighting pigeons. So he made a giant mechanical owl to catch all the birds and bake them in a pie, just like in his favorite nursery rhyme. 

In the episode “Owl most foul,” the pigeons strangely actively began attacking the school with their droppings, what never happened in other episodes, despite the fact that in the end every pigeon was saved (and never left). 

It's also strange that Ty and Abby said at the end that the pigeons should be "controlled" rather than baked into a pie. What do they mean by population control then? If it’s extermination, then why not like that? If it’s “just don't feed them”, it seems no one did, and they're still there. If it’s birth control... this won't solve the problem that they're swarming the school right now. 

Somehow the problem resolved itself after this episode. It seems that for some reason the pigeons follow Mr. Fowler everywhere. He wasn’t a permanent employee at this school, and the school didn’t have problems with pigeons before, so when he left, the pigeons left too. It also explains why pigeon control is his personal problem. It's unclear whether Mr. Fowler finished his plan or not off-screen, because on the one hand, his owl suit was taken to the Gross-vault, and on the other hand, he could later be seen playing bingo in the episode “Oldie but a goodie” and without any pigeons.

Mr. Fowler is perhaps the most harmless villain that has ever been considered a villain here. He didn’t cause any big problems for the school kids, at most one unpleasant moment on the school bus. What happened to Ty and Abby when they tried to stop him is a different matter, but he didn't try to seriously harm them either, so he was one of the few villains who wasn't arrested. Not like the other truly evil mad scientist who was left in charge of the school for the summer.

Dr. Cornelius Colon is a proctologist who everyone teased because of his last name, and instead of changing it, he decided to take it to the extreme and put the whole world inside a giant intestine inhabited by giant tapeworms.

I would say that he is a sparing version of Fartor. Dr. Colon is similar to him in every way except the degree of nightmare fuel (probably). He even has his own creepy mutation – when he laughs, his face distorts as if he has unfused skull bones. I usually consider cannibalism/eating sentient species worse than torture and body horror, but in this case, I think the episode "School's grossed out for summer" is not as terrible as any episode about Fartor (at least Dr. Colon didn’t bring his matter to an irreparable point). There was also a pretty sweet storyline about Ty and Abby, along with Paige and Naomi, being unable to go on a field trip with their classes and going on a field trip to a school overrun by horrors.

And now the following mad scientists in order of unexpectedness of their profession.

The least unexpected, of course, is the candy factory owner. Many people have come up with the idea that Willy Wonka could be a mad scientist, so you can find plenty of parodies. Here is one of them.

Gary Gumdrop (I somehow associate the word "gumdrop" with falling out gums) can change between "candy man" and "candy maniac" amazingly quickly. He has a popular brand of candy, but he's secretly angry that the candy is causing his teeth to rot and fall out, so he adds destructive bacteria to his products to make it happen to others faster than to him. He even tries to use cauldrons of these bacteria to kill. By the way, there are also parodies about the fact that Willy Wonka adds human flesh to his sweets, for example in Epic Movie (2007).

And about Gary Gumdrops transformations. It would seem that it’s possible to disguise such a terrible appearance well, but it should take much longer and use many more resources. He definitely needed all the makeup, orthopedic corset, etc. But all these things shouldn't be so easy to lose, otherwise he would have revealed his true nature much earlier. But he can just put in a false jaw, put on a wig, a suit and done! There's not even a hint left of what a creepy guy he is! He doesn't even need to use blush or foundation; he just automatically gets rosy cheeks and a healthier skin color. 

But he can just as easily switch back – all he has to do is lose his dentures and wig. The fact that his beautification process is not shown is not just off-screen: in one scene he was directly running away from Abby and managed to instantly change his appearance in a matter of minutes before she caught up with him. And the second case is completely absurd, where he changes his appearance right on stage, against his will, showing the public his true face with the same speed with which he can move from one mannerism to another. These mannerisms are also diametrically opposed.

Unlike Willy Wonka, Gary Gumdrop would never give a tour of the factory, although Ty fanatically sought one. Not only is there nothing wonderful there, but everyone would definitely stop eating his candy if they knew how they were produced. It's strange that they turn out delicious, but that's probably why Gary Gumdrop is a mad scientist. Another one who could have been simply successful in his career, but chose pointless revenge. 

In WordGirl there was also a parody of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and so in one episode Toby wanted to take revenge on the factory for his bad tooth. I had the idea that Willy Wonka's father from Tim Burton’s movie, a dentist, would benefit from having a popular chocolate factory nearby so he could have more customers. The case of Gary Gumdrop is somehow between these two: his story started with his mom not letting him eat too much candy, but he ate anyway, turned out she was right, so he decided to take revenge... giving his problem to everyone else.

The second least unexpected is the hairdresser. Not everyone knows it now, but barbers used to be also bloodletters and sometimes surgeons. In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack there was Doctor Barber – also a mad scientist, but now we are not talking about him. Here is a modern hairdresser with genetic engineering.

Frederick Follicle is a once popular hairdresser who disliked the new fashion so much that he decided to make sure that everyone's hair always remained the same. In an attempt to achieve this, he combined hair with muscle, creating a scientific explanation for the beloved hair-tentacle trope. By the way, these tentacles were not only made from hair on his head – that’s the gross part. He is another one of the recurring villains, so one time he wanted to make everyone bald through laser hair removal from space, and another time he wanted to give everyone muscular hair that would also have a separate mind. He ironically explained his motivation by fighting for hair rights... controlling everyone’s hair with a remote control.

Another one-time villainess of a not-so-unexpected profession for a mad scientist is a greenhouse owner. “Growing up Creepie” had one too, but the one here went even further.

Sarah Senia (as Sarracenia plant) is a plant woman. Strangely, her name is not mentioned anywhere in the series and can only be learned from the episode description and Wikipedia page. While in other episodes about many villains both their villain name and their real human name are revealed.

Sarah Senia worked in a closed greenhouse and apparently produced resources for herself. She modified herself by mixing her genes with plant DNA. This gave her the ability to photosynthesize, but as an active creature it wasn’t enough for her. Perhaps this is why she identified with carnivorous plants, which hunt insects to replenish nutritional deficiencies. 

She created flying seeds of giant, instantly growing carnivorous plants to take over the world. Just as her natural enemy Insectiva wanted insects to rule the world, she also wanted to give everything to the carnivorous plants so that they would need nothing else. But since she considered their main advantage to be adaptability to a lack of resources, why didn’t she think that with their abundance they would degrade into ordinary plants? Perhaps she just needed something to justify her cannibalistic tendencies.

The next, more unexpected mad scientist was owner of the fishing shop by the lake. Such hermits usually, although with oddities, simply live in harmony with nature. This person is passionate about nature, perhaps even too much. Gundy McGoober loves to live on a lake without modern technology in the company of giant worms and a huge living mass of ordinary ones. He can control them, seemingly using folk tricks, but on some incredible scale. 

Gundy McGoober’s plan was especially ridiculous. He wanted no one to come to his lake to relax with their newfangled devices, so he got giant worms that would steal tourists' things by pulling them underground. But paradoxically, he himself began to support the legend of a large catfish that no one manages to catch in order to attract even more tourists. So, his plan was to lure all the fishermen in the area here and scare them with worms so that they would never return... instead of not drawing attention to this lake and scaring only random wanderers. How is it that his plan has not yet backfired, gathering around the lake not only tourists, but also cryptologists, ufologists, zoologists, biologists, or anyone else – and all with high-tech devices?

Finally, who is simply unthinkable as a mad scientist is a professional basketball player. When should he study some fungal bacteria? When to invent the super wrecking basketball? When to organize fully automated production of overly sophisticated sneakers? Or is he so rich that they would invent everything for him without asking questions? But, as it turned out in the episode, Keith Van Kobbler is not a team player, so he would not trust anyone else to carry out his insidious plan. 

His plan is, as always, crazy. At first, he got rid of other strong basketball players as competitors. But why did he have to ensure that all the basketball players got a fungus and were unable to play? And then who should he brilliantly defeat in competitions? He certainly didn't want his record to be broken, but that wouldn't help against those in other countries or even cities. And why infect not only basketball players, but also everyone who falls for advertising his shoes? It was as if he wanted to mot only become the best, but to ruin his reputation at the same time. After all, even if grossologists hadn’t exposed him, sooner or later people would’ve established a connection between the epidemic of foot fungus and his massive sales of advertised sneakers.

You know those creepy or gross close-ups that some cartoons have? Those could be expected in large amounts from an animated series called “Grossology”! However, there was none. But there was a sudden opposite version. When basketball players take off their sneakers after a game, judging by their shocked reaction, you can expect the worst. From a distance on their feet it seems that the skin is worn out in places, muscles are visible in places, and bare bones stick out in places.... then they show a close-up and it turns out these are just some mild symptoms of foot fungus.

Arachnidia is the last recurring villain, an arachnid version of Insectiva and her twin sister. She is similar to her in everything, except that she is less active and more prone to murder, which is explained by the differences between spiders and insects. Arachnidia is so secretive that Insectiva managed to forget about her existence and didn’t think of her first when they came to her with accusations of attack by giant spiders.

Interestingly, independently of each other, they mutated almost identically. The twin method in their case shows not how different they would become under different conditions, but, on the contrary, how similar they remained. Of course, it could also be that when they mutated, they were together, so that they were affected by the same mutagen in equal proportions. But according to their backstory, they couldn't stand each other since they were kids. Why would they suddenly get together as adults? But they still got together at the family dinner in the Christmas episode. So, maybe as the only relatives, or the only relatives who accept their villainy, they feel obligated to occasionally spend time together. Arachnidia's relationship with Insectiva has been compared in various episodes to either Abby and Ty as rival siblings, or Abby and Paige as two girl rivals who are particularly close despite disliking each other.

Arachnidia had not yet been introduced in the first season, so in the episode "Club parasites" Insectiva has no problem using the spider web logo, despite the fact that spiders are not her thing. However, in Arachnidia's first appearance, Insectiva acts as if she would never do anything like that.

And those were all the villains here. As you may have noticed, most of them became villains out of suffering, not out of avarice or sadistic tendencies. These were times when all villains had to have a tragic backstory. But not to sympathize with them, but rather to ridicule them. That's why it's so problematic here. It demonizes those who are tired at work or ridiculed for being weird (in a cartoon designed to support weird kids!) or, worst of all, people with acquired disabilities. The latter, by the way, are usually so brilliant here that they could direct their energy to returning themselves to their original state. But, obviously, that idea no longer seems attractive to Fartor with such a broken psyche, and Lance Boil even liked being a short man with a giant Boil. 

In fact, among all the suffering villains here, only Lance Boil was the one who became a villain both before his transformation and before the start of his suffering. He was a spoiled child who got the best of everything, but wanted exactly what he wasn't given. And instead of just going and getting all the desired gross things himself, he decided to spread the grossness to everyone around. And generally take over the world to make it gross.

Unlike the WordGirl’s villains, these didn’t form a villain society, although there were attempts. At first, Lance Boil, Insectiva and Sloppy Joe effectively teamed up in the episode "All together now", but, thanks to the grossologists, they got into a fight with each other at the end. However, Insectiva and Sloppy Joe continued to keep in touch and hate Lance Boil together. 

In the episode "Pussed off", Lance Boil talks about his formal dinner party for villains, where, in addition to the main trio, Darko Crevasse and Fartor were present. However, given the circumstances, it is unknown whether this party actually took place or was a fictitious event. However, Ty and Abby learned about Sloppy Joe's birthday celebration completely by accident, so they might not have known about other similar events.

Also, unlike the WordGirl’s villains, these are not sent to jail for a few days or in the same comfortable conditions. The Splatticus state prison is more like Arkham Asylum. As can be seen in various episodes, therapy is conducted for the villains in the form of a conversation, aimed at correcting their way of thinking, perhaps even providing psychological assistance. However, for the especially incorrigible there are literally torture chambers. I already mentioned that Darko Crevasse was kept under the spotlights, so Insectiva was there on giant sticky fly tapes, Frederick Follicle was bald and in a straitjacket, Fartor was with an air freshener... and Lance Boil, oddly enough, was in relatively comfortable conditions , in a luxurious armchair and with writing tools. He said, it's too sterile for him, but it really doesn't compare to the treatment the others got. Why is this so? Did he bribe the guards or something? Or did they simply not find something to get through to him, as was later the case with Roger Pinkeye?

So, here there is no such connivance for the villains as in “WordGirl”, but still some manage to appear repeatedly, even quite often. The fact is that these most incorrigibles are also the masters of escape. None of those who were shown in the torture chambers remain there. 

Insectiva escapes, sometimes pretending to reform, sometimes summoning a swarm of insects, sometimes using her own insect traits. After that episode, she appears free very soon. In the same Pink Eye’s story arc, she calmly plays golf and even tolerates a lazy old man until Lance Boil sets her up by throwing the old man a beehive. But even after that, Insectiva still appears free in the episode “Pucker up”. Frederick Follicle's ability to escape depends on his hair growing back, and he appears in the beard episode "Hirsute Yourself". Fartor appears again multiple times in the same Pink Eye’s story arc and in the series finale. Darko Crevasse appears in the episode "Night of the living road kill" (although it is stated that it was a dream, I can prove that it was not). Lance Boil is constantly running away, and some villains escape the scene of the crime without being caught.

I had a theory that "City of Mad Scientists" is a science experiment, like what would happen if you had too many creative people in one place, and if you raised children to encourage them not to be standard. This could be said, rather, about the city of WordGirl. Here, if there is such an experiment, then it gathers all the embittered geniuses in one place, where there is someone to fight their quirks. Do you think that in the episode “Survival of the grossest”, Pat, a boy genius with the clean bot that constantly needs tuning, accidentally transferred on exchange here? Ty and Abby even told him about the Bureau of Grossology, partly to offer an alternative path to becoming a mad scientist. But subsequent adventures turned out to be too gross for him, so he proved to the experiment organizers that he would not become one of the local villains, nor would he help fight them.

The concentration of such individuals in one place, of course, can save other cities from taking out the anger of each such person on them. But if instead they were given the opportunity not to be failures, at least half of them could use their inventions for great benefit to humanity and receive the recognition they deserve. Andy was able to do this with his invention, based on the technology of Lance Boil in the episode "Pussed off". Petunia, Ty and Abby's mom, also invented a necklace that repels insects. How useful this would be all over the world: from the jungle to the tundra! But perhaps the experiment organizers believe that some individuals are too brilliant for this world, and simply don’t want to allow a new scientific and technological revolution. In this case, Andy and Petunia's inventions will not go beyond the city limits.

Another argument in favor of the experiment is the ubiquitous security guard, truck driver and handyman. Pay attention to these three, and you will realize that they change jobs strangely often. The frail old security guard was at a hockey stadium, then at a history museum (which only adds to his resemblance to the same old security guard from WordGirl), then at bingo, then at a nuclear power plant, then at the candy factory. The track driver was transporting live octopuses, deodorants, and even mosquitoes with parasites. You can't see him with the Halloween pumpkins, but the bright appearance of the truck suggests he was there too. His truck is usually marked with symbols of what he is carrying, as if attracting villains aimed at it. The handyman appears later than everyone else, but becomes just as ubiquitous. First he is in a cheese factory, then in a silo tower, then in a meat warehouse, then selling Christmas trees. 

They don’t appear more often only because otherwise everyone will definitely notice it and they will look suspicious. And, most importantly, they always find themselves exactly where gross attacks occur. As if they are decoys who must be the first to test the plans of the villains and thereby protect ordinary people. At the same time, for example, a worker from a fish factory remained there, as seen in the episodes “Go Fish” and “Kid Rot”. So you can’t even say that they left their previous job because of the very gross attack that happened there.

In the episode "All Together Now", the Bureau of Grossology is closed due to the fact that the laboratory did not pass the test, because of the three most dangerous villains. Of course, it’s quite typical, but what kind of ignorant top management do they have that doesn’t understand the specifics of the organization, sends a nervous inspector, and forgets that without people who can withstand the gross conditions, there will be no one to fight the even greater grossness that the villains will bring upon everyone. The police, as proven in "Perfect Stink", don't take on such cases precisely because they are too gross, and the cops pass out or run away to throw up as soon as they get close. Obviously, at the end of this episode, grossologists managed to convey this to those bosses. In the City of Mad Scientists experiment, this incident showed that either the Bureau’s superiors weren’t behind the experiment, or their plan was to test the grossologists' work without high-tech equipment, which is why they agreed so easily after that return everything as it was. And they didn’t necessarily want to save money: quite possibly, it could have been a check to see if they were too dependent on equipment, and if they needed additional training in case of an unforeseen situation. Although this doesn’t negate their guilt for the fact that the teens were almost killed as a result.

In cartoons where characters shrink and travel inside someone's body, there’s a common situation: the authors cannot decide whether the characters should swim through blood vessels or through internal organs, and combine both options. It was exactly the case here, in the episode “the insider”. Abby and Lance Boil swam through Ty's body among the red and white blood cells, but also swam to such internal organs as the vocal cords and sinuses. If you imagine this, it turns out that Ty’s nasal cavities and throat are full of blood. Blood vessels, of course, permeate all the internal organs, but not in such a way that, swimming through them, you can see these organs as if they were from the outside. But still, this is just a cartoon trope, not like some other anti-scientific things in this animated series, which can really be misleading.

There is a moment in the episode “School’s grossed out for summer” where Ty has no idea how to get information without access to the lab of the Bureau of Grossology, and then Abby points him to the library where they were hiding. To which Ty, with a startled realization, replies, “Oh, right... the library! That’s what normal students do.” Except isn’t he the one in the first episode “Queen for a Day” who is shocked by the attack on the library and says: “Poor innocent books... I haven’t even finished to read them all yet” and “This is worse than I imagined! I’ve never seen such destruction! What kind of monster could do this?!” How did he manage to completely forget about the books in just 16 episodes? Moreover, they never used any of the books in that episode. Learned everything they needed from the old educational film.

In the episode "Kid Rot", this Kid Rot, when he learned that they wanted to make him normal, decided to destroy all the data collected about him by breaking the computer... only what he broke was just a display. The computer's memory isn't actually in the screen, so I doubt it was any different with this Lab Rat’s super computer. In addition, there were even larger screen on which that data was also displayed, so I doubt that the authors themselves thought that the memory was in the display. I think Lab Rat fake-screamed that he lost all the data so that Kid Rot wouldn't think of destroying the rest of the computer. Of course, grossologists never used the data to somehow solve his problem, but this is more likely due to the fact that he either hid for too long or evolved too quickly.

Later in the same episode, Ty, Abby and Lab Rat find themselves trapped in the lab and fear that the rot will soon reach them. However, perhaps they shouldn’t have been so afraid of it, since this rot had previously dissolved the clothes on the school bully twice, but never touched him. It seems that this rot prefers to consume only organic matter of plant origin (except maybe that gross lunch in the beginning, but maybe it was vegetarian meat). And the fact that the same powerful fertilizer was obtained from a laboratory plant using this rot as in the schoolyard means that the composition of the rot at that time had not yet changed. But even the modified rot seemed to only affect vegetation and wooden things, so this could also explain how Chester, after drowning in the rot, was able to return to normal.

In "Oldie but a goodie", at the end of the bingo scene, Abby falls and calls out to Ty, saying, "I’ve fallen and I can't get up!" I wonder how this reference got here. I only know about this from the Nostalgia Critic's ad reviews, but apparently there was some intrusive american ad where an old woman says exactly that, and for some reason everyone started inserting that phrase into a bunch of other media. Yes, overly intrusive advertising inevitably ends up in memes, but at what time was it? 80s? Could the Grossology's target audience see the ad and understand the reference? I somehow doubt it. And in general, is it that funny without that intrusive ad? It's funny only in the sense that they basically decided to make this reference.

At the end of that episode, when Lab Rat sends the antidote with his robot pigeon, Abby immediately pours the antidote into the pool of pus. However, she was not present during the Lab Rat's research, and the drug was not properly tested – as he once said: "Testing is for amateurs... or people with time." Then how did Abby know that the substance in the test tube would spread throughout the pus and give it the opposite effect? At the first moment, it looked as if she, in her senile insanity, had simply wasted it in vain. Not all Lab Rat chemicals work on like that, so this also doesn’t give confidence that this trick would definitely work. 

And when Lab Rat himself tested the antidote, he dropped it on a plant, and it turned into a sprout. It wasn’t shown that he first grew this plant from a sprout using a sample of pus. Then how could he know that this would actually reverse the effect of pus, and not have a rejuvenating effect in principle? Most likely, this was implied, but did not fit into the episode. However, everyone acts so carelessly that they could easily turn anyone into babies.

I've already mentioned how ridiculously Ty and Abby wear their slimesuits under the regular clothes, but it’s especially absurd in the episode "Heave it or leave it", where their clothes are being dissolved by Lance Boil's modified stomach acid while Ty stands with his bare hands, and acid doesn't get to them. Then, like Superman, they tear the clothes on their chests and the slimesuits underneath, but Tai is still bare-handed. The torn clothes dissolve completely, and the freezers are now in full suits with gloves and boots. Even if their sleeves were rolled up, where did the gloves and boots come from? They wouldn't have had time to put them on so quickly, especially Abby, already standing with her bare legs in a puddle of stomach acid.

Before that, Lance Boil told them that they would be digested, but then he himself swam in this acid, and nothing happened to him except for the dissolution of his clothes. If this acid only affected clothes and he only wanted to humiliate them, then how could he not expect them to come with protective gear? 

By the way, given that Lance Boil often loses his clothes in such situations, why doesn't he make himself a suit that cannot be dissolved or accidentally ripped off of him?

In "A New Leaf", at the end, Abby lets Insectiva go after teaming-up. Ty doesn't know about it and wants to arrest Insectiva because she escaped from prison, but Abby stops him. In the final shots, when they are already at school, Insectiva's sinister laughter can be heard. Given that this is the last or second to last episode of the season, and in the first episode of the next season Insectiva is again in prison, despite the fact that there were no other episodes with her in between, it seems that it was at that moment that she managed to mess things up.

In the episode "Sinister Rivalry", in the scene where Ty and Abby are in the spider web, there is an obvious animation error. In some shots, Ty holds his hands without touching the web, and also his grossometer is upside down: when he pokes his nose at it, he always hits the screen, although it is animated as he was supposed to press buttons. And just to think, individually everything matched perfectly, it was just put together inaccurately.

In the episode "Sloppy Joe to go", Sloppy Joe suddenly starts to resemble Chuck the Evil Sandwich Making Guy from WordGirl. He was also unexpectedly successful in an honest job, and everyone loved his food, which was without any catch. There was even a scene where Sloppy Joe shot Ty and Abby with ketchup and mustard, which was Chuck's main attack. Not to mention, the fast food restaurant chain’s mascot, portrayed by Sloppy Joe, was named Chucky. Of course, I know that both cases are based on the Chuck E Cheese, but I don’t think that the ideas of two different animated series to make such a villain out of it could be so similar.

At the beginning of this episode, no one is happy that garbage was stolen from the dump, like it means the city has become cleaner. Because people know that if someone steals something like that, it will be with bad intentions. True, in the case of Sloppy Joe, it may well be not-so-bad intensions. He stole handkerchiefs with snot to make a boogerman, which at first was not even expected to come to life. Here, too, he didn’t plan to litter the entire city, although in the end he liked it when it happened by accident. On the other hand, there was an incident where dung was stolen to be used to attack a city in the episode “Turd Wars”. But then Insectiva was involved in that plan. And there’s no telling whether Sloppy Joe would have done the same without her.

By the way, how did Sloppy Joe manage to steal the city dump without disturbing Lance Boil, who had a secret base in that dump with an entrance disguised as mountains of garbage? Sloppy Joe knew about this, knew about the secret entrance, and despised Lance Boil (that is, he was not afraid to disturb him). 

However, in the Pink Eye’s story arc, this base was still in place, not changed at all inside, and the entrance is not the same at all. The garbage that was stolen in the episode was burned. And the empty site looked somewhat small compared to the large dump in other episodes. Maybe there is more than one dump in the city? Maybe Sloppy Joe wanted to create his own, underground, precisely because the main one was occupied by Lance? And most importantly, he worked SO hard for this. That whole maze of underground tunnels, that whole chain of restaurants with fake garbage bins, marketing with toys, cars, branded packaging, all that really tasty food, not made in unsanitary conditions, and in huge quantities. How many people were working on all this? Where does this overproduction come from? And how could Sloppy Joe afford it?

Roger Pinkeye first appears in the episode "Flushed Away" in the school bathroom line. There you can see that his pink eye is not the same. Obviously, he was simply mirrored there, and not turned over correctly. However, it can also be assumed that before the super mold got into his eye, he was still experimenting with mold and accidentally infected his other eye with something less dangerous, so then he was able to quickly cure it. That's why he managed to get used to it and wasn't too worried about the other eye.

In the episode "Mold Monster", Roger locked Ty and Abby in his room with that mold monster and made excuses first by saying that he couldn't find the key, then by saying that the door was stuck. Afterwards, Ty told him to fix the lock. Well, he fixed it. Replaced the regular lock with retinal scanner one. This, oddly enough, turned out only in favor of the grossologists. That lock ended up being disabled because Abby broke the scanner. Breaking a regular lock probably wouldn't be so easy.

Actually, during a break in the Pink Eye’s arc, Abby and Ty strangely don't watch out for him while doing the work of grossologists at school. In the Christmas episode "Let Them Eat Fruitcake", the final shot shows Roger and Paige having a snowball fight. But that means they were there and could see Abby and Sloppy Joe doing all those airplane stunts to stop Lance Boil. Even if this episode was supposed to follow the story arc where Roger lost his memory, the ending made it clear that he hasn't stopped thinking about grossologists, and things like that could easily make him remember everything.

But in that episode, most of the action took place on the plane, and Roger didn’t have a full view of what was happening. It was a completely different matter in the episode "Candy isn't dandy". Ty and Abby, in full grossology gear with their gadgets and tricks, were on stage in front of the entire school. Of course, most kids thought it was part of the show. But Roger might have realized what it really was, if he had been there. Apparently he wasn’t interested in concerts and candy. But it was probably stated that Ty would be the presenter at the concert. Wouldn't Roger have come at least for that?

While investigating, Ty and Abby find several lost teeth, which Gary Gumdrop keeps losing throughout the episode. However, his teeth are falling out in such quantities that it’s surprising that he still has them at this point. In one episode, which occurs over the course of about a day, he lost 4 teeth. And he says this went on for years. Perhaps, of course, his teeth had rotted enough to fall out only recently, which could explain his only now awakened desire for revenge. But on the other hand, he thought of losing his teeth as something normal, as if he had a lot of time to get used to it.

At the beginning of the episode, Gary Gumdrop tests his destructive bacteria on wind-up chattering teeth, which is completely destroyed. However, later, when Ty and Abby are hanging over a cauldron of those bacteria, Ty is somehow sure that their robot dog Sniffer is not in danger. He actually emerges unharmed, and this can only be explained by the fact that Lab Rat made him resistant to everything. The idea that bacteria only act on organic matter is not justified here because it is unlikely that the chattering teeth was organic. Bacteria damage real teeth by producing acids, and plastic should be more resistant to acid attack than metal. To be fair, Ty knew nothing about the destroyed chattering teeth from the beginning.

In "Ain't over til the fat man sings", Ty and Abby's dad goes to the deli shop and meets a surprise twin of that revolting school cafeteria chef. This one is different from him with black hair and a goatee, and I think he's not the same person because he has a different voice, and Ty and Abby aren't surprised that he works there. This is clearly not the case with that old security guard who just appears everywhere. In the case of that chef, his mysterious appearance throughout the city was already played out in the plot, where all his twins turned out to be Fartor's robots. This one, unlike them, is clearly real. And apparently the most refined of the twins. Of course, little is known about the chef, but from his behavior in the school cafeteria it can’t be said that he could have been interested in opera in order to know details about such events. On the other hand, maybe he acts that way because he hates working in the school cafeteria and would prefer something more sophisticated. Anyway I think the deli shopkeeper is his real twin brother. For me the situation is very reminiscent of the similar case from WordGirl, where a minor villain named Big Left Hand Guy suddenly has a twin – a salesman in a hardware store, differing from him mainly in his hairstyle in the shape of a hammer.

Here the deli shopkeeper is not even the last twin of the background character, who also does not belong to the types that constantly change their job. There's also another generic blond guy who Abby likes, even if he's not the same guy. He can usually be seen at school: in "Queen for a day" he was hanging decorations in the gym, in "Oldie but a goodie" he was taking photographs, in "Hairless whispers" he was in the auditorium at a fashion show. There, by the way, Paige said his name was Rudy. However, in "Squirm" he appears as a cycling instructor, says his name is Greg, and doesn’t recognize Abby. Oddly enough, Abby also doesn’t remember the exact same classmate she already knows. Either he also has a twin brother who doesn't even try to look different, or they are shown to have the same appearance only from Abby's point of view, and she doesn't pay attention to details and just thinks that's what all attractive guys look like. Of course, it seems like the artists lazily used one character model instead of drawing a new one, and hoped that even if they were different people in the script, no one would notice. But in the case of the school chef’s twin, they still thought about making him at least a little different, why not here? Here Abby's strange obsession with one particular type seems more convincing to me.

"Squirm" was a unique episode where there was no mission from the Bureau of Grossology, and nothing dangerous happened at all in Abby's storyline. Ty just accidentally discovered another mad scientist, whom he left alone in the end, despite the fact that he promised revenge if they returned. Although this whole invasion of worms scared Ty’s dad at that moment, it didn’t make him change his mind about returning next year. So, Gundy McGoober's plan to scare away tourists didn’t work, but since he remains free, he can still come up with something worse.

The reason why Gundy McGoober thought it necessary to scare away tourists is the legend of a giant catfish that was caught by a hippie in 1968. Moreover, that hippie shown in the flashback is the recognizable Director of the Bureau of Grossology. The fact that the specific year is indicated there allows us to calculate the Director’s age. This episode was released in 2009, and this date in the animated series can be considered the present, since others are not mentioned. So if he was old enough to look recognizable in 1968, he must have been in his 60s at the time of the episode. I thought it would turn out something implausible, but it’s quite safe to say that he looks his age.

In several episodes there is a strange tendency that giants are scared of small animals, simply because these are their natural enemies. First, in “Go Fish”, giant hagfish were defeated with the help of regular – not giant – cats. Then in “Turd Wars” the giant dung beetles were defeated with the help of king toads, large for their species but still tiny for that giant dung beetles. Finally, in “Squirm”, The giant worms were defeated by the catfish, realistically gigantic for its species, but again dwarfed by these worms. 

However, for some reason the giants continue to be afraid of them, despite the colossal size difference. It's as if their fear is related to a genetic fear of specific species, and not to the ability of those species to eat them. Actually, I don’t know if that kind of things really exists. But it seems that when predators are so much smaller and don't specialize in hunting anything larger than themselves, it shouldn't work that way. Why such an anti-scientific idea is so obsessively promoted in an educational cartoon series? Of course, they wanted to talk about the natural enemies of certain species, but why add this absurdity again and again? It was possible to at least shrink some giants using Lab Rat’s shrinking ray, and enlarge some predators using his magnifying ray, as in the episode “Ask the dust mites.”

In my articles about cartoons, I usually have nominations for worst episodes. Because it’s impossible to choose the best one when they are all good, and everyone has different tastes, but it’s easy to identify the bad ones. So the most boring episode here is “Go fish”, about mindless giant fish that were defeated by ordinary cats. The most annoying is "Vertigo go-go", where there is nothing but bullying of Abby. Well, and the most painful... any episode about Fartor. But especially “the Fart-zilla”. This episode is similar in level of morbidity to the sausage episode from “Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs” (also a sickening story where the monstrosity is not taken seriously). From the very beginning, it has a rather foul atmosphere, which, as the plot progresses, intensifies and becomes more and more nauseating, and when the mystery is revealed, it simply finishes off. And the ending doesn’t bring any relief, quite the opposite.

And if you have seen that episode, then you know what kind of monster this pathetic clerk really is. He is the one who most deserves to be sent to prison rather than walk free, let alone enjoy life. Well, if it's any consolation, his last appearance is at Basso Profondo's performance, and when the theater collapses, he's not among those escaping, and Ty and Abby save only their parents. So I can hope that he died in the rubble (not to seem insensitive to the real victims, but for this fictional criminal who showed more than proportionate cruelty, it is a fitting end). Yes, sorry for telling so much about what you would be better off not knowing, but this is especially for those who were shocked and don’t know what to do with this knowledge now.

And now that Halloween episode “Night of living road kill”, which is presented as Ty’s dream, as it ends with the trope “It was all a dream”. And yet I don't think it was. How often do you have storylines in your dreams – scenes with a consistent plot where you aren’t present? This only happens to me if I dream that I am watching something, but even then – as the dream progresses, I usually find myself in the same scenes, following the characters. But here it all started with Darko Crevasse, who planned to attack Halloween with nocturnal animals, and in the next scene, Ty and Andy were making costumes, not suspecting anything. After Darko announced to everyone that he was taking over the holiday, the very people he was watching at the beginning began to remove the decorations. For a dream, this is also a very logical episode. Do you know how strange and chaotic dreams can be? Here the plot goes smoothly, without things coming out of nowhere. Various characters discussed scientific and statistical facts that made sense. Everyone was shown a very detailed and rich life that Ty might not have any idea about. 

Zombies are the main oddity of most of the episode, but is it really something impossible, after all that the mad scientists here have been doing? Lance Boil and Roger Pinkeye, from Abby's fingernail and a rat's hair, instantly grew a perfectly intelligent clone, having all of Abby's memory, and her abilities were enhanced by those of the rat. And after that, how impossible is a zombie? Those animals were recently killed. These are not the hundreds of road kills that the Detective has been burying along the road. All Frankenstein-type stories exploit this idea. And you know that experiment with a dog’s head, right?

There was, of course, Ty’s dream in this episode, but it was more of a dream without warning. If you pay attention, you can find an exact moment when his dream begins. Ty jumped on Darko from the basketball hoop, and only after that the craziest and inexplicable events began. Ty easily dressed Darko into Paige's Little Bo Peep costume. He then set zombie animals on him because it was a Halloween costume even though there was nothing themed about it. Lab Rat suddenly came to the rescue and saved the day. The skeletons of the gnawed zombies ran away in embarrassment! Lab Rat suddenly had a DJ console and started a party. School kids came running in costumes, although they did not know whether it was safe to celebrate or not. The Director and the Detective joined the party too! Even the skeletons danced!!! And after that, Ty thought Abby and Andy dancing was the weirdest thing? 

In fact, it looks like Ty fell from the basketball hoop, hit his head and passed out, so he only dreamed what happened after that. It is unknown what actually happened to Darko Crevasse in this case, whether he escaped or was defeated by Abby. I can assume that Ty could still hear his farewell speech, because I had the experience of dreaming about what I was listening to in my sleep.

Well, when Ty woke up in his bed with a bunch of candy, I think Abby left it for him from the party when she brought him home. The ominous cat with glowing red eyes that appeared in his window at the end, it would seem, should have been proof that everything that happened was real. But in fact, the cat seemed to have nothing to do with all this. It feels like it was supposed to be a zombie, but at the last minute the writers changed their mind. Or maybe it’s a new and improved type of zombie, now that Darko has deliberately taken on the task of creating them. The cat was clearly intentionally watching Ty.

Interestingly, the last time an episode had a mystery ending like this was also in the Darko Crevasse episode. There, the last will-o'-the-wisp, after his arrest, flies up to Ty and Abby's window, and then quickly flies away somewhere. Abby assumed that they were controlled by static electricity, but the balls that turned off the lights in different parts of the city were definitely more complexly programmed, so it is possible that Darko could even launch the last ball from prison to make Ty and Abby worry that something else is coming.

The second half of Pink Eye's story arc is particularly packed with interesting moments. This is simply grand finale level, despite the fact that it is not a finale. And, to be honest, this is the reason why I decided to write the entire article.

In the episode "Pussed off", it turns out that Lance Boil published a book, and based on his technology, Andy invented a device that creates and removes pimples. But while his invention was unfinished, Ty and Abby suspected Lance, and he decided to take advantage of it.

When Lance Boil was talking about his supposed villain party where Sloppy Joe allegedly stole his blueprints, it can be seen that all the villains present at the party are the same ones that Ty and Abby saw in prison when they came for him. Only Sloppy Joe was free at the time. If they had all been captured at that party, Ty and Abby would probably have known about it, so most likely the party either didn’t happen or it was at a different time and had nothing to do with recent events. Most likely, Lance Boil simply knew who was now in prison and who wasn’t, in order to convincingly set the grossologists on the wild goose chase.

I already mentioned that none of these villains remained in prison, but later in this story arc some of them appear several more times. Judging by the time Lance Boil spent in Pinkeye's captivity, this all happened pretty quickly. Fartor ran away immediately after the episode, did something off-screen, was caught at the beginning of the next one, escaped off-screen, appeared two more times in the continuation of the story arc – one escaped and one was caught. But again not for long, because by the end, after a few more episodes, I managed to make a spaceship. Insectiva also appears once again in this story arc, surprisingly not embittered, but on the contrary – perhaps she decided to actually try to live peacefully. Sloppy Joe, although he was suspected twice in vain, the third time he decided to take up his old ways and pollute the city water, after which he was arrested. WordGirl may have had a lot of villains in every episode, but for Grossology to have such an impressive number of villains at once is unique. And that's not to mention the three main villains of this arc – Lance Boil, Roger and Abby's evil clone.

The episode “Pussed off” wasn't about Roger Pinkeye, but there he reappeared after his long and mysterious absence. At first, it seems that he has made very little progress in exposing Ty and Abby: in his last appearance, he learned that they have the Director, and guessed that Lab Rat is an inventor who supplies them with everything they need, here – that they have a lab. It's likely that he also saw Abby collecting a sample of pus with a bulky device there, and immediately missed the opportunity to find the laboratory itself.

Remember I thought that it was strange that Roger didn't discover these easy-to-open secret passages through lockers with obviously different locks? Well, Andy was the one who discovered them! Sooner or later it just had to happen. The fact that there was always no one in the hallway when Ty and Abby ran to the lockers seemed implausible. 

Andy interrupted their attempt to gear up for the mission twice, but never noticed what was happening. And this despite the fact that he read Lance Boil’s book and knew about his villainy! He even organized his fan club, but remained its only member. How did Roger not notice this? Why is he trying to find out what kind of grossness Ty and Abby are dealing with, but ignores the obvious gross villains? Apparently Andy and Roger were too focused on different things until the end of the episode when the truth was revealed to both of them.

Ty and Abby were as bad at hiding in this episode as they were in most, suggesting that no one at school still cared. And Andy really ignored everything they gave away at the climax of the episode. They pursued Lance Boil, openly opposed him, admitted to slipping a nano-tracking device into his tea, revealed they'd known each other for a long time, warned Andy that Boil was dangerous, remained calm while trapped... and Andy still didn't think anything about it. He probably saw them at Gary Gumdrop’s show, and he definitely saw them in the fight with Darko Crevasse on Halloween, but he never realized that they were from a secret organization.

Lance Boil told Andy that he was thinking about finding a sidekick with an intellect that matches his own. That is, not stupid, like his thug from other episodes. Andy didn't agree because of his evil plans, and you'd think everyone would forget about it after that. However, further along the storyline, Roger Pinkeye became just such a sidekick to Lance Boil for some time.

If in this episode Roger, instead of kidnapping Lance, had joined his fan club, met him through Andy, and decided that since he wasn't accepted into the Bureau of Grossology, he'd help to take over it; they might have had a good relationship. But then this twisted plot wouldn't exist.

You would think that one of them would still betray the other. If Roger had been invited to join the Bureau of Grossology, that was his original dream, he would have accepted. It made no sense for Lance to betray a good sidekick, but if Roger had given him a reason, he would’ve done it. One of the main themes of this story arc was their similarities, but these similarities didn’t make them a perfect team. On the contrary, it created a vicious circle of betrayal. In the end, apparently, Lance realized that he didn’t need a smart sidekick when both the principled Andy and the morally unstable Roger treated him cruelly, putting their interests above.

During the confrontation with Lance Boil, Andy got the same giant pimple on his head as his. However, at the end, when he had the opportunity to attack Lance with his invention, he chose to enlarge his pimple. Although he could make his head normal, and this for Lance could be a worse punishment than just having his pimple burst again. Perhaps, then they wouldn’t have won, because if he hadn’t slipped on the pus, he wouldn’t have ended up in the cage. Before this, Lance Boil said that it would take years to repussify, but in fact he did in the next episode, while he was captured by Roger.

Andy's invention was very relevant in this particular animated series, because here, for some reason, everyone is especially obsessed with acne. In the episode “When ya gotta go,” Paige turned down the lead role in the play because of the zit. In “Pussed off,” she criticized the pimple on Andy’s nose and believed that he should also use cosmetics. Abby’s pimple in “Spa Insectiva” was reminded by absolutely everyone: her mom, Ty, Lab Rat, Insectiva, and the some cream saleswoman. Abby paid a lot of money for this cream, and Insectiva profited from it.

Back to the fact that Roger has not yet progressed very far in his goal. Already at the end of this episode it turned out that he simply upgraded his stealth. Not only did he end up above the stage without being detected, but he also managed to stealthily kidnap Lance Boil in a pet carrier while Ty and Abby were in class, in the short time they were talking to Andy! Moreover, he had to sneak from the door to the opposite wall of the classroom and back, and the grossologists didn’t even notice out of the corner of their eye that someone was entering and leaving!

Before “Pinkeye and the Brain”, Ty and Abby were so bad at hiding their double lives that the scene on the bus wouldn't have change anything. However, it shows how much they have lost their guard, using a sample collection device to simply cut the ball's rubber band, and loudly discussing their search for Lance Boil, even knowing that Roger Pinkeye is sitting across from them with his eavesdropper device.

When Ty and Abby suspect Insectiva and Sloppy Joe of kidnapping Lance Boil, they are suspiciously running around with something that looks incredibly like him. Since it was already known what actually happened to Lance, here one would expect that trope, where everything would turn out to be something funny and mundane. But the longer this situation continues, the fewer options there are for what it could turn out to be.

That trope’s still here, but it’s not what I expected. Instead of mistaking some mundane activity for something sinister, Ty and Abby simply observe something not so sinister. Sloppy Joe celebrates his birthday by smashing a Lance Boil piñata. Even if it wasn't real, it was made as realistic as possible, as if they were hanging him and beating him with sticks. In reality, it often happens that someone who realizes their fantasies in this way doesn’t relieve tension, but only reinforces the desire to do it for real. That's why it's more of a red flag here than an innocent confusion trope.

The title of the episode “Pinkeye and the Brain,” is an obvious reference to, well, “Pinky and the Brain.” But if you think about it, there's a lot more to this reference than meets the eye. Lance Boil with his disproportionately large head and small body resembles Brain. Roger Pinkeye is tall and slim in comparison, but still quite small compared to the others, just like Pinky. Lance Boil is an evil mad scientist who wants to make the world gross (which in his case is the same as taking over the world) and Roger is an underrated creative genius who wants appreciation (Pinky wasn't stupid either: compared to many characters of his type, he's just quirky and clever in his own way). Roger and Lance in this story arc work with genetically engineered rats, including one with a human body and mind (while Pinky and the Brain were genetically modified mice themselves). Even the fact that they keep each other in a cage can be a reference to the fact that Pinky and the Brain lived in a cage, and also, as laboratory mice, were subjected to experiments with various torture devices, like the ones Roger used on Lance Boil, and just like him, they had their own tricks to avoid them. Despite the mostly toxic relationship, both pairs had some sweet moments. And also intricate evil plans. With all this, I can’t say that they were copied – in some parts it’s a coincidence, and in others it is a masterful allusion.

Roger's torture devices in this episode are presented as ridiculous, but are actually quite creepy. First of all, why did he create them in the first place if he didn't expect to catch a supervillain? His previous observations of Ty and Abby hardly gave him the impression that he would need such a thing. I don't think he saw Lance Boil on the fishing boat in "When allergies attack" because then he would have noticed Andy's fan club. I think Roger could’ve seen him in that episode if he wasn't too focused on Ty and Abby. But was he going to torture them when he ran out of options to discover their secret? It's actually fortunate that Lance Boil was so immune to everything Roger had. But how would those tortures affect normal people? I believe it can be seen from the way Lance Boil later subjected Roger himself to some of his tortures.

The first thing Roger had, was the feather tickling robot. It's ridiculous, unless you think about the fact that tickling can cause a nervous reaction that can kill. This seems to be a fairly rare occurrence, so it's not that important here. But why do you need a whole robot to tickle with a feather? Unless Roger was going to use it on himself. Even so, the robot doesn't need to be that bulky. For me it's reminiscent of the scene from Droids the animated series, where C-3PO describes to the captive space pirate what terrible things R2D2 is capable of, causing him to pass out when the confetti bubble bursts. So, it seems that Roger needed this robot for intimidation – with the hope that it wouldn’t come to tickling at all.

In fact, it didn’t, but for a different reason. It seems the feather didn't even touch Lance Boil, simply not reaching behind the bars. And if it had, he could have stepped back, and it still wouldn’t have reached him. 

And when Lance was tickling Roger, for some reason Roger also didn’t even think about stepping back, although there was plenty of space. And Lance didn't need any robot. He said he added powerful itching powder, but it didn't seem to have any effect on Roger. Either because he was wearing multi-layered clothes, or there was no powder – it was a bluff, also as a method of intimidation.

Next was the maggot pie. This is actually torture not with gross food, but with hunger. Roger added water, but apparently hadn’t given Lance Boil any food before that pie. More than one day passed there.

In the mirror situation, it’s not obvious how long Lance kept Roger in the cage, perhaps only a few hours (or how long could all these captures of scoundrels and changes in leadership take place?) Roger decided to try the pizza with maggot anyway, but that wasn't the main catch.

Finally, there was the hot sauce torture. It was some special sauce of Roger's invention that burned through wood and metal. This would be enough to use one drop at a time, and not whole bottles through that infernal invention that combines an iron maiden and a force-feeding device. Why was Roger even sure that it won't kill? 

In the case of the pizza, he, of course, tried the sauce himself, and swallowed the piece without consequences, and didn’t even try to spit it out. However, he did not try again, but melted the lock of his cage with the sauce. This seems to be another case of substance destructive to everything except people. Maybe Lance Boil isn't the only one who got himself an artificial stomach. Maybe the residents of the City of Mad Scientists themselves don’t know that local doctors have made them invulnerable to all dangerous chemicals, since such a threat is so much more common here than in the rest of the world. This would also explain the case with stomach acid, pus and everything else that never harmed anyone as intended.

Why did Roger's whining finally work when everything else didn't? Obviously, Lance Boil is not the one who gives up out of pity. After all, he wanted to make Roger cry by refusing to help even when he begged. If he believed that a broken person was easier to control, then it didn’t work here, because Roger is used to being humiliated and treachery is his coping mechanism. The worse he feels, the more prone he is to betrayal. In fact, in this scene Roger exposed his vulnerabilities, and coincidentally, these are exactly the feelings that Lance Boil understands well, since he experiences them himself.

The fact that Ty and Abby don't accept Roger into their "secret detective club" but he feels entitled to it is similar to how Lance Boil tries to take over the Bureau of Grossology and believes it should have been his from the very beginning. The lengths to which Roger can stoop to achieve his goal are similar to the lengths Lance went to in an attempt to disgrace the Director when he was still a grossologist. Roger being called “Pink Eye” even though he can't help the fact that he has bacterial conjunctivitis is similar to how Lance was once considered handsome but now everyone knows him as the short guy with the giant pimple. Roger's words about being treated like a worthless slime mold are similar to how grossologists, Sloppy Joe and others often treat Lance Boil like a mean baby.

But the point here is not that Lance saw in Roger a young version of himself and felt compassion. Under other circumstances he might’ve been able to, but here he saw an opportunity to use it to take over the Bureau of Grossology and take revenge at the same time. The fact that Lance Boil understood him well meant that he had the right leverage and knew how to use it – give Roger everything he wanted and then take it away. Of course, to do this, he first had to win him over and show how much he needed him. He also realized that there will be no better time to start.

When Lance Boil talked about his confrontations with Ty and Abby, pieces of other episodes were inserted. It seems it would be better if he commented on what was happening from his point of view. At the very least, his comments between these scenes showed that he considers his ability to always come back despite endless defeats to be his strength. However, from this, Roger concluded that Lance Boil must be the most pathetic villain in the world. Despite the fact that being pathetic but not giving up after failure is also Roger's main trait.

Yet why did Lance Boil focus on his humiliating defeats rather than his achievements? In the same scenes, he showed pus causing rapid aging and a homemade rocket designed to fly into space and spread infectious flies and stench throughout the world. Among his inventions are many real miracles of science, which for some reason he is not proud of. 

Apparently he supposed to tell what to watch out for when dealing with Ty and Abby, but he ended up getting carried away by the painful memories. He could also mention that he was the one who taught Ty and Abby much of what they now use against him (and by extension that he could teach it to Roger). And also that in these episodes he temporarily defeated them by exploiting their weaknesses and problems. He may have said this off-screen, because later Roger suddenly began to respect him.

When Ty and Abby came to check if Lance Boil was really captured by Roger, those two had already conspired, so there were rats in the carrier. However, Ty and Abby could remember that Lance Boil disappeared precisely after he got into a carrier at school, the carrier disappeared from the school, and they saw him in this carrier in this very room, which matched all the signs. And now Roger has the exact same carrier? How could they think after all this that he had nothing to do with it? If he doesn't have Lance now, the conclusion is that he just let him go. This shouldn’t have invalidated all other evidence. 

Why, despite the mold monster episode was Ty still so desperate to believe Roger? Because of their common interests? Or because he still feels guilty about his gossiping in that episode? Or maybe he also thinks that he understands him well? I mean, what's it like to be the lone gross science lover in the school, since he was one himself before he became friends with Andy (but Andy wasn't a fan of grossness, so Roger was even closer to Ty). Ty's justification for the photos of them in Roger's room was that in "New Recruits" he also had a locker with a bunch of photos of Naomi from before they started talking. It looks like Abby didn't hold on to Chester and Keith Van Kobbler all that much, especially after they showed their villainous side. However, Ty himself had episodes when he became morally ambiguous...

The title of the two-part episode "Pinkeye's Revenge" probably has a different meaning for each part. In the first part, he takes revenge on Abby for treating him badly and gets her fired from the Bureau of Grossology by teaming up with Lance Boil. In the second part, he teams up with Abby and takes revenge on Lance Boil for taking revenge on him by turning their plan against him. By the way, an obsession with revenge is their another common trait, if you remember how Lance Boil always vows to take revenge, including for unsuccessful attempts at revenge.

At the beginning of the first part of “Pinkeye’s Revenge”, Roger showed the rats at the science fair and proved that they were clones because they had the same unique spots on their fur. But in was drawn as if these rats were simply shabby. Well, or part of their fur is simply shaved. Or if the wrong length of fur would be too noticeable (although the spots did look unnaturally smooth), such spots can easily be achieved using hair dye. This is similar to the experiment with apples or tomatoes, to which you can stick a figured piece of foil until they are ripe, and get a green spot of this shape on the ripe ones. Of course, rats don’t change color this way, but you can cover the spots that should remain, and then dye everything else (or cover everything except the spots).

In other features that Roger listed (eye color, fur color, size and weight) it is quite natural for rats to look the same, especially if they have the same parents, who also looked standard for their species, and they were raised in equal conditions. But later it turned out that the cloned rats had more unique features.

In the second part, Lance Boil said that he trained the rats while he was caged. However, if you find in “Pinkeye and the Brain” the only moment of his interaction with rats, there he only managed to scare them away and call them genetically engineered, which gave him the idea of a future plan. It happened right before Roger returned for the last time in that episode, so Lance clearly didn't have time to do anything with the rats. Besides, how would he even train them? They didn’t even run everywhere, but were in a separate cage. 

Moreover, he said that these were the same rats that were cloned. Except there weren't any cloned rats back then, and they weren't even the ones with the specific spots that they cloned later. Most likely, in the process of cloning, Lance Boil made other rats genetically modified, increasing their intelligence and controllability. Why did he lie? Perhaps to make it seem like he hadn't wasted his time locked up. To convince everyone that he is always doing something useful for himself, even in the most uncomfortable situations – and this is an additional reason to be afraid of him. In the end, they believed it because Roger didn't pay attention to the inconsistencies and Abby didn't know the full picture.

Among all the fantastic inventions of the local mad scientists, this cloning is the most supernatural. First, somehow Lance Boil made “homemade protoplasm.” He had it on a small platter. He just added Abby's fingernail there, and then a hair from a random passing rat just fell in there, and that's it! The perfect hybrid clone of Abby and a rat! That was Abby's age: that is, she didn't have to be grown from an embryo (although Lance Boil could do it with that aging pus). And had Abby's intelligence and memory: that is, she didn't have to be taught anything, and she even had the same excellent acting skills. And it was all in the nail?! 

It’s just the height of anti-science in the educational animated series – in fact, there is no DNA in nails at all! More precisely, some genes are in the root of the nail (and not all of them), but here it was cut off. And in general, neither hair nor skin flakes would help here. Even if Lance Boil obtained her stem cells, it still wouldn't help copy the information from her brain. But the mad scientists here are so all-powerful! 

Evil Clone Abby is not only a human clone with all her characteristics (for some reason other than moral beliefs), but also only the good qualities of a rat, such as agility, reaction speed and ferocity. Of course, there was instinctive behavior, but that also came in handy for Lance and Roger. Moreover, the Clone Abby could control rats. Packs of rats have leaders, so it's not unheard of. But how much luck does it take to accidentally get this useful ability? And the most absurd part is that she grew from biomaterial immediately in a slimesuit from the Bureau of Grossology! It wasn't even part of her body, as she was then able to change into Abby's casual clothes – with her arms and legs exposed.

If they are SO advanced in cloning, then why not create a clone of the Director? Why not use him to get to the higher-ups and replace them too? In WordGirl, Lady Redundant Woman did that, but her duplicates of important people were fragile and crumbled into paper, what can’t be said about the clones here. And why, after such a successful experience, did Lance Boil never return to cloning? After all, if he could do it once, practically from scratch, what stopped him from doing it again?

Could it be that Roger actually invented it and Lance only provided him with the technology? In Andy's case, Lance Boil was annoyed that he wasn’t the one who invent the device that creates pimples, although in fact Andy invented it thanks to him. Lance wanted a smart sidekick who could use his scientific genius in unexpected ways to invent something he hadn't thought of himself. Roger's participation in the creation of the cloning machine remained off-screen. So when he calls Clone Abby "his greatest creation" or accuses Lance of "turning his creation against him" it’s not obvious whether he is conceited or has the right to say so. The first time Lance Boil corrects him “our creation”, after the accusation of betrayal he doesn’t correct him at all, and subsequently doesn’t downplay his role. Even at the end of the story arc he doesn’t say that Roger did nothing. He could have – to be the last one to hurt him – but he didn't because it would only work if it were true. 

Perhaps when Lance Boil called the original rats "genetically engineered" it wasn’t an insult but the truth. Perhaps Roger had been working on this for a while for a science fair, like Ty with the evolution of fruit flies. If cloning had actually been invented by Roger, Lance might never have realized what exactly caused the effect, which would explain why he was unable to use the technology in the future. And Roger lost his memory along with the secret of cloning, so that terrible future with evil clones doesn’t yet threaten anyone.

Why did Ty so quickly begin to suspect Abby of betrayal in the first part, without even trying to understand the situation? It would be better if he encountered such a situation for the first time. But they had such a history! In "When ya gotta go", Abby convincingly pretended that she wanted to betray Ty and join Lance Boil in order to gain an advantage and take away his diarrhea-inducing violin case. There was a school play in this episode, so Ty, when he understood everything, complimented her acting. There was also the episode "Vertigo a go-go", where Abby was literally controlled by Lance Boil like a puppet, and Ty had to fight her, despite the fact that she wasn’t consciously a traitor. Abby was also similarly controlled by Insectiva in “Club Parasites”.

But Ty is another thing. Unlike Abby, he consciously became a villain, and more than once. In the episode "Survival of the grossest", Ty behaved no less suspiciously because he used the Insectiva’s mutagen in his project with fruit flies. He wanted to win at all costs, and created huge problems due to his rivalry with the new guy, Pat, whom he disliked because he was successful in his field. In the end, Ty never completely overcame this feeling, which is realistic. Here you might think that Ty was simply judging by himself. But that is why he had to understand that Abby could have her own motives, and not necessarily treacherous ones.

A more severe case where Ty became a villain was in the two-part episode "Silent but deadly". There he became a villain, partly out of envy, partly under life-threatening torture. You'd think he'd know that such changes usually involve serious problems. If he thought that Abby was up to something because she wasn’t missing and looked normal, then he himself didn’t show that he was suffering, and Abby believed that he had no reason to envy her. Even if you look at it objectively, Ty does just as well on missions, and also does a lot of things that Abby doesn't do, like all the tricks with the jetpack and various gadgets. If he had shared his feelings sooner, she could have told him that before something terrible happened.

On the other hand, perhaps Ty shouldn't have been judged by himself precisely because he knew how easy it was to want to become a villain. Although in that episode Fartor kidnapped him and made him physically dependent, psychologically Ty willingly turned to his side, began to wholeheartedly help in his plans and fought Abby of his own free will. Even when Abby managed to return his body to normal, he did not return to her side until they solved his psychological problem.

But how could Ty forget this? Maybe everything was so terrible that he distanced himself from these memories. This is perhaps the only explanation for why he was so cavalier about Fartor in the Pink Eye story arc, where he appeared suspiciously often, as if trying to remind him with his mere presence that they had a worse version of the situation with Lance Boil and Roger.

Unfortunately, despite the good ending to that story, it seems that Ty was once again unable to completely overcome his envy. And perhaps he suspected Abby here because he still believed that she was better than him, which meant that nothing bad could happen to her and her ambitions were great enough to push her to take over the organization. If you look at it this way, Abby really is better than him – she never truly became a villain and never turned her back on Ty, even when there were reasons to do so.

It seems that the plot wouldn’t have changed much if Ty didn’t suspect Abby of betrayal, but obsessively tried to help her. Abby would then simply not understand what he was talking about, and wouldn’t know how to explain that nothing had actually happened to her. As a result, she could realize that she wasn’t being listened to anyway, run away from his overprotectiveness, still suspect Roger and fall into the trap of being quietly replaced by the clone.

If the fact that Abby blamed Roger, whom Ty decided to patronize, played a big role in his suspicion of her, then it would be nice to remember Chester, who also made a cameo in this story arc. In his case, on the contrary, Abby wanted to trust him, and Ty suspected him. In both cases, trust outweighed, which is why both Chester and Roger caused them big problems in their time. Both cases taught them that red flags shouldn’t be ignored. And if someone is missing them by idealizing the person, friends and family can help them see the situation from a different perspective. At the same time, the situations with Roger and Pat also have something in common – in the sense that hostility towards each had to be overcome so that he could help fix everything.

In terms of plot continuity, it turns out that the main characters don’t learn from past experiences, but the villains take advantage of this. After all, in fact, Ty's suspicions about Abby were necessary for them to reach the director, and he could fire her. It was part of Lance Boil's plan to turn Roger into a grossologist. If Ty had reacted differently, and the Clone Abby hadn’t been able to replace the real one much earlier, they wouldn’t have been able to move on to the next steps in the plan. As a result, only by the middle of the second part, Ty and Lab Rat came to their senses and said that it was not at all like Abby.

When Roger became a grossologist, he received a purple slime suit. Judging by the colors of the other slime suits, apparently the color scheme shouldn’t be repeated: Ty's is red-orange, Abby's is yellow, the Director's is green, Lab Rat's is blue, but in the episode "Stinko" he also appeared in white. Usually the suit colors do not match the colors of their everyday clothes: Abby's is purple and violet, Ty's is blue and olive, Lab Rat's is muted blue and black, the Director's is gray, Roger's is purple, black and denim grey. Perhaps the color mismatch was intended as a (very weak) secret identity disguise that only works for the most oblivious. Like, if family and classmates associate Ty and Abby with one color scheme, and villains with another; chances are they won't recognize them in different colors. And since Lab Rat has no life outside the lab, his color scheme can match.

But why was the color of Roger's slime suit so close to his everyday clothes? I think part of the reason is that there are no other colors left in the main spectrum. Also, when he saved the school from rats using homemade equipment, he was wearing the same glasses as from the grossologist uniform set, but not the ones he was given after. These had dark purple lens and a pale green frame. Lance Boil didn’t wear a slime suit while he was a grossologist, but perhaps these glasses were from his old equipment. So we can assume that his slime suit was of these colors. This, again, wouldn’t coincide with his favorite colors – black, yellow and red. In general, different media and especially cartoons have their own color code, which has changed over time. If previously black, red and dark blue were considered villainous colors, now they are purple (“the new black”) and green (“the color of madness”). Apparently, this is partly the case here too.

This story arc showed some more features of the slime suits. For example, before Ty and Abby wore them only under their regular clothes, but here, on the contrary, they wore them only on top. It's strange how quite voluminous items of clothing fit unnoticed under these tight-fitting overalls.

It also shows how the suits are removed. Roger makes a gesture of unzipping his chest, even though the suit doesn't appear to have a zipper. In this way, he took off the suit without effort or awkward movements, although in the episode “When allergies attack” Ty had to pull the upper part of the suit over his head and the lower part like tights, which definitely didn’t save him from the allergens that got onto the suit. Roger took pictures of the whole process, so he must have thought that was the only way to remove the slime suit. It looks like the suit model was improved after that incident.

At the end of Part 1, when Evil Clone Abby defeated Sloppy Joe and got promoted, Roger said that it should’ve been him and that it wasn't part of the plan. The plan itself wasn’t spelled out, so if it is difficult to follow its progress in these intense episodes, the plan was like this:

- Clone Abby organizes an invasion of rats on city objects, grossologists go to investigate;

- Clone Abby catches Ty's eye when the real Abby is not around;

- Lance Boil anonymously reports a rat attack on two places at once;

- Ty and Abby are separated, the rats end up only where Ty goes;

- Abby, not finding anything, returns to him and looks suspicious;

- Rats attack the school, Abby wants to prove that she has nothing to do with it;

- Roger distracts Ty to separate him from Abby;

- Clone Abby hides under the serving line in the cafeteria and causes rats to swarm around the real Abby;

- Roger brings Ty into the dining room at the right moment, discrediting Abby;

- Roger repels rats with a specially prepared chemical;

- Lance Boil anonymously calls the press to report that Roger saved the school, and thus introduce him to the Director of the Bureau of Grossology;

- The Director fires Abby and hires Roger in her place;

- Roger secretly trains with Lance Boil to become a best agent;

- He wins all the rigged missions and gets promoted;

- Lance Boil continues to call the press while Roger exposes the Director as incompetent;

- The Director is fired and Roger takes his place;

- Roger gives up his position as director to Lance Boil, and remains the only agent of the Bureau of Grossology (Ty, Abby and Lab Rat will either work underground, so Roger will become their main enemy, or some terrible fate awaits them).

This was the plan as Roger knew it. However, Lance Boil planned his betrayal from the very beginning. So, starting from the point with the best agent, he replaced Roger with Clone Abby everywhere. She was already perfectly trained and didn't need much time to build up a reputation. So Lance didn't have to delay moving on to the last steps of the plan. And to prevent Roger from giving away their plan, he had to be fired first. Due to Roger’s lack of experience, he created enough situations himself to justify this decision. Here Roger could’ve confessed everything, but instead he went to Lance Boil's base in the city dump (which he knew about, despite the fact that they were making a cloning machine in his attic). There, a trap was already prepared for him, as well as all the tools for revenge. 

The only mistake was leaving him with Abby, which should’ve been an additional punishment given their poor relationship. But in reality Abby had already sympathized with ambiguous villains like Chester and teamed up with old enemies like Insectiva in "A new leaf" and Sloppy Joe in "Let them eat fruitcake", and Roger wasn’t too stubborn and picky in choosing his allies, in comparison with the same Insectiva.

When Ty and Lab Rat learned the truth about Clone Abby, they found Director working in a cafe... the same one that Sloppy Joe opened. It's even still called Chucky’s, only now it's run by regular people, serves regular food, and doesn't provide any entertainment. Turns out nothing would be as good without Sloppy Joe! Apparently he had an unquenchable enthusiasm based on his passion for garbage, and there is no other like him in the city. For some reason, the successors didn’t try to preserve his best ideas, but only reduced portions to reasonable limits, reduced the number of branches and stopped overproduction. They could still be popular instead of becoming a standard diner that everyone goes to simply because there's nowhere else to go.

The fact that the Director ended up there reminds me of Mayor Dewey from Steven Universe, who started working at the donut shop after he wasn't re-elected. Unlike him, the Director did not stay there, but still adapted very quickly (and his boss also turned out to be one of Ty and Abby’s schoolmates). Apparently, the director took the job the same day he was fired, was already at work and knew how to talk to clients. The fact that not much time has passed can be judged by how long Abby and Roger spent in captivity at Lance Boil's base. They weren’t tired, were able to escape and carried out the final operation to return the Bureau of Grossology, almost keeping up with Ty, Lab Rat and the Director.

The Director, when leaving, also asked not to fire him if nothing worked out with the Bureau of Grossology. If you think about it, it wasn’t only because he didn’t believe in victory and wanted to play it safe, but so that they would look for him if he went missing. The fact is that if they really didn’t work out, he would hardly be able to return to a new job. Just remember what Lance Boil tried to do to him in “New recruits” – shrink him and put him in a hamster cage. Also, in various episodes, he tried to kill Ty, Abby, and Lab Rat in a variety of ways, namely by drowning them in pus in a cave-in, launching them into space without their spacesuits on an explosive rocket, tearing them apart with a mechanical alligator, irreversibly artificially aging them, or paralyzing their brains from the inside. So there is no certainty that they would have survived at all if they had lost. But perhaps, despite this, Director decided to go because it was his only chance to get his position back. If he didn't go and the others succeeded, the real Abby might have taken his place.

When Lance Boil took over the lab, the first thing he did was cover the big screen with a poster of himself in front of a fireplace with his portrait in the background. At first glance, it simply emphasizes his narcissism, but if you take a closer look, he poses there not in some majestic or menacing way, but as if for a pin-up. Sloppy Joe even posed for such a calendar, which he showed during his song in the christmas special.

But where did Lance Boil’s poster go in literally the next scene? Also at the end of this, the lab was shown to be swarmed with rats, and in the next scene, the final battle, there were none left. But why, if they could be useful? Animating them, of course, would’ve been more difficult, but so as not to overload the scene with characters. Even Ty, Lab Rat and Director were glued to the wall until the end. However, what did that scene with the poster and the rats really mean? Apparently, Lance Boil took over the bureau and decided to celebrate, but the rats destroyed the poster, so he had to get rid of them.

Perhaps if he had taken that time to change the security protocols, Ty, Lab Rat, the Director, and later Abby wouldn’t have gotten into the lab. Besides, Roger wouldn't have gotten there if Lance Boil had blocked the vent he'd previously sneaked through himself. But it seems their trespass was part of his plan as he and Clone Abby ambushed them. He probably needed to gather all his enemies in one place in order to get rid of them at once. But locking them in a vault like in “Flushed Away” wasn't a good idea either, since it's full of stuff that could help them escape and gain a combat advantage.

So the story arc ended with Roger losing his memory and remembering that he only won the science fair. At the last moment, he found a photo of Ty and Abby in their Grossology uniforms and began to remember something else. Of course, if he remembered more, all the previous events were crazy enough to decide that it was a dream. However, later Roger could find a lot of evidence that everything really happened.

The science club kids could remind him HOW he won the science fair. They would probably wonder how he cloned rats, so Roger can remember that this is not all his doing. However, if he invented cloning and even before that he worked on the genetic modification of rats, something as fantastic as Evil Clone Abby is still easy to write off as a dream.

Ty and Abby took their photos from him (except for one), but there were still a bunch of photos left that ended up in the press news. Since this happened so recently, television still shows reruns of reports in which Roger "saved the school", Clone Abby defeated Sloppy Joe at the sewage treatment plant, got promoted, and later temporarily took over the Bureau of Grossology. 

In general, the Bureau of Grossology is often talked about in the news – It is not such a secret organization. Even if the grossologists contacted the press through the police (like when they closed all the deli shops) and demanded that nothing be shown, there would still be many witnesses who could still have photos and who could recognize Roger on the street.

Roger could also have met Chester. At the beginning of this story arc he could be seen in the school cafeteria, and during Roger’s last training with holograms he could be seen as a villain. Seeing Chester a third time might be enough for everything to come together. 

Roger also has quite a lot in common with Chester: unpopularity at school and unhealthy methods of self-defense, desire for something grandiose, talent in science, secrecy, general morbidness and willingness to sacrifice himself for a just cause (in their understanding), temporary obsession with Abby and villainous phase. Both worked with organic substances harmful to humans, which left a mark on their bodies. Also, both were in the Gag Lab and knew about the Bureau. It is unknown whether Chester also lost his memory or just decided to stay away from it all. In the first case, they could remind each other of what they had forgotten. In the second case, Chester could have refused to tell Roger anything or warned him that it wasn't worth it. But since the opening sequence features Kid Rot and Pink Eye in the same villainous crowd, it looks like both were supposed to return as villains.

Perhaps if there was another season, that plot would be developed. Here I can imagine different scenarios. For example, if Kid Rot's parasite was still alive, his next plan could be to infect other people, and perhaps Roger's bad eye would be good for that. If the parasite is dead, the super mold could mutate into a similar creature. Chester could then be trying to help Roger prevent the same thing from happening to him. Or if Chester wasn't disappointed by what happened to him and only lay low because he lost his special powers, Roger could re-infect him, promising that this time it would work out better. They could have teamed up against Ty and Abby for not fully helping them and thereby allowing something worse to grow. Ty, Abby, and Lab Rat really weren't responsible enough to check to see if Chester was alive or what was wrong with Roger's eye, so returning to this issue could at least belatedly set things right.

Since there was no continuation, and Ty and Abby stopped hiding again, it’s quite possible that Roger remembered everything and that is why he stopped striving for the Bureau of Grossology. After all the real dangers to his life, he may have decided that it was too much to deal with as often as grossologists have to. Perhaps he stopped wanting more after receiving recognition from the kids in that science club who carried him after the science fair. And he wouldn't have to blame Ty and Abby for deciding to deceive him again because they wanted to protect him from a constant threat.

However, that doesn't mean Roger won't cause them any more problems. When he graduates from school, he will still want to find a use for his talents. And mad scientists here come from all professions. His personality can show its worst side again at any point in his life. His remaining infected eye can either become a source of bitterness and motivation for revenge, or Roger will try to cure it himself through experiments, which here often lead to dangerous mutations. He still has a chance of becoming another versatile villain. Still, the outcome for him at the end of the story arc was left uncertain for a reason.

I think Roger should’ve been accepted as a grossologist in order to reform while it was still possible, and to find a worthy use for his abilities. Unlike Lance Boil, who wanted endless expansion of power, and who wouldn't get enough of taking over the bureau, Roger wanted mostly recognition, and could be happy with his position once he had all the necessary training, like Ty and Abby. At the end of his story arc, he showed that he was capable of reforming and doing the right thing, and also understood how to choose allies, and that betrayal could come back to haunt him. But in the end, it turns out that due to his memory loss, all this development was in vain. 

If he had stayed in the Bureau of Grossology, he wouldn't have had to become the fourth main character: he could’ve appeared no more often than Director or Detective. He could be a scout, or investigate a crime scene while Abby and Ty chase the villains without losing their trail. His tactics can teach that you don't have to be super fit or super smart to do something meaningful, as Roger is most effective when he's ignored or underestimated. Only occasionally could he come to the rescue in desperate situations or do something to tip the scales (like when he turned on the bleach while Ty and Abby were cornered by the mold monster). Usually this role is filled by Lab Rat, but he is initially older and more experienced than Ty and Abby, and his main problem is getting out of the lab, while Roger, as a newbie with quirks, could show other nuances. I think, it wouldn't spoil the plot. Anything is better than demoting him to a background character or failing to return as a villain.

By the way, in the concept art of the original plans for the animated series, he was on the team, as well as the prototypes of other villains. So it’s not that the authors didn’t consider that idea at all. Here we have Sloppy Joe as a child, and a young version of Insecitiva called Creepy Crowley (no less similar to Creepie Creecher!). The animated series is much more epic as it is, and I wouldn’t want it any other way, but I still wonder what it could have been like with this team.

What happened to Evil Clone Abby, who turned into a giant rat and lost her intelligence? She was probably sent to a zoo, just like the giant snakes from the episode “Fangs a lot”, which, by the way, comes next. In human form, she could crawl through bars and even push apart the armored gates of the gross vault, but, presumably, in the form of a giant rat she became more clumsy. This does not negate her strength, but the giant snakes were also strong, and in the zoo they were not kept frozen like in the laboratory, which means they somehow managed. But if they can't, they don't have to keep her alive. Such things aren't unheard of here either: one of the giant hagfish from "Go fish" can be seen preserved in a tube in the gross vault, despite the fact that all such fish seemed to have swam out to sea in the episode.

The snake episode doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Pink Eye arc, but I think the parallel between the giant rat and the giant snakes is no coincidence. These episodes come one after another. For some reason, now Professor Skinner – the haggler with fake inventions like the Martian repellent – has created real genetically modified reptiles. Although he had never done anything truly scientific before, here he suddenly became a professional in the field of genetic engineering. And the way he demonstrated the snake and turtle gene combination was very similar to how Ty and Lab Rat discovered the gene combination of Abby and the rat. Moreover, all the so-called “slitherbuddies” were created according to the same formula – that is, in fact, they were clones. As for different colors, if this type of reptile is able to change colors like a chameleon, then different colors can be achieved by influencing their development without affecting the DNA.

Although neither Roger nor Lance Boil used the cloning technology again, it apparently mysteriously fell into the hands of Professor Skinner. Actually, it is unknown what happened to their cloning machine. By the end of the first part of Pinkeye's revenge, it was still at Roger's house, but when he was brought home at the end of the second part, it was no longer there. 

Grossologists were clearly counting on Roger's memory loss, since they quietly took his photos from him and everything that could remind him of them. However, did they take the cloning machine? If it had been them, they would’ve put it in their vault and Professor Skinner wouldn't have gotten to it. 

Roger's parents obviously don't go to the attic, otherwise they would know what's going on there and might even find out about Lance Boil. If Lance took the machine, he didn’t move it to his base, because Abby and Roger were there in the second part, and it wasn’t there. 

Leaving such an ingenious invention elsewhere in a dump is terribly irresponsible, but it seems that this is the only way Professor Skinner could have discovered it. Unless he could be some relative of Roger, who could look into his room when he wasn’t there. Hope at least after this story, the grossologists confiscated this dangerous machine.

In "Go Fish", Ty and Abby got a kitten that helped them chase away the giant hagfish, but only caused trouble for their parents at home. Ty and Abby couldn't spend enough time with him because of their gross missions, and their parents warned that they would not tolerate the kitten if everything continued. He was still with them in "Yack attack", but then everyone somehow forgot about him. 

However, in the episode "Fangs a lot", this kitten again appeared in an advertisement for slitherbuddies, jumping on an old lady. It’s unlikely that it was Ty and Abby's grandmother, since later in the store they communicated as strangers. Most likely, Ty and Abby's parents let the kitten out into the street (or he ran away on his own and no one bothered to look for him), and this old lady took him in. Reminds me of the situation with Butcher's kitten from WordGirl.

In the episode "New recruits" it was shown how Ty and Abby joined the Bureau of Grossology and completed their first mission. In such belatedly added backstories there is a typical mistake: objects from the future. When Ty and Abby first visited the vault, all the recognizable artifacts from their yet-to-be-happened adventures were already there. Mr. Fowler's mechanical owl, KVK's shoes, Fartor's robot and his Fart-zilla's head, Insectiva’s mutant termites, Lance Boil’s giant intestine, the casing diarrhea violin case, and the rocket. And most importantly, everything was shown from new angles, so it can't even be explained by lazy reuse of old backgrounds! 

In addition, when Lab Rat opened the weapon compartment, there was Darko Crevasse's invention, that sprays octopus ink. And also less recognizable, but still the same laser hair removal device that Frederick Follicle stole from the optics lab.

When in flashback they used an antibiotic against the pus generator, the pus seemed to turn into water. Antibiotics don't actually work on pus that way.. But perhaps this is Lab Rat's special formula. Remember when Abby poured the anti-aging antidote into the pool of pus? Looks like that's how she knew that Lab Rat's chemicals worked on pus that way.

And why at the end of this episode do they carelessly fall into the pus, forgetting that before that the pus corroded everything, and thanks to this they even freed themselves? It’s just another proof that all residents of the City of Mad Scientists are inherently protected from harmful chemical exposure.

Finally, this episode had the most important evidence of the Mad Scientist City experiment theory. Or at least that there's more going on behind the scenes at the Bureau of Grossology than Ty and Abby know. The tour into the caves under the mount Cowpie volcano didn’t seem suspicious to me until I looked closer at the details. 

Among the crowd of sightseers was a truck driver, one of three ubiquitous guys. If he was a spy, he might’ve been the one who discovered Ty and Abby first. Although, more likely, he was deliberately sent there to find new agents for the Bureau of Grossology. Very conveniently, at another exit from the caves, littered with bat droppings, the press was already waiting for them, and the Director was hiding among the rocks. It was as if the whole situation was set up to test who would dare climb over the guano mountain, so that they could then be invited to the bureau. 

The excursion wasn’t stuck in the cave long enough for the press to find out in the usual way. And everyone just crowded outside, not even thinking about calling rescuers, or trying to help themselves. The cave collapse was clearly planned, and if Harvey, Ty and Abby's dad, hadn't yodeled and the tour guide had screamed, the truck driver probably would have. He simply decided not to attract attention to himself for as long as possible and wait to see if someone else would do it, because the organizers of the experiment knew how much grossness there was in the cave, and someone would definitely at least scream.

But does this mean that Lance Boil's suspicions that the Director wanted to get rid of him were correct? Did the Director realize that Lance wanted to betray him? Or maybe he somehow controversially solved the problems with gross attacks in the city? Besides, for some reason Director wanted to find new agents specifically from the school. No wonder he already had a secret passage through the lockers (that is, it was not made specifically for Ty and Abby).

The reasons, why exactly from the school, can also be different – one is more dubious than the other. Either it’s not too late to raise them properly, or teenagers are more desperate and less aware of real dangers, or they don’t know how to appreciate their work and they don’t have to be paid. Regarding the latter, the salary can be credited to their accounts and they can use it when they become adults. Teenagers save the world is a very common trope in many animated series, and in most cases it’s due to the fact that the adults there are terribly incompetent. 

But here it may be part of the experiment of the City of Mad Scientists: to identify in time the lovers of gross things who have already outgrown the stage of childhood fascination with such things, in order to create for them conditions in which they would be useful and would not grow up to be mad scientists. There are usually enough gross professions for such individuals, but in this city it’s not a reliable option. So the organizers of the experiment decided that it was better to force them to fight with already incorrigible mad scientists as early as possible, so that they would definitely not become like them.