Vegetables

EPISODE REVIEW

	Vegetables Release date: 8/19/2003 "The vegetables were sooo cute that I couldn't eat them. So I taught them a song!" Charlotte isn't happy with the school's lunch menu and thinks they should be serving healthier food.
Plot Summary It's lunchtime at Mu Elementary, and the kids are being served the daily meal: beef jerky, clams, and grape punch. Charlotte notices that this is the exact same food they had yesterday - as well as the day before that, and so on. She asks lunch lady Mrs. Millet about it, who nervously instructs her to check the menu on the wall. Upon looking at the menu, Charlotte sees that this meal is in fact served every single day. Malachi explains to her that it's because those are Vendetta's favorite foods (in his old-timey way of speaking, of course) Charlotte opposes this, and suggests the school serve healthier foods like vegetables. She even begins to sing a song about vegetables, which is cut short by Vendetta throwing a juice box at her. However, Charlotte's request gives Vendetta an idea. The green girl says she agrees and will add vegetables to the menu. Or at least she claims she will. We then get a cool night-time scene of Vendetta and Grudge at their house during a thunderstorm. They're in the process of creating something - something horrible. Grudge pulls a lever, zapping electricity into a carrot on a table. The last thing we see is Vendetta picking up the carrot and laughing evilly. The next day, Vendetta and Grudge arrive at the cafeteria with what looks like a normal plate of vegetables and offer them to Charlotte. Charlotte picks up one of the carrots...which immediately opens its mouth and starts screaming. The other vegetable fiends follow suit, and soon enough the whole cafeteria is taken over by screeching carrots, eggplants, lettuce, potatoes, and more. The students are terrified and run around all over the place, trying to escape from the chaos. Amused, Vendetta orders Grudge to steal Marvin's lunch and the two go outside to have a picnic. After being outside for a while, Vendetta notices that all the screaming has stopped. They both step back into the cafeteria, where they see Charlotte standing next to the vegetables. Charlotte explains that the vegetables were too cute to eat, so she decided to make them sing instead. Right on cue, the vegetables sing Charlotte's vegetable song, this time in full. The episode ends with Vendetta screaming at the top of her lungs in horror.
Fiendish Findings This episode was one of several that got remade for the TV series. Like the others that got that treatment, many new scenes were added to pad out the runtime and expand on the story. One thing they had to change for TV was the line "and your eyeballs will fall out", in which they replaced the word "eyeballs" with "eyebrows". I guess they found the original lyric too gruesome... If I'm correct (and I'm pretty sure I am), this is one of the only two (three if you count "Thanksgiving") web episodes Mrs. Millet appears in. She doesn't show up again until episode 20. Speaking of Mrs. Millet, we see that she has a red toad fiend that keeps watch over her, similar to Mr. Milk's red bird fiend. Because of this, we can infer that Vendetta probably made surveillance fiends for other teachers as well. (Or at least that's my theory) The alternate version of this episode shown on the DVD does not have commentary - rather, it's completely dubbed over in French. The female voices were all provided by Agalia (which is why Charlotte sounds like Vendetta in it) The singing vegetables were voiced by everyone - by that, I mean Amy, Agalia, Peter, and Chris (the guy who voiced the monkey from episode 2) This episode's hidden message read: "The THIRD episode of the original web series of Making Fiends. 'Eat vegetables with every meal or your lips will start to peel and your eyebrows will fall out, and your feet will smell like trout!' A cartoon series by Amy Winfrey, creator of Muffinfilms.com and Big Bunny. This is a webtoon about two little girls: Charlotte and Vendetta"
Final Thoughts This one's also pretty good. I like the TV version better but this does all it needs to. The vegetables' screams are a lot more ear-destroying in this version. Amy lived in an apartment during the web series' run, so I'd imagine any neighbors who were home did not enjoy that recording session. Going back to the TV version, it's weird watching this after having seen it so many times because of how much faster the pace is. In that version, Vendetta screams at the end because the vegetables literally cornered her up against the wall and KISSED HER. Here she just does it out of sheer rage. I still love it, though. All in all a good episode. I can see why they remade it.