EPISODE REVIEW
Birthday
Release date: 4/22/2004
"Happy birthday to you, you are stupid and blue. You look like you're stupid - wait, wait, I'm sure that's true!"
Vendetta throws Charlotte a party she'll never forget.

Plot Summary

Charlotte has been hassling Vendetta about her upcoming birthday all week, much to the green girl's annoyance. However, it ends up giving her an idea. Vendetta decides to host a birthday party for Charlotte in her backyard that Friday and gives out invitations. As one would expect, Charlotte is thrilled about it, but Vendetta has some evil plans in store for the party.

Friday finally rolls around and Vendetta has the party all set up in her backyard, complete with a table, balloons, cake, and presents. The other kids from school made sure to show up (as the invitations threatened that they would be shot if they didn't attend) When Charlotte finally shows up, Vendetta greets her and hands her a bunch of balloons. The balloons turn out to be fiends and tie themselves tightly around Charlotte's body, coming close to strangling her. However, Buttons 2 arrives just in time and proceeds to save the blue girl by cutting the strings so the balloon fiends float away.

Vendetta's a little disappointed, but doesn't sweat it as she has plenty more chances to kill Charlotte. She offers Charlotte a party hat (which, suspiciously, has an eye and teeth) but Charlotte refuses as she is wearing special ribbons in her hair and wants them to be visible. So instead, Vendetta directs her to open one of her presents - specifically the big black one in the middle of the table. Charlotte unwraps the present to find a square-shaped fiend who immediately demands she give it her liver. Amused by the fiend, Charlotte gives it the party hat, which proceeds to devour both the fiend and the table itself (as well as eat a hole into the ground which all the presents fall into)

Now Vendetta's getting pissed off at her plans failing. However, she still has one that might work - the cake, which is poisoned (probably). Much to Vendetta's annoyance, Charlotte seems to never be satisfied with the whole cake situation. First, she tells her that everyone (including Vendetta) has to sing happy birthday to her first. Then she complains about the cake not having any candles (to which Vendetta responds by jamming a stick of dynamite on it) Finally, Charlotte asks what flavor the cake is, and Vendetta tells her that it's "strawberry clam". Upon learning this, Charlotte is immediately disgusted and now refuses to eat the cake at all, claiming that she doesn't like strawberries. Luckily she happens to have a cookie in her pocket and eats that instead. As Charlotte walks off, Vendetta tries to run after her and make her come back, but the dynamite explodes, leaving the green girl covered in cake residue and even angrier than before.

Fiendish Findings

  • This episode was one of several to receive an alternate title in the years after its release. The original title was "Birthday" but it was changed to "Charlotte's Birthday" when the website's design was updated.
  • This was another one I had trouble finding the release date for. The wiki for some reason claimed it came out on May 19th, but Wikipedia very kindly provided a link to an archived MF site page from 2004, which revealed the true release date: April 22nd.
  • There's a somewhat glaring animation error at the part where Vendetta demands that Marvin, Marion, and Maggie sing to Charlotte. If you look at said trio, you'll see that Maggie's arm is completely detached from her body. This was not fixed in the 2012 remaster.
  • Grudge seems to just vanish after the scene of Charlotte opening the present. That bothers me more than it should.
  • The bonus DVD version of this episode adds Pig Latin subtitles. It's the only bonus version in season 1 that adds a visual change rather than an audio change.
  • This episode's hidden message read "The EIGHTH episode of Making Fiends. Happy Birthday to you. You are stupid and blue. A cartoon series by Amy Winfrey, the creator of Muffinfilms.com and Big Bunny."
Final Thoughts

This is definitely one of the series' darker episodes...Vendetta comes very close to winning several times. I love it though. Also lots of great quotes in this one. "Now give me your liver!" and "I have decided to throw a party at you!" as well as Vendetta's birthday song. All incredible. I love when Vendetta messes up her English. It doesn't happen a lot, but it's kind of cute when it does. Also Charlotte is uncharacteristically whiny and picky here which makes everything even funnier. It's like that one Spongebob episode where he works at the Chum Bucket and just acts like a spoiled brat to Plankton.

As one Youtube commenter pointed out, it's hard to see this episode being made into a Nicktoon. It's a little too heavy on the dark humor for that, probably. Also "Come to Charlotte's birthday or you will be destroyed" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Also I feel the need to admit that I tried to write a creepypasta based on this episode when I was 12. No, I will not post it. It's bad but not bad enough to be that entertaining.

Sorry this review took a while. I've been trying to map out more features for the site (including a major homepage redesign) and I also started my senior year of high school this week so that's fun. Neocities isn't blocked on the school computers so that opens up some possibilities...Anyway see you when I review episode 9.