I Scream, You Scream

"I Scream, You Scream" is Episode 19 in Season 2. It originally aired on February 8, 1996.

Plot
In the Puzzle Place's kitchen, Leon, Kiki, and Skye are planning on making "puzzle pancakes", but they can't get Jody involved, seeing that she is unhappy. She won't talk about it...until Leon tells her of a story about talking about troubles.

In the story, a pink ostrich plays a trombone that she keeps in a tattered old case. Her playing pleases every animal, especially her best friend, a green grasshopper. One day, she goes to the dentist's office for a checkup. While she is away, the grasshopper enters her house and takes away the trombone (and case) without asking. She later goes back and returns it to the ostrich. The ostrich pretends to approve of the grasshopper having borrowed it, but is clearly angry that permission was not asked. However, she does not talk about it. She gets angrier and angrier. The grasshopper asks if anything is wrong, but she denies it saying everything is fine, which it's not. The longer she keeps it to herself, the angrier she gets. As she is hiding her head in the sand, the grasshopper tries to check with her again. When she can't keep her feelings to herself, she takes out her anger and says she is too mad to ever want to talk to the grasshopper. She runs off, but then the grasshopper, although going to wait until the ostrich's birthday, explains why she borrowed the trombone, which was to get her a new case, but to make sure she got one that fit it right, and why she didn't even ask which was because she wanted it to be a surprise. The ostrich loves her present and apologizes for keeping her anger to herself, and promises that the next time something bothers her, she will talk about it.

Back to reality, Jody explains in summary that she didn't get her usual ice cream sundae after her last game of teeball. Leon and Kiki sympathize, but Skye thinks it's crazy. Kiki tells him that it was probably important to Jody. The latter explains that what may not be so important to one person may be a big deal to another. She asks some real-life kids about it. They explain what is important to them. Skye then apologizes to Jody.

Jody explains that she lives only with her father because her parents are divorced. But that is not why she is feeling bad. She always has fun with him. Every (teeball) morning, they have cereal with bananas for breakfast, and then she plays teeball with her team. Afterward, they always go to the ice cream parlor, and Jody has a strawberry sundae with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry on top. They discuss teeball while waiting. When they finally get their ice cream, her father asks her if she can eat all of her sundae. She says she can try.

But this is what happened the last time: her father's new girlfriend, Debbie, came to watch the game. Jody played a good game, and Debbie suggested to Mr. Silver that they go to her favorite place to celebrate, much to Jody's attempted protest, but she ended up not saying a word about it. The aforementioned place was a French restaurant. The waiter mentioned food called zabione. When Jody asked her father who it was, the waiter revealed that "who" was not the question word, it was "what". He said it was like a custard, but upon Jody's asking, it didn't come with ice cream. She asked if they had anything like an ice cream sundae. Debbie apologized, having thought there'd be some, but said that some petit fours she had tried were pretty good, so she talked Jody into ordering that. Mr. Silver and Debbie, on the other hand, got cream puffs. Jody remained quiet, and that's because she was angry with them. She hadn't done a thing.

In a subplot, Nuzzle moves Sizzle's things in the basement, making her think that he intends to get rid of her.

Back to Jody's story, she mentions the problem wasn't just because she got petit fours instead of an ice cream sundae, but that she thinks her father loves Debbie more than her. The others tell her to talk to him about it. She fears that she will hurt his feelings, but Leon disagrees. They ask real-life kids with divorced parents about their problems. That doesn't work so well. They ask them what to do in a situation like that. They tell Jody to talk about it. She decides to talk about it, but not before singing to her obviously-absent father, only as practice...with some empathy from Sizzle, who feels unloved herself.

When Jody gets home, she explains to her father why she wasn't happy. He assures her that he loves her, but says it doesn't mean she gets everything she wants. In fact, sometimes Debbie's way will go and sometimes Jody's (such as the next time), and sometimes even his own. She then feels better.

Back to the basement, Sizzle tries leaving because she saw Nuzzle moving her things, but when she reveals why she was mad about it, he explained he was not trying to get rid of her. Rather, he was moving them to make room for her squeaky mouse toy. She is suddenly relieved.

When Jody returns to the Puzzle Place, she reveals that sometime, she, her father, and Debbie will go bowling. Now that her problem is over, they go to make their puzzle pancakes.

Note

 * Julie and Ben do not appear in this episode.
 * Even Debbie never reveals Mr. Silver's first name.