| Chicken Pops | Gallery | Transcript |
|---|
| Season 4 Episode 4b | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chicken Pops | |
| Original Airdate | August 23, 1997 |
| VHS release | Dr. Tommy Pickles |
| DVD release | Season 4 Complete Series |
| Previous Episode | Spike's Babies |
| Next Episode | Radio Daze |
"Chicken Pops" is a Season 4 episode of Rugrats.
Characters Present[]
Characters Mentioned[]
Synopsis[]
Plans to attend Charlotte's company picnic are ruined when Chuckie contracts chickenpox. This gives Angelica the opportunity to convince the Rugrats that he's turning into a chicken. - Description from Klasky Csupo
Plot[]
Today's the annual company picnic of Mega Corp, of which Charlotte is the CEO. Charlotte hates the company picnic, but everyone else is excited about it. Along with Charlotte and her daughter, Angelica, the others who're going to the picnic are Didi and Tommy, Betty and Phil & Lil, Chas and Chuckie, and Lucy and Susie Carmichael. Betty and the twins are already over at Didi's house, but when Chas and Chuckie finally come over, it's revealed that Chuckie has the chickenpox. Chas puts calamine lotion all over Chuckie and puts mittens on Chuckie's hands to keep him from scratching himself. Didi and Betty take Tommy, Phil, and Lil outside to play and to keep their distance from Chuckie.
The rest of the babies want to know what "chicken pops" is and why Chuckie couldn't come outside. To scare the babies, Angelica tells them that when someone gets the chicken pox, they actually turn into a chicken! Tommy doesn't believe her at first until Chuckie eventually gets covered in feathers (from a Dummi Bears pillow that Tommy and the twins were playing with earlier) that stick to the calamine lotion that Chas put on him. Tommy and the other babies soon think he's actually turning into a chicken. They tell this to Chuckie, and he tells his friends that if he's turning into a chicken, he's going to be a "brave chicken. Not a chicken chicken."
Tommy and the twins give Chuckie training lessons on how to eat worms, fly, and cluck like a chicken. Chuckie starts liking it when he does the "step, flap, cluck" lesson. Tommy, Phil, and Lil notice that they're getting itchy, and they realize that they've now got the chicken pox, just like Chuckie. They get scared and start to cry. Chuckie's happy that his friends are joining him, but Tommy and the twins continue to cry and scratch their itchy spots. Angelica makes it worse by telling them that the adults are going to have a barbecue at the picnic and are going to eat them. Chuckie stands up for his friends and tells Angelica that they are going to be chickens together. He scares Angelica away by making chicken noises at her (as he clucks, Chuckie's hair turns into a chicken's comb). Tommy tells Chuckie that he was "the bravest chicken" he ever saw.
Lucy and Susie finally come by. Lucy apologizes for being late, explaining that she was doing some organ transplants at the hospital. Chas explains to Lucy that Chuckie's got the chickenpox and, upon looking outside, they and the other adults notice that all the kids (minus Angelica) now have it -- but Lucy assures them that all the kids will just be fine. If anything, they're much better off getting it while they're still young because an illness like the chickenpox is way worse if you get it as an adult (especially if you're a man).
While her mom was inside explaining the situation to the adults, Susie explains to the babies that they're not actually turning into chickens because of the chickenpox, and that the chickenpox don't last that long. Chuckie confesses to Tommy that he's kind of sad that he's not turning into a chicken, saying that he was braver as a chicken than a kid. Tommy makes Chuckie feel better by telling him that he'll always think of him as a chicken (a "brave" chicken).
While Angelica leaves with her mother, the car hits the curb on the way out, and an egg from a picnic basket bounces into her car seat. When Angelica finds the egg, it's shown that she now has the chickenpox. Angelica gets scared and thinks that she's now turning into a chicken (believing the lie she had made up in the first place to scare the other kids).
Goofs[]
- Chas isn't credited despite having dialogue.
- When Angelica brushes her doll's hair and hears Didi talking about Chuckie being sick, she blinks her eyes and her hair contacts her eyelids on each end side.
- When the babies cry the third time, Tommy's gums are miscolored white instead of pink making them look like teeth.
Trivia[]
- Drew's the only member of the Pickles family to not appear while Howard's the only member of the DeVille family to not appear. Lucy and Susie are the only members of the Carmichael family to be seen.
- Lou is the first to figure out that Chuckie has the chickenpox.
- A person really is better off getting the chickenpox as a kid than as an adult.
- Susie's the only Rugrat who doesn't end up getting the chickenpox -- while not confirmed, it's possible that she already had the chickenpox prior to the events of this episode, or she could've been vaccinated (her mom is a physician, after all).
- After the other adults explain that their children had chickenpox, Lucy claims that there's a strain of it going around and that half the kids at Susie's daycare center had chickenpox.
- After Lucy explains to the other adults that chickenpox is worse if you get it as an adult, especially if you're a man, Stu asks his dad, Lou, if he already had the chickenpox as a kid. Lou says he did, which Stu is relieved about, but then Lou says it might have been his older brother, Drew, who already had the chickenpox as a kid, which Stu gets nervous about.
- It's never revealed if either Stu or Drew already had the chickenpox as a kid. It's possible they both had it, perhaps at the same time.
- This is the third time Chuckie imitates a farm animal. The first two times were both in "Chuckie's First Haircut" when Chuckie pretends to be a cow and a duck.
- Betty DeVille's mother exposed her and the rest of her family to all kinds of diseases when she was a child.
- The chicken pox is later mentioned in All's Well That Pretends Well.
- Charlotte's vanity plate says "CEO1".
- Karma: When Angelica makes fun of Chuckie for having chickenpox, she tells the babies that he is turning into a chicken, and later Angelica ends up having chickenpox and she thinks that she’s turning into a chicken.
- Morals. If you have chickenpox, stay home and don’t touch other people because chickenpox are contagious. Never tell fake stories with the intent to scare your younger siblings, cousins, and playmates, because it will come back to bite you.
- This is the episode of Tommy crying previously from "Regarding Stuie".
