Lights Out (The Fairly OddParents)

Lights Out
This episode should have been left in the dark...in the pile of scripts rejected by the writing staff.
Series: The Fairly OddParents Part of Season: 7 Episode Number: 118a<brFOP-338 Air Date: July 13, 2011 Writer: Kevin Sullivan Director: Ken Bruce Dave Thomas Previous episode: Cosmo Rules Dad Overboard (FOP-337) Please Don't Feed The Turners (airing order) Next episode: Dad Overboard Farm Pit (FOP-339

"Lights Out" is the thirty-fourth episode in the seventh season of The Fairly OddParents.

Plot

After Timmy reads Poof a scary story, his crying keeps him up all night, so Timmy wishes for twelve hours of darkness. Little does Timmy know that when his godparents are kept in the dark for more than eight hours, they become "Scary Fairies" and turn on their godchild.

Why Its Lights Went Out

1. This is one of these darker-themed episodes that becomes so dark and twisted that it clearly makes everyone their age feel really uncomfortable. This is also an episode that starts out good, but soon goes downhill.
2. The episode is notorious for how cheaply-produced and obsessively mean-spirited it was. Not even the second half of the tenth season was this cheaply produced!
   • The plot was specifically made to "abuse" Timmy.
3. Cosmo and Wanda are completely out of character as they repeatedly tried to kill Timmy, their own godkid, throughout the episode.
4. Unfunny, nonsensical, and inappropriate lines in a kids show, including:
   • "Sorry, son! I just waxed the stairs...and added more of them!" — Mr. Turner
   • "And I shouldn't have picked a bad time to smear my naked body in cat food." — Mr. Turner
   • "Sorry, son! I moved our house to the top of a hill because the view is so much better!" — Mr. Turner
   • "In the meantime, we're going to drag our lacerated bodies to the hospital sweetie." — Mrs. Turner
   • "Oh, hi, Timmy! Forgot to tell you: when I moved the house to the top of a hill, I also moved it closer to a freeway! Have fun!" — Mr. Turner
   • "I don't know which was worse, the tiger attack or the passionate mouth-to-mouth from Mother." — Mr. Crocker
5. Tootie and Mr. Crocker are completely annoying and serve nothing to the episode other than failed attempts at humor.
   • Tootie also seems to be out of character as she, too, goes through extreme lengths to outright physically harm Timmy, almost as if her role in this episode was originally intended for her sister Vicky, but then the writer switched Vicky's role to Tootie at the last minute, similar to Vicky's role in "Frenemy Mine" (which was also written by Kevin Sullivan).
   • Not helping is that this was Tootie's final major appearance in the show, aside from a few cameos as well as appearances in the live-action movies.
6. Disturbing imagery, with most of them coming from Cosmo and Wanda's designs (by Ernie Gilbert), which include stretched-out bulging eyes and a general design which resembles shady alleyway folk. As the episode continues, they become more grotesque in appearance, despite that Dave Thomas did a good job for the grotesque.
7. Most of the episode takes place in the dark and only the characters' eyes are shown on-screen. This completely goes against the visual-focused humor of the show.
   • This proves how gimmicky the plot was and how lazy Kevin Sullivan is.
   • For some reason, the darkness doesn't affect anyone in any way aside from Timmy.
8. Strangely, saber-toothed cats are in this episode for some odd reason despite having died out around 12,000 years ago. Furthermore, they managed to fly for some reason and hurt Crocker, who was floating away in a helicopter.
9. The way this episode wants Timmy to learn not to scare other people is poorly handled.
10. Unfair ending where Cosmo and Wanda face zero consequences for their unjustified actions, notably attempting to run Timmy over with a passenger train at a railroad crossing, as well as attempting to dangle him dangerously on an airplane and also try to run him over with a truck. If they were human beings, doing those things to a real child would've landed them in jail.
11. This episode showed how hypocritical Butch Hartman was. He apologized for "It's a Wishful Life" due to it being mean-spirited towards Timmy, and yet he was okay with this episode being produced.

Redeeming Qualities

1. In the end, Timmy apologizing to Poof was one of the sweetest moments about this episode.
2. The first two minutes were decent.
3. The animation is good when it's not when we only see the characters' eyes in the dark.
   • Dave Thomas surprisingly did a wonderful yet grotesque take of Cosmo and Wanda's designs.

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