How to Embrace the Chill and How to Discover A New Species in This Week's "StuGo" on Disney Channel
Merian can’t relax and doesn’t like being told to while Pliny can’t relax either - discovering new bird species alongside an ancient naturalist on this week’s StuGo on Disney Channel.
The Leg Farm
The power is out on the entire island and it will be at least a full business week before it can be restored. This means that everyone has the chance to relax and chill for the next five days. Everyone except for Merian that is. It seems she can’t relax. It’s quite literally not in her vocabulary.
Realizing that there must be productive things that she can do, she even goes to Lullah’s lab and tries to help out there too. There, she discovers that Lullah and Mr. Okay are also just relaxing and enjoying the downtime. Merian however, proposes that they can make giant hamster wheels and use them as generators to restore power to the island so that everyone can get back to whatever work they can get back to.
Lullah has seen this kind of energy before and knows exactly what to do and suggests Mr. Okay take her out to… the farm. And while the idea of going to “the farm" is perceived as quite dark by Merian, it turns out that Mr. Okay (once he starts paying attention to the road ahead of him) is in fact, taking her to a real farm on the island.
But it’s not just any farm, this farm is a leg farm and it’s where all the mutants get their legs. Along with that, it’s also where, years ago, Mr. Okay learned to relax and unwind himself.
Here, much like a garden, he tends to all the legs (especially since the mutants have a knack for breaking them) and grows them peacefully. However, Merian quickly learns that the legs, complete with feet, have an affinity for shoes. It’s just one of the many quirks and borderline warnings that Mr. Okay gives her while he is showing her around. Eventually, they get to a barn that holds Baby Connie, a large leg that has just continued to grow and who knows, may end up on a mutant whale one day. But for now, she stays here in the barn. Throughout the tour, Merian has pointed out numerous ways in which the operation of the barn can be improved. Mr. Okay emphasizes that operational optimization and efficiency is not what the farm is for. It’s a place to let things happen slowly and enjoy the downtime, and more importantly— Relax.
He then leaves her and promises to return once the power has been restored to the island. Cut to three days later. Lullah and Mr. Okay are watching some mutants when again, they break their legs. This prompts Mr. Okay to head out to the farm and retrieve a pair. While there, he discovers Merian just laying back on a hammock. Did she learn to relax? No. In fact, while she was laying there, she sewed a patch into the hammock blindly behind her head. Just one of many skills she taught herself while being left there. Not only that, she also basically did everything she suggested she would do to enhance the farm - including a soil analysis so that the legs grow faster and stronger and even injected a bit of her own DNA into them so they’d also be restless and full of energy for the mutants when they finally got to them.
However, this has backfired (as expected) and Baby Connie is not that much of a baby anymore and this now hyperactive and muscular beast leg is now heading toward a defenseless Lullah’s lab. Why? For the length of the lifespan of the leg, Mr. Okay has been telling stories of how, when you look at it, Lullah’s lab looks like a shoe.
The chase is on, and they must stop Baby Connie before it gets to the lab as it tears its way across the island.
At one point, Merian tries to stop Connie and in turn gets trampled. This prompts Mr. Okay to call their insurance company, noting that after all this time they “finally lost one." Not quite lost though, as Merian is wedged between two of the giant toes getting thrashed on the way to the lab.
Remembering that her DNA is in the leg now, Merian knows she can’t tell the leg to relax, but instead suggests they channel that energy (that is currently being used to smash into the lab) in a more productive way. The leg, as best as it can, musters a smile and we see a future moment on the farm where Mr. Okay and Merian have built a giant hamster wheel for Baby Connie allowing it to run and generate power for the island, which now has excessive amounts of energy and power failures shalln’t happen again.
Unquenchable Thurst
Pliny and Chip are birdwatching and trying to spot all the species that can be found on the island. In fact, Pliny only has one more to go and they chase it into a bog. Chip is suggesting a stronger use of the bird calling whistle, but an accident finds himself swallowing and now making bird calls whenever he talks. Out on the bog, Pliny spots the bird she is going after and bonus! It has also dropped a feather. Realizing that she can collect this plumage sample, she rushes out there and discovers the bog covered body of Thurstavious Brinkman Throop. He’s been trapped for 170 years, but the bog and moss has preserved him….perfectly? He is filled with goo, after all. And, he likes to be called Thurst. He arrived on the island as part of an expedition (that clearly went awry, with his ship wrecked nearby) but is still ready to make all the discoveries here.
From this point, we see Pliny and Throop making their way through the island where it is quickly put together that there is nothing left to discover. Everything was already a known species or was discovered or manufactured by Dr. Lullah. However, at the same time, Chip - complete with bird caller in his mouth - has been stumbling around and getting into situations that make him look more and more like a big bird. Like getting covered in sticky goop that causes leaves to stick to him (a la feathers) when he falls into a nearby bush. Other plant life gets attached to his feet to make them look like the webbed feet of a duck and so on and so forth.
Pliny, feeling bad that Thurst hasn’t been able to make a discovery that he can claim, discovers Chip wandering around looking like this with Thurst calling out this strange new bird creature. Though Pliny knows that this is clearly Chip, a human boy, she lets Thurst have it and they conduct the discovery process together. She is excited to be his apprentice, taking notes and conducting the study, until the last moments of it. That’s when Thurst traps Chip and says he has to do what every naturalist does - he has to kill him and eat him to discover what this new creature tastes like. That’s when Pliny realizes that’s why every species that Thurst discovered, according to her guide, has gone extinct. Because he was eating all of them!
Well, she can’t let him eat Chip, and despite her best efforts Thurst gets away on his rickety old boat and takes Chip with him. Pliny runs to the lab to get Lullah’s permission to take a boat - but it seems Lullah is busy and doesn’t particular care what Pliny is up to - thus allowing her to take the boat.
She gets to the Thurst and Chip and after an old-timey and kind of disgusting battle with this bog-goo filled man, she saves the day and reveals Chip as a human boy once again. And, there are some bog-goo filled eggs that were under Chip (in bird form) of the one species that Pliny had always wanted to see. So win, kind of win, right?
This episode of StuGo is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW website. You can also catch it and other episodes when they arrive on Disney+ this Spring.