A Heaping Bowl of Shame and the Return of Big Tech in This Week's "Big City Greens" on Disney Channel

Big Tech is back in the latest episode of Big City Greens on Disney Channel, but after Cricket gets himself into a bit of an embarrassing pickle with Gloria.

Dog Proof

It’s another evening at the Green’s house and everyone has polished off some of the best pizza in Big City - Mamaroni’s. However, it seems that not every member of the family has eaten their dinner. Cricket soon realizes that Phoenix, his quite elderly puppy pal, has not even touched her dinner. Turns out, Bill switched her to a new and highly nutritious brand of dog food and she apparently doesn’t trust it.

Cricket knows she needs to eat and takes on the task of making sure that Phoenix gets fed, even if it takes all night. Oh yeah, and it totally does take all night. Finally, in the early morning hours Cricket is out of ideas and, having previously tried to trick Phoenix into eating the food by showing that he had eaten it liked it…he realizes that he might ACTUALLY have to eat the dog food. At first, he gives the food a small taste before realizing it actually tastes good and starts heaping spoonfuls into his mouth. Phoenix quickly joins in and together they have a feast.

Just steps away though, someone else in the home is awake and nearby and now filming this whole thing on her phone, and it’s Gloria. She now possesses hilarious footage of Cricket eating dog food that she says will attract lots of attention if she wanted to actually share it with the world.

Cricket begins to panic as he knows that Gloria will likely show it to everyone he knows and maybe even post it online somewhere too. The video would make Big City headlines and everyone would laugh about him eating a pile of dog food.

During his shift at the cafe, he is brainstorming how to get Gloria’s phone to delete the video. He gets the phone pretty easily, but can’t get past the passcode. As he’s mumbling to himself about the video, Gloria overhears and is reminded that that even happened. She had almost forgotten! To ensure she doesn’t, she said she’s going to add it to her diary later.

Around this time, Remy and Vasquez show up and Cricket borrows his best friend’s bodyguard to discuss ways of deleting the video. Vasquez suggests that if someone has an embarrassing video of Cricket, maybe Cricket should get something embarrassing that will bring that someone down too, so everyone goes down together. That’s when Cricket remembers the mention of Gloria’s diary.

He quickly runs home and finds it with ease (okay, not really), and comes back and furthers the plan with Vasquez. If Gloria starts sharing the video, he will read from the diary to the whole cafe. And as quickly as they concoct their scheme, they go inside and Cricket immediately sees Gloria sharing a video with Jade, with Jade even making a comment about “dog breath."

Cricket is shocked and immediately gives Vasquez the go-ahead to start reading the diary, in which we hear an embarrassing tale about dates-gone-wrong and maybe even a bit about butt sweat.

Gloria is appalled, but has learned in therapy to embrace those embarrassing moments and own them. Still, she asks why Cricket did this and it turns out the video she was showing Jade was actually a viral puppy video that featured a cute little canine.

Learning from Gloria, Cricket not only feels bad about what he did, but decides to own the embarrassing moment and shows the cafe his video too - which leads to a string of cafe patrons sharing some of their deeper secrets.

Gloria was never going to show off the video, just keep it to herself, but she promises that if Cricket ever does anything with her diary again, he’ll have to figure out a new way to eat dog food since his face might just get rearranged.

Oh, and this whole time Bill, Tilly, and Alice went to a painting and snacking class where Bill discovers that the teacher, who according to Doug Perkins is quite encouraging, tells everyone the same thing and he learns that his art should be something that HE is proud of, not someone else.

Cricket Control

Bill just needs a bit of time to himself to finish whittling Lamby, a new figure he’s been working on. With Nancy out in the country, it’s really up to just Bill to manage his chaotic son Cricket. As he’s explaining this, Gramma (who has done her time raising kids) is quickly leaving the room so she doesn’t get stuck with the task of keeping her eye on Cricket. Fortunately, a Big Tech salesman (not Gwendolyn Zapp for once, likely because of the events of the film Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation but can’t confirm) appears on the Green’s doorstep in the nick of time and offers a new tech device that is basically another parent in the household. Shaped like other assistants in the real world - Alexa, Google Nest, et al. - this gadget provides punishment and scolding when necessary and at various levels.

Cricket is in the house and causing chaos and Bill quickly realizes he has to up the preferences to keep his son in check so he can enjoy some quiet time on the porch.

Elsewhere, Gramma and Tilly are hitting up a strange new restaurant in Big City - “FÜD". This strange establishment does not simply allow customers to just walk up to the register and place an order. As the pair quickly realizes, they must scroll through devices of various options to place their order and even perform operational tasks of the restaurant (washing dishes, cleaning tables, etc.) to gain access to the dining room. They choose to sing Happy Birthday to another table, but can’t even figure out where that table is. Eventually, they also discover that to get their food they must head into the kitchen and cook it themselves. What kind of restaurant is this? Gramma and Tilly lead a revolt and then head, along with all the other panicked patrons of the place, to the nearest Burger Clown.

Back at home, Cricket is still running rambunctiously and Bill is progressively working his way through the options that this new device can handle. As he increases, Cricket is getting into trouble and the device is responding appropriately but maybe not enough. He finally increases it to its highest level while he’s inside with Cricket and even Bill can’t do anything remotely wrong - like talk back to the device. As the two are put into laser-enforced time out, they are trying to figure out a way to shut down the device permanently. Bill can’t do anything either, as his phone (that he used to control the device and its settings) has registered that as helping Bill cause all the infractions and has, in fact, destroyed it.

After a few moments, Bill realizes that the robo-parent is getting overwhelmed - much like he is - as the only thing handling Cricket and himself. That’s when he tells Cricket to just go crazy and create all the chaos he can in the hopes that the device won’t be able to handle it. Here’s the catch: as Cricket points out - Bill must misbehave too. Together, the pair create enough havoc that the device gets confused, overwhelmed, and eventually explodes. Bill explains that he doesn’t like being told what to do all the time, and suddenly understands a bit about his son’s perspective. Coming back from their burger adventure, Gramma and Tilly walk back in and discover their home in utter ruin thanks to the misbehaving boys and the destroyed device.

This episode of Big City Greens is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW website. You can also catch up with earlier episodes and seasons, now streaming on Disney+.