"The Belly of the Beast" is an episode of Phineas and Ferb.
Synopsis[]
For Harbor Days Festival, Phineas and Ferb celebrate by creating a mechanical version of the historical elusive shark of Danville Harbor. Seeing what the boys are up to, Candace enlists some help to capture the mysterious shark. Meanwhile, Dr. Doofenshmirtz invents the 'Salt Water Taffy-inator' to give cavities to every kid in the Tri-State Area.
Plot[]
The Flynn-Fletcher family is at the Danville Harbor, in 1700s era apparel for the Harbor Day festival. According to the song the "sailors" sing, Harbor Day is the anniversary of the day in the 1700s that the inhabitants of Danville drove out a giant shark that had terrorized them by eating teachers and politicians. There is a reenactment of this every year at the festival. Buford and Baljeet are dressed like a shark. Upon seeing how poorly prepared the reenactment is, Phineas decides what he and Ferb are going to do for the day.
While the Flynn-Fletcher family watch the festival, Perry goes off to his lair, which is flooded because of the plumbing backing up, and is told his mission. Meanwhile, Candace and Stacy anticipate how poor the reenactment will be when they see a large mechanical shark which had been built by Phineas and Ferb being lowered into the water by two helicopters. Candace, seeing an opportunity to try and bust her brothers again takes Stacy with her and gets into a boat with Captain Squint to chase the giant robot shark (which is controlled from inside by Ferb in a wired shark suit).
Meanwhile, Perry finds Doofenshmirtz in a crab boat, planning to make saltwater taffy in the sea to give all the children in the Tri-State Area tooth decay. When he arrives on the boat, Doofenshmirtz throws him into the storage with the crabs. The chase between Candace, Captain Squint and Stacy and Phineas and Ferb heats up. Phineas and Ferb, not seeing it's Candace and believing that the reenactment has begun, decide to run from them.
Perry manages to escape and gets to Doofenshmirtz's Saltwater Taffy-inator. They begin to fight physically, as usual, but get stuck in the taffy. Phineas and Ferb's robot shark swallows Captain Squint, who the boys offer cheese and sausage (which he had used as bait). However, he declines and remarks that he'd expected the inside of a shark to look more "stomachy."
Candace and Stacy are left alone on the boat. Candace, with her last shred of patience now gone, assumes control as captain and maneuvers the boat to seize custody of the shark. She launches a number of toilet plunger "harpoons" at the shark, catching hold of it and starts pulling the shark towards the shore. Phineas, still under the impression that they're conducting a reenactment, switches to full power, extending the shark's mechanical body to its full capacity and starts pulling the other way.
Doofenshmirtz and Perry are still stuck in the Taffy-inator, which is causing large waves on the water surface and making Candace's attempts at catching the shark difficult. Stacy manages to launch several more toilet plungers at the shark, one of which is tied to Candace's leg and pulls her towards the shark. She is entangled to the shark's hull for the duration of the struggle. A large wave pushes the shark ashore and the captain disembarks from it, thanking Phineas and Ferb for the new rocket-propelled leg they built. He leaves quickly.
When Candace tries to get Linda's attention, the Taffy-inator breaks, lashing out a long strip of taffy, which pulls the shark away, leaving Candace on the ground with seaweed in her hair. Linda removes starfish from her eyes and only sees Buford and Baljeet dressed as the shark. Candace tries to tell her it isn't what she meant, and Linda says it never is. She then leads the kids away for some blood pudding, and Candace is left sad and tired. Meanwhile, Perry escapes the taffy and leaving Dr. Doofenshmirtz and the machine to get crushed by the mechanical shark.
Cast[]
- Vincent Martella as Phineas
- Ashley Tisdale as Candace
- Thomas Sangster as Ferb
- Caroline Rhea as Mom
- Dan Povenmire as Dr. Doofenshmirtz
- Jeff "Swampy" Marsh as Major Monogram
- Richard O'Brien as Dad
- Dee Bradley Baker as Perry
- Kelly Hu as Stacy
- Maulik Pancholy as Baljeet
- Bobby Gaylor as Buford
- Nick Frost as Captain Squint
Songs[]
Goofs[]
- The captain's black eye switched when he, Candace and Stacy were walking onto the ship, also both of the his eyes were opened when he saw the mechanical shark jump out of the water. However this could also just simply that both his eyes are fully working and he just wears the eye-patch for show, which is very possible considering his style of storytelling.
- When Candace, Stacy and Captain Squint leaves the harbor on the ship, the top mast disappears.
- In some scenes throughout the episode, the mechanical shark's eyes turn black.
- After Doofenshmirtz's evil laugh, he wiped away the fog on the inside of his helmet from the outside.
- While the captain is talking to a random kid before Candace, the walkway behind him is short and leads to the ship behind him. When Candace is starting to push him with Stacy behind her, it appears to be the same one but the walkway has changed and became very long, appearing to go over all the ships before arriving at his ship.
- In the scene, in which Ferb controls the whale in such way that Captain Squint's ship is driven off by waves, and when Phineas looks at it and appreciates Ferb, his bigger eye is facing the audience.
- When Captain Kidd is swallowed by the Shark, he doesn't have a peg leg, and when he stands up, he does. Also, his boot came off when he was swallowed, so his foot was bare, but in the scene where the shark is on shore, he has his boot back on.
- When Candace becomes captain, at Stacy's point of view, the plunger Candace is holding is behind the sail but when it switches to Candace's point of view it is in front of the sail.
- After the shark is brought to shore, Stacy has mysteriously disappeared.
Trivia[]
- The episode is a parody of Moby Dick. Candace's scream "From Danville Harbor I stab at thee; for the sake of busting I spit my last spit at thee!" parodies the famous "From @#!*% 's heart I stab at thee; for the sake of hate I spit my last breath at thee!" from the classic novel. (Candace has spit on the plunger so it will stick to the shark better.) Also, the name of Captain Squint's ship is the Pea-quad. In the novel, the ship is the Pequod.
- Phineas says "We're gonna need a bigger shark", and Stacy says, "We're going to need a bigger captain", both parodies of the famous line "You're gonna need a bigger boat." from Jaws. The whole catching process of the shark is also from Jaws, only with rubber ducks instead of barrels, and even the boat resembles the Orca from the film. And finally, the shark leaps out of the water and lands on the boat, thereby swallowing the captain, similar to how the shark from Jaws kills Quint. Also, the commercial has the theme of Jaws.
- Among the list of infractions committed by the shark, one is "Tossing Timmy down the well." This is the stereotypical problem associated with the show Lassie, although it never actually happened.
- Given the size of the Danville Shark, it is possible that it was a Megalodon, a prehistoric shark known to be approximately 75 feet in length. However, Megalodons have been extinct for 3.6 million years, but this episode suggests that in this reality, some may have survived.
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