Scrambled Eggs (DC Super Hero Girls)

Scrambled Eggs (DC Super Hero Girls)
Get the Hock Out and Ice Age: Collision Course but with extra steps.
Series: DC Super Hero Girls Part of Season: 1 Episode Number: 31 Air Date: December 19, 2019 Writer: Tim Sheridan Director: Natalie Wetzig Previous episode: Power Surge Next episode: Drama Queen

Scrambled Eggs is the thirty-first episode of Season 1 of DC Super Hero Girls.

Plot

Thanks to a home economics assignment, the students are paired up and given an egg to, “care for”, over a weekend, but when tragedy befalls egg after egg, what was supposed to be an easy assignment escalates into a madcap romp with super-high stakes.

Why It's A Scrambled Mess

1. To get the egg out of the basket, this episode is just an extremely lazy rehash of the short, "Shell Shock", which had a similar premise of egg sitting and was executed much better since it managed to stay true to its superhero genre and Kara and Karen are in-character, but extended to 11 minutes with almost all of the charm of said short removed, 15 more characters added in as well as the plot being very out of place for a superhero show and more suited for a sitcom or a comedy show.
   • Not to mention that plot points did way better in other cartoons years before this episode aired such as Bart the Mother from The Simpsons, Shell Shocked from The Loud House and the Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show episode, Scrambled Eggs/George Stephenson.
   • Not only this episode entirely rehashes Shell Shock, but Kara and Haleen's egg-stealing subplot is a rehash of the infamous Buddy Thunderstruck episode, known as Get the Hock Out, since Kara and Haleen try to steal other teams' eggs so they can get out of summer school, similar to how Buddy and Darnell stealing other peoples' stuff so they can get their stuff back from Big Tex after Auntie Uncle pawned all of their stuff, not to mention these two pair of characters acted completely out-of-character in both episodes.
   • As a result, The writing from Tim Sheridan is just plain lazy and bizarre, even for the show’s standards, as it not only reuses the plot from one of the shorts removing the cleverness of the short, such as the superhero theme, and dumbed down many of the characters for the plot to fill the 11-minute runtime, but also added tons of plot holes that completely contracts the original premise and continuity of the show, which is just unacceptable since he wrote Gotham Con and DC Super Hero Boys, and Tim’s writing in these two episodes are good.
   • Even a later episode, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Mind Them did a much better job at a babysitting episode than this episode and it fixes some of the problems such as using an original story, reducing the character focus to just the Super Hero Girls thus making them in character, keeping the original tone of the show, and not filling its runtime with useless subplots.
   • Even when Shell Shock aired two months before this episode and had the same premise, the former was still great without these aforementioned issues the episode has done it wrong, making the idea of extending the short to an 11-minute episode and the episode's existence entirely pointless.
2. Unlike many other episodes in the series and almost in a similar matter to The Great Divide, Roadside Attraction, Turbo Does Laundry and 137 Hours from Turbo F.A.S.T., and Get the Hock Out. This episode’s events are very dull and barely serve anything important, nor leave a single impact on the series as a whole, while a few episodes like Crushing It and Retreat had filler, the events of those episodes are still official even if they’re filler episodes, this episode, on the other hand, barely have any impact nor character development on the series overall, aside from Zee and Oliver’s bad character change in Drama Queen, since the events are mostly ignored in later episodes, thus ending up being one of the few episodes in the entire series that serves as true filler.
3. Many of the running gags in this episode fall annoying flat and a massive downgrade to the short's cleverness in the humor as Pamela burping after eating eggs, and Zee and Oliver acting as parents in a toxic relationship.
   • Due to the large amount of main characters, several scenes can drag out too long or only serve as filler such as the infamously dragged-out scene where all of the students, except Pamela, Jessica, and Leslie, fight over a last egg, the same one from the post office, at the pier that goes on for two whole minutes, more on that later, which further shows that this episode is nothing more than filler, with barely anything important happen.
4. This episode lacks any action or drama that made the show so clever and memorable and has a more lighthearted, campy, and kiddie tone than most of the DC Super Hero Girls episodes are known for, which is ironic since some of the show's previous episodes such as Meet the Cheetah, From Bat to Worse, DC Super Hero Boys, Soul Sisters, and even later ones like Happy Birthday Zee, which their dark moments prove that the show can make compelling stories that don't pander to kids and can be enjoyed by even adults, This episode, however, focuses more on comedy and less on action and drama that is rather ill-suited for a DC Super Hero Girls episode and makes this episode come off as a rejected episode of a sitcom or even a Teen Titans Go! episode whose script was somehow reworked into this show in terms of writing.
   • It should be worth noting that DC Super Hero Girls normally has comedic, and funny moments, in previous, and even later episodes, but even they don't go overboard with this tone.
   • Overall due to this episode’s overall random nature and out-of-nowhere campy tone, it can be comparable to something out of a Teen Titans Go episode, therefore, if this episode was written for that show, replace the assents from DC Super Hero Girls with ones from that show, and nothing would've change.
   • Even Mrs. Cuddles, Get the Hock Out, The Great Divide, and Roadside Attraction at least kept the original balanced tones of their shows while being mostly lighthearted filler episodes.
5. On the topic of lacking the action-packed tone of the show, this episode lacks many of the characteristic things from the entire show including a certain villain, the appearance of Superhero Girls, aside from Barbara, Da Invicni-Bros, Tastu, nor the Super Villain Girls in their super suits nor with their weapons and powers, nor even action scenes.
6. Most, if not all of the Super Hero Girls and other character groups, act completely out-of-character since they inexplicably reverted to either their dumbed-down selves or per-character development personalities, which starkly contrasts with the amount of development they've gotten throughout the series and are at their worst when it comes to this episode by being total immature, grade-obsessing brats who treat the egg sitting assignment as if it was a contest or competition since they argue, steal, and fight over certain eggs after theirs broke by accident which is pretty much a ridiculous reason just to keep the plot going and even shows that they learned nothing about responsibility about taking care of things like an egg despite them being teenagers, a great example for their immature behaviour is that all of the students, except Pamela, Jessica, and Leslie, fight over a last egg at the pier that lasts for two whole minutes when they have better things to do after they fail.
   • Similar to Drama Queen as mentioned earlier, Zee Zatara and Oliver Queen are both dumbed down in this episode as they act like abusive, toxic stereotypical parents who take control of every decision they make with an egg that were going to take care of, while they’re rivals in the super shorts and even the previous episodes, at least they are also times where they work and care together, but here, their rivalry went one step way too far in this episode, up to the point where they aggressively arguing and fighting over keeping their egg in a carton 'til Monday. Not only that, but their character derailment would carry over to the next episode, Drama Queen which makes it two episodes in a row where they’re out of character, thankfully they both reverted to their original personalities in Ally Cat.
   • Barbara is downgraded from an intelligent crime-fighter to a troublemaking idiot in this episode as she takes her team's egg to do crime fighting despite Garth and Zee telling her not to take the egg to fight crime and literality breaks it.
   • Garth, while being the less moronic compared to the other characters, has been reduced to a punching bag, who gets tortured by the students, including Barbara.
   • Carol Ferris easily has the worst character derailment out of all the students in this episode as she is a bigger, violent, and psychopathic brat here than she usually is in the previous episodes, and not even the tolerable nor entertaining kind here either, since she only cares about taking care of an egg with Hal Jordan.
   • Hal Jordan is a bigger talker than he was in the previous episodes as he tried to take care of an egg with Selina Kyle just because she’s a girl which caused her to leave due to his annoyance.
   • Kara and Haleen, while having interesting chemistry, became the episode’s version of how Buddy and Darnell are portrayed in Get the Hock Out and Beast Boy and Cyborg are portrayed in Teen Titans Go (another reason why this episode feels like a rejected episode of that show), being morons over their missing egg.
     • As a plus, Haleen has become a Selina Kyle clone who wants to steal eggs from other teams and even Zee's stuff, which is something Selina would do.
   • Similar to Shrek the Third, Rio 2, or the last two Ice Age sequels, the episode even had to include a total of 17 main protagonists, including the Super Villain Girls, as a result, the character focus between the 17 main protagonists are imbalanced as most of the episode, only Kara, Haleen, Hal, Carol, Oliver, Garth, Barbara, and Zee have actual purposes to the plot while the rest of the main cast, Diana, Karen, Barry, Selina, Pamela, Tatsu, Jessica, Leslie and Carter, barely get much lines and screen time that felt like they’re only shoehorned in this episode for filler and most of them never appear again until later on in the episode (especially the fight scene) to the point that they could easily be removed from the story and nothing would’ve changed, also just like the ones that are purposes, the aforementioned ones that were completely wasted were also dumbed down, as well.
     • Diana and Karen became a duo of idiotic morons just like Kara and Harleen who care about talking about their experience with responsibilities and yet both of them wouldn’t even notice their egg rolling on the former’s desk and falling onto the floor and later confused that they’re on separate teams during the only fight scene, which is just out of character since both characters, especially Karen, are intelligent enough to keep the egg safe.
     • Tatsu is yet another worst example of character derailment in this episode as she somehow went from a complex anti-heroine who learned her lesson on how to be a true hero as stated in Soul Sisters to a greedy mean girl who barely acts like a hero like she promised and wanted to up pass Diana which contradicts their interaction in that episode which thrown Tastu's character development out the window, thankfully, later episodes featuring Tatsu doesn’t have her act like this.
       • The idea of Tatsu learning about the responsibility of saving and taking care of people and things is executed rather poorly due to Tatsu’s derailment and being underused until the fight scene as well throughout the episode.
     • Pamela Isley, similar to Robby Burgles in Get the Hock Out, is reduced to a gross-out joke fodder-typed flawless girl, whose only trial is burping after eating raw eggs and serves as an excuse for the entirely of the students, even her team, to fail the assignment by making a sandwich out of the last egg as opposed to the clam and smoothly villainous nature-loving girl, but unlike Robby who has a helpful speaking role in Get the Hock Out, she is also reduced to only burping sounds as well as being just a filler character that adds nothing other than being a plot device.
     • Barry is annoying towards Carter as he talks and pulls an egg prank on him about sitting on egg-like birds since the latter is Hawkman in DC Superhero Boys.
     • Selina and Carter are reduced to non-speaking roles who are shown to be likable at first after they are fed up with Hal and Barry annoying them but derailed later in this episode to become morons like the rest of the cast.
     • Jessica Cruz, despite being part of the Super Hero Girls and one of the main characters, appears to be completely wasted since she appears in two classroom scenes with only one line of dialogue as if she doesn’t want to be in this episode due to how filler this episode is which wasted Myrna Velasco's talent and even worse is that Jessica doesn't bother to show up at the pier to stop the fight, call out the students for their immature behavior, suggested them that they could share and take care of the last egg together while defending it from both Pamela and Leslie to get out of summer school which is not only very out-of-character for her since she'd normally stop fights and saying that, "fighting is never the answer", but also a careless hypocrite who show less care about anyone fighting.
     • The same could be said for Leslie Wills since she appears just to make a mean prank on Tatsu and disappears afterward which makes her a filler character.
       • Due to Jessica and Leslie being completely wasted, neither of the two have any scenes throughout the weekend after they lose their eggs to their teammates, not even in the fight scene over the last egg which resulted in the episode never actually explaining what ever happen to both of them throughout the entire weekend of egg sitting. However, Jessica reappears in the classroom scene to be madly against Pamela for eating her team’s egg that was meant for egg sitting.
   • Even most, if not all of their intelligence were downgraded to an IQ of 0, including some of the smarter ones like Diana and Karen who were downgraded to massive idiots who didn't even notice their egg falling to the ground.
     • Speaking of, the most infamous example of the students' complete lack of intelligence is the part where Barbara breaks into Garth's house and takes her team's egg in front of Kara and Haleen to go night patrol, despite her working in a restaurant in previous episodes, despite Garth and Zee telling her not to take the egg to do night patrol and runs into a road hole when riding her motorcycle and what did she do to save the egg? Of course, she watched the egg through the wired fence rolling into the woodchipper and run by a truck that was going to be used for a plot device later. Since she's usually the creative small problem solver, could Barbara just climb over the fence and save the egg in a few seconds with her gadgets? It's not electrified or anything, but still, she somehow couldn't climb the fence and listen to your teammate about the danger of night patrol.
     • Overall, this contracts the Superhero Girls, Da Invisia-Bros, and Tastu's characters, since they're known to take responsibility for saving countless lives of people they know in the show.
7. It completely contradicts and outright ignores events of certain important episodes like, "Soul Sisters", "Abracadabrapalooza", "Frenemies", and "The Good The Bad and the Bizarre", since the episode acts like most of the show's continuity doesn't happen at all.
   • The events of DC Super Hero Boys are just ruined in this episode, since in that episode, Da Invinci-Bros and the Super Hero Girls start as rivals who fight between which team is the best and later work together to stop the Kryptonians from taking over Metropolis, even though in this episode, both teams fight over one simple thing, reverting to rivals. which is just unacceptable, considering that this episode was written by the same writer behind the former two-part episode, Tim Sheridan.
   • In "The Good, The Bad, and The Bizarre", Supergirl was doing well academically. but this episode, however, shows that she is failing in school.
   • In the mall scene, Barbara says to Grath that she’s going to take the egg to her night patrol job, rather than working at the Burrito Bucket as an employee as stated in earlier episodes like Beeline and Burrito Bucket as well as the short, Veggie Burrito Bucket.
   • Barbara and Haleen, despite being best friends as their casual selves, appear to be fighting over an egg when they only do that when they’re both Batgirl and Harley Quinn.
   • Despite being set after the events of Soul Sisters, the real issue is that it's far from being an actual sequel. It instead feels more like a stand-alone sequel that has a lot of continuity errors that seem to have contradicted the events of that episode.
     • This episode is supposed to take place sometime after the events of Soul Sisters. However, at the end of that episode, Tatsu promises Diana to become a true hero, but in this episode, she is still acting as a villain, showing the exact opposite of being a hero.
   • As mentioned above, all of the students’ character development is completely reversed and derailed to the point where they barely act like how they’re supposed to which starkly contrasts with the amount of development they've gotten from the previous episodes.
8. Due to the episode's extremely poor writing, it leaves out even more plot holes than every other episode of the series, especially with all of the hero and villain students, especially Jessica, Hal, Carol, and Zee, not using their harmless weapons and powers to keep their eggs safe due to the extreme lack of the superhero theme, which is huge wasted potential since the Super Hero Girls, the Incinvi-Bros and Tastu fighting crime and the Super Villain Girls doing crimes in Metropolis while taking care of their eggs could've given the episode more creative gags and save this episode from the lazy writing and being filler.
   • They could've just gone to the grocery store, bought replacement eggs, and drew Chapin's face on them, but nope, they just kept arguing, fighting, and stealing over a handful of eggs.
   • If Pamela was at the pier, then how didn't Jessica appear alongside her to notice the students' fighting and tell them to stop at the pier even though she appears for filler?
   • Why would the Super Hero Girls, Da Invinci-Bros, the Super Villain Girls, and Tastu, three groups of teenage heroines, superheroes, villainesses, and a sword-fighting anti-heroine, fight and steal one another's egg that was meant for babysitting for their assignment? This is only something Teen Titans Go!, another DC cartoon, or seasons 6-8 of SpongeBob SquarePants, much like Get the Hock Out, would do.
9. While the other episodes, even some of the worst ones, have some pretty good voice acting, the voice acting here is just terrible and annoying. Because it consists of the actors heard often yelling the majority of their lines, particularly from Tara Strong (Babs and Harleen), Nicole Sullivan (Kara Danvers), Eddie Perino (Oliver Queen), and especially Kari Wahlgren (Zee and Carol), which is just unacceptable since the voice acting are always amazing in most of the episodes, even from characters who tend to have annoying voices.
10. Much like the final two Ice Age sequels and Rio 2, this episode tries so hard to fill its 11-minute runtime, with too many subplots, to the point where the story ended up being a very big mess of story ideas.
    • Oliver and Zee’s infuriating husband-and-wife relationship, over an egg.
    • Carol trying to take care of an egg with Hal Jordan after he has been rejected by Selina Kyle for being a stalker.
    • Kara and Harleen trying to steal other team eggs after they lose theirs in a post office.
    • Barbara introduces life to her team’s egg by taking it with her on night patrol while disobeying Garth and Zee at the mall earlier.
    • Tatsu trying to be a good heroine and learns about responsibility.
11. The teacher revealed that the school mascot has just given birth to baby hamsters and decides to have them take care of it, even having everybody match up with the same person instead of switching teams so that the students are less annoyed before Pam burping while everyone looks at her. Nearly all of the 14 main characters got unpunished for their endless bratty actions, making them get off scot-free.
12. After all of the students fail, we get an promising emotional scene where Kara and Haleen have to face summer school by hugging and crying one another, which could’ve saved the episode from being filler since that’s heartwarming for the least, until the truck goes by and drops the last egg that Kara and Haleen left at the post office in front of the students abruptly ended that emotional scene, given that fact that not only the emotional scene involving Kara and Haleen literally comes out of nowhere and only there just to make Kara and Haleen’s egg seemed more of a plot device than anything else, as a result, this makes the entire scene filler and pointless just like all the scenes with the large amount of useless, "protagonists", such as the classroom scene that drags out for three minutes, even Kara’s backstory on how her mother died and landed on Earth in DC Super Hero Boys, which is written by the same writer, is more emotional than this, and that scene actually gives Kara some character development, unlike that Kara and Haleen scene that make this episode worse, after the last egg falls out of the truck.
    • Speaking of the climax, it was considered by many fans to be the absolute worst climax of the entire show for good reason, as all of the students chasing and fighting for a very stupid reason which is a last egg that drags out for two minutes. Even goes as far as to ruin all of the students’ characters, even Tatsu after all the character development she’s gone through in Soul Sisters, as in this episode Tatsu becomes a selfish mean girl who wants to surpass Diana over egg-sitting, throwing out her character development and interaction of Diana from that aforementioned episode out the window. Because failing the egg sitting assignment is all their fault for breaking their eggs and could’ve just used their gadgets and superpowers to keep them safe instead of acting completely selfish and stupid about a certain egg, and keep in mind that this was the only action scene in the entire episode.
13. The whole episode is supposed to be an, "It’s made for kids", excuse as stated from Tim Sheridan's writing after DC Super Hero Boys. However, the arguing, stealing, and fighting morals prevented the message from being fully understood.
14. In fact, this episode along with Tween Titans were responsible for Tim Sheridan's downhill in terms of writing with the latter episode being his last written episode to date with him not returning to write episodes for season 2.
15. Laughable dialogue, due to the terrible voice acting, and lack of effort put into the writing, especially the use of egg puns, and, "of course, I could play father in my sleep", from Oliver Queen.
16. The character pair-ups, though interesting such as Haleen and Kara, would've worked, and made a lot more sense, especially with Diana and Tatsu, since their interaction in Soul Sisters, Zee and Karen, Garth and Hal, and Selina would've worked alone, but we ended up having pair-ups that doesn't make sense since they're often annoyed or just rivals, especially Zee and Oliver.
17. The music, while great, is extremely underused as the music only played in a few scenes of the episode like the fight scene and the part where Kara and Haleen getting stuff for their egg at the post office.
18. This episode is rather out-of-place to the series as a whole, being the only episode that never usually happens compared to most episodes which barely have any impact on the series overall, but even so, it can still be skipped. You can watch the show, skip this episode, and anything too important will not be missed.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Much like other bad episodes of the show, the animation is great as always much like the other jam-filled animated episodes.
2. Bloo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends makes a cameo as a plush toy.
3. Jessica and Leslie, despite only being shown as filler and the former not calling out the students, are the only likable students as they never argue, steal, or fight over an egg, unlike the others.
   • Mr. Chapin and the Teacher in the ending are also likable in this episode.
4. Half-Nice ending: the baby hamsters at the ending are very cute and the 17 students didn't go to summer school as the egg babysitting assignments are rather outdated.
5. A few funny moments, even when the episode comes across as a filler episode such as Barbara's reaction to her egg running over by a truck, despite the plot hole of her not saving the egg in a few seconds.
6. Thankfully, this episode is considered unofficial, mainly due to the events of this episode being completely ignored, and the character development and the original personalities of the students, especially Tastu, have been rightfully restored in many later episodes.
7. The idea of Kara interacting with Haleen is very interesting, even though it’s completely wasted on a filler episode, like this.
8. The music, while underused for the most part, is great, just like many other episodes.

Reception

The episode was extremely unpopular among fans to the point of being one of if not, the worst episodes of DC Super Hero Girls (along with others such as Crushing It, Breaking News, Drama Queen, and Retreat), with some of them even calling this episode a rehash of the short, Shell Shock, only with a filler plot and a huge amount of character derailment within the entire cast that serves to be a waste of time. It received a 6.9/10 on IMDb, not only making it the 2nd lowest-rated episode of DC Super Hero Girls, only behind Drama Queen, but also made it in the bottom 5 episodes of the entire series.

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