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| Men at Work | |
 | |
| Episode | 17 |
| Season | 2 |
| Airdate (US) | June 2, 2004 |
| Airdate (CA) | November 30, 2004 |
| Invention(s) | Fully automated and hygienic McSpanky's Hover Hats |
| Previous | The Science Fair Affair |
| Next | The Mighty Wheezers |
Men at Work is the 17th episode in season 2 of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. (On Hulu, it is specified as Season 2, Episode 16)
Plot
To raise money for his inventions, Jimmy decides that he, Sheen, and Carl should get jobs. Skeet, employee of the month and manager at McSpanky's, hires Sheen and Carl, but doesn't think Jimmy's the McSpanky type, though he agrees to try Jimmy out. Carl and Sheen really enjoy their positions. Jimmy, however, doesn’t follow the rules, talks back to Skeet and is not pleased with the humiliating work he has to do, so he takes it upon himself to show everyone what he's capable of - by making McSpanky's fully automated and hygienic. Everything is smooth sailing, and the restaurant is keeping the rating at "VERY SATISFIED" until Hugh and Judy show up to support Jimmy. However, Hugh prefers Taco Shack to McSpanky's, and starts talking and singing about it, which causes the approval rating to drop. Then the whole restaurant starts shaking. As it shakes, the restaurant starts taking away everyone's tables and food, which causes the rating to drop to "VERY UNSATISFIED". Principal Willoughby announces that it is "Burger-geddon" and Sam yells “Everybody out! Yeah!” and everybody runs out of the restaurant screaming. Hugh doesn't care though because now he's heading out to eat at Taco Shack.
The restaurant head then grows in size and starts flying like a UFO. Jimmy, Sheen and Carl follow it in Jimmy's hovercraft to determine what it's doing, and they observe it liquidating Taco Shack along with other local fast-food outlets, including Pizza Clown and The Big Pilgrim, so that it will be the only restaurant in Retroville, much to Hugh's horror. Jimmy tries to shoot McSpanky's down, but it fires back. It then starts heading towards the supermarket, and Jimmy realizes that it's not satisfying with just destroying restaurants. It's going to destroy every single place in town that sells food products.
Jimmy rewires Goddard's tongue and tricks it into placing an order for 4 McSpanky's deluxe burgers cooked at 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit (which Sheen calls "A King Arthur with a hip replacement on a bed of coal"). The restaurant then flies to the only place in the galaxy that can attain that temperature: the Sun. It burns up enough to put it out of power, but the restaurant is then salvaged and commandeered by Zix, Travoltron, and Tee, who find Skeet's employee of the month picture; they assume he was the captain of the ship and set off to find him as they laugh maniacally.
Home Media
DVD
iTunes
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Season 2
Quotes
- Jimmy: (manning the cash register) "A Double McSpanky with fries and a Flurp. That'll be 6.53." (takes the customer's money and gives him change) "And 3.47's your change!"
- Skeet: (sighs) "Dude, you're supposed to push the buttons with the pictures of food on 'em."
- Jimmy: "Don't need to, Skeet. I memorized the prices, and did the tax and change in my head!"
- Skeet: "Oh, okay, Mister Magic Man - I also did not hear you say, 'Big McThankies from McSpanky's' to the customer!"
- Jimmy: "Well, frankly, it struck me as... cliched. What do you think about this? 'Don't let our food be denied you - put our polyunsaturated fats and triglycerides inside you!'"
- Skeet: "I'll tell you what I think..."
- (Jimmy is now on mop duty)
- Jimmy: (rudely imitating Skeet) "No human brain can add three things, dude. Only the machine knows the tax, dude!"
- Skeet: (manning the cash register) "Picture of money, picture of money... ha! Gotcha!" (presses the money button) "Big McThankies from McSpanky's! Heh, heh." (to Jimmy, pointing to an open packet of salt on the ground) "Hey, dude! You missed a spot."
- Jimmy: "I got it." (Skeet picks up the packet) "Just a little sodium chloride."
- Skeet: "Actually, dude, it's salt."
- Jimmy: "That's what I said! Sodium chloride."
- Skeet: "Ah, dude... that would be salt. If you don't know what salt is, maybe mop duty's too complicated for ya! What size are you? Small?"
- Jimmy: "Yeah, why?"
- (Jimmy is now standing outside the restaurant wearing a burger suit)
- Jimmy: "If you want cheap food with taste, put McSpanky's in your face!"
- Carl: "I knew a fast-food restaurant that lets you have it your way was just a crazy dream."
- Jimmy: "Hey, wait a minute...Carl, that's it!"
- Sheen: "You mean this is all a crazy dream? All right! Bring on the dancing tubas!"
- (Jimmy is improving the drive-through window at McSpanky's and Goddard starts to growl at it)
- Jimmy: "Easy, Goddard. It's just a giant, mechanical Scotman's head. But by tomorrow, it's going to be smarter than Skeet!" (knocks on it) "Come to think of it, it's smarter than Skeet now!"
- Sheen: "I don't know. Hey Carl, give me a taxi driver with a Polish accent."
- Carl: "You want a hamburger with peanut butter on it?"
- Sheen: "No, but if Jimmy's leaving, we'll need a ride home."
- Sheen: (while at the drive-through window) "Welcome to McSpanky's, home of the Belly Buster! May I take your order?"
- Mother: "Yes, we'll have one chicken bits and a Purple Flurp, one plain McSpanky burger, and I'll have a cheeseburger, no pickles, fries, and a vanilla shake."
- Sheen: (to Carl) "Gimme a cow in a earthquake, a dancing' albino with a heart condition, and a baby in a rickshaw!"
- Carl: (while flipping burgers) "Comin' at ya!"
- Customer: "Yeah, I'd like a deluxe McSpanky on half a bun with a side of chili fries!"
- Sheen: (to Carl) "Gimme a clown with a harelip sitting in a steam room!"
- Carl: "Doing' the tango or walking' the goose?!"
- Sheen: (to Carl) "Hold on!" (To the drive-through window) "You want a dollar salad?"
- Customer: "Yep."
- Sheen: (to Carl) "He's packing' light!"
- Carl: (hums while flipping burgers) "Yeah!"
- Carl: "Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Neutron."
- Judy: "My goodness! You boys have turned this place into quite the hot spot."
- Carl: "Yup-- hope you enjoy it. Um... hold up, Mr. Neutron."
- Hugh: "What... I, I'm with her."
- Carl: "Whoa, whoa, whoa-- back it up, chief. Hmm... yeah... nope, sorry, not feeling it."
- Hugh: "What do you mean?"
- Carl: "Look don't make me spell it out, Mr. N., but your outfit just isn't saying McSpanky's to me."
- Hugh: "Oh, really? Well, maybe that's because it's too busy saying, 'Step aside, Mr... Sassy-mouth before I tell your parents!'"
- Carl: "Go ahead-- I turned them away two hours ago."
- Hugh: "That's just terrible. How could you... Oh, hey, look: a famous movie star!"
- Carl: (turns around, excitedly) "Where? Where?"
- Hugh: (snickers, whispers) "Sucker."
- (Hugh and the other people in line start sneaking into McSpanky's)
- Carl: "What, I don't see anybody... Oh, I see him! Hi! No, that's not him."
- Libby: "One for the utility closet please!"
- Cindy: "Make it two!"
- Bolbi: "A burger-fries-and-shake kebab! Just like back home."
- Principal Willoughby: "A pineapple burger with low-cal thousand island dressing! It's like you're inside my head!"
Gallery
Click HERE to view the gallery
Trivia
- The episode's title comes from the band Men at Work.
- This episode is considered a classic among series fans.
- The computer that Jimmy builds to run McSpanky's is a reference to HAL 9000 from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- It's never made clear who the manager of the restaurant is.
- While Skeet has a supervisory role, he is only referred to as "Employee of The Month".
- McSpanky's is basically a parody of McDonalds.
- When Sheen is telling the customer orders to Carl, he uses diner lingo.
- Jimmy and his friends working at McSpanky's might somewhat be similar to the classic Nickelodeon film, Good Burger.
- Although Skeet did ask how old Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen are before hiring them, he's still violating child labor laws by having them work at the restaurant. In real life, the minimum age for a person to work in the United States is 14 and the characters are only 10 years old. It's also odd that none of their parents pointed out that their children are too young to hold down jobs.
- In reality, before any workplace could hire someone under age 18 (other than a close family member), permission from their parents and/or a letter from the school nurse would be required in order to not violate child labor laws.
- Regarding Jimmy and Skeet's argument about the register, Skeet was right. Register entry is used both for inventory tracking, as well as final tally for profits and taxes. Plus, Jimmy not using the register was very illegal and his method was unable to print out a sales receipt for the customers.
- Strangely, McSpanky's never considered targeting the Candy Bar, despite being one of the restaurants in Retroville.
- Captain Betty makes a cameo as one of the customers at McSpanky's.
- Hugh's piñata war cry is similar to Xena's own.
- The rather odd vocabulary Carl and Sheen use to call out orders is an obvious reference to the secret menu code used at fast-food chain In-N-Out Burger.
- Although Tee appears in this episode, he does not speak at all. It is likely that Tee's voice actor, Kevin Michael Richardson, was not available to record this episode. However, Tee can be briefly heard laughing at the end of the episode. His voice is credited to Maurice LaMarche instead.
- The conclusion implies that the alien bandits Zix, Travoltron, and Tee, will attempt to hunt down and capture Skeet, whom they believe to be the technologically upgraded McSpanky's captain, due his Employee of the Month plaque. However, when they're next seen in "The Incredible Shrinking Town" they not only don't care for Skeet in the slightest, but he isn't even shown.
- The character, Skeet, has become a minor internet meme. Due to his memorable moments where he disciplines Jimmy for being a lackluster employee. This became a meme because of two videos called "It's Sodium Chloride" and "Anime Character Analysis: Skeet".
- This is the last episode, along with being the only half-hour episode, to be written by Andrew Nichols and Darrell Vickers
- Carl’s line “I don’t have a problem.” would later be recycled in "Jimmy Goes to College".
- Although this episode was released in 2004, you can actually see "Copyright 2003 Viacom International, Inc." at the end of the credits. This means that the episode was produced in 2003.
- When Jimmy says that the Sun attains temperatures of 20,000 °F (ca. 11.100 °C), he is right. The surface of the Sun reaches approximately 10,000 °F (ca. 5.500 °C). The Sun's corona, however, exceeds temperatures of 1 million degrees Fahrenheit (ca. 555.000 °C). And the Sun's core reaches even higher temperatures of over 28 million degrees Fahrenheit (ca. 15.600.000 °C).
- It was never established if Jimmy got the equipment needed to replace the gold that was destroyed from the helmets.
Goofs
- When Skeet points out to Jimmy that he missed a spot of salt, Jimmy is not wearing a McSpanky's hat. But after Skeet picks up the packet where the salt came from, a McSpanky's hat appears out of nowhere on Jimmy's head.
- When Jimmy flies up to McSpanky's to place an order with Goddard's rearranged taste buds, the previously destroyed Big Pilgrim restaurant can be seen perfectly unharmed, standing right behind the Candy Bar.
- In some scenes, the satisfaction meter says “C.S.”. In other scenes, it says “Customer Satisfaction Meter” instead.
- Jimmy says the Sun is the only place in the galaxy that can attain a temperature of 20,000 °F, but this is incorrect as there are stars, namely white dwarfs and blue giants, that are much hotter than the sun. In fact, temperatures of 20,000 °F (ca. 11.100 °C) are easily attainable in many places around the universe and even here on Earth. Lightning, for example, heats up the air to temperatures of around 54,000 °F (ca. 30.000 °C).
- Ike Wilderman and Amber can be seen entering McSpanky's twice.