"The Currency of Doubt" is the fourteenth episode of Fillmore!, and the first episode of the second season. It originally aired on ABC Kids on September 20, 2003.
Summary[]
Tina and Toby are the stars of the school at both dancing and smoit-collecting. Smoits are tokens found on dairy bars and packets of chips used to buy basically anything a kid could want once enough of them are saved up. The smoit stash goes missing, and Fillmore and Ingrid go undercover in X's steamy underground casino scene. They discover Toby's gambling debts, and he becomes the prime suspect, which destroys his dance partnership with Tina. Case closed - or is it? Meanwhile, Fillmore is having a little too much trouble obsessing over his damaged sash (that is, until it dissolves in a vat of chili).
Parodied crimes: Theft and illegal gambling
Plot[]
Act One: A Dance Of Deceit[]
Tina and Toby, the school's best dancing couple mentored by student dancing expert Natasha who retired after a leg injury, discover their massive collection of ten thousand "Smoits" saved over a year have been stolen from their locker. The Safety Patrol investigates and discovers the thief knew the locker combo, which was only known by Toby, Tina, and Natash, who is indifferent to the theft, more concerned about Toby and Tina's performance in an upcoming competition. Fillmore and Ingrid talk to a delinquent informant named Paulie who reveals Smoits are promotion tokens which come with snacks and can be used to by all kinds of things if enough are saved up, but most blow through them quickly and some become desperate enough to try to win more at gambling tables. Paulie leads them to an underground casino and reveals Toby goes there often. Meanwhile, Fillmore struggles with his old sash falling apart. Ingrid and Fillmore go undercover as associates of gambler Ken Himmelman and learn from the casino's operator Johnny Neveda that Toby is deep in debt. However, their cover is blown when Ken comes in and exposes their ruse.
Act Two: A Stolen Trust[]
Ingrid and Fillmore make a successful escape and suspecting Toby of stealing the Smoits to cover his loses since he knew the locker combo. While waiting to talk to Toby, Ingrid and Fillmore learn from Natasha that her dance career ended when her former partner dropped her and injured her leg. When they talk to Toby about his debts, Tina is outraged he was gambling behind her back. Toby claims that he was home sick at that the time of the theft, but when no one can prove his alibi, Tina quits being his partner. Tina searches for a new dance partner and Toby confronts Fillmore for ruining his life by exposing his gambling. Fillmore reminds him the evidence points to him, but Toby insists he was framed, pointing out he still hasn't paid off his debts and is stuck waiting tables for Johnny until he does. This convinces Fillmore and Ingrid to reopen the investigate and discovers someone replaced Toby's lunch of hard-boiled eggs with ones made from cheese before the theft. Eating the cheese eggs made Toby sick since he's lactose intolerant and kept him out of the studio on the day of the theft, proving he was set up. With Toby's innocence proven, Fillmore talks to Tina on his behalf while she's holding auditions for a new partner, but she is still upset he was lying to her even if he didn't steal their Smoits. During the audition, Natasha angrily chases out an auditioning student named Larry Dewulf, who was her former partner who dropped her. Tina also reveals that Natasha's leg has healed and she and Larry were the favored to win the competition, but she still can't dance because of a mental block from her grudge against Larry, and she tries to mess up his career ever chance she gets. Fillmore suggests Tina forgive Toby or she will end up bitter like Natasha. Suspecting Larry may have a motive for revenge against Natasha's harassment by sabotaging her students, Fillmore and Ingrid investigate him. When his sash falls apart again, Fillmore takes it to the school seamstress for repair and finds she is also making a dress for a student dancer, believed to be Tina. Ingird and Fillmore head to the shop that makes the cheese eggs that were given to Toby, but a disguised acrobat suddenly topples a stack of small crates onto them.
Act Three: A Bitter Betrayal My Sweet[]
The acrobat's escapes after their sabotage stalls long enough for the store to close, but Ingrid still manages to convince the store owner to talk. The store owner reveals cheese eggs are a British custom given as rewards to students for good grades. On the way to Larry's house, they see Paulie's family is about to move out of town and bid him farewell, but he gets a scheming look on his face when they leave. When the two reach Larry's house, they talk to his Anglophile mother and learn his real name is Lancelot and he's at the dance competition. Connecting Lancelot's British influenced upbringing to the cheese eggs, Fillmore and Ingrid head to the dance competition/chili cook off, where Tina is struggling with her new partner, Danny. There, Tina tells them Lancelot has been there all day, so he couldn't have been the acrobat who stalled them. However, when Fillmore sees Tina practicing a move with Danny similar to the one the acrobat used to escape and not wearing the dress the seamstress was working on, which according to Tina coordinates to those with blond hair like Natasha, he realizes Natasha is a suspect since her dancing block was only mental and that she and Lancelot were the favored to win before her accident; Natasha and Lancelot got back together and set up Toby to keep him and Tina from winning. They interrupt Natasha and Lancelot's performance and publicly reveal that by the time Natasha forgave Lancelot so they could compete, Toby and Tina were already trained too well for them to beat, so they conspired to split them up. Lancelot replaced Toby's eggs with the cheese eggs to make him sick so Natasha, who knew the locker combination, could steal the Smoits and set it up so it looked like Toby took them to pay his gambling debts, then all they all had to do was act like they were still split until the competition. Ingrid catches Lancelot while Fillmore chases after Natasha, having his sash dissolved in a vat of chili in the process. Natasha tries to escape with the Smoits and blames Fillmore for ruining everything, though Fillmore points out that it was her own refusal to forgive Lancelot that ruined her career. Suddenly, Paulie comes in and steals the Smoits for himself plans to escape with his family's move, but Tina intercepts him and, deciding the Smoits have been nothing but trouble, scatters them to the wind. She then runs off and reconciles with Toby while Fillmore decides to get a new sash.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- This episode premiered the same day as the premiere of Lilo & Stitch: The Series.
