The First Cut

"The First Cut" is an episode of Rugrats from Season 5.

Characters Present

 * Tommy
 * Chuckie
 * Phil
 * Lil
 * Angelica
 * Spike
 * Stu
 * Didi
 * Betty
 * Chas
 * Marvin (mentioned)
 * Shirley (mentioned)

Summary
''Tommy gets his first boo-boo rescuing a baby bird. Phil and Lil want one too so they can get a Reptar Band Aid. - Description from Klasky Csupo''

Plot
Chuckie's away visiting his grandparents for a night, while Tommy and the DeVille twins are at the park with their moms when the babies see a baby bird on the walking path. When they see a man in running shoes (which they refer to as "the Big Shoes") joggin towards them, Tommy and the twins get out of the way, but Tommy realizes that the baby bird is still on the path. He manages to save it and return it to its nest with its two siblings. But then Tommy notices that he has a cut on his finger and starts crying when he sees blood dripping from it. Didi uses her First Aid kit to clean Tommy's cut and put a band-aid on it (a Reptar band-aid to be precise). Phil and Lil think Tommy's band-aid is cool and want one, but Tommy says that that's a bad idea, and describes his experience with it.

The episode then cuts to the playpen at Tommy's house, where Phil and Lil are covering themselves in band-aids for their "pretend boo-boos." Tommy doesn't want to play with them, still scared from what happened with the cut on his finger. Angelica then comes by and tells the three about the story of her first cut: she was playing on a piece of exercising equipment that belonged to her mom and fell off and skinned her knee really bad, and it started bleeding a lot. She claims she had to go to the hospital to get medicine that would prevent her from getting an infection and she also had to get stitches to close the cut. Tommy has a nightmare that night where Angelica and the twins are playing outside, and when he goes to join them, he falls down and sees that a "stitching" on his leg is open and "stuffing" is coming out of it.

The next day, Phil and Lil are playing "ambulance" with a red wagon and when Tommy comes up to them, they ask him to be the driver. While Tommy's pulling the wagon, he turns around and sees the sharp corners of the wagon and gets nervous and starts sweating, but tells himself that he'll be okay. Angelica and Didi are walking towards the living room, with Didi carrying her sewing machine. Angelica asks Didi to sew a dress for her Cynthia doll, but when Tommy sees his mom walk into the living room carrying her sewing machine, he screams and gets scared again. Stu decides to take him, the twins and Spike to the park.

While at the park, Phil and Lil are playing while Tommy's looking at a book. The twins ask Tommy if he wants to play with them, but he says no. Then Spike gets loose and runs after a squirrel, but then the babies get scared when they see he's in the path of two oncoming bikers, but the two people simply bike around Spike and thus he's okay. Phil and Lil are surprised that Tommy didn't even try to save Spike, and later that night, when Stu and Didi put him to bed, Stu's perplexed as to why Tommy didn't even try playing. At first they think he's sick, but then they decide that the reason he's acting so weird is because he misses Chuckie, and think that Tommy will probably be happy when Chuckie gets home the next day.

The episode then cuts to Chuckie telling Phil and Lil about what a great time he had at his grandparents place, and that his grandpa even gave him a pinwheel. The twins think it's really cool, but when Chuckie says that he wants to show it to Tommy, they reveal that Tommy's been acting really weird, which Chuckie is confused by. When Tommy comes up to them, he's really glad to see Chuckie, and Chuckie starts telling him about what a great time he had with his grandparents, and shows him the pinwheel. But Tommy gets scared and pushes it out of the way, but ends up accidentally pushing Chuckie down the hill. When Tommy sees Chuckie heading towards the big thorny bush, he rolls down the hill to save Chuckie, which he does, but he also gets another cut in the process.

Chuckie notices the cut, but Tommy says that it was worth it since he saved Chuckie. He then tells Chuckie about his first cut, but when Chuckie takes the band-aid off of it, Tommy gets worried that it'll start bleeding again. But Chuckie points out that his first cut is almost healed. Tommy gets excited and shows it to Phil and Lil. When Stu and Didi come by, they notice Tommy's other cut in the paper cut and are wondering why he's not crying. Chas comes up to the them and faints when he sees the blood from Tommy's cut. Stu then expresses his thankfulness on the fact that they have a First Aid kit to treat Tommy's cut. The scene then shows the baby bird that Tommy saved at the beginning of the episode trying to fly but is also shedding feathers.

Goofs

 * How Phil and Lil got the Reptar bandages is currently unknown. They could have stolen them from Didi's First Aid kit, but that would be impossible.
 * Tommy's bandage keeps vanishing and reappearing throughout the episode.

Trivia

 * Tommy gets his first two cuts in this episode.
 * Didi seemed kind of annoyed when Angelica asked her to sew a dress for her Cynthia doll, but when Angelica told her that the dress for Cynthia was so could go to a ball and meet Prince Charming so she could live happily ever after, she seemed to be okay with it when she saw it was for romance.
 * There are two scenes with blood when Tommy gets his aforementioned cuts. Nickelodeon normally rejects episodes that contain blood, but this is an exception. Most other NickToons shows Harvey Beaks, SpongeBob SquarePants, Doug, Ren and Stimpy, and Rocko's Modern Life also featured scenes with blood and Nick made them exceptions. The manner of the blood is not violent as Rugrats is rated TV-G (sometimes TV-Y), for the general population.
 * Angelica talked about an infection she called Tangerine, she possibly meant to say gangrene which can indeed be caused by infection in which the body's tissue dies. It can also cause limbs to die from lack of blood flow. Gangrene can also be caused by untreated frostbite.
 * Didi has bandages, a snake bite kit, a hypodermic needle, and Wahorn Wipes in her medical kit.
 * This is the first time Chuckie has helpful knowledge from being older: knowing that cuts get better.
 * Moral: Always have a first aid kit ready and well-stocked with essentials in case of emergencies. Cuts and scrapes can become infected if left uncovered. Infected cuts and scrapes can cause dermatitis.