Missing Milo is the 23rd episode of the first season of Milo Murphy's Law. It is the first hour-long special of this show.
Episode Synopsis
When Cavendish and Dakota stop Milo from destroying a pistachio plant, they change the future. Pistachio plants become sentient and take over the planet, so Cavendish, Dakota and Milo must race through time to save the future.
Plot
Part One
After Milo, Melissa and Zack narrowly avoid an oncoming wave of lava that fell out of a truck riding a block of ice pulled by chinchillas , a bike missing the back tire, and skis leaving small sparks, Milo volunteers to swing by the grocery store to pick up replacement snacks.
On the way he encounters Dakota and Cavendish checking on a pistachio seedling. They ask if Milo was trying to thwart them. Milo denies it and explains Murphy's Law to them. As Milo fixes his bike, they contact Mr. Block to tell him they succeeded in their mission. As they are talking to Mr. Block, he is attacked and they wonder if something's wrong or if Mr. Block is pranking them. They decide to seek out Brick and Savannah to borrow their time limo and interrupt Brick and Savannah's mission to help end the common cold. They refuse to loan their time vehicle. As Milo arrives, the ledge beneath Brick and Savannah fails and they fall off a cliff and into the sea.
Milo returns the temporal communicator that Cavendish dropped by his school. As he does, he gets trapped in the time machine and ends up going with them, leaving his backpack and Diogee in the present. Zack and Melissa search in vain for Milo, unaware that he is now lost in time. The time-traveling trio land in Cavendish and Dakota's time of 2175 to find it overrun by pistachions.
Part Two
Milo, Dakota and Cavendish, decide to go to the Time Bureau and try to make sense of what has happened. Along the way a peach hits Cavendish, causing all three to realize they nearly walked into some marching pistachions and they hide before they are seen. They are eventually discovered and run.
In the present, Zack and Melissa are led by Diogee to Milo's backpack, where they encounter Brick and Savannah who try and interrogate them. The three flee with the time travelers hot on their tails. Zack and Melissa run down a storm drain and nearly escape only to be cornered by the agents. However, Scott appears, and Zack and Melissa go with him to Subterranis but Brick and Savannah are still hot on their trail. Scott tries to collapse a house on the agents but they escape the rubble before meeting their targets at a trap door. They are hit with a sign then roll into a pit where they are overwhelmed by rats and a wolf. Scott leads the kids back to the surface, then talks to his milk carton friend.
In the future, Milo, Vinnie and Balthazar - still running from the pistachions - hot-wire a hovercraft elevator and use it to get to their time machine and escape. Back in the present, Zack and Melissa head to Milo's house where they get Sara involved in the search. They see Milo on the newly found fifty-year-old pilot episode of The Doctor Zone Files. They are shocked and desperate for answers.
In the future, King Pistachion takes his own time machine and six goons to try and intersect the trio.
Part Three
Balthazar, Vinnie and Milo send themselves ten minutes into the past to search for answers. They see themselves walking into on-coming troops and throw a peach to warn themselves. They realize it was them who saved themselves and this opens a debate of where the peach came from. In the present, Melissa takes Sara and Zack to her house and shows them her Murphy's Law room, a room dedicated to documenting Murphy's Law. Looking for clues, they notice Cavendish and Dakota in the background of many of the pictures.
The time-traveling trio then make it to a library and learn that the plant they saved was King Pistachion's seedling. They escape an ambush thanks to Murphy's Law and return to the time machine. King Pistachion and six of his goons follow in their own time machine. Milo gives Balthazar (who's driving the time limo) directions that lead them to the llama incident to temporarily throw the pistachions off their trail.
Sara offers to take her friends to someone who can help. She takes Melissa and Zack to the home of Orton Mahlson to get answers about Milo being on the 1965 program. Mr. Orton tells his guests that the time travelers inspired his show and Milo gave him a letter to give to curious folks after fifty years, telling them to meet him at school with his backpack at three in the afternoon on that day.
Part Four
As Milo and the time travelers head for the present, he is attacked in the time stream by a pistachion, but Dakota knocks it off with his bag of clocks. As Sara and the others reach the middle school and a space-time portal opens up - scaring Elliot away - revealing the pistachions. They try to attack with the three hedge-trimmers but they all break. Moments later Milo shows up, as Melissa is throwing Milo his backpack a pistachion parries it to the flag pole. They get in the time machine and try to destroy the plant by running it over while the pistachions chase after them, but King Pistachion defends his seedling self and after they drive through much of the school he corners them and, with the help of his children, tears the time limo in half to prevent anyone from doing any more time-traveling.
Part Five
The six escape and while the pistachions are temporarily subdued by bubbles and Milo gives them random equipment from his backpack. He gives Cavendish and Dakota a catapult, five bowling balls, and a sink possibly from the girls' bathroom they drove through, Zack a piano winch and cable snares, Sara a triple extra-large straitjacket, and Melissa wind chimes and a self-inflating air mattress. They hold back the pistachions while Milo sets out to destroy the small plant. With their items, the humans are able to detain any pistachion that is in Milo's path or that they come across, but they run out of ideas when King Pistachion confronts them. Milo is pulling the pistachio sapling when he sees everyone has been captured by the king (as cliché leverage). He backs away, then blows his woodpecker whistle to summon woodpeckers to attack King Pistachion like mosquitoes. This hole-ridden monster falls off the roof he was standing on and Milo is able to catch his friends with the air-mattress, but the king reaches Milo before he can get back to the tiny pistachio tree. As the king is about to claim victory, Diogee pees on the plant, killing it and thus saving the future. The pistachions and their time machine all disappear, as they will never be created. Mr. Block has no memories of the event since the space-time continuum was fixed and sees the story as an odd attempt by Dakota and Cavendish to get out of pistachio-protecting duty. The time travelers part on good terms with Milo and company before running into Brick and Savannah and giving them back their keys to their destroyed time limo, much to their dismay. Zack tells Milo of Melissa's special room. When Milo asks his friends and sister how they knew of his where- and when-abouts, they show him the Dr. Zone pilot episode and old letter. They all wonder why he will go to 1965 in the first place. Back in the time stream, the pistachion that Dakota hit lands in a 1955 town fair and gives an evil laugh. Then "THE END?" appears on the screen.
Transcript
For a full transcript of "Missing Milo", click here.
Song
Gallery
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| The image gallery for Missing Milo may be viewed here. |
Notes
International Airings
Trivia
- This is the series' first special.
- Cavendish and Dakota temporarily mirror the Dr. Zone billboard behind them.
- One reference to Phineas and Ferb is made. During the song I Can't Find You, the girl in one of the shops is reading a Ducky Momo book.
- A caption during the scene where Brick and Savannah are reintroduced reveals that they are "Time Travelers First Class".
- Melissa has a room with pictures of Milo, mainly of his incidents and his past possessions. She claimed it's to try and figure out how Murphy's Law works so she can help him or even profit from it.
- She has pictures of him when he was an infant. It could imply they met at a very young age.
- Zack calls some of them "weirdly specific".
- This is the first time we see Diogee and Sara interact.
- The peach scene (and possibly the note) are examples of the bootstrap paradox (also known as the causal loop).
- Sophie Winkleman is credited as Time Ape despite having no actual lines in the episode.
- Diogee has a bowl saying "the greatest dog in the world" in Chinese, which was ordered by Sara.
- Melissa's house is seen for the first time.
- Orton Mahlson, the creator and star of The Dr. Zone Files, knows who Cavendish and Dakota are. He claims they were the inspiration to create his show.
- Zack shaves his neck daily.
- Vinnie Dakota gives Milo one of his last clocks as a souvenir.
- A different, longer section of the extended theme song plays during the credits.
- The creator of The Dr. Zone Files is also the show's star. (It is common knowledge among long-time Dr. Zone fans.)
- The song I Can't Find You plays on the time limo's radio.
- This marks the first time Josh appears in normal attire rather than his Doctor Zone costume.
- Sara claims Milo goes through 3 phones a week.
- This is the first time Melissa, Zack and Diogee interact with Brick and Savannah. This is also the first time Sara and Elliot interact.
- After he is given the letter he wrote, Milo brings up the peach from his adventure.[1]
- There are eleven snapshots during this episode's end credits.
Continuity
- The Llama Incident is visited while Milo, Dakota and Cavendish try to temporarily lose the pistachions following them to the present. (The Llama Incident)
- The pistachion appearing at the football field in The Llama Incident is explained. Milo, Cavendish and Dakota tried to lose the pistachions and Milo knew exactly when and where it was and used it to his advantage.
- The woodpecker whistle used during the woodpecker incident is used again.
- This episode referenced The Substitute as the pistachio plant grew and led to a foreshadowing cliffhanger, until the events of this episode.
- Zack mentioned going down the sewer with Milo on his first day from Going the Extra Milo.
- The bird that took their map is also seen briefly above the sewer.
- There was a wolf in the trap door like the ones that chased Zack and Milo in Coyote Woods. (Going The Extra Milo)
- Milo is now on good terms with Cavendish after an assumption that Milo is an agent trying to stop their missions. (Time Out)
- Scott leads Zack and Melissa back down to Subterranis, the subterranean region named and lived in by the undergrounders. (The Undergrounders)
- Sara interacts with Cavendish and Dakota again (The Doctor Zone Files) while Melissa and Zack interact with them again too (School Dance).
Allusions
- Deus Ex Machina - Diogee's full name is revealed to be "Diogee Ex Machina Murphy", a pun on the name of a plot device that abruptly resolves an unsolvable conflict.
- Back To The Future - Near the end of the episode, a pistachion is seen falling through the time stream and landing in a town's square in 1955. Every Back to the Future movie takes place partly in that year.
- Back To The Future Part II - In 1965, Milo wrote a letter for Orton to give to some people fifty years after it was written to help the current day. In the end of Back to the Future Part II, a letter written by Doc Emmitt Brown in 1885 is delivered to Marty McFly Sr. at a certain place and minute in 1955 to report his safety and whereabouts. (Back to the Future Part III starts with that same scene.)
- Nathan Hale - As Jerry disappears he was invoking the patriot's famous quote, "I only regret I have but one life to lose for my country".
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers - The "The End?" from the science fiction/horror movie is referenced at the very end, just like in The Substitute and Invasion of the Ferb Snatchers.
- Castaway - Just as Scott has a milk carton friend Mildred, Chuck Noland had a volleyball friend named Wilson.
Errors
- The skis that Zack used were not bound to his feet.
- The Time Ape image on Sara's shirt reverses several times throughout the episode.
- It does so twice on screen, once when she's talking to Orton Mahlson on his porch and again in his greenhouse.
- While the hologram at the library is speaking, his tongue is sticking out when he says "of".
- After Dakota drops the tray at the party, it disappears.
- King Pistachion's yellow leaf glows in 2175 but not in the present or during the llama incident, and the one on his seedling only glows in the last courtyard scene.
- After Milo puts one of Dakota's last clocks in his backpack, he hangs it over just his right shoulder. But when the screen changes for Dakota's next comment, it is on both his shoulders.
- When Melissa sees a building crumble, she has goggles on her bike helmet, but after she goes around the fence, the goggles are gone.
- After Melissa, Zack, and Sara drop the hedge-trimmers, they are not always seen during the rest of that scene.
Characters
- Milo Murphy
- Zack Underwood
- Melissa Chase
- Diogee
- Sara Murphy
- Vinnie Dakota
- Balthazar Cavendish
- King Pistachion
- Jerry
- Brandy
- Dr. Zone
- Orton Mahlson
- Time Ape
- Elliot Decker
- Savannah
- Brick
- Mr. Block
- Kyle Drako (non-speaking role)
- Josh
- Scott
References
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Episodes | Next: Star Struck |