Changes: The Family Tree

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Season 5 Episode 12

The Family Tree
Original Airdate	September 19, 1998
DVD release	Season 5
Previous Episode	A Very McNulty Birthday
Next Episode	Chuckie's Duckling

The Family Tree is an episode Rugrats from Season 5. It is served as a prequel for the movie released in November 20, 1998, The Rugrats Movie.

Characters Present

Recap

Stu and Didi go on a cruise to Mexico for their fifth anniversary, so the Finsters are left to babysit Tommy. Tommy is pampered by Chas because he was playing alone and Charles thought that meant he was lonely. Tommy and Chuckie see a family tree and thought babies grew on trees, then, due to sharing some interest, Tommy and Chuckie decide they must be brothers. Meanwhile, Didi is vomiting due to seasickness, which was revealed to be actually morning sickness as she is expecting Dil.

Synopsis

As Chas starts the Pickles' family tree, Tommy and Chuckie decide that they're brothers. Meanwhile, we learn that a new branch of the family is on its way when Didi announces that she is pregnant. - Description from Klasky Csupo.

Trivia

This episode marked the first appearance of Chuckie's paternal grandparents (Chas's parents), Shirley and Marvin.
- Marvin and Shirley are said to still be in their fifties, so they're significantly younger than the rest of the grandparents on the show. It can be assumed that they were probably somewhere in their twenties when they had Chas.
This is a 30-minute episode.
The title card sequence is used twice in this episode -- once after the opening credits, where the title card says, "The Family Tree Part I", and again after the first commercial break, where it says "The Family Tree Part II". Also, the music in the second title card is different than the regular fanfare used in the first title.
Throughout their anniversary cruise vacation, Didi becomes very ill, with her and Stu assuming it's seasickness. Morning sickness (what Didi was experiencing), happens during the first trimester of pregnancy. This starts during the first couple of weeks, and ends after a month of being pregnant. Stu and Didi must have had conception within days, or less than a week of boarding the ship. This is very confusing and strange as to why they were unable to deduce this. Due to the fact that Stu and Didi already have a child, they should have already known how pregnancy works. Stu even confirms this in the final scene when Didi starts to become sick in the doctor's office, "We have to get used to this again". So the way this was set up seems very confusing,
Have you noticed that we never actually see Didi throw up? Well, in these newer episodes, the scene shifts to something else when someone throws up. In the classic episodes, there were two instances that we actually get to see barfing in action -- when Tommy threw up on Angelica in Slumber Party in his sleep, and when Angelica threw up on Drew in Chuckie Loses His Glasses. Apparently, tastefulness is not the problem here, as Nick continues to show those two episodes, uncensored so it is unknown why. On the other hand, one of the creators, Arlene Klasky, doesn't go for that sort of thing, according to a recent article in The New Yorker. Dil also spits milk up on Stu in Accidents Happen, uncensored, and censored throwing up was shown in A Dose of Dil (by Chuckie due to sensory nausea), Rugrats Go Wild (by Kira due to seasickness) and Ransom of Cynthia (due to being spun by Drew, by Angelica.) Throwing up is mentioned in The Rugrats Movie (Chuckie in the truck), Raising Dil (Stu remembers Dil spitting up on his cake), Tommy and the Secret Club (Chuckie mentions barfing in his poem), A Very McNulty Birthday (Angelica suggests lying to Colleen McNulty that Timmy McNulty threw up so he won't get cake), The Age of Aquarium (Chuckie remembers his dad throwing up on a boat) and Accidents Happen (Chas and Chuckie both throw up on the roller coaster)
One of Angelica's "bad" tactics was to have Chuckie spray water from a gardening hose onto Tommy. However, water was sprayed everywhere in the room that Tommy was in, and in that room was the computer that held the family tree. For some reason, the computer escaped the watery mess.
This episode also served as a sort of pilot to The Rugrats Movie, which was released in theaters on 11/20/1998. However, the only link between this episode and the movie is at the very end, when it's revealed that Didi is pregnant. Other than that, it's, more or less, a normal Rugrats episode.
What Tommy, Chuckie, and Angelica don't know is they aren't and never will be brothers or sisters.
This is the last episode to use the 1991 Klasky Csupo logo after the credits. For The Rugrats Movie and the later episodes onward, the 1998 Klasky Csupo logo is used after the credits.

Quotes

Angelica: Sometimes I wish I could be you, just so I can be friends with me!

Gallery

The gallery for this episode can be found here

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 ==Recap==
-Stu and Didi go on a cruise to Mexico for their fifth anniversary, so the Finsters are left to babysit Tommy. Tommy is pampered by Chas because he was playing alone and Charles thought that meant he was lonely. Tommy and Chuckie see a family tree and thought babies grew on trees, then, due to sharing some interest, Tommy and Chuckie decide they must be brothers. Didi, meanwhile, is vomiting due to seasickness and, as it is revealed, morning sickness as she is expecting Dil.
+Stu and Didi go on a cruise to Mexico for their fifth anniversary, so the Finsters are left to babysit Tommy. Tommy is pampered by Chas because he was playing alone and Charles thought that meant he was lonely. Tommy and Chuckie see a family tree and thought babies grew on trees, then, due to sharing some interest, Tommy and Chuckie decide they must be brothers. Meanwhile, Didi is vomiting due to seasickness, which was revealed to be actually morning sickness as she is expecting Dil.
 == Synopsis ==