Francine's Pilfered Paper

"Francine's Pilfered Paper"
Main image Title card
Season/Series:	11
Number in season:	8a
Original airdate:	September 5, 2007 October 24, 2007 December 21, 2007
Credits
Written by:	Raye Lankford
Storyboard by:	Jean Lacombe Ivan Tankushev Robert Yap
Episodes
Previous "Mr. Alwaysright"	Next "Buster Gets Real"

Read transcript

"Francine's Pilfered Paper" is the first half of the eighth episode in the eleventh season of Arthur.

Summary

Francine copies and pastes information from a Web site to use as her school report.

Plot

In the pilgrim's times, Arthur, Buster, Muffy, and Brain feel sorry for Francine that she will not be attending the feast due to Ratburn punishing her for copying an essay.

Francine‘s Pilfered Paper

Mr. Ratburn assigns the class to write a report about Thanksgiving during the holiday, much to everyone's (except for Brain's) dissatisfaction, giving each student in the class a topic to research. Francine feels that she will not be able to handle her topic, pilgrims diet, and struggles to find relevant books in the library. Brain shows her that she could look up information on the Internet while advising her that not all the stuff she might find is accurate and that it is best to check your facts with other resources.

Francine goes home and finds a published paprt that she feels suits her topic. She copies the information and pastes it into a new document, complete with the original title "Food For Thought: What the Pilgrims Ate." The next day, she hands in the report early and surprises her classmates. Mr. Ratburn compliments her on the neatness and timing of her assignment. Buster checks Francine to make sure she is not a robot.

The next day, while everyone is working on their reports, Francine is watching a football game on TV with her father. She gets called in by her sister Catherine, who found a source that might help Francine with her report. As Francine informs her sister she already finished, she is surprised to see the paper and tells Catherine that this is her report, which she had copied. When Francine reveals how she composed her paper, a shocked Catherine tells her that she cannot use someone else's work as her own, and explains that doing so is plagiarism, which is basically stealing. Francine is horrified to learn that she unknowingly stole someone else's work and could be suspended if she is caught. Catherine presses her to tell Mr. Ratburn what happened. At dinner, Mr. Frensky talks about "stealing" a recipe he used to make dinner. This triggers Francine's guilt about her report. She asks to be excused from the dinner table, and then rides her bike to Mr. Ratburn's house.

Mr. Ratburn meets Francine at the door. He assumes that she has come over to get her report. He walks over to his desk, grabs a marker, and marks Francine's project with an A minus. He explains that there was some inaccurate information regarding when yams were introduced to the pilgrims, but that the paper was excellent overall. When he asks what source she used, Francine hesitates before naming a random book and leaves, losing her nerve.

That night, Francine has a nightmare in which she is a highly successful novelist as an adult who capitalized on the success of her plagiarized work, only to be confronted by the website's original creator who publicly denounces Francine as a plagiarist. Francine then wakes up and looks at her paper.

On Monday morning, Francine gets to class early and confesses to Mr. Ratburn about her accidental plagiarism, saying that she did not know it was wrong at the time. Mr. Ratburn adds that he did not notice and she initially thought she would get away with it. He notes that Francine still would have paid a price even if she technically got away with it; Mr. Ratburn points out that two crimes happen when someone plagiarizes: First, the original author is robbed of credit and second, the person who plagiarizes is robbed of learning something. Francine acknowledges his words and tells him that before he thinks about suspending her, she wrote a different report. Mr. Ratburn accepts it and assures Francine that finishing the report on her own merit is more important than what grade she gets.

In class, Mr. Ratburn is handing back the Thanksgiving reports. He comes to Francine and says how original her real report was. Francine sees that she earned a B for her work, much to her delight. Arthur asks her what was so exciting for her about earning a B. Francine happily replies that it's because this is her B, kissing her report, and the episode finishes.

Characters

Major

• Francine Frensky
• Mr. Ratburn

Minor

• Arthur Read
• Buster Baxter
• Muffy Crosswire
• Brain
• Binky Barnes
• Bitzi Baxter
• Pal
• Oliver Frensky
• Catherine Frensky
• Seth's mother
• Article author (Francine's Pilfered Paper)

Cameo

• Maria Pappas
• George Lundgren
• Fern Walters
• Alex Davidson
• Sue Ellen Armstrong
• Jenna Morgan
• Prunella Deegan
• Helen
• Steve Pappas
• 3rd Grade Male Rat
• Grandpa Frensky
• Bubby
• Laverne Frensky
• Julie Moore
• Mr. Morris

Mentioned

• Boris (greengrocer)
• Hoprah Linseed

Trivia

• Morals:
  • While it is important to research your facts, you should never cut corners. You won't be able to learn anything through this method.
  • Always acknowledge the source material, as plagiarism is wrong.
• This episode ends with an iris-out.
• During the prologue, which takes place before the first Thanksgiving, Francine is the only one who does not speak like a pilgrim.
• Until "An Arthur Thanksgiving" (and not counting the book Arthur's Thanksgiving), this episode was the closest that the TV series had ever gotten to a "Thanksgiving special."
• This is the second Arthur episode to deal with plagiarism, with the first being "Binky Barnes, Art Expert." In that episode, Buster and Arthur plagiarized from the art museum's information booklet when they were attempting to finish their art report at the last minute. Unlike in "Francine's Pilfred Paper", the plagiarism only plays a small role and is not a focal point of the episode.
• This is the second time that Francine has had trouble writing a paper on early American settlers. In "The Blizzard", Francine skips out on finishing her single page report on the pioneers due to finding it "dull". As punishment, she is forced to write a three page report during the snow day.
• The first search result on the WooHoo! search close-up links to a real AP wire report that was published on August 22, 2006.

  

  WooHoo! search results

Cultural references

• In the prologue, Francine has a red letter 'P' on the front of her cap. This a reference to The Scarlet Letter, while the 'P' presumably stands for 'plagiarist/plagiarism'.
• Binky's topic, the Arminius–Gomarus conflict, was a theological dispute between two Calvinist professors at Leiden, Netherlands. The Pilgrims were English Calvinists who lived in Leiden during the dispute before founding Plymouth Colony in North America.
• WooHoo! is a parody of Yahoo!.
• The TV documentary mentions Giovanni D’Arcoli (Johannes Arculanus), a fifteenth century professor of medicine who is the first person known to have used gold fillings in teeth.
• Mr. Ratburn's books include Moby Dick, A Recipe for Murder, Catch 22, The Secret Pilgrim, as well as books on Rome.
• The character who appears in Francine's dream is a parody of Erik, better known as the Phantom, from the novel/musical, The Phantom of the Opera. One of the problems Erik faces is that the opera managers, ashamed of Erik, pass off his operas as their own, angering Erik.
• In Francine's dream, Muffy mentioning they got Hoprah Linseed (the show's parody of Oprah Winfrey)'s endorsement for Francine's book is an obvious reference to Oprah's Book Club.

Errors

• Mr. Ratburn says that the report has to be at least five pages and Buster says it must be what college is like. However, Mr. Ratburn talked to the class about another five-page report in "The Boy with His Head in the Clouds," but it did not seem like they were bothered about how hard it was.
  • It’s possible that this episode took place later in the school year, after Thanksgiving.
• When on the internet searching for resources Francine can use in her paper, Brain points out that you can put quotation marks around your search topic in order to get more specific results (Ex: "Pilgrim's Diet" instead of Pilgrim's Diet). This is not always true (that you will get more specific results), as when you put quotation marks around words in a search query, the search engine is programmed to find those 2+ words in any source where they appear together (Ex: a source may have a sentence that says "The study of a pilgrim's diet is fascinating", and that would appear in the search results simply because the words "Pilgrim's" and "Diet appear together "Pilgrim's Diet". This does not always mean that the source would be an appropriate source to use for research)
• Throughout the episode, Francine is said to have used the Cut and Paste functions for her essay. In reality, the Cut function does not work on text published on a web page, unless it is in a text box where it can be edited like a document, since Cut deletes any selected text or images while copying it to the computer's "clipboard". The Copy function is meant for copying text or images from sources that cannot be edited and does not delete the selection.
• When Francine is watching TV, she is wearing socks. Then, when she goes into her and Catherine's room, she is wearing shoes. She may have put her shoes on off-screen.
• With subtitles/closed captions enabled, in Francine's dream, Muffy's name above her first line spoken is shown as "Catherine" instead.
• When Francine visits Mr. Ratburn's house, the "5" on her jacket is missing in one shot.

Production notes

• Beginning with this episode, in the "Francine Hits the Gong" title card, the sound of Arthur yelping has changed.

Home Video

DVD

• Dancing Fools (DVD)
• Arthur: Season 11

Gallery

Main article: Francine's Pilfered Paper/Gallery