"Bad Influence(r)" is the second episode of the Disney+ animated series, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. It premiered on February 23, 2022 on Disney+ and aired on January 7, 2023 on Disney Channel.
Synopsis[]
Frustrated by her friends' obsession with a makeup influencer, Penny becomes an influencer herself but the fame quickly goes to her head.
Plot[]
After school, Maya showed Penny and her friends a social media influencer who goes by the name "Makeup Boy", and he is trending with many followers. The girls are all interested and obsessed with Makeup Boy, except for Penny, who sees through his salesman-like tactics. Penny becomes jealous that she only had two followers: Her own parents. Then her friends ditched her with the 20 dollars that they took from her to buy Makeup Boy's products.
Penny comes back home outraged with her jealousy. After Oscar told Penny the story of how he dressed up as Prince (in song), Suga Mama appeared and she is also obsessed with Makeup Boy. Later, Penny is in charge of cleaning Suga Mama's dentures, which gives her an idea on how to prove a point regarding Makeup Boy's tactics. She creates a webseries called "Growing Up Proud", where she records a video to demonstrate how hard it is to clean Suga Mama's dentures. Later that night, a bunch of packages of the denture mouth wash arrived at the house much to Oscar's shock. However, Penny's video went viral and she now have about 10,000 followers, which makes her more excited that she may overpass Makeup Boy. But, on the next day, her friends reminded her that Makeup Boy has 50,000 followers, and even LaCienega pointed out that Penny is the only one who didn't spend money on Makeup Boy. Suddenly, the Gross Sisters appeared and they "ask" Penny to play their track on her next video. Penny does so, and minutes later, her next video went viral. Then, she keeps her series up with more videos, such as "Two Babies, One Diaper" and "Penny wearing Suga Mama's jeans", which gives Penny a check of 100,000,000 dollars and Oscar was losing it.
The following day, Penny finds her friends at the mall where they meet Makeup Boy in person. After Penny points out that he is once again using his sleazy tactics, Makeup Boy publicly insulted her by calling her "basic", and everyone, including her friends, is laughing at her. Having about enough of him, Penny creates a video to expose Makeup Boy and his sleazy tactics, officially cancelling him and ruining his career. Penny now has the power to control people's views. LaCienega, however, is not happy about the way Penny did to Makeup Boy and insulted her. Penny then made another video to cancel LaCienega and ruin her life as well. When Penny got back home, Suga Mama was disappointed at her when she reminded her that she has been skipping school for days. But after being grounded by Suga Mama, Penny made a "tragic" video to make the followers believe that Suga Mama needs help losing her pounds. Soon after, Dr. Payne arrived to take Suga Mama to his boot camp, "No Payne, No Gain", with the help of Bufferina. Oscar became very happy about Suga Mama being taken away, and he goes too far by sending Puff to the boot camp with her. The next day, Principal Hightower was arrested due to Penny's lust for power, and her friends are now afraid of Penny (including LaCienega who is inside her locker in fear), except for Maya, who pointed out that Penny is a sell-out. As Penny, Dijonay, and Zoey leave school, Maya noticed that live video from Oscar, and she borrowed KG's drone to expose Penny once and for all. The next morning, Penny wakes up and she suddenly lost her followers. As she arrived in school, Principal Hightower came back and informed Penny that she got detention every day for the next year. Maya then told Penny that she created her own video called "Maya's $ell-Out List", where Penny became the number 1 sell-out after she recorded the video of Oscar getting payed off by Wizard Kelly. This causes Penny to lose everything as she ran off in humiliation.
As she walks back home, Penny notices that her parents are no longer her followers. Suddenly, a beagle appeared out of nowhere, and then Penny encountered Makeup Boy again, only this time he goes by his real name "Sebastian Boyle". He tells her that he has a new career to save the beagles, and one of the beagles is named "Sophie". Sebastian then thanked Penny for bringing him back to his roots as he realized that he was "seduced by the juice". Back at the Proud Family's house, Trudy reminds Oscar that they lost everything in their house, but Oscar tells her that he has saved all of the cash from Wizard Kelly to his new bank account, only to find out that Oscar lost all of the money from his account, thus being outwitted by Wizard Kelly again. In spite of that, Oscar is still happy that Suga Mama is gone, but his celebration was short lived as Suga Mama and Puff came back home buffed from the boot camp. As they began to punish Oscar, Penny returned home and apologized to Suga Mama for her actions. Trudy and Suga Mama easily forgave Penny, and Suga Mama told her that she could do no wrong. As for Oscar, that's another story, as she and Puff continue to punish him for sending them away.
Cast[]
- Kyla Pratt as Penny Proud
- Karen Malina White as Dijonay Jones
- Bresha Webb as CeCe Proud
- Aiden Dodson as BeBe Proud
- Jo Marie Payton as Suga Mama
- Paula Jai Parker as Trudy Proud
- Tommy Davidson as Oscar Proud
- Soleil Moon Frye as Zoey Howzer
- Alisa Reyes as LaCienega Boulevardez
- Keke Palmer as Maya Leibowitz-Jenkins
- Alvaro Gutierrez as Papi Boulevardez
- Raquel Lee as The Gross Sisters
- Bretman Rock as Makeup Boy/Sebastian Boyd
- Aries Spears as Wizard Kelly
- Marcus T. Paulk as Myron Lewinski
- Patricia Belcher as Principal Hightower
- Kevin Michael Richardson as Papi Laugh, Doctor Payne
- Cree Summer as Bufferina, Rochelle, Fan
- Carlos Alazraqui as Puff
Songs[]
- "When Doves Cry" by Prince
- "Hands Up Cash Out" by The Gross Sisters
- "Juice" by Lizzo
Trivia[]
- Morals:
- Use your platform to spread positivity, not to cancel others nor to destroy people’s lives.
- Fame isn't everything.
- Makeup Boy is a obvious reference to online influencers like James Charles.
- This episode implies that the series takes place in the same universe as The Boondocks as Maya references Uncle Ruckus.
- Oscar sings a version of Prince's "When Doves Cry" in a fantasy sequence.
- There is an episode of Big City Greens with a similar title and premise "Bad Influencer".
- In a flashback, Oscar is dressed like Will Smith from the first episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
- This is the second time Suga Mama undergoes one of Dr. Payne’s weight loss programs after "Wedding Bell Blues".
- This episode has somewhat more adult humor than its original incarnation. Right after the theme song, as Penny is walking into her house, Trudy and Oscar are heard giggling and kissing, with Trudy seductively saying Oscar's name, and the couple seen with messy hair and wearing each other's clothes all wrinkled. These heavily imply that Oscar and Trudy were having sexual intercourse.
Gallery[]
Concept art[]
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External links[]
