"Spar for the Course" | |
Season/Series: | 19 (US/AUS) |
---|---|
Number in season: | 3b[1] |
Original Airdate: | January 20, 2016[2] June 10, 2015[3] May 1, 2015[4] |
Credits | |
Written by: | David Steven Cohen Raye Lankford |
Storyboard by: | Jeremy O'Neill |
Episodes | |
Previous "Arthur's Toy Trouble" |
Next "Carried Away" |
Read transcript |
"Spar for the Course" is the second half of the third episode in the nineteenth season of Arthur.
Summary[]
Muffy, Buster, and Binky must agree on an idea for a new 18th hole at the mini golf course.[5]
Plot[]
The episode opens with Muffy at Crosswire Motors. She talks about cooperation and opens the hood of a car, only to find Buster. Buster takes Muffy to a planet that is light years away, where Binky body slams an alien and changes the location to a professional wrestling ring.
At a golf course, Binky fails to hit the ball through a windmill. Muffy tells him to hit it harder, and although Binky complies, the entire windmill breaks. However, the golf ball still rolls into the hole.
Mr. Shank now has to buy a new windmill. Binky, Buster, and Muffy point out that windmills are overused, and the hole should use something "radically different." Mr. Shank agrees, and gives them a week to design a good course, or else he is still going with a windmill.
At The Sugar Bowl, Binky, Buster, and Muffy struggle to think of ideas. Buster gets annoyed by Binky's pencil tapping, and Binky responds that he is tapping to the tune of a song. He then gets the idea for a musical 18th hole, where the golfer bounces the ball off of drums, cymbals, xylophone keys, and a triangle to get it to land in a clarinet.
Buster then suggests his idea, which is a Moon-themed 18th hole. The golfer has to avoid moon rocks and aliens to hit the ball into a UFO's tractor beam. He then adds the idea of an anti-gravity dome over the hole.
Binky does not like the idea, saying that his course is better. Buster comments that Binky's course would be too hard to build, and Binky responds, "Oh, but we can build an anti-gravity dome?" Muffy then says that they will have to compromise, and tells them about her course. The golf ball goes into a car, drives through a Swiss Alp, parks in front of a castle, and is dropped into the hole by a robot butler.
Nobody can agree on which one idea is the best. Muffy suggests that they all race and tell Mr. Shank their ideas, and the first one there gets their course built. However, Mr. Shank only wants one good idea and not three completely different ideas. Muffy, Binky, and Buster all agree to combine their courses to make "a big musical castle on the moon."
The kids make a model of the course, and slowly add and modify things until the course is possible to complete. They show the model to Mr. Shank, who likes the course, but wants to add something.
The episode finishes with the final course. It matches the model, but now has a windmill in it, which Mr. Shank says was his idea.
Characters[]
Major[]
Minor[]
Cameo[]
Mentioned[]
Trivia[]
- Arthur does not appear in this episode, although he is mentioned at the beginning.
Episode connections[]
- The episode's general plot and many of the problems the kids encounter are similar to "Castles in the Sky."
- The kids build their model on the same workbench that Muffy and her dad used to build the derby car in "Muffy Takes the Wheel."
Cultural references[]
- The episode name is a play on the term "spar" and the idiom "par for the course".
- Binky (sort of) drums Max Roach's drum solo from Cherokee on the table. The original is one of the most acclaimed solos in jazz.
- The last movement from Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture is heard at the end of Binky's imaginary golf course, and in the windmill in the final golf course at the end of the episode.
- Buster mentions astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the second person and first American in space, and the fifth person to walk on the moon.
- While Buster floats in zero gravity, The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II plays. The tune is often associated with space scenes, since it was used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
References[]
- ↑ http://www.ket.org/episode/ARUR%20%20001903
- ↑ http://www.kued.org/whatson/arthur/arthurs-toy-trouble-spar-for-the-course
- ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/programmes/schedules/2015/06/10
- ↑ http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/shows/guide/201505/20150501.htm?site=children
- ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/programmes/schedules/2015/06/10 (archived page)