Before Milo Murphy’s Law comes back from hiatus, let’s look back at the show’s first hour-long episode, which is probably its best one so far.
Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Milo Murphy’s Law is about Milo Murphy (“Weird Al” Yankovic), a direct descendant of whom the law was named, and his two friends Melissa Chase (Sabrina Carpenter) and Zack Underwood (Mekai Curtis), as they deal with unforeseen chaos and misadventures that Murphy’s Law brings. From the creative minds of Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, the show also has a “Plot B” like Phineas and Ferb (their previous work). The side plot revolves around two time travelers, Vinnie Dakota and Balthazar Cavendish (creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh), who are tasked to prevent the extinction of pistachios. Weird job, I know. Their fellow time travel agents and their superior Mr Block (Mark Hamill) consider them a joke and thus only unimportant and inconsequential missions – like protecting pistachios – are assigned to them.
In their most recent episode “Missing Milo”, we finally get to see Milo being confronted by Dakota and Cavendish. This episode also features the first time Milo actually time travels, which makes one wonder about the repercussions of Murphy’s Law brought about by Milo in the time stream.
The episode starts with Milo, Melissa, and Zack preparing for the lost pilot episode of The Doctor Zone Files. Zack and Melissa banter about the semantics of a lost episode.
Zack: “How can we watch a lost episode?”
Melissa: “They found it.”
Zack: “But then, isn’t it a found episode?”
Meanwhile, Dakota and Cavendish were assigned to protect a pistachio plant that they have failed to save before – a call-back from the same pistachio seedling at the end of “The Substitute” episode. Dakota think they were getting a do-over, but Cavendish thought they were being the “butt of a huge cosmic joke”, as a Doctor Zone billboard came into view where Cavendish and Dakota unknowingly imitate the Doctor Zone and Time Ape’s poses.
On the way to the grocery store, Milo runs into Dakota and Cavendish where they finally confront him about thwarting their missions. Milo then finally explains Murphy’s Law to Cavendish and Dakota – a plot which I thought was resolved faster than expected. Knowing the nature of misadventures in Phineas and Ferb, I thought Dakota and Cavendish would have had more failed missions thinking Milo was their nemesis and the cause of their failures.
As Milo fixes his bike, Dakota and Cavendish contacts Mr Block to tell about their achievement – preventing Milo from ruining the pistachio plant. Mr Block, however, was attacked while talking to them, leading them to think that it was a prank. Dakota comments, “Remember that thing with the shaving cream?” (a plot which I hope gets called back in a future episode). Dakota and Cavendish decide to check it out anyway as there seemed to be no signal coming from the future. Since their time machine got wrecked, they planned to borrow Brick and Savannah’s time machine.
They meet Brick and Savannah (Agents of SHIELD’s Brett Dalton and Ming-Na Wen) in a party to ask for their time vehicle, but the pair refused. “There’s no force on earth that could make us loan you our car,” Brick said too soon as Murphy’s Law acts against them while Milo approaches. The ledge beneath Brick and Savannah breaks and they fall off into the sea. Dakota and Cavendish took the opportunity to “borrow” the better time vehicle, where Milo ended up being trapped in as he was trying to return the temporal communicator Cavendish dropped earlier. Milo’s backpack – which he uses for every possible emergency there is – gets left behind with Diogee as the time machine disappears.
The time stream in the Milo Murphy’s Law universe seems to look like a generic wormhole, but with lots of clocks of different variation. Milo asks, “What’s with all the clocks?” to which Dakota comments on how he thinks it’s somebody’s idea of a joke. They time travel to 2175 which they discover to be run by pistachions, aka pistachio plant monsters. The trio explore around. A peach then hits Cavendish, which they realize helped them from nearly walking into a group of pistachions. They kept the peach and moved on.
In the present, meanwhile, Zack and Melissa look for Milo as the airing of the lost Doctor Zone pilot episode approaches. It was easy for them to deduce that Milo was missing as there were no Murphy’s Law-related disasters that happened in the town. The two was then led by Diogee to Milo’s backpack, where they encounter Brick and Savannah, who tried to interrogate them. Zack and Melissa runs off to escape the two time travelers. They head back to Milo’s house to inform Milo’s sister Sara (Kate Micucci) about her brother’s disappearance. They then were shocked to see Milo on the TV screen, where he appeared on the lost pilot episode of Doctor Zone – a fifty-year-old episode.
Meanwhile, Milo, Cavendish, and Dakota uses a hover craft elevator to escape and get to their time machine. At this point, I thought Murphy’s Law might not have that much effect in the future, since all events seem to conspire in the trio’s favor. King Pistachion and some of his pistachions attempted to chase the three using his own time machine.
The trio sent themselves ten minutes into the past in an attempt to reach the Time Bureau. They see the past versions of themselves nearly walking into the same group of pistachions they almost ran into earlier, so Dakota (surprisingly) thought fast and threw the peach (the one they kept earlier) to warn their past selves. Cavendish then hilariously questions Dakota about the origin of the peach, directly addressing the bootstrap paradox that occurred.
Cavendish: “Wait a moment, where did you get that peach?”
Dakota: “Someone threw it at you earlier.”
Cavendish: “But that someone was me.”
Dakota: “I know.”
Cavendish: “But where did I get it?”
Dakota: “From me.”
Cavendish: “Yes, but where did you get it?”
Dakota: “Someone threw it at you earlier.”
Not gonna lie, I laughed at the absurdity of this scene. It might be the hardest that I have laughed in the show. This went on for a few more seconds, making the scene funnier. I love how they directly addressed this paradox, poking fun at how ridiculous it is (and how often bootstrap paradoxes occur on time travel shows), since it wouldn’t be as funny if it was resolved.
In the present, Melissa takes Sara and Zack to a room in her house dedicated to figuring out how to fix Milo’s case of Murphy’s Law. They noticed Cavendish and Dakota seemed to be in most pictures, and Sara even commented on how they looked and dressed like Doctor Zone and Time Ape. As any obsessed fan would, Sara thought there was a Doctor Zone connection and takes them to Orton Mahlson, who we discover as both the creator and star of the Doctor Zone Files. They ask about Milo being in the lost pilot episode. Orton tells them that the two time agents were, in fact, the inspiration for the show. Orton gives them a fifty-year-old letter from Milo, telling the three to go to the school with his backpack at 3 pm.
In the Time Bureau, Dakota and Milo talk about time travel and Murphy’s Law.
Dakota: “So how does this Murphy’s Law thing work anyway? What makes it happen?”
Milo: “I don’t know really I’m just caught in its crosswind. How about time travel? How does that work?”
Dakota: “No idea, we literally just push a button.”
It seems to me that this is making fun of how most time travel shows work. Nobody cares about the science behind it – the viewers just want chaos and adventure!
Dakota: “Some guy named Professor Time invented it years ago, or like for you, years from now, I guess.”
Milo: “Wait, the guy who invented time travel was named Professor Time?”
At this remark, I thought maybe Professor Time’s interest in time travel came from his name. Kidding aside, I wonder if Professor Time will ever appear in the show.
As the trio try to figure out how to fix the future, they discover that the “Pistachio Plant Conquest of the World” started from the very same pistachio seedling in Milo’s school. King Pistachion and his army suddenly arrvied and captured them. King Pistachion bragged about having everything under control to which Dakota retorts, “Well there’s one thing you haven’t accounted for,” referring to Murphy’s Law. Again, Murphy’s Law acted in Milo and his company’s favor while time traveling in the future. I wonder if it was just a coincidence – written to help the trio against the enemy – or if there’s something more to it, that maybe something happens that weirdly affects Murphy’s Law in time travel. But then again, this show – and this episode specifically – is chock-full of mocking of time travel and sci-fi TV tropes, so it might be nothing.
The trio then escaped into the time stream, and discovered that there were no clocks in it this time. Dakota thinks that they probably were in the time when the clocks weren’t there yet. As Milo was getting out of the time vehicle to look at the terminal collector to fix the signal, a pistachion appears on top of the car and grabs Milo. Dakota reached out to a bag and uses it to push off the pistachion. The bag turned out to be one containing lots of clocks, and Dakota discovered that he was actually the joker who put all the clocks in the time stream.
As Milo, Cavendish, and Dakota head for the present, Sara, Zack, and Melissa reached the school. The six then try to defend themselves using random items from Milo’s backpack. Zack, Sara, and Melissa held back the pistachions as Milo came out for the small pistachion seedling – to delete King Pistachion from existence. Milo was about to pull the pistachio seedling but sees that King Pistachion has captured his friends. He backed away, but then used a what initially seemed to be just random, useless items from his backpack – a woodpecker whistle and an air mattress – the former he used to summon woodpeckers to attack King Pistachion and the latter to save his friends from falling from his grasp. However, all efforts seemed futile as King Pistachion reached the seedling before Milo did. But as the king was about to claim victory, Diogee pees on the seedling, killing the plant and therefore saving the future. (I also want to add that this is, disturbingly, not the first time Povenmire and Marsh use the lead character’s pet’s pee in a dire situation. Remember when Perry peed on the couch in Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension, anyone?)
The pistachions were now erased from existence, and Mr Block therefore has no memory of the events and the effort Cavendish and Dakota did to save the future. Dakota gave Milo a clock from the time stream as a souvenir and they parted ways. Milo then questions how Sara, Zack, and Melissa knew where he was and they told him about his appearance in the lost Doctor Zone pilot episode. They concluded that since they haven’t figured out how this happened, Milo might still have more time traveling adventures to come. He then keeps the letter in order to give it to Orton Mahlson in his next time travel adventure, so he wouldn’t have to forget to make one and since, “It worked for peaches, apparently,” another bootstrap paradox is yet to happen.
At the very end, we see King Pistachion falling into the time stream and instead of being erased from existence, he was sent to 1955. Hence, this is not the last we see of King Pistachion. I feel like that one violated the laws of physics, but hey, I’m no expert. I guess we will see more of King Pistachion in another later episode, although I hope the plot won’t feel too repetitive if we have him again as the villain.
I do hope there will be some explanation referring to the connection of the effects of Murphy’s Law and time traveling, since like I said, Murphy’s Law seemed to be almost always in favor of Milo when they were in 2175. I also wonder if, in some future episode, some kind of Murphy’s Law disaster or accident might lead to time anomalies. And, since it was announced that Milo Murphy’s Law would crossover with Phineas and Ferb, will there be time traveling involved? In any case, however, I can’t wait to see more of Milo time traveling and causing chaos somewhere (or somewhen?).
Lois Lorraine Reyes
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