"Hiya Henry" is the first segment of the twenty-fourth episode of Big City Greens.
Synopsis[]
Tilly tries ventriloquism for the Big Coffee open mic night with a new dummy named Henry. Everyone loves the act except for Cricket who is horrified by Henry's wooden appearance and believes the doll is evil. He decides to take matters into his own hands, but does not want to hurt Tilly's feelings.
Plot[]
While working at Big Coffee, Cricket notices that Gloria is putting up flyers for Big Coffee's open mic night. She explains to him about the event and Cricket gets excited about the idea of performing a talent of some kind. He convinces Remy to join him as his assistant and Tilly to join the show. Tilly is confused as she is unsure if she even has a talent of any kind, but Cricket gets her to agree as it would be fun. Back at home, Tilly digs through the garage for anything that catches her interest. She gives up, but then notices a trunk in the corner and opens it to find an old fashioned ventriloquist dummy. She names it Henry and shows him off to the family. While Remy, Bill and Gramma Alice find "Henry" hilarious, Cricket is horrified by its appearance. He tries to tell everyone of his concern, but everyone believes that he is jealous of Tilly's talent.
Cricket has trouble sleeping at night as he feels that Henry is watching him and trying to distract him from the stunt he will perform tomorrow. When he tosses a pillow at him, Tilly assumes that he is trying to make him comfortable and has Henry "sleep" with Cricket. He has a nightmare that a monstrous Henry has turned his whole family into dummies including himself and awakens believing that the dummy has evil intent. Not wanting to hurt Tilly's feelings, he takes Henry into the backyard and digs a grave for him hoping that Henry will just "die".
The next day at open mic night, Tilly cannot find Henry, but Cricket tells her not to worry. After Gloria's bizarre poem, Cricket attempts to perform his stunt: jumping over the audience and hitting a target with a stick (Remy could not find a samurai sword). To his shock, Tilly finds Henry (Phoenix happened to dig him out in the yard) and begins performing her routine with him. Everyone is laughing except for Cricket who is horrified. Fed up, he jumps up on stage and destroys Henry in front of the whole audience, much to everyone's shock and Tilly's disappointment. He finally comes clean about his hatred of Henry and how he did not want to hurt Tilly who is nevertheless saddened that her act is in shambles and he hurt her feelings anyway without even telling her. Gloria announces the end of open-mic, but since Tilly hasn't finished her act as she has no dummy to speak of, Cricket then decides to make up for what he did by becoming her dummy and they carry on the routine together to the applause of everyone.
Cast[]
- Chris Houghton as Cricket Green
- Marieve Herington as Tilly Green / Henry
- Bob Joles as Bill Green
- Artemis Pebdani as Gramma Alice
- Anna Akana as Gloria Sato / Miriam Cho
- Zeno Robinson as Remy Remington
- Wendi McLendon-Covey as Nancy Green
Trivia[]
- Cricket is revealed to have automophobia, the fear of ventriloquist dummies.
- When Tilly redresses Henry, he resembles Slappy from the Goosebumps television adaptation.
- Gloria is shown to be interested in beat poetry.
- Oddly enough, we never actually see Nancy's reaction to Henry even when she sees Tilly start to perform with him.
- Hiya Henry is a parody of Howdy Doody.
- When the Greens turn into dummies in Cricket's nightmare, Cricket's eyes are revealed to be blue, Gramma's are brown, and Tilly's are green, like Bill's.
- The episode appears to be a reverse of the roles in "Barry Cuda". In that episode, Cricket finds something that he loves, but annoys the family; in this episode, Tilly finds something that the family loves, but annoys Cricket.
- Moral: It's important to tell someone if something is making you uncomfortable.