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"The Inconveniencing" is the fifth episode of the first season of Gravity Falls. It premiered on July 13th, 2012 on Disney Channel.
Official overview[]
When Dipper tries to impress Wendy by acting older than he really is, he's invited to join a group of teenagers on an outing that leads to an old abandoned convenience store that may be haunted. Mabel tags along for the ride, but she gets sidetracked when she sees a discontinued line of flavored candies that sends her on an individual, unexpected adventure.[3]
Synopsis[]
Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Soos are hanging out at the Mystery Shack, when Stan enters and calls Soos and Wendy. Stan tells them he is going out and tells them to clean the bathrooms. Soos says that he will while Wendy refuses. After Stan leaves, Wendy leads Dipper and Mabel up to the roof, where Wendy reveals she has put up a place to relax during work. Wendy then throws a pine cone at a target on a totem pole and gets a bulls-eye. Dipper and Mabel try. They do not have the arm Wendy has, and consequently fall short. Dipper hits a van, setting off a car alarm, and Wendy holds up her hand to give him a high five (on the grounds that hitting the car was a "jackpot"). Dipper hesitates, seeing Wendy with her hair in the wind, realizing her beauty, before coming to his senses and returning the high five. Her friends then come by, and Wendy asks them to not tell Stan about her spot, to which Dipper and Mabel agree, Dipper pantomiming zipping his lips shut. She does the same and then slides down some trees to leave with her pals.
Dipper yells a goodbye to Wendy and nervously laughs, and this leads Mabel to realize Dipper has a big crush on Wendy. However, Dipper denies this and tells her that "it's not like [he] lays awake at night thinking about her," and it cuts to a scene during the night where Dipper is actually lying awake thinking about Wendy.
Later, Mabel and Wendy have a "random dance party for no reason," while Dipper watches awkwardly. Wendy asks Dipper to come and dance, and Dipper says that he doesn't really dance, but Mabel begins talking about a time when the twins' mom used to dress him up in a lamb costume and make him do the "Lamby Lamby Dance." Dipper gets embarrassed, but Wendy interrupts and says that she has to go hang out with her friends when she sees her shift is done. To seem old enough to come, Dipper lies about his and Mabel's age, saying they're 13, technically teenagers, even though Dipper and Mabel are only 12 years old. Mabel becomes confused, and Dipper tells her that they get to hang out with the cool kids and "Wendy." Mabel realizes Dipper's feelings for Wendy, and Dipper distracts her by flipping her hair over her head.
Outside, some of Wendy's friends goof off while waiting for Wendy. When Wendy comes, she introduces Dipper and Mabel, then introduces her friends to the twins (Robbie, Thompson, Tambry, Lee, and Nate). Robbie reveals that he was the one who spray painted the water tower. Dipper states that he recognized it, calling it a "big muffin" when Robbie intended it to be a giant explosion. Lee and Nate agree that the spray paint looks like a muffin and this insults Robbie, who then turns to glare at Dipper. (Dipper's rivalry with Robbie begins here.) Back at the Mystery Shack, Stan is watching television when he realizes that he is watching the Black and White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie Channel. Too lazy to get up and look for the remote, or get up, period, he calls for Dipper and Mabel, who had just departed with Wendy and her friends. An old-time movie called The Duchess Approves begins, and Stan calls again for Dipper and Mabel, in vain.
Meanwhile, the group is in Thompson's car, a gratified blue minivan, going off to somewhere. Mabel and Dipper are in the back seat, and Mabel notices a note someone else wrote, which says "You stink!" Mabel then crosses it out and writes "You look nice today!" using a red marker borrowed from Dipper, saying it will blow someone's mind.
They then arrive at the Dusk 2 Dawn, an old and shut down convenience store. Dipper is quizzical as to why it was shut down, to which Nate replies it was murder. Lee tells him that a couple died in there and that it has been haunted ever since. Everyone jumps over the fence with the exception of Dipper, who is having trouble climbing over the top. (Lee climbs back up and pushes him over in the end.) Robbie tries to open the door to the convenience store to no avail, as the store is locked. Dipper asks if he can take a crack at it, to which Robbie is skeptical, saying that if he could not, Dipper definitely could not either. Wendy tells Robbie to not be so hard on Dipper, saying he was just a little kid. Dipper is hurt by this, and begins crawling up a garbage crate to the top of the roof of the Dusk 2 Dawn. He crawls into an air vent on top and disappears. Robbie then says, "Who wants to bet he doesn't make it?" Dipper emerges from the front door and lets the group in. Nate gives him a new name "Dr. Fun Times." While they chat in the store, a sign hanging on the front door that states "Yes, We're Open," is flipped to the reverse side, as if by an invisible hand, to the back, which states, "Get Lost, We're Closed."
Wendy flips some switches, turning on lights, a vending machine and a TV. Dipper asks what they should do next and Wendy replies "Anything we want!". Everyone has some fun together when Mabel soon finds Smile Dip (which was banned in America). She excitedly dumps the entire pack in her mouth, which later leads to hallucinations. Later, Wendy and Dipper have popsicles, while she explains to him how "legendary" the night is for them due to everybody bonding and comments on how Dipper's surprisingly mature for his age. The guys ask for someone to get more ice to put in Thompson's pants, so Dipper runs to the cooler to get more ice. When he opens the door to the cooler, he sees a disembodied floating brain with eyeballs and a mouth hiding in it. Freaked out, he shuts the door quickly. He opens it again and the monster mysteriously disappears. Everyone (except Mabel) comes to him and Lee says he heard a lady screaming over there. Lee asks if he was freaking out and Dipper manages to draw their attention to the Dancy Pants Revolution game.
Thompson plays the game and Wendy states that he's terrible at it. Still freaked out, Dipper sees everyone's skeletons through their reflection in the door. Dipper wipes his eyes and sees that they are all normal. Dipper calls Stan, though he doesn't pick up because he is still watching the movie (and is seen to be enjoying it). Dipper then attempts to ask Mabel, but she continues to have even crazier hallucinations, too delirious to even hear her brother, let alone give him advice. When Dipper manages to somewhat rouse her and asks how many bags of Smile Dip she ate, she replies she had "bleven-teen." Later, the gang finds a crime scene of the dead bodies, two white silhouettes. Nate is about to lie down in one of the silhouettes, but before he can even step on it, Dipper stops him. The others say he's acting like a buzz kill. Tambry calls him a nine-year-old and Dipper gets angry and lays down on one of the dead bodies' silhouettes shouting he is thirteen, technically a teen. This apparently causes the chalk lines to highlight themselves and every electronic device to shut down.
Tambry's body then disassembles and disappears, and reassembles inside the security monitor, and screams, which freaks everyone out. Robbie then yells at everyone to make a run for it. Thompson tells them to wait up, because he almost has the high score on Dancy Pants Revolution. He then disassembles and then reassembles into Dancy Pants, which begins pounding onto and sticking the game arrows onto Thompson. Robbie says to forget him and get out of there. The doors then close and lock themselves. Dipper says that whatever is doing this has to have a reason. Lee speaks about this idea in sarcasm, and then starts floating, then gets disassembled. He reassembles on a cereal box cover, and the bird on the box says, "I'm bonkers for eating you alive!" Mabel floats up from behind a counter and speaks in a deep voice, welcoming the remainders of the group to their graves. Dipper realizes the Ghosts are possessing her.
He asks the ghosts if they can leave. The ghost says they can leave, but they gotta try some of the hot dogs because he says they are delicious. Nate and Robbie look at each other and scream and make a run for it. The ghost then says he is kidding about the dogs. Nate yells at him to let them go. The ghost doesn't like his tone and disassembles Nate and reassembles him into a hot dog. He then makes everything in the room float to the ceiling. Dipper and Wendy duck and hide in a cabinet and wonder what the ghosts are haunting them for. When Dipper remembers what Tambry, Thompson and Lee had done to be taken but can't figure out why, Wendy says all they were doing are normal teenage things. Dipper realizes something about that and goes out of the cabinet and yells at the ghost that he is not a teenager, admitting that he's 12.
The ghosts then reveal themselves to be a kind old dead couple: Ma and Pa. They tell Dipper that when they were alive, teenagers were an annoyance to their store, with their boom boxes and "disrespectful" short pants. So they banned teenagers from the store. But the teenagers got revenge with the latest music genre, rap. The lyrics and music were so hurtful and crazy, it struck the couple down with double heart attacks, which is why they hate teenagers. Dipper asks if there is anything he can do to free his friends, and Pa asks if Dipper knows any funny dances. Dipper says he knows one dance, the Lamby Lamby Dance, but trying to avoid doing it, says he can't do the dance without a lamb costume. Pa snaps his fingers and a lamb costume appears on him. Dipper reluctantly performs the silly dance. Pleased by the dance, Pa then frees him and his friends.
After everything that was floating in the store falls down, the gang asks what happened, and Wendy is about to tell them about Dipper's embarrassing dance, but instead tells them a lie about Dipper beating up the ghosts with a baseball bat to save Dipper's reputation. From there, they exchange zipping their lips. Outside at the van, Wendy tells Dipper she is probably scarred for life, and that she is gonna stare at a wall for a few hours and rethink everything. She says the next time they hang out they should stay at the Mystery Shack, which Dipper completely agrees with. They drive away and the lights at the Dusk 2 Dawn go out. In the van, a very sick Mabel stares at the 'You look nice today!' and says, "What kind of sick joke is this?" During the end credits, it shows Stan watching TV again. He gets angry at the classic film and throws the TV out a window. Stan then sees the twins staring at him and he blames it on the remote being missing.
Credits[]
- Written by:
- Directed by:
- Storyboards by:
- With the Voice Talents of:
- Kristen Schaal as Mabel
- Jason Ritter as Dipper
- Alex Hirsch as Grunkle Stan and Soos
- Linda Cardellini as Wendy
- Jessica DiCicco as Tambry
- Ken Jenkins as Pa
- T.J. Miller as Robbie
- Michael Rianda as Lee and Thompson
- April Winchell as Ma
- Additional Voices:
- Jessica DiCicco as Duchess' mother
- Alex Hirsch as Saunterblugget Hampterfuppinshire
- Scott Menville as Nate & Flavor pups
- T.J. Miller as TV announcer, 90s teens, & Cereal Box Toucan
- Kevin Michael Richardson as Possessed Mabel
- April Winchell as Duchess
- Mikey Kelley as Dancy Pants Revolution announcer
- Casting by:
Production notes[]
- See also: List of allusions and List of goofs.
Series continuity[]
- Wendy uses the zip-lips-and-throw-away-the-key gesture, indicating her sharing a secret with Dipper, which becomes a plot device in "Into the Bunker."
Songs featured[]
Revelations & significant events[]
- Wendy learns from Dipper that he and Mabel are 12 years old.
- Wendy learns that Dipper once did the Lamby Lamby Dance when he was younger and sees him do it for the first time.
- Mabel thinks that Dipper has a crush on Wendy, which foreshadows the events of "Into the Bunker".
- Dipper is revealed to lie awake at night thinking about Wendy.
- Mabel's eye color is revealed to be light green.
- Stan is revealed to be lazy every time the Mystery Shack is closed. He also hates the movie The Duchess Approves, but then he starts to like it because his life is so miserable.
- Dipper and Mabel learn that Wendy hangs out with her friends after her shift.
- Wendy introduces Dipper and Mabel to her friends named Robbie who spray painted the water tower with a muffin, Nate and Lee who are always sarcastic, Thompson who is always embarrassed about everything, and Tambry who always looks up on her phone.
- Dusk 2 Dawn was shut down/abandoned because the old couple died due to a heart attack caused by teenagers.
Trivia[]
- Viewership: This episode was watched by 3.552 million viewers on its premiere night.[2]
- This marks the debut of Wendy's friends Nate, Lee, Thompson, Tambry, and Robbie.
- On the back of the cereal box in which Lee is trapped, a maze with the headline "Can you escape?" and an exit spot labeled "Freedom" can be seen. It is impossible to reach "Freedom" from the starting point.
- However, it's possible, and fairly easy, to get to an unlabeled exit from "start."
- Mabel's hallucination dolphin, Aoshima, is named after Gravity Falls director John Aoshima.
- Aoshima the dolphin is also a reference to one of the 3 shows that Alex Hirsch pitched to Disney originally. Alongside Gravity Falls, he pitched a show about time travelling Dolphins and Time Travelling gentlemen.
- One of the Flavor Pups seen in Mabel's hallucination can be heard saying "Must distrust Grunkle" in reverse.
- Mabel breaks the fourth wall asking if it's a leap year. The series takes place in 2012, the year it premiered.
- The "You stink!" in the car was originally going to be "You suck!" but couldn't make it past Disney's Broadcast Standards.[4]
- Jason Ritter and April Winchell (the voices of Dipper, Duchess, and Ma) both had fathers who voiced Disney animated characters: Jason is the son of John Ritter, who voiced Great Uncle Stew in Stanley's Great Dinosaur Round-Up (his last role); and April is the daughter of Paul Winchell, the original voice of Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh franchise.
- At twenty and a half minutes, this episode marks the shortest episode of the entire series.
- Soos appears for at least 15-30 seconds, making it his smallest appearance in the whole show. This is also the first episode in which Stan plays a minor role, therefore only appearing in the prologue, two acts and the end credits.
- The original title of this episode was "Wendy".[5]
- In the first Gravity Falls book Happy Summerween! / The Convenience Store...of Horrors! (which retells the main story), Ma and Pa Duskerton's flashback scene is in color, revealing the colors of Jeffy Fresh and Byrone.
- While in the episode it appears that Ma and Pa Duskerton were killed instantly by the teens playing rap music, in "A Tale of Two Stans", they can visibly be seen listening to that same song outside the store, while they are inside and completely fine. This would mean that their story about their deaths is likely untrue.
Cryptogram[]
- During the end credits of this episode, there is a cryptogram that reads "RQZDUGV DRVKLPD!" Once decoded, it reads "ONWARDS AOSHIMA!" referring to what Mabel said while hallucinating.
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References[]
- ↑ Storyboard
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Disney Channel press release. The Fulton Critic (July 16, 2012). Retrieved on November 13, 2020.
- ↑ Anders, Charlie Jane (July 9, 2012). This Week's TV: The Best New Cartoon You're Not Watching!. Retrieved on April 17, 2015.
- ↑ I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything.. Reddit (September 18, 2012).
- ↑ Rianda, Michael (April 7, 2021). Tweet Number 1379792268887003136.