Knock It Off

"Knock It Off" is the sixth episode in the fourth season of The Powerpuff Girls and the 80th episode overall.

It was completed on February 5, 2001 ^[1] but didn't premiere on Cartoon Network in the United States until July 12, 2002.

Synopsis[]

The Professor's old college roommate, Dick Hardly, stops by for a visit. When he gets his first glance at the girls, he comes up with an idea to create his own and sell them off as a security system to make money.

Dickhardly1 7129 — Dick before and after his monster-transformation.

Powerpuff more — Some of the 'Powerpuff Girls with Chemical X-treme' being made.

PPG (July 12, 2002) — Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, as they appear in this episode.

Plot[]

The Professor gets a call from his old friend, Dick Hardly, who tells him that he's coming over for a visit. Soon, Professor Utonium begins remembering his interactions with Dick at the university they both attended (where Dick secretly cheated on his work and slacked off when he wasn't looking). Dick soon arrives and tells the Professor that he was in the neighborhood and wanted to see what he’s old roommate was up to. He gets a tour of the household. After Dick gets his first glance at the girls, he becomes interested in them and believes they could make a fortune together as he discusses various ways to make money off of them. But, the Professor, offended by Dick’s dehumanizing comments about the girls, becomes suspicious of his proposal and forcefully orders Dick to leave. Feeling betrayed, Dick begins planning his revenge on Utonium.

Later that day, the girls are about to return home from school when Dick's car pulled up in the driveway, and he offers them a ride home. While driving, Dick explains how evil is always occurring around the world. Afterwards, he mentions the possibility for multiple Powerpuff Girls who would fight crime in various locations outside of Townsville. Later, he asks the girls what they are made of. The girls quickly answer: "Sugar, spice, and everything nice, and an accidental dose of Chemical X." Arriving at their household, he asks the girls for a flask of Chemical X. They zip to the Professor's lab and back, giving him the flask. Now eager, Dick rushes into an abandoned evil factory, which he now owns, and uses all the ingredients the girls told him earlier to make his own creation—The Powerpuff Girls with Chemical X-treme (which are actually knock-offs of the originals).

The next day, Dick shows off his creations to the mayor of New York City. Sometime later, the creations rush a giant alligator monster (who bears a striking resemblance to Wally Gator) to safety while on his way to work. This footage is publicly broadcast, and the Utonium family is watching. The Professor acts a little skeptical towards the real girls, thinking that they were in New York, and asks them when they went. The girls lie to him, saying that they went there earlier. While in bed, the girls feel guilty about lying to him, but believe it will all turn out good.

In the following weeks, Dick's factory starts expanding, he was now making more knock-off girls, and sold them all over the world such as Japan, France, India, Germany, and Egypt. However, even though the Powerpuff knock-offs greatly resembled the original girls, Dick started to cut back on their ingredients and intentionally allow them to have poor quality so they could quickly deteriorate so he could make more money, and even created disfigured versions of the knock-offs that he rejected. Meanwhile, Professor Utonium is starting to grow more and more suspicious.

Eventually, the girls' trust in Dick quickly fades after watching an infomercial featuring him advertising "The Powerpuff Girls with Chemical Xtreme", in which they also learn that Dick sold his Powerpuff Girls to anyone for profit, even criminals. Now knowing that Dick lied to them, the girls fly to his factory, confront him, and ask for the Chemical X they gave him, back. But, rather than give it back to them, he psychotically swallows it whole (flask and all). Suddenly, the effects of the Chemical X he swallowed transforms Dick into a radioactive monster.

The girls battle Dick, but they are no match for him and he overpowers them. Dick then captures the girls inside a glass dome and starts forcibly extracting the Chemical X from their bodies, so he could continue to produce more clones.

Meanwhile, the Professor, whose suspicions lead him into realizing Dick was behind all of this, drives all the way to his factory. Noticing the fight inside, he rushes into the factory, but arrives too late, as Dick had already begun extracting all the Chemical X out of the girls using a machine he invented.

The Power of the Professor's Love — As the Professor cries over the loss of the girls, the floating hearts at the end of each episode appears in the background as his love swiftly revives them.

Utonium begs Dick to stop, but he refuses at first. After offering himself willingly to take the girls' place so he could make more Chemical X, Dick decides to have both the girls and Utonium instead, ordering all the rejects to take the Professor away. While they do so, Professor Utonium tearfully expresses his strong and deep fatherly love towards the real girls. This sparks the rejected girls' minds into knowing that Dick never gave them love or care. The rejects turn on him, cling to his body, and sacrifice themselves to consume Dick in an inferno. However, a few of the rejects who survived release the girls, who are now ostensibly come close to dying from being completely drained of their Chemical X, before ordering the Professor to take his family and escape before it's too late. He does so, leaving Dick behind. Now, far away from the burning factory, Utonium is grief-stricken over the apparent loss of his girls. Fortunately, his love quickly revives them, and replenishes all of their Chemical X as well. The Professor, now happy, tells the girls: "Old Dick may have gotten the formula right, but the one ingredient he forgot was LOVE." As the girls and Utonium leave, Dick Hardly screams in agony one last time as his factory continues to burn, and the narrator says: "Guess like the love you take is equal to the love you make."

Characters[]

Major Roles[]

Minor Roles[]

Students of Pokey Oaks Kindergarten
Raja Jaja
Trevor
Lloyd & Floyd Floyjoydson (cameo)
Mitch Mitchelson (cameo)
Mary (cameo)
Harry Pitt (cameo)
Kim (cameo)
Hanout Anoush (cameo)
Wally Gator (non-speaking cameo)
Betty (flashback)
The Mayor of Townsville (pictured)
Narrator
Trevor
Citizens of Townsville

Trivia[]

This episode premiered in some countries before the United States.^[2]
- This episode premiered in Australia on August 3, 2001.
- This episode premiered in Brazil on October 19, 2001.
- This episode premiered in Canada on October 26, 2001.
- This episode premiered in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2001.
- This episode premiered in Mexico on March 25, 2002.
The title is a play on the word "knock-off", which means a cheaper and/or poorly-constructed version of something, such as what Dick was doing with his Powerpuff Girls.
Despite being produced by Cartoon Network Studios instead of Hanna-Barbera, it shows the latter's logo at the end.
This is the fourth episode to have a character die in the show, which is Dick. The first being the Rowdyruff Boys in the synonymous episode of the same name (although they are later revived), the second being the Broccoloids in "Beat Your Greens", and the third being Bunny in "Twisted Sister".
It's possible that Townsville is located in California, because according to the license plate on Dick's car, it's from California. The license plate also says PROF-DIK and that the car was made in June 2001.
- Oddly, that date was four months after this episode was completed in February 2001.
To further support the above theory, the directions to Townsville that Professor Utonium gives to Dick in the opening refer to actual freeways in the city of Los Angeles. If we applied the Professor's description to real life, Townsville would be located in Pasadena, which is where the 210 (nearly) junctions with the Harbor Freeway (aka Highway 110), roughly 15 miles east of the 101.
When the Girls are telling Dick how they were made, each ingredient is spoken by the Girl who mostly represents it: sugar for Bubbles, spice for Buttercup, and everything nice for Blossom.
It's unclear how the Girls and Professor Utonium found Dick's hideout.
There is a theory that Dick is brothers with Dexter's Dad from Dexter's Laboratory. The two bear a similar appearance and both are voiced by Jeff Bennett.
The Professor says, "Well, old Dick may have gotten the formula right, but the one ingredient that he forgot was love." It should be noted that the only ingredients known to make the girls were sugar, spice, everything nice, and Chemical X. Although it can be assumed that the Professor is simply being poetic, given that one of the ingredients is everything nice, it could be said that love is the nicest of all that is nice.
This episode was the closest that someone had ever gotten to destroying the Powerpuff Girls by taking nearly all of their Chemical X, and their life force, but they fully recovered thanks to the deep fatherly love of the Professor.
In one scene of Dick overlooking his rejects, look closely and you can see that one of them bears a resemblance to Dynamo.
The villain in India, named Raja Jaja, is a human version of Mojo Jojo.
Professor Utonium's declaration of his love towards the girls is similar to a scene in the last episode of Samurai Jack, where Jack declares his love towards Ashi.
The address for the Utonium residence is revealed to be 1440.
After the Professor questions the girls if they were really in India, Blossom answered instead with the phrase, "Mazel Tov". This is oddly inaccurate, as the phrase is in Hebrew, which is the native language of Israel, not India (whose native language is Sanskrit).
MsMojo ranked this as the #3 darkest episode of The Powerpuff Girls.
Dick Hardly is very similar to Scar from the Disney film The Lion King as:
- Both of them are the main antagonists of this episode and the film respectively;
- Both of them are greedy and selfish;
- Both of them want power and respect;
- The scene where Dick dies is parallel to the scene where Scar dies, as both villains’ minions turned against them and mauled them to death as flames engulfed the whole scene.
The narrator never says "The City of Townsville" at the beginning of this episode, but the Professer says these words instead.
Morals: Never try to make money of someone else's work and treat other people with respect and kindness and honesty.
- Don't treat them like slaves or guinea pigs.
- The Love of Money is the Root of All Evil.
- Always tell the truth.
- His name matches his personality very well

Cultural References[]

The episode could be seen as an allusion to The Clone Saga, a Spider-Man storyline that ran from 1994 to 1996, and depicted Spider-Man facing an armada of clones created by the supervillain Jackal, including the Scarlet Spider, Kaine, and Spidercide.
When the rejects turn on Dick, a buck-toothed Bubbles says "Only a master of evil, Dick", a reference to the line: "Only a master of evil, Darth" during the confrontation between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader on the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope (1977).
National Public Radio (NPR) is referenced in this episode, making it the only time a real-life radio brand was mentioned in the series.
The robots are seen remorsefully looking at the scenery when the Powerpuff Girls Xtreme saved Japan resemble (from left to right) Mazinger Z, Ultraman, and Getter Robo.
The Narrator's last line in this episode, that the love you take is equal to the love you make, is referring to the song "The End" by The Beatles.

Continuity[]

This is the third time the girls come close to dying, the first was in "The Rowdyruff Boys", the second was in "Mojo Jonesin'". In the first and third times, they are revived by the power of love. The second time, they are revived by some friends, who used their last bit of Chemical X, which they had previously received by a disguised Mojo Jojo, to do so.
The part where Buttercup says "I think they're askin' for a hiney whoppin!" is re-used from "The Rowdyruff Boys".

Goofs[]

When this episode first aired on Cartoon Network, the episode incorrectly had a 2000 copyright date at the end. Later reruns corrected this to 2001.
The Narrator says the Powerpuff Girls saved the day when it was actually the Powerpuff Girls Xtreme who saved the day.

Production Notes[]

Wally gator Tripping — A giant Wally Gator about to crush the World Trade Center.

Although this episode premiered in the United States on July 12, 2002, it was actually produced in 2001 according to the credits.
- This episode was completed on February 5, 2001.^[3]
- One scene featured the World Trade Center and its trademark Twin Towers standing fully intact. In this scene, a giant version of Wally Gator trips and nearly falls onto the World Trade Center before knock-off versions of the Powerpuff Girls save him. This episode was completed well before 9/11, but didn't premiere in the United States until 10 months after the attacks. However, the Twin Towers were kept intact for all American airings.
This was the final episode to use traditional hand-drawn cel animation. All future episodes, starting with "Superfriends", would utilize digital ink and paint instead. An earlier episode, "All Chalked Up" used the technique as a test run before they permanently made the switch to digital.
- After this episode finished production, Rough Draft produced Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?, their final TV series to be done with traditional cel animation, which aired between 2002 and 2003. By the end of 2003, Rough Draft management decided that audiences wanted only television programs produced using digital ink-and-paint, and closed down their traditional cel animation department. The cel animation desks and cels from episodes were removed or sold off and the animation-specific rostrum cameras along with an episode outro production cel of the girls (in a smaller size and in their normal poses) created exclusively for this episode was dismantled and scrapped. The reused episode outro production cels (complete with November 1998, January 1999, and April 2000 star explosion cells and the November 1998 and January 1999 cells of the girls in their normal poses (in usual large sizes and in normal poses) were then reused for color-corrected versions of 1998-2001 episodes that were produced using computers and cell animation at an American not-for-profit animation studio between late 2003 and early 2006.
This was the first episode to credit Bubbles' voice actress as Tara Strong, since she married her husband, Craig Strong, in 2000.

References[]

[1] ttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0677593/locations

[2] ttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0677593/releaseinfo

[3] ttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0677593/locations

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