The episode marks the first appearance of Principal Wartz. However, he is only described as "The Principal."
This is the first episode to reveal Curly's erratic personality.
We learn that Eugene's last name is Horowitz and Stinky's last name is Peterson.
We also learn that Eugene was banned from Wanky-Land the preceding Fall before the episode aired because of a Thanksgiving Day parade accident he caused.
We learn that Eugene wears eyeglasses, although not regularly.
This is the first time that Harold calls Helga "Madam Fortress Mommy".
There's a Yahoo Soda machine in the school cafeteria.
As the jury kids start deliberating in the library the clock says its just past 3:30 P.M. and shows around 4:00 P.M. when they end.
Airing[]
When this episode originally aired, it did not have any closed-captioning. Some time in 2002 or 2003, closed-captioning was added to subsequent airings by the WGBH Educational Foundation. As a result, all dialogue captions in this episode are in lowercase, similar to the Season 5 episodes, compared to other Season 1 episodes using all-uppercase dialogue captions.
Cultural References[]
This episode is a spoof of the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men.
The plot of the episode is very similar to that of an actual criminal trial.
Arnold plays a similar role to that of Juror No. 8, who decides to challenge the otherwise unanimous verdict.
Helga plays a similar role to that of Juror No. 3, who is stubbornly convinced the accused is guilty and antagonizes Arnold constantly.
Helga also has tickets to a sporting event like Juror No. 7. In the original film, it was a baseball game, in this episode, it is a wrestling event called "WrestleMania".
Arnold's reveal of the pencil is similar to Juror No. 8's reveal of the so-called "one-of-a-kind" knife. Both revelations involved getting the other juror's attention by stabbing a table, though unlike the knife, the pencil would be protected by a candy bar.
Stinky plays a Southern-accent defense lawyer role a la Atticus Finch in 1962 film To Kill A Mockingbird.
WrestleMania just so happens to be the name of the WWF/WWE's most prominent annual pay-per-view event. Helga herself suggests that the WrestleMania she is attending is prominent, stating that it features a "not everyday" wrestling match between Bloated Bill and Haystacks Calhoun.
Haystacks Calhoun is in fact the name of a real life professional wrestler. However, he died seven years before the episode aired and had retired from professional wrestling by the time WrestleMania premiered in 1985.
The real upcoming Wrestlemania 13 was headlined by a title match between The Undertaker, whose wrestling gimmick was death-themed, and Sycho Sid, a bloated wrestler from then-U.S. President Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas.
Continuity[]
In a later episode, "Eugene Goes Bad," Eugene does actually pull the school fire alarm.
Story Analysis[]
Helga states that she can help Harold, who is choking on banana, because she is a "certified CPU". CPU usually stands for Central Processing Unit. Presumably, she meant CPR, which stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, though even this does not make sense.
In a clever bit of foreshadowing, in the opening shot of Harold's flashback, you can see Curly smiling sinisterly between the lockers and the firehose.
When the fire alarm goes off at P.S. 118, it's the same bell used as the school bell. While bells were indeed often used as fire alarms back in the past (as P.S. 118 was built in 1932), usually in schools the fire alarm bells would be different from the school bells (usually with larger and louder gongs, sometimes in a certain coding pattern instead of ringing continuously), to sound distinctive from each other. Also bells are rarely used as fire alarms in modern days, many having been replaced with modern horn/strobe units or voice-evacuation systems.
The Hillwood fire department does not arrive at P.S. 118 due to the false fire alarm. It's likely P.S. 118's fire alarm system is so old it isn't tied into a central alarm station that would automatically contact the fire department.
All three of them go out of their way to prove that their fellow peers or clients they didn't commit the crime in question when the odds of innocence are stacked against them.
Eventually, the true culprit is exposed and the defendant is found innocent.
Morals[]
Admit your mistakes and wrongdoings instead of letting someone else take the blame for them.
