"Operation: F.L.A.V.O.R." | |
Season 2, Episode 19 | |
Mission: | 037 |
---|---|
Production Code: | 19a |
Airdate: | November 7, 2003 |
Credits | |
Writer(s): | Tom Warburton Mo Willems |
Storyboards by: | Guy Moore Quack Leard |
Episode Guide | |
Previous Mission "Operation: O.O.M.P.P.A.H." |
Next Mission "Operation: K.I.S.S." |
Find Lost Ancient Variety Of Refreshment "Operation: F.L.A.V.O.R." is the first story in the sixth episode of Season 2 of Codename: Kids Next Door. It first aired on November 7, 2003 on Cartoon Network.
Information[]
Summary[]
Numbuh 5 is taken by the Ice Cream Men to a mystical mountain that hides the ancient fourth flavor. After avoiding traps, she reaches the shrine where it resides but the DCFDTL have other plans for it.
Plot[]
The episode begins with a narration from Numbuh 5 giving a backstory about the three elemental flavors of pure ice cream: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. However, there was also an unnamed flavor simply known as the Fourth Flavor, a flavor so perfect that it had to be locked away in a temple for fear of being eaten up and leaving none for the Dessert Monks who created it. The only way to get a taste of the Fourth Flavor is to have taste buds deemed worthy enough to wield the coveted golden scoop.
In the present day, Numbuh 5 is delivering this backstory to a group of kids in a museum, the golden scoop itself on display. The kids, clearly uninterested, run off to the gift shop. Just then, the Delightful Children from Down the Lane show up, each of them enjoying their own vanilla ice cream cones topped with sprinkles (or “jimmies,” as the Delightfuls call them) and taunting Numbuh 5 about the supposed nonexistence of the Fourth Flavor (and not eating her ice cream with sprinkles to the point of calling her dumber than Numbuh 4). Not paying them any mind, she vows to one day taste the Fourth Flavor for herself.
Moments later, an Ice Cream Truck comes barreling down the hallway and crashes into the display case encasing the golden scoop. Numbuh 5 grabs it and runs off, the ice cream truck giving chase. She jumps onto a ceiling drape and the truck drives out the museum window and seemingly falls to the ground below. The truck however, using propellers, flies back up to the window. As Numbuh 5 runs off again, a pair of grapples are shot out the back of the truck, grab hold of her and reel her inside. The truck flies away with rockets.
When Numbuh 5 comes to sometime later, she is grabbed and thrown out of the truck. She sees that they’ve arrived at the Mountain of Greatest-Ever Flavors, the location of the lost temple that supposedly has the Fourth Flavor locked away. Inside the temple, there’s a large group of Ice Cream Men standing in front of a statue. One ice cream man nervously mutters flavors to himself, trying to solve the statue’s riddle: Flavor of the Day. He incorrectly guesses banilla minty ripple, causing a flood of chocolate fudge to spew out the statue’s mouth and cover the ice cream man, freezing him in place. The Delightful Children are revealed to be the ones carrying this out. They’re happy to see Numbuh 5, whom they claim will solve the riddle and unlock the hidden passages to the Fourth Flavor. She refuses outright at first, but is convinced when the Delightful Children imply they might actually consider sharing some of it with her.
Numbuh 5 takes the golden scoop and approaches the statue. She thinks long and hard about the riddle, Flavor of the Day, and gives her answer: sundae. The Delightful Children believe this answer to be ridiculous, until they notice the floor beneath the statue open up with a staircase leading underground. Numbuh 5 bids them all farewell and goes inside, the Ice Cream Men running after her. As she runs through the narrow hallway, she unknowingly steps on a single brick that seeps into the ground, triggering a giant ice cream boulder to chase after her. She just barely makes it into the next room before the creamy boulder squishes her. With a giant glob of ice cream blocking the doorway, the Delightful Children demand the Ice Cream Men eat their way out. As they begin eating, they start to choke and experience extreme brain freeze due to the ice cream boulder being poisonous.
Meanwhile, in the next room, a beam of golden light shines down on a platform that holds a small bowl of ice cream. On the platform steps, there reads a message: Only with the scoop of gold / And taste buds pure / Shall you find the cave of cold / And taste the flavor’s sweet allure. Numbuh 5 forces the golden scoop into the ice cream bowl. A mystical force knocks her off her feet momentarily and reflects the beam of light onto a nearby giant ice cream cone. The light melts four individual scoops, each scoop representing the four elemental flavors, and unlocks the final door.
The last door leads into a massive temple that reveals a mountainous ice cream cone holding the very real Fourth Flavor. An excited and triumphant Numbuh 5 runs across a bridge to get up close with the giant ice cream cone. She goes in to get a lick of the Fourth Flavor but is pulled away and restrained by an ice cream man. The Delightful Children thank Numbuh 5 for finding the Fourth Flavor for them and make a group of Ice Cream Men suck it all up with a hose. They tell her they plan to only share it with adults, but not before getting a taste themselves. They each take a scoop on an ice cream cone, and just as they’re about to taste it, decide to put sprinkles all over it. Numbuh 5 desperately tries to warn them not to but her pleas fall on deaf ears. As soon as the sprinkles make contact with the scoops of ice cream, the scoops fade into a cloud of smoke and a violent thunderstorm erupts inside the temple, causing stalagmites to fall around everyone. The Delightful Children first blame Numbuh 5, but she angrily tells them that they weren't supposed to put anything on good ice cream like the Fourth Flavor. The Delightful Children and Ice Cream Men cut their losses and run for their lives.
As Numbuh 5 begins to run, she looks back at the Fourth Flavor. Realizing this might be her one and only chance to get a taste, in the midst of the storm, she runs back across the bridge. As Fourth Flavor begins to topple backwards, Numbuh 5 jumps off the platform and holds onto the ice cream cone for dear life and begins scaling up towards the ice cream itself. She tries to get a lick of the ice cream, but a bolt of lightning strikes in front of her, knocking her off the cone and into the abyss below.
After some time passes, Numbuh 5 wakes up amongst the ruins of the temple, defeated about not being able to get a taste. She picks up her hat and notices a small drop of the Fourth Flavor on the back of it. Numbuh 5 finally gets a taste, and just before she announces (to herself) what it tastes like, her P.I.P.E.R. rings and she answers it; Numbuh 1 is on the other line. The episode ends with Numbuh 5 requesting a pick-up and walking into the setting sun.
Featured[]
KND Operatives
Allies
- Dessert Monks (mentioned and pictured)
Villains
Locations
- The Candy Museum (only physical appearance)
- Lost Temple of the 4th Flavor (only appearance)
- Mountain of the 37 Flavors (only appearance)
Objects
- Golden Scoop (only appearance)
- The Fourth Flavor (debut)
Quotes[]
Trivia[]
- This is Numbuh 5's first character specific episode, making her the first of Sector V to receive one.
- Numbuh 5 appears to volunteer as curator at the Candy Museum.
- Constance (the brown-haired DCFDTL-girl) holds her ice cream cone in her left hand, while the rest of the group use their right hand.
- This is the first time the Ice Cream Truck is shown able to fly; this would not occur again until Operation: C.A.K.E.D. F.I.V.E..
- Though the fourth flavor is never revealed, it was mentioned to similar to an already established flavor and can be speculated upon.
- In ancient Rome, honey was used to sweeten crushed ice, and has been believed to be the first ice cream flavor.
- In Antonio Latini's 1694 book, "Lo scalco alla moderna, overo l’arte di ben disporre i conviti, con le regole piu scelte di scalcheria" ("The modern banqueting director, or the art of arranging banquets, with the most important rules of banqueting etiquette"), he described how to make sorbets with flavors of: chocolate, strawberry, cherries, and lemon.
- The 1775 book, "De’ sorbetti e de’ bagni freddi saggi medico-fisici" ("On sorbets and frozen products, the medical and physical benefits"), Filippo Baldini grouped sorbet flavors into three categories: subacid flavours (lemon, strawberry, pineapple), aromatic flavours (chocolate, coffee, pistachio), and milky flavors (closer to the modern ice cream).
- The mysterious fourth flavor was almost licensed out to an ice cream company, with a contest where kids could write in what they thought the flavor could be. But this never happened.[1]
- According to Mr. Warburton, the fan favorite for the fourth flavor was: banana.[2]
Series Continuity[]
- This is the first of Numbuh 5's solo candy adventure-stories, with one appearing in each season.
- Operation: P.I.R.A.T.E. can be considered a precursor to Numbuh 5's candy adventures.
- The six-armed deities shown through the episode are parodies of Hindu deities.
- The way the Ice Cream Men are encased in chocolate is similar to how Heinrich Von Marzipan encases people in Operation: C.H.O.C.O.L.A.T.E..
- In Operation: Z.E.R.O., Monty Uno comments that blurpleberry ice cream was the closest he ever got to the 4th flavor.
Pop Culture References[]
- This episode is a parody of Indiana Jones, with scenes and music closely resembling Raiders of the Lost Ark:
- The Golden Scoop is a parody of the gold statue.
- The huge rolling ball of ice cream is parodying the rolling boulder.
- The "Mountain of the 37 Flavors" is likely a reference to Baskin-Robbins' slogan of having 31 different flavors of ice cream.
Errors/Goofs[]
- Numbuh 5 is touching a display case in the middle of the museum as she's talking to the group of kids in the opening shot, but when the shot changes to close-up, she has a red tapestry hanging right behind her.
- When the DCFDTL appears behind Numbuh 5 in the museum, the stone monument displayed is missing its text.
- The inside of the Ice Cream Truck is more spacious than the actual size of the truck.
- When Numbuh 5 and the Ice Cream Man is approaching the large green statue inside the temple, the entrance at the foot of the statue is already open.
- When the DCFDTL say "next!", the Golden Scoop is lying on the ground in front of them. In the next shot, they're holding it ready for Numbuh 5.
- When Numbuh 5 is dragged into the temple in front of the Delightful Children and a crowd of Ice Cream Men, several of the Ice Cream Men are faceless and generally featureless.
- Numbuh 5 was just over the bridge when she stuck out her tongue to taste the fourth flavor, but is somehow several paces further down when pulled back by an Ice Cream Man.
- The ice cream cones held by the DCFDTL disappear after they pour sprinkles over them.
- When the DCFDTL raise their chins at Numbuh 5 for saying that jimmies are called sprinkles, the underside of Lenny's helmet is first colored red, and then black after the lightning strike.
- The hand rail at the right side of the bridge to the fourth flavor is missing when the DCFDTL and Numbuh 5 are running back across the bridge. It returns when Numbuh 5 turns back to go after the fourth flavor again.
Voice Credits[]
- Benjamin Diskin: DCFDTL and girl
- Dee Bradley Baker: DCFDTL and Ice Cream Man #1
- Cree Summer: Numbuh 5 and DCFDTL
- Daran Norris: Ice Cream Man #2 and Ice Cream Man #3