This is the first episode I’ve watched solely for the purpose of recapping, which means it’s also the first one I haven’t seen twice. I am… okay with this.
Velma paces her messy bedroom as Velma Voiceover complains about friends not texting you back. We see she’s been text-spamming Norville, and VO continues that she might actually die of him not responding, because her hallucinations are so bad that she can’t even look at her murder board. She glances next door to see Daphne, who’s looking at a website that says “CRYSTAL MINES – CLOSED”. Hard to tell if she’s obsessing over the little info she can find, or only finding profoundly unhelpful sites. Velma thinks that she can’t sub Daphne in for Norville, because she’s too distracted by her attraction to her. Velma’s anxiety ramps up between the crush and hallucination energies, and she text-yells at Norville.
Since said friend is MIA, Velma enters the kitchen to ask her dad for a ride to school. He claims he doesn’t have time, because Sophie and the baby are coming home the next day. He pulls out a rack of costumes as part of his explanation that he has to be at the hospital overnight for a photoshoot with her and the nursing staff. Velma can’t believe he’s leaving her home alone with a murderer on the loose. He reminds her that actually, she has the marching bad sleepover tonight. Now she feels really abandoned.
I’ll just mention again here that I played flute in high school and college, and yes, that included marching band. This means that some of this episode’s dumb crap goes from business to personal. If they wanted me to like the show, they should have gone after intramural lacrosse.
In the band room at school, all the band nerds are hyped for the sleepover, as if that’s a thing any clubs usually do. Velma asks the nerds if they’ve seen Norville, describing him for them, but isn’t he also in band? She’s interrupted by Principal Momville bidding the school good morning over the PA system. And for a special treat, she has the mayor and sheriff with her today! The sheriff announces that “we just learned someone somewhere is being intolerant,” so everyone in the band room screams and hides. Here we go again with the “horseshoe offense” theory– who is this joke for? Conservatives to make fun of fragile snowflakes? Have I actually been watching a right-wing show this whole time, tricked into taking outrage bait? I’m thinking too hard for this.
But we have to find about who is being intolerant, I guess. The mayor continues that they’ve gotten pushback about the police presence for the Hot List squad– FROM the police. Cut to the hot girls trying to grind up on their police escorts. Oh also, Kimmy is in sweats again instead of her low-cut top, which really feels like they wanted to prove something about her having big breasts last episode and IDK it’s all ugh. Anyway, all the officers resigned because of the sexual harassment, so instead, they’re instituting a city-wide curfew of 9 pm. Anyone caught outside after that will spend the night in jail. Momville says that this means some school events will be canceled: track meet, Find the Asbestos Service Night, and… band sleepover! Velma is the only one in the room pumped to hear this.
At Daphne’s house, she waits for her moms to leave so she can sneak out. On her way out, she looks at an early family picture and tells “Baby Daphne” that she won’t come back from the mines until she figures out where she comes from. She arrives at said mines by bike, and starts to pull planks off of the boarded-up entrance. She dodges swarms of bats and rats, then sighs in relief once the area is cleared of rodents. She’s suddenly yanked into the dark of the entrance.
Back at school, where I guess Daphne’s moms aren’t letting her attend at all, Fred has been waiting around for Velma. He thinks he can score some points by showing her the Female Body Inspector shirt that he updated to Female Mind Inspector. He also wants to prove that he’s a helpful ally. To that end, he checked out Velma’s theory about Diya coming to his house, and actually found something: his house used to be owned by a Dr. Edna Perdue. Velma looks her up and reads off that she was a “female neurologist”. Fred points out that she doesn’t need the “female” descriptor, which, yes actually. Velma waves him off and continues that Perdue died in the town insane asylum (are they still called that anywhere?) after conducting “ethically dubious experiments”. Velma wants to find Norville to give him this update, and Fred suggests he might be off with his girlfriend. This is the first Velma is hearing of this.
Accordingly, Velma busts into the school paper classroom to find Norville making out with Gigi. She demands to know how this happened. Gigi relays last episode’s implausible development wherein Velma somehow gave her the confidence to be “artsy hot” and not “regular hot”, and that brought her into Norville’s orbit. Norville is afraid Velma will be mad, but she’s actually excited, because now Gigi can take on the “swords and feelings” part of Norville’s life, and Velma can just use him to find her mom. She starts to fill him in, but Norville stops her to say that “Gigi and I have decided” that he should spend less time with Velma. Gigi backs him up. Velma tries to play it off like this doesn’t bother her, claiming that Fred can help her stop the hallucinations. He’s up to help with anything, “except filling in your ethnicity on a form”.
Somewhere in the middle of the mines, Daphne finds herself in the presence of two shadowy figures. One steps forward, and a neuron path in my brain from 90s-Cartoon-Network era fires up, as I realize that it’s a mascot-costume version of Captain Caveman (who is also Hanna Barbera IP). It’s pretty creepy. This is a real deep cut on the part of the show, apparently originating from segments in “Scooby’s All-Star Laff-a-Lympics”. The 70s were a wild time. Both figures are in the same costume, but at slightly different heights. The male- and female-sounding Cavemen explain that they’re Daphne’s parents, but that they need to hide their identity until they know they can trust her. None of this is shady at all. Daphne is immediately willing to believe that two costumed strangers are her parents, and is offended to hear that SHE needs to earn their trust, seeing as they abandoned her. They claim that she wasn’t abandoned– her moms stole her from them. Daphne argues that her moms found her in the middle of a cornfield. “Mom” Caveman says that if she doesn’t believe them, she should “look up the Crystal Mines Gang on Netscape Navigator”. Daphne gestures to the rundown old-timey tourist shops around her as she asks how long they’ve been in there to have that as a reference. Ooohhh, I’m sorry, the correct response to that suggestion from someone born c. 2005 is, “What the hell is Netscape Navigator?” But she had to look away for a second, so that the Cavemen could disappear mysteriously.
After school, Velma takes Fred to the Historical Society that Daphne and Norville hit up before, so she can look for records of Dr. Perdue. It appears to be entirely staffed by little old ladies, one of whom refers to Norville as their favorite docent. She’s glad to hear he’s with Gigi after wasting time “pining for that bossy one”, maybe her name was Meatball? Velma vehemently defends poor Meatball. Little Old Lady #1 thinks they have Dr. Perdue’s old journals, leading them over to a shelved box. But when she opens it, the journals are gone! Luckily they have one of those old checkout card slots, so they can tell that the last person to borrow them was… Diya Dinkley! Velma tries to process this and starts hallucinating. She shouts to Fred to tell him to make her laugh, but he’s stuck thinking about the gender pay gap. He explains how it works as Velma screams and flails around. Monster Diya grabs Velma’s ankle and drags her into the empty box, and everything goes black. Cut to the old ladies standing around a collapsed Velma, the box over her head. Fred takes her pulse and asks if anyone has a defibrillator. All the old ladies happen to have one on them.
At Spooner’s, where curfew signs are plastered all over, Norville and Gigi do some cutesy early love eating. Nearby, Fred tries to feed a fry to a bummed out Velma, but only succeeds in poking her in the face. She doesn’t think Fred has been very helpful, and still wants Norville on the case. She figures that “if I can separate reality shows’ exploitation of women from my obsessive need to watch them, I can separate Gigi from Norville.” Sorry guys, The Onion did the better version of that joke a while ago. Velma thinks she has a plan to lure Norville to a place where girlfriends would never go. Since her dad and stepmom (when did Sophie go from mistress to wife?) are out of the house, she’s re-hosting the marching band sleepover! Huh, okay.
If you’re keeping a Crystal Cove character tree, the featured Female Band Nerd is being dropped off by the middle-aged painter lady Fred was attracted to via Enlightenment in the last episode. I am confused why the sleepover at the actual school had to be canceled for curfew, but everyone can be out overnight at a random student’s house. There’s a dumb setup where Male Band Nerd makes everyone play when they come to the door to prove that they’re really in band. This annoys me because I am extremely petty, and if any of the band kids even brought their instruments, they would 100% be carrying them in their cases, not just like around. Inside, Velma, with an assist from Sophie over video call, is telling everyone not to mess up the house given the baby’s homecoming. Fred pops up at the window. He knows he’s not in band, “thank God,” but he still wants to help so Velma will like him. Velma points out that she gave him a chance, and she ended up dead for a few seconds. She pauses to tell a band nerd to stop eating the baking soda out of the fridge. Female Band Nerd suggests that he’s doing this because there is no food for the overnight guests. Velma panics that she forgot to order pizza, so of course Fred is on it. He knocks a couple of band kids out of the way as he hops on a hover board.
Meanwhile, Daphne is looking up the Crystal Mines Gang. She reads to us over flashbacks that when the mines closed in the early 90s, former employees of the attraction banded together and decided to just… stay in the in-mine theme park and live there now. They used the tour boats to travel under the town and commit robberies, with manholes as their exit points. Daphne’s Cop Moms were the ones to catch and arrest the gang, by which time it had twenty members “including one infant”. The article even has a picture of Baby Daphne. Weird that nobody ever obliquely mentioned this in front of her.
We confirm that Norville is in band, as his parents drop him off near Velma’s. Not AT Velma’s, though, because Momville has a reputation to protect. When Norville hesitates, they shove him out of the car and then declare that it’s “time to get freaky” as they drive away. Daphne pushes through the inexplicable line of bandos waiting to enter Velma’s house, but is denied by Male Band Nerd. Velma comes out and interrupts Daphne to ask if she’s seen Norville, then gets distracted by band shenanigans inside and heads back in. Daphne still can’t go in, but Norville rolls up jamming on his trumpet instead of CARRYING IT SAFELY IN ITS CASE. Daphne grabs him to tell him about her creepy cave parents, and he’s excited to hear everything. But no! Velma spots him and pulls him inside. Whatever magic band forcefield has been activated means that Daphne can’t just go into the damn house, so a trombone does the “wa wa” thing at her. Daphne kicks him. What happened to Daphne “I Love Danger” Lastname? Just bust in!
Velma pulls Norville into her room, acknowledging that it must be hard to choose between her and Gigi, who she calls “a beautiful girl who puts out”. Yikes. She insists that she can’t research her new clue without him. He’s reluctant but agrees. Rumblings out in the living room lead him to suspect that Gigi just got here, so they go out to see. Velma wants to know why she would be here, seeing as hot girls are usually in choir. Gigi says Norville made band sound fun, so she called the registrar and joined. She accuses Velma of playing the bassoon, but that’s actually a lot cooler than what Velma actually is, which is as she puts it, a “flutatist”. Imagine that! So is Gigi! She challenges Velma to a “flute-off”: if Gigi wins she gets to stay, if Velma wine Norville has to do what she says forever. Everyone chants, “Flute! Flute! Flute!” I think I had a dream like this once.
Some other instruments do a jazzy intro to lead Gigi into… some very poor flute-playing. Norville tries to be supportive. They then cue up Velma, and she also sucks! You know how sometimes media isn’t very accurate with technicalities, but you’re having so much fun watching that you don’t even notice? Yeah, I spent more than a few seconds during this scene trying to tell if the embouchures were correct. They continue to intensely suck at playing flute in each others’ direction. My mind wanders and I think about how it’s really strange that there’s no director or school staff at this weird-ass half-social half-school-sponsored event. Velma loses breath first, so Norville declares Gigi the winner. Female Band Nerd inquires about the promised pizza, angering Velma, but the problem is that she has to take a pill with food. So does everyone else there, as it turns out. Velma tries texting Fred, who’s at the pizza place explaining to the hapless employee that the pizzas need more meat if he’s going to impress Velma. Fred knocks the existing pizzas off the counter in his irritation. I don’t know why he couldn’t have called in an order.
Velma follows Gigi into the bathroom to tell her that Norville was “hers” first, so she’s only going to say this once– “this” being literally begging Gigi to let Norville help her. Gigi sighs in disgust.
At Daphne’s house, she comes downstairs to find her moms playing cards. They ask if she wants to hang out, but she actually wants to talk about her adoption. In complete unison they reply, “We found you wrapped in a blanket in the middle of a cornfield”. Daphne asks for details, like how she was also in a crater, and they keep answering in unison, even as they insist it’s not rehearsed. Daphne points out that she has the same origin story as Superman. They try to claim that they don’t know who that is, but everyone glances over at the curio cabinet full of Superman memorabilia. Daphne narrows her eyes.
For some reason, we split the last Velma scene early, because now we’re back with her proposing that she and Gigi share Norville. Velma will get the majority of the time, naturally. Gigi asks if Velma knows what’s going on with his family. As far as Velma knows, they’re a perfect little unit. Gigi stops herself and says she promised she wouldn’t tell Velma, which Velma is surprised to hear, because Norville tells her everything. Gigi tries to leave, so Velma suddenly “remembers” what Gigi is referring to. She’s surprised he told Gigi even, given… she trails off. Gigi isn’t sure that they’re talking about the same thing, so Velma suggests that they say it at the same time.
Cut to Velma yelling at Norville about how apparently Dr. Perdue is his grandmother. Norville isn’t thrilled that Gigi told, but Velma isn’t thrilled that he was keeping it from her. Norville thinks he shouldn’t have trusted either of them.
Band kids are crowding at the window to watch Fred approaching on his hoverboard, spinning stacks of pizza boxes as he prides himself on a job well done. Norville runs out of the house and bumps into him, and pizza goes everywhere. The band kids are apparently electric-fenced inside or something, because they just collapse at the windows, looking completely crushed. The sheriff drives over the pizzas as he drives by to call curfew time, followed by a tank, so dinner is well and truly ruined. Fred muses that he tried, but only got halfway there, which he thinks is typical for a male feminist.
I guess Norville couldn’t get away in time, so he’s now stuck at the sleepover all night. That being the case, Velma wants to know how Diya’s disappearance is related to his grandma. He says that he just learned about it, and the truth could ruin his mom’s life. There’s a crash from the living room, where the band kids are wrecking and/or trying to eat everything in the house. Velma scolds them, but Female Band Nerd says this is what happens when they don’t take their pills. Velma declares they have to “feed these nerds now”, as if she isn’t one of them. There’s literally no food in any of the cabinets or anything, so I don’t know what Velma was subsisting on up until an hour ago. After using a bagged salad she finds to confirm that bandos only eat junk food, Velma suggests that they go to Spooner’s. The problem is that nobody can be outside now… except for cops. Velma wants to drive over in Cop Moms’ car, but she observes that Norville is the only one who can drive. She lays it on thick, saying that she couldn’t ask him to do that, given everything going on, and maybe the house will just get destroyed. He says he’ll do it. Gigi reminds him that he agreed not to do any more simping for Velma. He insists that he’s simping for himself, which grosses everyone out. He asks Velma if she can get the keys from Daphne.
Daphne is in her room, gazing at herself in the geode. The facets reflect costumed Cavemen back at her, and she tosses it away. Just then, Velma calls. Daphne is glad to hear from her, because she’s freaking out. Velma assures her that she’ll help, after Daphne does her a favor. Cut to Daphne standing by as the rest of the gang pull out in the police car. I guess the two officers who own the car and parent the teenager, both of which are outside after town curfew, have somehow not noticed any of this? Velma promises again to help Daphne later, and as the car drives off, it pops the cover off of a manhole. Daphne goes over to peer in, gasping when she spots a boat at the bottom.
At Spooner’s, the kids load styrofoam containers into the car. I’m not sure how they actually obtained the food, though, because Norville says he wants to go back and write an IOU for the food, and I would assume any adults would bust them for violating curfew. Velma doesn’t think there’s time, but Norville asks, “If we don’t support a small business owned by a woman of color, who will?” Velma is stunned to realize that Norville is a better person than she is. The sheriff drives by blooping his siren and announcing that they’re giving away Katy Perry tickets to serial killers at the police station. The kids hide behind the dumpster, Fred whining that he doesn’t want to go back to jail. The police car pulls into the alley. Velma looks determined, and tells everyone else to head back while she handles the sheriff. They can’t believe she’s willing to go to jail, but she thinks Norville would do the same for her. He thanks her, and they head off. The sheriff almost catches Norville, but Velma stands in front of his car and disses the movie Serpico. He knocks her over with said car, and it looks like she lost some teeth.
Daphne’s moms are asleep in front of a TV segment about The Thief still being on the loose after his escape. She sneaks out, dressed in a hoodie.
Velma is put into the back of the police car, where Momville and Dadville are already seated. They’re in cow and milkmaid costumes that can only be fetish-related. Velma immediately wants to post this on the internet. Momville asks what it would take for her to NOT do that. Velma smirks.
Daphne climbs into the manhole, gets in the boat, and pushes a “Start Tour” button. The boat starts moving, with an audio track narrated by Casey Kasem.
Norville, Fred, and Gigi return to Velma’s house, where the band kids are basically rabid. They throw the takeout containers in and leave the house. To go where after curfew when Velma just got detained, I have no earthly idea.
The sun rises at the police station, where all curfew-breakers, including the middle-aged mom and the Historical Society lady, are released. Momville tells Velma to come to her office on Monday, when she’ll tell her everything about Dr. Perdue.
Velma arrives home at the same time as Aman and Sophie. Apparently the baby is named Amanda, which is not nearly as bad as I would have feared with Sophie as a mom. Velma braces herself as they all enter, but the house is spotless! Amanda spits up, and Sophie assumes Velma will clean it up. Velma is distracted by a note from Male Band Nerd. TLDR: Norville threatened to shove their instruments up their butts if they didn’t clean the house, so they did. Velma smiles broadly. Aman asks what the hell happened to her teeth. Oh so NOW we’re insisting on real-world repercussions.
Tag! Daphne’s boat pulls up to the shore, where she met with her parents earlier. The shorter Caveman welcomes her home, and they take off their costumes to introduce themselves as Carol and Darren, her parents. More Cavemen creep out, so they also proceed to introduce the rest of the Crystal Mines Gang. Everyone gathers around, and Daphne smiles, at least until another swarm of bats swings by.
The Unisex Bathroom 