Beach Blanket Babies

"Beach Blanket Babies" is the second segment of the ninth episode of season 2, and the forty-third Rugrats segment overall.

Characters Present

 * Tommy
 * Chuckie
 * Angelica
 * Stu
 * Didi
 * Lou
 * Drew
 * Chas
 * Boris
 * Minka

Synopsis
When the Pickles and the Finsters go to the beach, Chuckie has a personal mission -- to set free the "Sea Moneys" ("Sea Monkeys") that his dad gave him.


 * - Description from Klasky Csupo

Plot
At Tommy’s house, in the living room, Chuckie is showing Tommy his new pet Sea Monkeys (mispronounced by both Tommy and Chuckie as Sea “Moneys”) that his father, Chaz recently got for him. Tommy comments that they only look like a bunch of specks to him, and Chuckie replies that he’d also look like a speck of he were that small. Chaz and Stu walk into the living room from the kitchen and Chaz points out to Stu out that he thinks it’s wonderful to see the babies interested in the Sea Monkeys, and he also mentions that Sea Monkeys were also his first pet; Stu skeptically states that he doesn’t think “freeze dried brine shrimp” falls in the pets category, and Chaz replies: “What do you mean Stu? They’re the perfect pet; you don’t have to walk them, you barely have to feed them, and they don’t leave any nasty surprises in your slippers.” Didi walks into the scene, carrying a blanket, flippers and a floating tube, and she interrupts her husband and Chaz and tells them they need to start packing. Stu sarcastically replies “Hey Deed, we are the crowds”, and Didi just sighs and hands her husband the blanket and Chaz the flippers and floating tube. We then focus back on the babies, and Chuckie remarks to his best friend that the “Sea Moneys” look happier on the box they came in, and Tommy adds in that they look a lot bigger too; Chuckie then states that he believes they’re sad and want to go back to their castle at the bottom of the ocean (as depicted on the box), and Tommy adds in he’d want to be at a castle down below the ocean if he had one. Chuckie then mentions that he wishes they could get the Sea Monkeys back there; Tommy mentions that perhaps they can, and Chuckie asks how and points out that they don’t know where the ocean is. The babies then decide to secretly take the sea monkeys to the beach.

Chuckie then picks up the heavy fishbowl his Sea Monkeys are living in and begins to carry it over to the front door (presumably where the rest of the items the group is taking with them to the beach is waiting to get loaded into the van); but Lou, whose bringing over a plastic white “Cool Man” cooler filled with ice and drinks the group is taking to the beach with them, stops Chuckie, puts the cooler down, takes the fishbowl from Chuckie and puts it back where it was before, telling Chuckie that he can’t take his Sea Monkeys to the beach with him, and jokingly adds in: “Don’t want them to get sunburned, do ya’?” Chuckie then asks his best friend: “Now what are we going to do Tommy? The grown-ups won’t let us take the ‘Sea Moneys’ to the beach. This is so sad.” Tommy tells his best friend not to worry and mentions that he has an idea; he takes Chuckie over to the cooler and takes off its top, and Chuckie tells Tommy that he understands his idea. While none of the adults are looking, Tommy brings Chuckie’s fishbowl of Sea Monkeys over to the cooler (with Chuckie telling Tommy to be careful and not to spill them), and pours its contents into the cooler. Tommy then hands the empty fishbowl to Chuckie to take away, Tommy puts the lid back on the cooler just before anyone can see, and he and Chuckie then sit innocently on the floor as Stu comes into the scene, picks up the cooler and takes it out to the car, unaware of the extra passengers he’s taking on-board; Tommy and Chuckie smile at each other.

Eventually, the group is on the highway, in route to the beach; and in addition to Tommy and his family and Chuckie and his father, joined by them are Angelica and her father (who’s driving the van they’re all traveling in) and Didi’s parents, Boris and Minka. As they drive down the highway, the adults all sing “Low Bridge” (with Lou enthusiastically singing “fifteen miles on the erie canal” in solo). As the adults continue singing; we then focus on Tommy, Chuckie and Angelica, who are sitting in the very back on the van; Chuckie peaks inside the cooler that’s in-between his and Tommy’s car-seats and asks his Sea Monkeys is they’re ok, and Tommy tells Chuckie not to worry and they’ll be at the beach any minute. Angelica, who’s sitting in a car-seat that’s facing Tommy, Chuckie and the cooler in-between them, decides to have some fun with them and asks them: “Do you babies know who lives at the beach?” They both shake their heads as to rely no, and Angelica replies: “The Sandman!” Tommy asks “You mean the man who comes when you go to sleep?” and Angelica replies: “NO, the other sandman.” She describes him as someone who’s real mean, who hides in the sand and eats babies for lunch; Tommy and Chuckie gulp nervously and ask “Babies?” Angelica replies “Little babies.. LIKE YOU!” and laughs wickedly.

At last, the group arrives at the beach, and Drew comments that it’s not too crowded as he parks the van; the group then brings their things to a spot on the beach and gets everything set up. While this is happening, we focus on Tommy and Chuckie, and Chuckie complains about their beach-wear and their sun block lotion: “Great. We look silly, we’re sticky and we smell like a coconut cream pie.” Angelica then runs quickly by in her pink swimsuit and shouts out loud to no one in-particular “Look at me! Look at me!”; and Tommy replies to Chuckie’s complaint (referring to Angelica) “Well, at least we don’t look like that.” Chuckie then points out the cooler to Tommy (“Tommy look!”); he and Tommy crawl over to it and Tommy states: “Alls we gotta do is push this thing down in the water. Come on.” Tommy and Chuckie get in position and push against the cooler as hard as they can; unfortunately, they’re unable to budge the heavy cooler. They stop pushing and Chuckie states “Oh great; now what?” Lou then walks over and states to Tommy and Chuckie “Excuse me scouts; gotta get something to ‘wet my whistle’” as he opens the cooler, takes out a soda can for him to drink, closes the cooler and walks away whilst drinking from the can. Tommy then states to Chuckie that they just need to wait until the adults take more of the cans out so that the cooler gets easier to push; Chuckie sighs eagerly. As time passes, we see the adults take more and more of the cans out of the cooler; eventually we see Didi fix herself a drink in a glass (rather than drinking right from a can) and add ice cubes from the cooler to it. However, a few of Chuckie’s sea monkeys also get into Didi’s drink with the ice cubes! Didi notices this, but only thinks they’re just dirt from the beach; and she pinches the helpless sea monkeys out of her drink and rubs them off her fingers and onto the hot, dry sand, and shouts out loud: “SAY EVERYONE, LET’S TRY AND KEEP THE LID CLOSED.”

Chuckie gasps in horror when he sees what Didi is inadvertently doing to his sea monkeys, and Tommy puts his hand of his best friend’s shoulder and consoles him, stating: “Don’t worry Chuckie, we’ll save the rest of them”; Chuckie replies that they have to hurry before it’s too late. Suddenly, the two babies are nearly hit by a folding table that Lou and Boris are setting down where the two babies are standing; Tommy and Chuckie run out of the way in the nick of time, and Lou tells them both: “Hey sports, be careful down there; you don’t wanna get squashed, do ya’?” We then focus on Lou and Boris; Lou ask Boris if he’s found a deck of cards that they’re looking for, and Boris replies: “I’m looking, i’m looking.” Boris then asks his wife from afar “Minka, where’s the ‘bicycle’ bag?” and she responds sarcastically “What do I look like here, your servant girl?” Tommy and Chuckie look at each other for a brief moment in response to what they’re seeing, and they then run over to the cooler to try pushing it again; they push as hard as they can, and this time, they finally manage to get it moving towards the water. Just as the two are making progress, Angelica skips over, shouting “Look at me! Look at me!”; Tommy, not wanting Angelica to find out what they’re doing and spoil their plan, tells Chuckie to pretend they’re not doing anything. Angelica stops next to them, and Tommy tells her that her bathing suit looks very nice; Angelica replies: “You didn’t see what I can do in it.” Angelica then demonstrates how she can “swim” by running out into the shallow water and wading in it for a brief moment, shouting “I can swim! I can swim!”; she then runs back to Tommy and Chuckie and states enthusiastically to them “Did you see!? I can swim!” Tommy, with an innocent look on his face, replies: “That was great Angelica.. we gotta be going.” Angelica then suspiciously asks them “Hey, what are you babies doing anyway?”; they both reply “Nothing.” Angelica then asks “Oh yeah. what’s in here?” and peaks inside the cooler, but she only sees water, ice and cans of soda and doesn’t notice Chuckie’s tiny sea monkeys; Angelica closes the cooler and looks back at Tommy and Chuckie. Tommy and Chuckie both stare back innocently with smiles on their faces, Angelica glares at them suspiciously and Tommy and Chuckie both continue to stare back innocently; Angelica, unable to think of what’s important about what they’re doing tells them “You babies are really weird” and then runs off. Tommy and Chuckie sigh with relief that Angelica didn’t figure it out and they get back to pushing.

Meanwhile, we find that Chaz is sleeping on the sand, and Angelica walks over and decides to play a prank on him by burying him in the sand while he’s sleeping and begins to do so. We then focus back on Tommy and Chuckie as they just manage to reach the edge of the water, but are unable to push it further and get it into the water; Chuckie stops to rest and states to Tommy (who also stops to rest): “It wont’ move, it wont’ move! What are we gonna do now Tommy?” Tommy tells Chuckie to clam down and states he has an idea. He and Chuckie walk a few steps away from the cooler and Tommy states that they’ll run at the cooler on “three”. They position themselves for a running start and Tommy shouts “Three!”; but before the two can start, Stu comes over in front of them (not minding the cooler), picks them up and takes them away to show them how to build “a good old-fashioned sandcastle.” Didi then walks up to the cooler, asks herself how it got there, and then picks it up and takes it back to the group’s spot in the beach. As Stu lectures Tommy and Chuckie and demonstrates by building a castle, Tommy and Chuckie then take their eyes off Stu and notice the cooler is under the table where Lou and Boris are playing a game of cards. Drew then comes over and asks his “little bro” what he’s doing; Stu replies that he’s showing Tommy and Chuckie “the finer points of sandcastle construction”. Drew briefly examines the castle that Stu was building and give an opinion: “Hmm; ya’, well shouldn’t this outer wall be further from the central courtyard?” Stu, confident with his own judgement, replies: “Heh, a lot you know; if you do that, they’re won’t be any room for the moat.” Drew replies: “Moat? Oh bother you are out of touch. What’s current in sandcastles is more of a deconstructive treatment.” Stu, fed up with his brother’s judging brings back a sensitive memory: “Like the ‘deconstructive treatment’ you gave my castle when I was 8?” An intimidated Drew replies: “Well you stomped all over mine first!”  An equally intimidated Stu adds in: “Well you poured sand down my shorts!” Drew replies: “Well you dropped a crab on my stomach!” Stu and Drew’s conversation when devolves into a brotherly argument, and neither of them notice Tommy and Chuckie crawling away and back toward the cooler.

As the babies approach the cooler, we briefly focus on Lou and Boris; Boris scoldingly asks Lou where the two of hearts is. Lou replies that he didn’t take the two of hearts; Boris then angrily tells Lou that he has to play a card if he picks it up, and Lou angrily replies: “Where’d you hear those rules; Budapest?” The two grandfathers don’t notice Tommy and Chuckie as they begin pushing the cooler toward the water again; as the two are pushing, Angelica decides to have some fun with them. She buries her left foot in the sand and pretends she’s desperately struggling to free it from the sandman she mentioned earlier; she screams to Tommy and Chuckie: “HELP! HELP! HE’S GOT ME! THE SANDMAN’S GOT ME!” Tommy and Chuckie gasp in horror, but Angelica then effortlessly pulls her foot out of the sand and runs past the two babies, laughing wickedly. Chuckie asks Tommy “Do you think the sandman really almost got her?”, and Tommy replies “I don’t know; she might have made it up like the time she said your blanket was alive.” Chuckie tells Tommy not to remind him of that; Tommy apologizes and then states: “Come on, we gotta get the ‘Sea Moneys’ over that hill [pointing out a mound of sand in their path].” The two then resume pushing the cooler and they manage to get it almost to the top of the mound before it gets stuck, and Tommy tells Chuckie to go around and pull; but as Chuckie walks to the other side, he suddenly sees his father’s unconscious head sticking out of the side of the mound (as it’s now apparent that the mound of sand is that Angelica buried Chaz in as part of the prank she pulled on him), and in horror, he shouts: “DAAAAHHHHH!!! MY DAD’S BEEN DECAFFEINATED [as if to say decapitated]!!!” Chuckie then runs off screaming in sheer horror and Tommy asks “Chuckie, what happened?”; but before he can get an answer, Chaz wakes up and rises out of the sand, and this frightens away Tommy (who thought he was the sandman Angelica was talking about), who screams: “AAHHHHH!!! THE SANDMAN!”

Chaz doesn’t notice the two frightened babies running off as he dusts himself off, but he then notices the cooler and asks himself what it’s doing there; he takes a can of soda out and drinks it, and he picks up the cooler and carries it back to the groups spot. Meanwhile, Tommy catches up with Chuckie and they both stop and sit down near a wire mesh trash receptacle to catch their breath and get themselves together. Chuckie remarks that setting his “sea moneys” free sure isn’t easy, and Tommy adds in that he’s been thinking that perhaps the “sea moneys” aren’t worth all the trouble they’re going though, adding in that they’re just little specks. Chuckie replies in disappointment “Just little specks?” and adds in “When a grown-up walks past you and doesn’t even know you’re there; don’t you feel like ‘just little specks’?” Chuckie goes on: “When you’re not tall enough to open a door, or turn on a light, or get at the cookies, don’t you feel like ‘just little specks’?” Tommy tries to reply; but Chuckie continues before he can: “I don’t know about you Tommy; but for all the little specks out there, I’m pushing that thing down in the water!” Tommy, with his determination restored, adds in “Let’s go!” and the two march back to their mission.

While the babies are doing that, we focus back on Lou and Boris, and we find that their disagreement to the rules of the game has turned into a heated argument; Boris angrily tells Lou: “Friendly game, shmendly game; I’m telling you, when you pick up a card, you’ve gotta play this card!” Lou angrily replies: “Oh you’re off your nut! I’ve played this game for over 15 years, and just because you pick up a card don’t mean you gotta put it down!”; and as he says this, we see Tommy and Chuckie get to the cooler (which is once again under the table) and push it out into the open without either grandfather noticing. The argument between Lou and Boris starts to get even more heated as the two stand up and lean in each other’s faces with aggressive glares, and Didi comes over and tells the two that it’s only a game and there’s no reason to get upset; and as this is happening, Tommy and Chuckie stop pushing and think for a moment, though no one else takes notice of either of them. Didi’s father replies as Chaz and Minka walk into the scene to help: “Upset! Who’s upset!? Just because this old schmender called me a nut!?”; Lou aggressively rebuttals “schmenick ‘eigh!? I’ve got your schmenick!” and he and Boris attempt to take each other on physically (though Didi and Chaz hold the two back)! We briefly focus on Tommy and Chuckie and Tommy states that he has an idea; we then focus back on the argument between Lou and Boris and Boris states to Lou as he puts up his fists: “SO! YOU WANT TO PLAY DIRTY, ‘EIGH!?” Minka tells her husband to watch his blood pressure, and Boris then grabs the entire deck of cards and tells Lou that he's got a card game for him; Lou asks what, and Boris replies “52 Pickup!” and flicks the cards all over the sand. A horrified Lou rebuttals: “Ah! My cards!” and proceeds to pick them up as the carnage and arguing only continues to pile up.

We then focus back on Tommy and Chuckie and we see Tommy bring over his dog, Spike (though strangely, we didn’t see Spike in the van with the group) and tie his leash to one of the cooler’s handles. Chuckie asks Tommy is he’s sure his idea will work, and Tommy replies that it’s gotta work. Tommy then mounts his dog like a horse, shouts “yee-haw!” and gives him “leg pressure” as if he really were a horse, and the much stronger Spike begins to run and pull the cooler toward the water at a significant speed with Chuckie running behind to keep up; but just as Tommy and Spike reach the water, a huge and dangerous wave suddenly charges straight toward them and frightens them away with quite a rightful fright. But as the frightened Tommy and Spike turn back and dash to safety in the nick of time, Spike’s leash comes loose from the cooler and they leave it behind; Tommy falls off his dog as he continues to run off and Chuckie catches up to him and helps him up. Chuckie then shouts “Oh-No!” as the large wave washes up onto the cooler and pulls it out into the water, where its remaining contents (including the remaining sea monkeys inside) are spilled out into the water and its lid is lost before another wave washes it back onto the beach; realizing that their mission is finally accomplished, Tommy shouts in excitement “We did it Chuckie! We did it!” Chuckie however isn’t excited like Tommy and begins to look kind of downhearted; Tommy asks his best friend what’s wrong and states that he thought he wanted to free them. Chuckie replies: “I know, but I’m not sure they were ready; after all we’ve been though together, I’ll miss ‘em [and he sniffles sadly].” Tommy tells Chuckie that there’s still time to say bye, and Chuckie shouts out to his freed sea monkeys: “GOODBYE SPIFFY, GOODBYE SPOT, GOODBYE BINKY, GOODBYE OREO, GOODBYE LEFTY, GOODBYE MIKE!”

Tommy then consoles his best friend and tells him that he did a nice thing by freeing his sea monkeys; a slightly cheered up Chuckie asks: “You think so?” Tommy replies: “Sure; ‘sea moneys’ belong in the sea. That’s where their real castle is, along with all the ‘sea bananas’ they’ll ever want.” The camera then begins to pan away from Tommy and Chuckie as they face the sunset and Tommy continues: “You did the right thing Chuckie, and they’ll never forget you for it.” The episode then ends as Tommy and Chuckie share an emotionally appropriate view of the sunset.

Trivia

 * This episode takes its title from the 1965 Frankie and Annette film, Beach Blanket Bingo 
 * A 1988 episode of Jim Henson's Muppet Babies used the same title pun, Beach Blanket Babies, in which Nanny gets the Muppet babies bathing suits and water wings and a wading pool for learning to swim. (In the 1990s, Muppet Babies reruns also aired on Nickelodeon).
 * This is the first episode where Angelica appears in a swimsuit. It is also the first time that Chuckie and Tommy are wearing beach clothes.
 * In the next episode, "Family Feud", Didi says to Stu that it's just a game. In this episode, she repeats this to Lou, but both times it's useless.
 * Though Angelica appears, she is a secondary character with most of the adults.
 * The group sings the 1905 folk song Low Bridge on the way to the beach, with Lou singing the 15 miles on the Erie Canal parts.
 * The difference between the illustrated sea monkeys and the actual sea monkeys is not unique to this episode. Many kids have learned the hard way that sea monkeys don't even come close to resembling the illustrations and in fact are a variety of shrimp (but not one edible to humans).
 * This episode is also known as On the Beach.
 * Angelica's swimsuit would later return in "The Inside Story".
 * Phil and Lil are the only Rugrats who don't appear.
 * Chuckie's "just little specks" talk to Tommy is a sort of role-reversal, as the latter is usually the determined speech-giver, and the former is usually the quitter.


 * Moral: Not all animals need to be set free unless it is a wild animal.