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Makes a Rainbow |
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Makes a Rainbow (Color) is the seventh episode of the third season of The Magic School Bus. It first released on PBS in the United States on October 26, 1996.
Plot[]
Ralphie wonders why rainbows are always red on the outside and violet on the inside. Dorothy Ann claims the reason is because of it being the prettiest combination, but Arnold gives the correct explanation, saying that the colors come out according to the length of the light waves with red being the longest color and violet the shortest color. Carlos creates his rainbow out of flashlights and colored candy wrappers saying it will be the best, but Dorothy Ann scoffs at the idea as she does not believe colors and light to be related. Carlos demonstrates by shining the red flashlight on Dorothy Ann's rainbow painting, which he says improves it, Dorothy Ann then protests that a rainbow should look exactly like in the picture in her research book. Carlos begins to make fun of her book, criticizing its purple cover, to which she retorts that the term is violet. Their quarreling is quickly stifled by strange noises coming from Ms. Frizzle's closet. They go inside to find her playing a colorful pinball machine. She claims that she is trying to make a rainbow, but then fails. She has managed to activate all the colors, except for blue. The blue light bounces off the blue whale, but then hits the wall and disappears.
Devastated, Ms. Frizzle despairs that she will never make the rainbow. Ralphie remarks that the pinball machine is an unusual one, to which she perks up and says she built it herself with Liz's help. However she has one last chance to make the rainbow, before she loses the game machine to Mr. Ruhle, the principal.
The class quickly volunteer to assist but Dorothy Ann and Carlos still disagree on whether color or light is more important. Ms. Frizzle breaks up their argument and sends Liz and everyone, except Arnold, into the bus. Liz then shrinks it and drives it into the classroom. In the classroom, Ms. Frizzle puts Dorothy Ann and Carlos in charge of the pinball machine, much to Dorothy Ann's dismay.
The bus then shoots into the machine by turning into white light. Ms. Frizzle then explains the mechanic of the game to the class. The pinball machine has six chances --represented by six white light pulses and several plexiglass color items, which colored lights can bounce to and from to get the light into the eyes to create the rainbow, and each time, the items need to move around. Altogether, the class has six chances to make the rainbow.
When Ms. Frizzle sends the first pulse, the colors bounces around, then they hit the walls, and dissipate, except for the red light. When Keesha asks where all the colors came from, Ms. Frizzle shows the class a replay screen that shows the white light bounce off the mirror and go through the prism, thus making the colors come out. She also adds that the class must match each colored light with same colored eye and they need to bounce the light off things until it hits the right eye and scores. Suddenly, Arnold discovers that Mr. Ruhle, has made his way inside the classroom and Ms. Frizzle has Arnold distract him while she tends to the game.
To make the rainbow, the class has six chances in total. First off, they need red. So they take their first chance, successfully getting the red light through the red eye using its two plexiglass items (the tomato and red maple leaf) and a mirror. Arnold suggests to Mr. Ruhle that Ms. Frizzle is in the library and manages to lead him out of the classroom.
The class now sees that the red light keeps going. It bounces off its red items and scores into the red eye. With the first chance used up, the class now have five chances left to make the rainbow. The class watches the replay, and indeed, the red light hit the tomato, went into the red eye, and successfully made red.
For the next chance, they choose to go for colors green and orange, orange light bounces off an orange, only to have it disappear once it runs into a green shamrock. But when the green light appears, it bounces off the shamrock and the mirror to enter the green eye. Despite getting both red and green, the class now has four chances left.
Dorothy Ann then surmises that the effect only works if colored lights match the places they touch before entering the eyes. Phoebe suggests using both orange and blue in the next round. The class agrees to this and attempt to use Carlos' sweatshirt for the blue light to bounce off of. They successfully get the orange inside the orange eye. But for the blue light, Carlos, who was hesitant to participate, ducks away from the blue light as it comes towards him. So the blue light hits the yellow bus and disappears. Dorothy Ann firmly reminds Carlos that they need to use something the same color to make the light bounce.
In the library, Arnold is still trying to keep Mr. Ruhle occupied. When Arnold tells him that he missed his snack, he decides to look for Ms. Frizzle in the cafeteria. Back in the machine, the class has three more colors to go, but only two chances as well before they fail the game.
There are two chances to make the last three colors: yellow, blue, and violet. Dorothy Ann decides to use both yellow and blue at the same time. The yellow and the blue light successfully enter the eyes of their colors. The yellow light bounces off its three yellow items, then the bus, then the yellow eye, and gets yellow to make the rainbow. The blue light bounces off the blue whale, Carlos's sweater, then the blue eye, and gets blue to make the rainbow. Finally, they need the sixth and final color, which is violet. The violet light bounces off the purple grapes, it hits the mirror and then the purple grapes for a third time. And when it heads towards the bus, Dorothy Ann uses the violet cover on her book to bounce the it off. The violet light bounces off her book just in time, and into the matching eye.
Finally, the rainbow is completed, all six colors are won, and the class boards the Bus to exit the machine. That is, only to find that they are trapped inside it.
Ms. Frizzle exits the closet just as Mr. Ruhle and Arnold return to her classroom and she then makes Arnold take over the game. Arnold finds the class stuck in the machine and suggests turning the bus back into light, since that was how it entered. The class agrees to do so, but flying the bus through the prism suddenly transforms it into six bands of light, which become six buses and six of each of the children, each one a color of the rainbow.
When Dorothy Ann remembers that the prism splits white light into different colors, she surmises that the class would return to normal if they went through it in reverse. Arnold flips the buses back to the prism and they beam out of the machine and through the window. Moments later, the students return, and recollect their discovery that all the colors are made by ordinary light and the prism is what disperses them, thus creating a rainbow. By the end, they learn that Ms. Frizzle and Mr. Ruhle had a bet over the machine, but since she lit up the colors, she gets to keep it. Mr. Ruhle is disappointed, but she lets him play it all he wants. As Mr. Ruhle is playing on the machine, Dorothy Ann and Carlos make amends, with the former admitting that colors come from light and apologizes for thinking otherwise.
Trivia[]
- This is Mr. Ruhle's first appearance.
- This is one of the few times in the series that Ms. Frizzle gets upset, in this case from losing the pinball game.
- Arnold doesn't say "I knew I should have stayed home today," in this episode.
- This is the second episode to focus on the three characters, Arnold, Carlos and Dorothy Ann.
- This is the second episode where Carlos and Dorothy Ann have an argument, the first being "Blows Its Top".
- Since Dorothy Ann and Carlos are bickering over the colors and names violet and purple, her theory is considered more factual since the colors red and blue actually make violet, while the color purple despite popular belief is actually violet tinged with red, whereas likewise violet is purple tinged with blue.
- This is the only episode that hasn't been released on an NTSC DVD outside of a season set or The Complete Series.
- However, it has been released on a PAL DVD, in a standalone set.
- Ralphie calls Ms. Frizzle a "pinball wizard", a nod to the Elton John song of the same name.
- Besides mentioning a distant relative, Ms. Frizzle mentions a friend of hers named Oprah Tunity, whose name is presumably a play on the word "opportunity" and real-life talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
- One of the red surfaces in the pinball game is a maple leaf, the symbol on the Canadian flag, where this show is partially animated in.
- In the Spanish dub (United States and Latin America), Ms. Frizzle is mentioned as green instead of all blue (probably due to racism).
- This is the last episode that the class calls "Ralphie!", either in anger or annoyance.
- The plexiglass color items are:
- For Red: A red tomato and a red maple leaf
- For Orange: An orange
- For Yellow: A yellow sun, a yellow banana, and a yellow lemon
- For Green: A green shamrock
- For Blue: A blue whale and a blue shoe
- For Violet: A bunch of purple grapes
- Empire Wreckers included footage from this episode in a video analyzing the primitive digital filmmaking techniques of Attack of the Clones.
Goofs[]
- When the class is looking at the machine and Ralphie is amazed, it skips to the scene where he says "Duck!"
- When Carlos says, "Okay Ms. Frizzle, fire away!", the blue light is pink.
- When Ms. Frizzle says, "Last light in sight, it's rainbow time!", the machine looks as if the violet light already went into the violet eye.
- When Carlos says, "Dorothy Ann! It's coming right at you!", the blue color in the rainbow is out.
- This episode only lists the rainbow having only six colors, minus indigo. In reality, rainbows have seven colors, which includes indigo (the color which sits between blue and violet).
- This, however, was likely done intentionally, as the color differences between blue and indigo or indigo and violet are often seen as arbitrary. Studies of Isaac Newton's work on the color spectrum indicate that the color he referred to as "blue" should actually be referred to as "cyan", and the one he referred to as "indigo" is actually the one that should be referred to as "blue".
- The rainbow (which the class) does is actually the popular rainbow. (That is, which has red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.) The Asimov rainbow has seven (with the fifth color being indigo --the color that sits between blue and violet). The Isaac Newton version has seven (with the fifth color being turquoise --the color that sits between green and blue).
- Since the class does the popular rainbow which has six colors, it may be why the episode does the rainbow which does not have indigo. Only the popular rainbow leaves out indigo. And it uses the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
- But since the Asimov rainbow is used most often, it truly has seven. Rainbows (strictly speaking) have seven colors. That is, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.