Plot: During a big talent show, Linus Santiago, an aspiring magician, makes a boy’s robot dog disappear. His attempts to make it reappear fail, leaving Santiago under suspicion of being a thief. It doesn’t help that Santiago is a recently reformed ‘criminal’ casting even more doubt on his innocence. To make matters worse, Santiago refuses to explain how he did the trick, vowing to uphold the magician’s code. Without explaining how he did the trick, Folsom doesn’t believe a word out of his mouth.
However, Fillmore and Ingrid don’t quite believe Santiago is guilty. They think he’s being set up. But figuring out the who and why is much more complicated than they anticipated.
Breakdown: This is one of those cases where the overall ride was really engaging and enjoyable, but it was marred by a very unsatisfying ending.
We’ve already had a couple cases where it seems like someone with a rap sheet is being framed when they’ve gone straight, but Santiago is probably the nicest and least conspicuous one.
It’s honestly hard to believe that he used to be a troublemaker. He doesn’t raise his voice or get even a little upset. He’s respectful and sweet the entire episode. While it does make you really want to root for him to be cleared of all charges, it does make it a bit hard to swallow that no one but Fillmore and Ingrid (And his assistant, Rita) believe he’s innocent.
But that’s easily forgiven. If someone really has turned over a new leaf, it might make sense for them to work on their overall disposition to ensure they stay out of trouble.
The pool of suspects is kinda big in this episode, and they do a good job of steering your attention in various ways. Was Santiago the real target or was it the dog? Or was it the $200 in prize money for winning the talent show? Or did Santiago actually do it and is just playing innocent?
Like I said, all that intrigue kinda falls flat once you find out who did it and why.
I feel like spoiling this one, so here’s your warning.
The culprit was Kip, a ventriloquist who won the talent show when Santiago lost due to the dog incident. You’d initially think his motive was the prize money or the attention, but no. He dislikes all the attention he’s supposedly getting from the press, and he doesn’t mention any particular reason for wanting the cash.
Kip is shown to be a lonely kid. He’s even a member of a Loners’ Support Group in the school, which, comically and sadly, has only one member besides him. (The other member I thought would be a stealth suspect, but no. He doesn’t get any lines, we never learn who he is, and he just sits in the background the entire scene.)
This is immediately contradicted when his friend, Dewey, arrives in the Loners’ Support Group room to call Kip because his mom’s there to drive them home. Dewey, who is also the boy who lost his robot dog, is Kip’s long time friend and neighbor. They carpool every day.
His connection with Dewey and the fact that he won the talent show over Santiago is enough to make him a strong suspect, but there’s just not a lot to work with in regards to motive if he’s annoyed by the attention and doesn’t seem to covet the $200 too much.
So, if he’s the culprit, why did he do it? And how?
Well, Kip explains that his only friend is a wooden puppet. However, his dog recently gave birth to a litter of puppies, so they’ve been his friends now. Why his dog wasn’t his friend before, I guess, I don’t know.
Dewey only got a robot dog because he wanted a real puppy. But he’s, as Kip describes him, a disaster with everything. His mother didn’t trust him to get a puppy so she told him to take care of this robot to prove he was responsible enough to take care of a real dog. Terrible idea. Two completely different things. You’d be better off telling the kid to take care of a tomogatchi for a certain time to prove they’re responsible with a living being.
But anyway…
Kip made this plan to steal Dewey’s robot dog so his mother wouldn’t allow him to adopt one of his puppies.
Yup, that’s the motive.
Even during that brief moment where I felt some empathy for him, especially since I’m a big animal and dog lover, the show itself crumbles his motive. Dewey brings up that he’s his friend, so he didn’t understand why he was acting as if he was completely alone. This is further supported, by the way, by the fact that in the only other two scenes these characters are in, they’re hanging out at each other’s houses.
He also didn’t understand why Kip didn’t even bother just saying he wanted to keep the puppy. It’s not as if Dewey would insist he get the puppy. He’d be perfectly happy to find another dog somewhere else.
Once Dewey expresses his disappointment in Kip, Kip asks for forgiveness and even willingly offers one of the puppies to Dewey and they mend bridges. Kip announces in a press conference that he took the robot dog (which was named Barcode. This was obviously meant to be a pun, but it fails if they don’t spell it “Barkode”….) relinquishes the comically large $200 check to Santiago, even if it still has Kip’s name on it, and clears Santiago’s name.
As for the how he took the robot dog, he explains that he figured out how Santiago did his trick. By just watching him do it backstage, I guess. I should note that Fillmore, who is the equivalent to a detective in this universe, has been trying the entire episode to figure out how Santiago did his tricks and couldn’t get a single one. And Santiago is very protective of his magician secrets to the point where he’s willing to get expelled from school. But this ventriloquist could figure it out just by watching him do it.
Oh, and he decided to go through with this overly elaborate plan to take Barcode instead of just….taking Barcode because Dewey supposedly never let Barcode out of his sight. So he’s paranoid about something happening to this dog so much that he never lets it out of his sight, but he’ll also willingly let it be thrown into the air to be used in a disappearing act?
Also, Kip just kept Barcode in a box in his closet in his house instead of just throwing the dog away or something. Let me remind you that Dewey regularly visits Kip’s house.
So, yeah, while the overall ride was pretty fun, the conclusion was just blah and didn’t make a lot of sense.
Also, the opening scene, while being funny, was a bit out of place. It just seemed like a clunky setup to get them to the talent show when the episode could have just started out in the talent show instead of having all that stuff about popcorn.
I did appreciate how sweet Rita and Santiago were together, though. You don’t often see overtly romantic relationships on this show, and these two are as close as they’ve ever gotten.
Next episode….
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