"Rhythm & the Blues" is the first segment of the 8th episode of the first season of Trolls: TrollsTopia, and the 14th overall episode in the series. It premiered on November 19, 2020.
Synopsis[]
When Rhythm & Blues find themselves feeling homesick and missing their friends back in Vibe Town, Poppy and The Snack Pack rally around them in support.
Plot[]
Poppy, Holly Darlin', and Biggie are seen playing Double Dutch. Holly stops them and says Double Dutch is too easy. She wants four ropes as she has four legs after all.
Their activity is interrupted when a pile of marshmallows lands near them. Poppy figures out it is coming from out of Rhythm and Blues' laboratory. They grab the attention of the pair and are taken aboard the ship by a bubble. They find the girls attached to the ceiling and the lab is a complete mess. The girls claim they are alright when asked and explain that they were making a real big marshmallow; they did a slight miscalculation with the formula that they will work out. Rhythm hits a button to activate the Clean Up Bot, but accidentally hits the wrong button, activating the Mess Up Bot instead.
Soon, the bot trashes the lab, making things even worse. Rhythm apologizes and Blues says they need to tell Poppy what is going on. The pair are homesick and miss their friends and family from Vibe City. They love TrollsTopia and say they choose to be here, but while they love where they are they miss where they are from. Holly says the Country Trolls deal with feelings like this by singing and song and crying to get it out. While they appreciate Holly's suggestion, they just need something to keep their minds off of their homesickness.
Poppy thinks she can help and they try a ride from Pop Village, as Poppy tries "fun distractions" as the way to help the girls. The girls celebrate since they didn't feel homesickness the whole time. They soon get it back now that the ride on The Big Squeeze is over. When Poppy panics and asks for suggestions, Holly suggests Adorabull riding. Poppy then takes the idea fireworks. Holly says Flyer Bug racing. Poppy says cloud gazing (Cloud Guy showing off on a fashion runway). Biggie suggests whirlpool surfing. Holly then suggests pinwheels, and then as this falls flop, admits that they may be running out of ideas. As the Funk girls' homesickness returns stronger than ever, the trio helping them panics. Biggie then comes up with an idea and then does a detachable thumb trick. When this fails to even remotely impress the girls, Poppy calls to go back to the drawing board.
At the lab, Poppy tries to bring a piece of home to them and activates a discoballogram. Their friends from home, Big J, Little J and Medium J, appear as holograms. This works until the girls try to hug the three and realize they're not really there; they're still really far away. When Poppy tries to say that they have other homesickness solutions, the three Trolls come up with no further suggestions to help the Funk sisters. To make matters worse, Blues accidently leans on the console to activate their Bubble Beam. This accidentally traps King Peppy just as he's about to eat a cupcake.
Rhythm tries to put the beam in standby, but also loses focus and activates Rapid Mode. Soon, other Trolls and objects are caught in the beam including Cooper, Branch's bunker rock and his drink. Panicking, the Trolls try to stop the beam, but the Funk girls instead open a wormhole to the Lightning Dimension. Holly tells the girls that they have strange buttons and maybe they need labels.
The girls realize that they may have to do Holly's suggestion and just sing about their feelings. When they finish, Poppy comments their song was really beautiful in a calm manner, then in the same tone reminds them that their friends are in danger and about to be eaten by a wormhole. Focused, the Funk sisters manage to get the situation under control by closing the wormhole, popping the bubbles, and making sure everyone lands safely.
With the crisis over, the sisters admit they will always feel homesick, but know that it is okay to feel it. They feel lucky to have two places to call home, and two sets of friends with this.
Biggie ends the episode by doing detachable thumb trick again. This time, the girls admit that it was a pretty great trick.
Cast[]
- Kat Graham as Rhythm & Blues
- Ron Funches as Cooper
- Big J, Little J and Medium J (non-credited speaking roles, Medium J is non-speaking)
Songs[]
- "Homesick"
Trivia[]
- The title is a pun between the girls' names "Rhythm" and "Blues" (which in turn are a reference to the genre of the same name), and "having the blues". The latter term is often used to refer to sadness and/or depression; it's in itself a reference to the nature of the Blues genre, which often touched upon sad, depressing or sorrowful topics in an attempt to tell others of one's woes to appeal to listeners using empathy and or sympathy. It is a reflection of the hardship and life felt by the lower classes.
- This is the first episode to have Rhythm & Blues' name in the title.
- "The Big Squeeze" from the Trolls: The Beat Goes On! episode "Hug Fest" appears in this episode, and it would be later appear again in "Hair-aldine: The Musical".
- Double Dutch is a jump rope activity involving a person jumping between two others, who hold onto one end of two skipping ropes each.
- Until this episode, the fact Rhythm and Blues were sisters had never been mentioned.
- The "Mess Up Bot" resembles 1950s depictions of robots in science fiction, such as Robby the Robot.
- "Cloud gazing" is a outdoor activity involving starring at the clouds in the sky. Those partaking try to guess what each cloud in the sky looks like. It's a game that makes use of the Pareidolia phenomenon.
- Holly, the only Troll who wasn't present in the cloud gazing scene, is one of the Trolls Cloud Guy torments as revealed in the previous episode "Cloud Control", thus making it odd that she would cloud gaze on Cloud Guy despite showing anger towards him. However, she isn't actually shown admiring him, hinting of the aforementioned episode.
- Whirlpool surfing was an activity first mentioned by Synth in "Branch Out of Water", which is a favorite among the Techno Trolls. Poppy, Holly, Rhythm, Blues, and Biggie all use Branch's leaf flippers technique as well as seen in the episode.
- The "detachable thumb trick" is a simple illusion practice that mostly involves creating the illusion of removing a thumb and appearing to hold it in one's other hand. It involves angling the hand correctly and pulling off the right gestures with them, which can require some flexibility. Another version of this is the "removable finger tick", which involves using another finger (normally the index one) instead.
- This episode marks the second time the gag of "gravity does not work until you look down" occurs in the series.
Videos[]
