Dream Scheme (The Powerpuff Girls, 1998)

"Dream Scheme"
Before One Coarse Meal, The Boys of Bummer, and Smile at Despair in the Name of Hope, there was this episode of all out of the scope.
Series: The Powerpuff Girls (1998) Part of Season: 2 Episode Number: 4a Air Date: September 24, 1999 Writer: John McIntyre Chris Savino Director: John McIntyre Craig McCracken Previous episode: Down 'n' Dirty Next episode: You Snooze You Lose

"Dream Scheme" is the first half of episode 4 of the second season of The Powerpuff Girls, which aired on September 24, 1999.

Synopsis

The Powerpuff Girls refuse to go to sleep, and they run into trouble with the Sandman.

Why It's a Bad Dream

1. The episode is extremely similar to the infamous SpongeBob SquarePants episode, "One Coarse Meal", as both plots are about characters that are supposed to be the good characters when they are portrayed as the villains tormenting and scaring out of the villain that is supposed to be bad, but he's portrayed as the good character.
2. The Sandman is set up as the "villain" who puts everyone to sleep forever, but he comes off as sympathetic as it's pretty understandable why he's doing it: he's very tired and just want some rest for a change, because people just won't go to sleep.
3. The girls are set up as the "heroes" who torment the Sandman for putting them to sleep, but they behave more like villains, as they don't take in account that the Sandman is doing this because he can't get any sleep and it's his duty to put people to sleep.
4. The girls decide to invade the Sandman's dreams and sadistically torment him in his dreams so he'll never sleep again, which is similar to how Mr. Krabs torments Plankton in his dreams by disguising himself as Pearl.
5. On that topic, Sandman's nightmare sequence is very horrifying and disturbing.
6. The girls are very disobedient, inconsiderate, unsympathetic, and unlikable as they give the Sandman a living nightmare just because he put them to sleep. This is also incredibly out of character for Bubbles, since she's supposed to be the most sympathetic of the trio, outside of "Bubblevicious" and "Helter Shelter", of course.
   • They also don't listen to the Professor who told them to go to bed, and they continue to stay up late, and they don't even care that the Sandman is tired and is just doing his duties.
7. The girls show absolutely no remorse for their sadistic treatment towards the Sandman, nor do they get scolded for their actions, making them come off as Karma Houdinis.
8. Bad Moral: Never sleep because you have to put everyone to sleep every night, which is not true as everyone has to sleep, even the Sandman himself. And not getting enough sleep will make you very tired in the morning, and two weeks without sleep can almost kill a person.

Dreaming Qualities

1. The Sandman and the Professor are the only likable characters.
2. At least the Sandman learned from his mistake, and reversed the machine and woke everyone up.
3. The visuals in Sandman's nightmare look pretty amazing.
4. To be fair, making people sleep forever is a little dark considering the likely chance they'd eventually die from sleeping too much.
5. The rhyming is rather clever.

Trivia

• This is an episode in which all of the dialogue rhymes, including the title.
• MsMojo ranked this as the #8 darkest episode of The Powerpuff Girls series.

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