Sock Opera

"Sock Opera" is the fourth episode in the second season of Gravity Falls, and the 24th episode overall. It premiered on September 8, 2014.

Official overview
Mabel decides to put on a sock puppet rock opera to impress a local puppeteer but her show goes astray when Dipper's drive to uncover journal secrets leads to a supernatural disaster.

Synopsis
In the Gravity Falls Library, Mabel and Dipper finally access the laptop first seen in Into the Bunker, but are stopped by an 8 letter password. Annoyed, Dipper begins to attempt cracking the password with Mabel, but she is distracted by a puppeteer, Gabe Benson. She chats with him mentioning her love for puppets and decides to organize a puppet show to win Gabe's affection. She requests the help of Dipper, promising to help him crack the password once they finished the preparations. Dipper agrees, eager to finally discover what the laptop holds as he leaves the library with Mabel, unaware of a familiar shadow following them...

Over the next few days, Mabel, Wendy, Soos and the rest of the Pines family (excluding Stan, who ignores them) make many puppets. Dipper attempts to crack the password during the night, depriving him of sleep, but fails repeatedly. Frustrated, he considers finding a faster way to gain access to the laptop when he is surprised by none other than Bill Cipher. Bill toys with Dipper before offering to give him hints on how to unlock the laptop: if he would make a deal with him. Dipper refuses, the events of "Dreamscaperers" fresh in his mind. Bill tells Dipper that his offer would still be open to him before scaring him awake.

Dipper informs Mabel of his encounter with the "triangle guy" and is reassured by Mabel that she would help Dipper that day after passing her puppets to Candy and Grenda. However, this plan falls through when Gabe expected a quality performance by Mabel. Mabel, watching her team suffer from mishaps, decides to continue working on the puppet show, neglecting her promise to Dipper and instead telling him that she would help him after the show. Furious and disappointed, Dipper heads to the attic to crack the code himself.

However, the laptop, having received the incorrect password too many times, prepares to initiate a data wipe in 5 minutes. Dipper flies into a panic. Bill Cipher reappears, giving Dipper an ultimatum: Accept the deal, or have the laptop's secrets erased forever. Dipper continues to reject, so the sly Bill reminds Dipper of all the times he had sacrificed himself to Mabel, with her never returning the favor. Moreover, he tells Dipper that he just needed a simple puppet, of which Dipper had a huge number of from Mabel's preparations. The temptations push Dipper over the edge and he agrees. Bill now turns against Dipper, possessing his body and leaving the latter a ghost. Bill stomps on the laptop, smashing it to pieces. He reveals that Dipper was the puppet he wanted and that Dipper "had come way too close to figuring out some major answers," and that he wanted him out of the way. He proclaims that now all he has to do is destroy Journal 3 and Dipper will be unable to stop his "big plans." As he experiments with the body of Dipper, he attempts to find the journal. Mabel pops in and reveals that she borrowed the journal to use as a prop for her show. Bill, equipped with this knowledge, follows the gang to the show, mocking Dipper and gloats in the fact that he would not be stopped from executing his plan.

Dipper follows them to the show which had received a huge audience. Bill's plans are further aided with Mabel's help as he took the role of the Reverend in the play, allowing him firsthand access to the book. Bill learns from Grenda that the journal is being kept in the prop wedding cake, which is suspended above the stage near the catwalk. Dipper attempts to warn Mabel of the imminent danger, but as a ghost he was invisible to Mabel. He realizes he needs a body to possess to interact with others and thus possesses sock puppet Dipper.

The first half of the play goes successfully and Mabel washes up in the dressing room. She is frightened by the puppet of Dipper, who reveals his true identity and warns Mabel of Bill's plans. Mabel wants to stop Bill, but she risks losing the success of her show and Gabe's affection. This is further shown when Gabe, impressed, invites Mabel to join him for biscotti after the play. She compromises, attempting to retrieve the book as Dipper carries out the second half of the play.

She climbs to the top of the stage and reaches out for the book, but falls into the cake and plummets to the stage below. Someone catches the rope, saving the show from a failure. However, Bill-Dipper (or as Mabel calls him, Bipper,) is revealed as the one who caught the rope, and threatens to ruin her play if the Journal was not handed to him. Mabel relents, giving him the book. Bill gloats, saying, "Who would sacrifice everything they'd worked for just for their dumb sibling?" Mabel now realizes what her sibling had done for her, and the things he had to give up to help her. Indebted to Dipper, she repays the favor, dragging Bill into the cake and interrupting the play. Bill attempts to stop her, boasting about he could never be beat. However, knowing Bill in Dipper's body possessed Dipper's weaknesses, Mabel exploits them, first tickling him and then forcing Bill to chase her. The sleep-deprived body could not keep up with Mabel and collapses, forcing Bill out of Dipper's body and allowing Dipper to reclaim it.

Bill, now in the body of Dipper's puppet, laughs menacingly and warns of bigger plans that would unfold in time. Mabel ultimately ends this boasting by lighting the pyrotechnics, destroying all the puppets she had created and silencing Bill.

Mabel assumes that like most cartoons, the audience would believe it to be part of the play. This did not work for her, as the audience leaves with a crowd of boos and hisses. Gabe, heartbroken at Mabel defacing his art form, makes out with his puppets as he leaves, disgusting Mabel and Dipper.

Dipper now apologizes for his actions, but Mabel ends up apologizing for wasting a week on a horrible guy. They make up and leave.

As the credits roll, Mabel has a dream of an actual play starring her and Dipper as sock puppets with Stan and Old Man McGucket as the audience. Frightened, she turns her puppet away from her upon awakening and returns to sleep.

Credits

 * Written by:
 * Shion Takeuchi
 * Alex Hirsch


 * Directed by:
 * Matt Braly
 * Joe Pitt


 * Storyboards by:
 * Christopher Houghton
 * Sunil Hall
 * Vaughn Tada


 * With the Voice Talents of:
 * Kristen Schaal - Mabel
 * Jason Ritter - Dipper
 * Alex Hirsch - Stan, Soos, and Bill


 * Additional Voices:
 * Linda Cardellini - Wendy
 * John DiMaggio - Manly Dan
 * Carl Faruolo - Grenda
 * McKenna Grace
 * Carter Hastings
 * Alex Hirsch - Old Man McGucket
 * Jorma Taccone - Gabe
 * Niki Yang - Candy


 * Puppeteers:
 * Alex Hirsch
 * Matt Chapman

Character revelations

 * Dipper and Mabel have a twin-based handshake.
 * Dipper once attempted to eat his own shirt due to sleep deprivation.
 * Candy is fluent in Korean.
 * Bill has at least once inhabited a human body before.

Series continuity

 * The Gravity Falls Library is first seen again since "Irrational Treasure."
 * The laptop from "Into the Bunker" reappears.
 * Mermando is first mentioned since "The Deep End."
 * Mabel and Dipper refer to themselves as the "Mystery Twins" for the first time since "Irrational Treasure."
 * Bear-O the puppet is referenced from the short "Tooth."
 * The "No. 2 Mug" from "Boss Mabel" is seen again.
 * The poster of Candy and Grenda previously torn in "Boyz Crazy" reappears taped back together.
 * Bill calls Dipper "pine tree" as he did in "Dreamscaperers."
 * Dipper references Bill's alliance with Gideon Gleeful to infiltrate Stan's mind in "Dreamscaperers."
 * Mabel says Dipper looks "like a vampire, and not the hot kind," referring to the "couple of cute vampires" she claimed she met without Dipper's knowledge in "The Deep End." And her saying she wants a vampire boyfriend in "Tourist Trapped."
 * Dipper mentions ripping his teeth out as something Bill might do to him, referencing Bill ripping teeth out of a deer in "Dreamscaperers." This implies that Mabel told Dipper about what had happened that day.
 * Flashbacks to scenes from "Tourist Trapped," "The Time Traveler's Pig," and "The Deep End" appear when Bill is convincing Dipper to make a deal with him.
 * Agent Powers and Agent Trigger from "Scary-oke" can be seen in the audience of the play, while hiding their faces in playbills.
 * The Electron Carpet and Tumbleweed Terror are in the attic when Bill makes a deal with Dipper.

Trivia

 * Viewership: This episode was viewed by 0.9 million viewers on it's premiere.
 * The "home" screen from the laptop shows a diagram that resembles the universe portal.
 * Stan's puppet and the puppet Soos makes are the only ones that are made from a paper bag rather than a sock.
 * The potential passwords Dipper tried out and failed are:
 * password
 * journal3
 * overlord
 * thrilled
 * crochet (which is seven letters, not eight)
 * patootie
 * spooking
 * craniums
 * reawaken
 * vocalize
 * Starting with this episode, the series falls under the Disney XD Original Series label.
 * The Stan and McGucket puppets that appear at the end of the credits were used by Alex Hirsch at San Diego Comic Con 2013 and 2014.
 * Bill's cane is yellow instead of black as it was in "Dreamscaperers."
 * When Bill offers his hand to Dipper with his eye as a clock, the clock face appears to display the time 6:18, referencing the recurring number 618 in the show.
 * A listening device with the government agency's symbol appears in the space between the upper and lower floors when Dipper phases through to the living room.
 * The puppeteering for the credits sequence was done by creator Alex Hirsch and writer Matt Chapman. Chapman previously did some puppet work for the "Puppet Time" shorts on HomestarRunner.com.
 * Originally, some characters were going to notice something wrong with Dipper while Bill was in his body; however, these scenes had to be cut for time.
 * This is the first episode of the series to feature live-action segments.
 * When Bill makes spinning slots appear on his chest, all of the symbols in the slots appear on the wheel surrounding Bill in the opening sequence.

Cryptograms

 * In 3|Dipper's journal during a musical montage, there is a cryptogram that reads "KFIV VMVITB MLG HPRM ZMW YLMV IRHRMT ORPV GSV HSVKZIW GLMV". Using the atbash cipher it decodes to "Pure energy, not skin and bone, rising like the Shepard tone". (The Shepard tone is an artificial sound wave that sounds like it is continually rising and falling).
 * A piece of paper in the background titled "Codes" has "ZLGGOH", "VKLIWHU", "ZKDWHYV" and "EHDUR" written on it. When decoded using the Caesar Cipher, they read "WIDDLE", "SHIFTER", "WHATEVS" and "BEARO". The first three are the keywords from previous episodes. The last word is the name of Mabel's childhood stuffed bear, as seen in "Tooth" and the keyword for the next episode.


 * During the ending credits of this episode, there is a cryptogram that reads "YM’KL ECN PPK WFOM UBR KQVXNLK, DCI SIK’U VDA JFTOTA AYQ BWL VVCT "EBTGGB BHWKGZH" HVV: TMEASZFA LOS YCDT PRWKTIYEKGL DBV XQDTYRDGVI ." Once decoded using vigenère cipher, it reads "WE’VE ALL HAD SOME FUN TONIGHT, BUT LET’S NOT FORGET WHO THE REAL "PUPPET MASTERS" ARE: REPTOIDS WHO HAVE INFILTRATED OUR GOVERNMENT ."
 * Found in the mirror's reflection after Bill takes over Dipper's body: "CIPHER"
 * The page section revealed at the end of the episode says, "10-9 8-3-8-8-19-4 5-4-6-15-10-17-5 21-23-10 16-9-12-20 11-19 20-9-1-10" on the top left, "5-9 8-23-4-15-19-10-4-12-25 15 1-23-4-21-16 4-16-15-5 4-9-1-10" on the top right, "23-22-10-9-6-11-23-12 5-9-9-10 1-15-12-12 22-19 4-16-19 10-9-6-11" on the bottom left, and "19-10-14-9-25 4-16-19 21-23-12-11 22-19-18-9-6-19 4-16-19 5-4-9-6-11" on the bottom right. After being put through all of the ciphers, it translates to "NO PUPPET STRINGS CAN HOLD ME DOWN," "SO PATIENTLY I WATCH THIS TOWN," "ABNORMAL SOON WILL BE THE NORM," and "ENJOY THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM."