Mr. President
Original air date: May 13th, 2024
Pim and Charlie are called to help the unpopular President Jimble win the upcoming United States presidential election.
In Memoriam Gag: Our Darling Daughter & Mother of 2, Smelina from Arizona (1986 - 2016)
Mr. President contains examples of...
- Actor Allusion: Charlie's reaction to Jimble's fuck up in trying to be "the Money President"?Charlie: (resigned) Dude, check the news. It doesn't matter what channel.
- All for Nothing: Downplayed. By the end of the episode, the Smiling Friends have failed to re-elect President Jimble. However, The Stinger reveals he is happy having retired from presidency.
- Alliterative Name: WNW is hosted by William and Wendy Worm.
- Alternate History: Pim mentions that Ross Perot was the winner of the 1992 election, and narrowly won re-election in 1996. Charlie also says that the winner of the 1980 election was "Shrimpo Jones" instead of Ronald Reagan.
- Ambiguous Situation: When Squiggly Miggly is taken out of the running, having apparently committed suicide, it's unclear whether it was actually the case, or if the worm conspiracy killed him in an effort to install Mr. Frog and later Jimble as president.
- Animal Jingoism: The worm conspiracy immediately reverses course on its plan to plunge America into chaos through making Mr. Frog President when its members learn he eats bugs and decide not to take any chances as to whether or not worms count as bugs.
- Bait-and-Switch: Before his meeting with Mr. Blingo, Jimble complains he's feeling sick again, and Pim advises him to just get through it quickly. Despite the obvious set up for a Vomit Indiscretion Shot, Jimble actually gets through the whole meeting without issue, shaking Blingo's hand and proclaiming him a national ally. He triumphantly returns to Charlie and Pim... who are horrified because he was actually supposed to condemn Mr. Blingo for being a genocidal dictator.
- Character Death: Squiggly Miggly. Unusually, it happens offscreen. His death reduces the Presidential race to a two-man contest between Jimble and Mr. Frog.
- The Conspiracy: A secret society of worms apparently controls the mass media of the United States, and possibly the world.
- Caps Lock, Num Lock, Missiles Lock: For some reason, Jimble has a button to order a missile strike right next to the one to summon household staff to his office.
- Decided by One Vote: The election eventually comes down to a single vote: Glep's, who chooses Mr. Frog. Apparently, he had a really good reason for his vote, but we don't hear it due to him being The Unintelligible.
- Didn't Think This Through: The worm conspiracy's original plan was to get Mr. Frog elected President. They somehow don't know that he's famous solely for a TV show where he eats bugs, and are horrified to learn that frogs eat worms. As a result, they thrust all their support behind President Jimble instead.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- In addition to the Trumplica elements below, President Jimble also embodies criticisms and critical accusations of Joe Biden: he's a former Vice President who was only coasting on his predecessor's goodwill, he's widely derided as being clueless and inept, he constantly makes verbal gaffes, he's undermined by his health issues, he's under fire for supporting a foreign leader widely condemned by the international community, and the only reason he even comes close to winning is because he's being propped up by people who want to see Mr. Frog lose by any means necessary.
- The general way President Jimble actsnote and talksnote is very similar to Chris-Chan. Chris-Chan was the first choice to voice Grease Puddle in "Who Violently Murdered Simon S. Salty?" but due to budget constraints and concerns over Chris-Chan's inability to keep a secret they were replaced by Harry Partridge doing a Chris-Chan impression.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Charlie is proven correct that there's a shadowy cabal that secretly controls mass media, manipulates election results, and seeks to undermine the United States for their own ends. He just didn't expect that the cabal would be a bunch of earthworms.
- Downer Ending: Mr. Frog wins the election, rendering Pim and Charlie's efforts moot. There's also the matter of the President-Elect being a homicidal lunatic, which bodes poorly for America and most likely the entire world. Also The Boss plans to assassinate him, which, even if he succeeds in preventing the madman from sitting in the Oval Office, would doubtlessly lead to serious repercussions for everyone at Smiling Friends. The only real silver lining is Jimble being happy with his retirement.
- Dramatic Irony: The final scene shows that Pim and Charlie probably would've gotten their job of making Jimble smile done a lot sooner if they'd just convinced him to resign and retire instead of trying to help him get reelected.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: William Worm announces that presidential candidate Squiggly Miggly will not be in the debate because he "blew his head off with a 3D-printed shotgun". He then chastises the audience for making noise and the debate continues on as normal.
- Election Day Episode: The whole premise of the episode is the American election between Lethally Stupid President Jimble and Ax-Crazy Mr. Frog, neither of whom would make a good President.
- Epic Fail: The one time President Jimble makes it through a public appearance acting professional and diplomatic, the world leader he supported as a trusted ally was actually a vicious despot he was meant to condemn.
- Evil Is Petty: It's blatantly obvious that the only reason WNW Network released all of Glep's personal information (including social security number) is because his vote was in Mr. Frog's favor and ensured his victory during presidential elections, something that the WNW Network's worm overlords were trying to prevent.
- Foreshadowing: While discussing the concept of voting to a disgruntled, politics-avoiding Charlie, Pim notes that every single vote matters. By the episode's end, we indeed see that come to fruition, but not in a helpful way...
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Mr. Frog’s economic plan, shown extremely briefly on Charlie’s phone, is titled Industrial Society and Its Future, also the title of the Unabomber’s manifesto.
- Gross-Up Close-Up:
- President Jimble ordering napkins cuts to a close up of his barbecue sauce-covered fingers pressing the red button on his desk, which also gets covered in sauce.
- Mr. Frog's presidential campaign ad features very unflattering close-ups of Jimble's face.
- Inherently Funny Words: President Jimble says he thinks debate, or "de-bate" as he says it, is a funny word. This is the last straw for Charlie, who leaves immediately afterwards.
- He Knows Too Much: When Charlie stumbles upon the lair of the worms, they initially plan on burying him alive and eating him. But when Charlie reveals that Mr. Frog eats bugs, the worms opt to expel him outside the White House through a trap door instead.
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: The media-manipulating secret worm society initially supports Mr. Frog, until Charlie mentions that he eat bugs, something they probably qualify as. This leads to them quickly changing their allegiance to President Jimble. Note that Mr. Frog is famed in-universe for eating bugs.
- Jerkass Has a Point: The worm cabal may have rigged the debate and the media against Mr. Frog, but it's still a fair question to ask why he's so evil.
- Medium Blending: Not only is President Jimble live-action, but so is the stuff on his desk, and him pressing what he thinks is a napkin button cuts to live-action footage of missiles being launched.
- Medium-Shift Gag: President Jimble's "napkins" button actually launches missiles. This is shown with live-action footage of a destroyer launching them.
- Morton's Fork: The presidential race comes down to Jimble, who's already driving America into the ground with his utter stupidity, and Mr. Frog, who is a violent psychopath guaranteed to use his position to cause even more destruction to the country.
- No Party Given: Neither Mr. Frog or President Jimble ever have any political parties associated with their campaigns, with Jimble wearing a yellow tie ala Senator Armstrong for good measure. Jimble briefly describes himself as ‘Left,’ but immediately clarifies that he means that he’s left-handed.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Members of the worm conspiracy all wear cowls and meet in a dark, torch-lit room in the White House basement where they plot to manipulate the election.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Charlie bails on the job to help President Jimble win, Pim doesn't even put up a fight.
- Politicians Kiss Babies: During part of Mr. Frog's campaign ad, a mother gave him her baby with that in mind, before she quickly became horrified when he starts to open his mouth and attempt to eat the baby, before it abruptly cuts to a different scene.
- Produce Pelting: At the Pennsylvania rally, President Jimble gets pelted with tomatoes when he craps himself on stage.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Jimble's incompetence becomes too much for Charlie, who abandons the job. It's bad enough that even Pim doesn't blame him.
- Shout-Out: At one point, Mr. Frog's campaign ad shows him throwing a pumpkin bomb at a group of civilians, which then instantly reduces them to skeletons like the first Raimi movie.
- The Stinger: Shows former President Jimble contentedly relaxing on the beach, like Charlie suggested earlier in the episode, meaning that despite losing the election the Smiling Friends still succeeded in making him smile.
- Take That!: Charlie's whole argument that it's pointless to vote because the system is rigged anyway is proven dead wrong at the end of the episode when Mr. Frog wins by Glep's single vote, in spite of the entire conspiracy to get Jimble elected. This is likely a call out to people who don't vote in real life elections for the same reasons, only to watch their preferred candidate lose and subsequently complain about it despite not voting for them themselves.
- Tempting Fate: The moment Charlie says he doesn't want to get involved in politics, Mr. Boss comes in to tell the gang that they got a call to make President Jimble smile. Charlie then screams in frustration upon realizing he walked right into that one.
- Trumplica: All three Presidential candidates parody different aspects of Donald Trump:
- Squiggly Miggly is shown making a bunch of wild hand gesticulations that resemble Trump's during a speech. He could also resemble the more moderate Republicans Trump replaced as the face of the party, a former contender being rendered basically irrelevant by his arrival and ultimately giving up entirely on supplanting him.
- President Jimble is a Fat Slob who wears ill-fitting suits, is utterly incompetent at running the country, and endorses a widely-condemned foreign dictator. He also promises everyone in the country free money leading up to the election (a reference to Trump's COVID-19 stimulus checks in 2020), which causes economic chaos. The emergency Presidential alert he uses to announce the aforementioned free money is also identical to the one Trump tested in 2018. In other aspects, though, he's inspired by Joe Biden and Chris-Chan (see above).
- Mr. Frog is a TV celebrity and political outsider-turned-dark horse candidate who's popular despite a long history of both saying and doing terrible things, as well as directly insulting his voter base. He's described as dangerous to the country if he wins, and there's a conspiracy to get him elected because they want him to cause chaos and destabilize the US.
- Victorious Loser: President Jimble may have lost the election, but he was utterly not cut out for politics and is much happier in retirement.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: This episode reveals the Smiling Friends live somewhere in Pennsylvania.
