Email and Industrial Tube Life Lessons Abound in This Week's "StuGo" on Disney Channel
This episode of StuGo is full of lessons we should all take home with us - including lessons about email scams and industrial tubes.
Phishin’ Chip
On the cargo ship the kids call home, Chip has managed to bring a key utility aboard - the internet. Sure, it sounds an awful lot like dial-up, but he is able to access his email and discovers a lone message, filled with spelling errors that says that he has won a gift card.
While the other kids clearly all see that this is a scam, they suggest that he remember to hover over the link and see if the URL looks scammy. They even have a rhyme - “Hover and think before clicking that link" which is actually quite sound advice and should be adopted by every viewer.
Regardless, the promise of a free gift card is too enticing and Chip haphazardly clicks the link. Immediately, Dr. Lullah arrives with a cannon and explodes the computer. She wonders what nincompoop opened the email, wonders who put the island at risk by falling for this phishing scam. Obviously, it was Chip.
She recruits the rest of the kids to help fortify the island, and protect it from any incoming threat, but Chip is not allowed to join.
Left behind, Chip is approached by an off-putting secret agent who comes from KORM. That email he opened gave them the location they needed to find the island and investigate Lullah and her doomsday devices. She recruits Chip to help her before Lullah destroys the world, and enticed to prove that he is not a nincompoop after all, he agrees.
He must now get through a series of obstacles guarded by robots and his peers, but don’t worry. He did get a gift card after all.
First off, he must sneak into a warehouse and grab some supplies. This warehouse is guarded by Pliny, who immediately takes his gift card from him in exchange for keeping him undercover and getting him a brand new tux. Now, Chip must get to his next location and fortunately gets a little help from Rianne - whom we haven’t seen in a while. A motorcycle chase with Merian ensues as this not-quite-a-James-Bond adventure continues. Rianne helps him escape, and he heads into Club Lullah where he discovers Larry playing piano for a bunch of mutants and Francis at a bar nearby. She has assumed the role of the Informistress, and is holding a dossier full of information about the doomsday devices that KORM needs.
He obviously gets caught and a fight breaks out, allowing him to escape and head up to infiltrate Lullah’s lab. There, he discovers that the lab has a Dojang and is immediately distracted, but inside, Sara is there and ready to fight Chip and defend the lab. Thanks to some sweeping leg kicks, he gets a way but discovers Lullah might also have a cloning machine (or is it the secret twin?).
The agent then tells Chip that to end all this, he must log into a computer and shut down the device. As he logs in, he is met with an email and remembers the rhyme from earlier - Hover and think before you click that link - and puts his cursor over it, revealing the site as “nincom.poopsays.w.hat."
Yes, the whole thing was a set up, organized by Dr. Lullah and the Agent, who turns out to be Mr. Okay. Despite a clearly made up acronym at the beginning of the episode, I just processed that KORM is Mr. OK backwards. That’s why I don’t write this stuff I guess.
Anyway, Lullah rewards Chip and says he’s apparently not a nincompoop after all, despite failing the test this morning. As such, he now gets to receive a victory prize– he just has to enter his Social Security Number into this tablet and….yeah he failed again. Immediately.
Shell Shock
Mr. Okay has put together a presentation, and despite how glamorous or like a fun experience it could be, he is trying his best to get the kids into Dr. Lullah’s Torso Accelerator. He is just trying to pass it off as a fun, industrial looking, playground slide.
Too bad for him, the kids see right through it - except of course, for Larry. Sure he knows it’s true purpose, and even though it goes against Arfthur’s (the safety mascot) third safety rule - “Industrial Equipment That Looks Like A Slide Is A Really Quick Way For Children to Die - he jumps in willingly. Okay, this episode is full of great lessons. Big fan.
Back to the Super-Fun-Wow-Slide, as Mr. Okay has peddled it, Larry is careening through, going through loops, corkscrews, instant sunburn portions, before Merian realizes there’s a part of the tube that isn’t finished yet. Lullah quickly shoots it down, pointing out it's her Torso Accelerator, not Merian’s.
Larry, too late, is having doubts and is ready for this experience to be over. He hits the jump, and takes off into the depths of an underground cavern. All seems lost as he is approaching a pointy stalactite at incredible speed, even as Death/the Grim Reaper shows up for a brief moment anxiously waiting.
He is airborne and passes just under the stalactite, with the point scratching his forehead, narrowly avoiding death but still coming out of the slide absolutely shaken and traumatized.
All of this to set up the episode that now sees Larry living in fear, afraid of everything that could do any kind of harm to him. Shortly after, Larry becomes enamored with a hermit crab and its shell, capable of protecting the crab from anything that can happen to it and decides to adopt this lifestyle, crabshell and all.
Now, he shows off this lifestyle to all his friends and it is quickly adopted by Merian, who knows all of Arfthur the safety hound’s safety rules.
As they are heading to the beach to find a shell for Merian, they are met by two mutant crabs. One named Crabecca (who isn’t around very long thanks to nearby birds), and the other named Scrumptious, who has recently fallen into a vat of butter and possibly spices.
Scrumptious tells a legend that passes through the crabs of a giant shell called the Shell of Zanzibub, a shell so large and protective that they would be safe no matter what. The group all head up the mountain to find the shell, which is full of rather comedic dangers - though Scrumptious meets a tragic and humorous end when a number of bee mutants leave her getting “jacked up."
Quicker than it seems, Larry and Merian make it into the cave where Zanzibub is located, but as other mutants are going in with only their shelves popping out, Larry releases that the giant shell houses an enormous eel that is eating everything. Worse yet, Merian has jumped the line and is running right for it as she realized the truth far too late.
Larry, cowering in his shell as Merian is running out of time, has a vision of Arfthur, who tells him no matter how safe you are, everyone will get “jacked up" at some point.
Inspired, Larry leaves his shell and saves Merian, taunting the eel in his direction and eventually leading it to the Torso Accelerator. Larry knows what to expect this time and moves out of the way of the Stalactite, allowing the giant eel that followed him in to slam right into it, defeating it.
Now, unafraid of the accelerator, Larry and Merian are operating it as a ride for the mutants, and it seems that Larry has made friends with the Grim Reaper, who has now taken up skateboarding and is showing off his sweet tricks after he let Scrumptious come back to life.
This episode of StuGo is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW app. Episodes of the show are set to arrive on Disney+ later this spring.