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Gets Lost in Space
For Lunch
Inside Ralphie

"As I always say: 'No guts, no digestion!'"
Ms. Frizzle

For Lunch (Digestion) is the second episode of the first season of The Magic School Bus. It first released on PBS stations in the USA on September 17, 1994.

Plot[]

In the opening scene of Walkerville Elementary, Arnold is seen chewing gum, trying to break the school's gum chewing record, in order to win two free tickets to a ride called Action Mountain, the one of Wanda's dreams. Dorothy Ann, is unimpressed, as she is more focused on an assignment regarding digestion, while the other students wonder why Arnold would be interested in such a ride. After Arnold states that he is just being helpful, Ms. Frizzle suddenly enters the classroom while playing a tug-of-war game with Liz. Liz lets the other end go, the rope slithers into the skeleton, and inflates into a model digestive system.

Ms. Frizzle gives the class an encouraging statement stating "no guts, no digestion!" Wanda adopts this phrase on her anticipation to get the tickets on Arnold winning the record contest, but disrupts his chew by slapping his back. Upon realizing that this careless action resulted in him accidentally swallowing the gum, she is deeply disappointed but sincerely forgives him. At that moment, Ms. Frizzle announces a field trip which excites Wanda but brings Arnold into further dismay.

As the class boards the bus, an anxious Arnold states that he is very uncomfortable after accidentally ruining Wanda's plans and fears that he could ruin the field trip. Ms. Frizzle decides to allow him to volunteer to be left out of the field trip, with Liz as his substitute teacher. He happily agrees, yet he develops a suspicion due to the fact that this has never happened before.

Arnold turns away and opens a bag of Cheezie Weezies to eat. What he does not know is that the bus has magically shrunk in size and is heading his way. It blends in with the Cheezie Weezies, and is thrown into his mouth it in a handful. Ms. Frizzle then drives across his tongue, where the class observes "the pink pavement", "dripping walls", and the "humongo white things", but are all disgusted upon realizing that they are in a person's mouth. They become even more stunned when Ms. Frizzle presents them with a digestive diagram, revealing that the body that they are entering is Arnold's.

After finishing the Cheezie Weezies, Arnold heads back inside the classroom but has a feeling of emptiness in it. Clueless of where his classmates' have gone, he remarks that now he will no longer be an obstacle for them. He notices a jar of olives, picks one out, and chews it, still not knowing that his classmates, observing the first step of digestion, are still in his mouth (grinding food into smaller particles). Swallowing the chewed-up olive and Cheezie Weezies, he takes the bus along with it.

The bus goes down Arnold's throat, into his esophagus (misheard by Carlos as "The asparagus"), which automatically pushes food through it and to and down into his stomach, where the bus is directly brought to next. While it begins sailing on the surface of the stomach acid and food particles in there, Arnold has already finished consuming the entire jar of olives, thinking of a plan to break the school's olive eating record and reclaiming Wanda's respect. He even fantasizes about doing so, earning a trophy, and Wanda hugging him, his hope is short-lived when Liz tosses the school's record book to him, showing that the highest record was 978 olives - too long a way to go.

While Arnold looks through the book for other unbroken school records, his stomach muscles are beginning to contract, generating turbulence for the bus, still floating around. The class also discovers the wad of gum he swallowed earlier, which they initially mistake for a giant rock. They also get a feeling that the bus is dissolving, and their fear is confirmed after Ms. Frizzle calmly states that it's in the presence of doing so (stomach acid). The film then jumps to a cut scene, where Dorothy Ann presents a flow chart presentation for the digestion they've endured, while in industrial attire at a "digesting" enterprise she says is called United Digestion.

The scene then cuts back to the present, where Wanda is amazed by what she has witnessed from Arnold's digestive system and remarks that he "doesn't mess around when it comes to digestion". When Ms. Frizzle states that they had not seen anything yet, hearing that causes more nausea for Ralphie, still sickened from the sight of the esophagus.

Outside, Arnold miserably fails to break the record of placing the most pens in a shirt pocket one by one, as it inevitably expands and bursts out.

Meanwhile, the bus transforms into a submarine and enters Arnold's small intestine, along with the food remnants and the undigested gum, an object in which Ms. Frizzle states is too tough to be broken down. Scuba diving in the small intestine, the class observes countless numbers of "rubber cactus-like things", known as villi, absorbing the digested food and Tim wonders where it goes from there. The scene jumps to the continued flow chart scene. Dorothy Ann narrates that after nutrients are sucked out of the digestive tract and sent into the bloodstream (portrayed as a line of trucks), which then transports them system wide, and munches a carrot after finishing her explanation. The scene cuts back to the class realizing the whole digestive, but their attention is disrupted after Wanda gets separated from them and caught on the gum that is rolling away.

Outside, Arnold fails again at another attempt to break a school record by napping, waking up two minutes and four seconds short, deciding that he cannot break this record since his stomach wakes him by growling. As the class tries to rescue Wanda, they follow the food waste into Arnold's large intestine, where the atmosphere possesses a dry, but rather, odorous environment, to which Ralphie moans "If the small intestine was 'Scuba World', the large intestine is 'Smell World'!" Carlos, using a microphone from the Magic School Bus, is calling for Wanda. They heard a scream, which means Wanda is in trouble and they go rescue her. As they move on in search of Wanda, food particles surrounding them get drier and drier as they progress deeper, with Ralphie imagining her all wrinkled, to which the girls call out "Ralphie!" in annoyance. When they finally catch up with her, she and the gum are both hanging precariously on a ledge. Struggling to keep her balance, she loses it and falls off, but is saved after one of her feet attaches to a strand, which acts like a bungee cord, and propels her back up and to the bus where Carlos grabs her and pulls her back in. She then declares Arnold's digestive system is the most thrilling ride in the world.

When Ms. Frizzle states that the trip is not over yet, explaining that they just need to "join the rest of the waste products" to finish the trip. With the shocked and disgusted class realizing what that really means and refusing to do so, Wanda and Tim plan to exit Arnold's body by going back the way they came.

By this time, an apparently hungry Arnold is anxiously digging through a locker, stating his inability to break the lunch eating record when he is unable to find his own. However, reaching into Ralphie's, he manages to obtain a Mallow Blaster with delight.

Meanwhile, the class is busily driving the bus back through the intestines and up into the stomach, but they are troubled upon realizing the difficulty of re-entering the esophagus. Keesha checks the time, adding that it is almost lunchtime and that if Arnold eats, it would rain down on them. While they are frustrated, Arnold is also in a state of unease; knowing that breaking the lunch eating record will help him regain Wanda's respect for him, but he will also anger Ralphie by stealing his lunch. Suddenly, a slow, misty voice call his name the instant he is about to take a bite of Ralphie's Mallow Blaster. The voice claiming to be his "conscience", is actually Wanda speaking on over the bus' intercom system. She then coaxes him into drinking the bottle of seltzer in her lunch, which makes him hesitate at first and become suspicious of his "conscience". Wanda, on a short fuse, snaps at him to just drink it, and seeking this as another opportunity to break a school record, he does so after telling Liz to time him.

When the seltzer enters Arnold's stomach, the class begins rocking the bus back and forth to create a giant gas bubble in the acid. One forms, which carries the bus afloat and up the esophagus. Arnold loudly belches, without knowing that the bus is propelled out of his mouth by the force. He is yet again disappointed when Liz shakes her head meaning that he failed to break the seltzer drinking record. His disappointment is interrupted when Ms. Frizzle and his classmates return to the classroom, carrying a tray of lunch for him.

While Arnold eats his lunch, Wanda presents him with a trophy for "breaking the record for being the best field trip ever". He asks his classmates where they went and then realizes that they had literally gone inside him. Unsettled at this, he declares that in the future, he'll always participate in all field trips. But his courage is once again thwarted upon realizing their next destination, while his classmates laugh out loud.

Producer Says[]

The female producer gets a call from a boy who points out a number of mistakes, such as no food goes through the body that quickly, to which the producer argues that although it actually takes about 10 hours for it to digest, the network wouldn't have accepted it. When asked about the light inside the body, the producer adds that doing the radio show for the bus would have been much cheaper. The boy then adds that the stomach doesn't break everything down. The small intestine does just that as well besides absorbing food, which is something the episode left out. He also adds that the digestive system sometimes works in reverse, such as when you throw up, and as he complains about the ride through the human body not being completed since it didn't make its way out with the waste products, the producer argues that it would have been a rather unsettling sight to show on daytime television. The boy also complains about Wanda using the bubble gum as a bungee cord, and when he hears the sound of Liz doing so, the producer states that it was just Liz "stretching the truth".

Professor Frizzle's outfit[]

In this episode, Professor Frizzle's dress is lavender depicting images of different types of food which also carries over to the scuba outfit she wears while she and the class travel through Arnold's intestines. At the end of the episode, Professor Frizzle wears a different outfit, this time light blue and featuring volcanoes and dinosaurs (foreshadowing Season 2).

Bus forms[]

  • Submarine
  • Amphibious vehicle

Trivia[]

  • Like the computer game CD-ROM cover "explores the human body", on the VHS cover, Arnold is present, & inside the bus, when he is the one they are supposed to be inside of.
  • In English, Keesha compares crashing into Arnold's gum to the Pilgrims crashing into Plymouth Rock, while in German and the MiniMax Polish dub, she instead mentions the sinking of the Titanic, comparing the gum to the iceberg and the Bus to the Titanic.
  • This is the first time when Arnold appears without Janet.
  • This is the first episode to use PBS system cues, as "Gets Lost in Space" never used any. The system cue is the infamous 1993 "This is PBS" ident from the P-Pals era of PBS Kids (then PTV Park), which would be used until Season 4's "Makes a Stink," where it is replaced with the E/I balloon variant of the logo.
  • Tim's drawing of Arnold's digestive system includes the large intestine before the class even visits or knows about it.
  • On Discovery Education, its internal name is MSB_Lunch.
  • It and All Dried Up both have one line of text on their title cards.
  • This is the first episode in the series that the class says "Ralphie!" in annoyance other than Carlos.
  • This is the tenth episode in the PAL order, which uses the production order.
  • Arnold breaks the fourth wall in the end when he declares that he is willing to participate in all the following field trips, but he is discouraged upon seeing the dinosaur on the back of Ms. Frizzle's dress, to which he says, "...starting right after the next one." However, when that happens in "The Busasaurus", he ends up going with them and becomes the hero of the field trip.
    • This also reveals that "The Busasaurus" is the next episode in chronological order.
  • Arnold swallows the bus again in "Goes Cellular."
  • In the aired/NTSC order, Phoebe talks about her old school for the first time, having not done so in "Gets Lost in Space".
  • Mr. Junkett would point out the damage to the Bus's paint caused by Arnold's stomach acid in the next season's episode, "Revving Up".
  • This is the second episode to air after the pilot episode dating back in September 17, 1994. It also reveals that the original series aired during the weekends.
  • This is one of few episodes in which Carlos gets a universally positive reaction to one of his puns or jokes. When the bus touches down in Arnold's stomach, everyone laughs when he calls it a "belly flop".
    • Ralphie and Wanda get the receiving end of the "Carlos!" gag instead, both for inappropriate remarks. This is also the only time Wanda is subjected to the gag.
  • In the aired episode order, this is the first time that the bus shrinks.
  • In the Is This the Magic School Bus? segment, the clip in which the bus is a submarine swimming through Arnold's stomach is seen, which was never shown in or during the episode.
  • It is implied in this episode that Arnold has a crush on Wanda.
  • Amos Crawley (Arnold in Season 1) also voices the caller in the producer segment.
  • Tim is shown to be right-handed when he draws Arnold's digestive system.
  • Ralphie is shown to have motion-sickness in this episode. This was seen again in Taking Flight.
    • Ironically, the class was entering Arnold's stomach as this was happening.
  • In the Is This the Magic School Bus? segment, there is mature content when Susan Blu mentions how waste products of the body are expelled through the anus and that it would be controversial if it were shown on "daytime television".
  • This marks the first time Arnold didn’t say his catchphrase "I knew should’ve stayed home today".
  • In the Is This the Magic School Bus? segment, the female producer fills in for the producer for the first time.

Goofs[]

IMG 3364

Arnold inside of himself

  • Despite the fact that the bus is inside Arnold's body, Arnold is seen riding in the back twice. This is the most well-known error in the series. A similar goof happened in "In the Arctic", "Revving Up", and "Cracks a Yolk". It might just be a dummy Arnold or an animation error.
No seatbelt

Ms. Frizzle's seatbelt is gone

  • Also, when Ms. Frizzle says "Oh, right you are, Tim!", her seatbelt is gone.
IMG 3365

During the escape from Arnold's digestive system, the kids have their normal clothes on once they reach the stomach.

Carlos error

Carlos' frames repeating

  • After Ms. Frizzle says "They're called 'Villi'", when Ralphie says "Cool! They're soaking up the food like a sponge!", Carlos' frames repeat twice.
  • When Keesha says, "Wow! What a ride!" as she takes her helmet off, her gloves flash for a second.
  • While Tim goes over Arnold's digestive system, he doesn't have his glove on.
  • When Miss Frizzle tells Tim that he's right, his gloves are yellow instead of green.
  • When Ralphie imagines Wanda as a raisin and when Phoebe asks "What are we gonna do?" to Wanda, her gloves are missing.
  • The class is in their regular clothes instead of their scuba suits during the scenes when they arrive back in Arnold's stomach.
  • When Wanda says "field trip!", she talks with Dorothy Ann's voice. Something similar happened in "Makes a Stink" and "The Battle for Rock Mountain". Maybe Dorothy Ann might have said it, but the animators had Wanda move her mouth.
  • When the bus enters the large intestine, its decals depict stars and planets instead of food.
  • Arnold strangely has a shirt pocket in this episode, even though he didn't in any other ones.
  • When Arnold realizes he needs only one more pen to break the school record for pens in a shirt pocket, the pen he is holding is green, but when he puts it in his shirt pocket, the pen is fuchsia.
  • When Phoebe looks at the raining seltzer out the window, she's in her regular clothes. In the next shot, she's back in her scuba suit.
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