Lilo & Stitch: The Series



Lilo & Stitch: The Series (2003-2006) was a sequel series to the Disney movie of the same name. After the events of the film, Hawaiian girl Lilo is safe and happy with her sister Nani and their expanded family: alien experimental life-form Stitch, giant four-eyed mad scientist Jumba, and meek cycloptic soldier-bureaucrat Pleakley.

As the series begins, it is revealed that many other experiments of Stitch's lineage, of which he is number 626, have landed near Hawaii by accident (as shown in the straight for video movie Stitch The Movie). Stored in pods that activate one by one in freak occurrences (usually by dropping into water), each specialized experiment uses its unique power to wreak havok on the island until it is captured. Lilo and Stitch's goal is to find a place in which each of Stitch's "cousins" can be useful and happy. Competing with them for each capture is movie bad-guy Captain Gantu, who seeks to enslave the experiments for the even-eviler Doctor Hamsterviel. After three seasons of this, the series closed out with the 4th and final movie, Leroy and Stitch.

Now has a character sheet. -

This series contains examples of:

 * Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Shortstuff (#297) has a knack for this.
 * Actor Allusion: In one episode Pleakley claims he and Jumba are "Canadians from Canadia." Kevin MacDonald is Canadian.
 * Aliens Speaking English: As well as the experiment Frenchfry who can speak French.
 * Animate Inanimate Object: The ghost-like Phantasmo (#375) has the ability to possess any inanimate object from kitchen appliances to Lilo's doll Scrump. He eventually takes up residence in a broken animatronic macaw in a restaurant.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: An invisible Stitch is messing up things on Gantu's ship. In order, he takes out the Stabilizing Gyro Porter, the Subspace Hyper Gaskets, and the Satellite TV.
 * Art Shift: The series has a simpler and thicker lined style than the original film.
 * Audience Surrogate: According to Jess Winfield, Keoni is this and the entire writing staff hated him for it.
 * Batman Can Breathe in Space: All of the experiments are capable of doing this, as seen in 'The Asteroid', whether they have been specifically designed to survive in vacuum or just can hold their breath a long time is debatable.
 * Big Eater - Experiment 625, Gantu's Sidekick and Stitch's immediate predecessor, is a lazy bum who eats Dagwood sandwiches all day. In fact, most of the experiments (at least the more "beastly" ones), including Stitch himself, are.
 * Broken Aesop: Ohana may mean family, and family may mean that nobody's left behind, etc. etc., but Lilo can be astonishingly cold to some of the experiments. The episode Snafu hinged on this fact, actually.
 * Cardboard Prison - Dr. Hamsterviel is able to keep contact with Gantu through video phone and receive captured experiments from within his prison cell.
 * Card-Carrying Villain - Experiment 627 can literally only say "Evil."
 * Gantu himself flipflopped on the issue, depending on the episode.
 * Cheaters Never Prosper: Subverted in one case where Mertle actually won a dog contest through cheating but relinquished the the trophy after the duo helped saved her pet (which was an experiment) from Gantu. Played straight in a later episode via a trivia contest.
 * Continuity Nod: In the above episode, Stitch travels to the big city to participate in the dog show... and although he mostly keeps his destructive impulses with regards to large cities under control -- the question of whether he can being one of the driving elements of the plot -- he does eat someone's left shoe.
 * Crossover - A series of episodes in which the characters from other Disney Channel shows came to visit the islands. The series also holds the honor of having the most crossovers in a Disney series, which include:
 * Kim Possible
 * American Dragon: Jake Long
 * Recess
 * The Proud Family
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Stitch generally has to fight his cousins before they'll accept being 'ohana'.
 * Does Not Like Shoes - A lot of people are seen wearing sandals.
 * Earthquake Machine - Richter (#513)
 * Elemental Powers - Several of the experiments, most notably Yin (#501) and Yang (#502).
 * In fact, the entire 500 series of experiments have been stated to have some form of elemental abilities.
 * Evil Albino - Doctor Hamsterviel
 * Evil Redhead - Mertle
 * Executive Meddling - Producers hated Angel and didn't want her to appear again. After finding out about her Ensemble Darkhorse status, they relented.
 * Considering her lack of a real personality outside of being the Love Interest, who could really blame them for not liking her?
 * Fastball Special: Stitch and Gantu in a rare Enemy Mine moment.
 * Flanderization
 * Lilo's weirdness
 * Mertle's meanness
 * Jumba's broken English
 * Stitch's destructive tendencies.
 * Pleakley's cross dressing was also greatly exaggerated.
 * Nani's attitude toward Stitch was hit the most. She even tries to get rid of him in "Phantasmo", which was stupid in and of itself.
 * And what about when she grounded him and Lilo in "Bonnie and Clyde" just because they, as Lilo puts it, "ran around the house and burp"? What The Hell, Writers?
 * Moses (Lilo's hula teacher) as well. In the movie, he tries his best to give Lilo support. In the series, he is surprisingly un-supportive of her ideas weird as they are. You think he would at least give her some amount of creativity a chance.
 * Flawed Prototype: Some of Stitch's 'cousins' are regarded as failures by Jumba. The two most notable ones are Reuben (#625) and Woops (#600), both of which were prototypes for Stitch but had negative traits (laziness and clumsiness, respectively). Ace (#262) is considered by Jumba to be his greatest failure for not having any evil traits at all, instead being a hero by default.
 * For Want of a Nail - "Melty"
 * Frickin' Laser Beams - The only type of firearms that appear in the series, being a kid's show and all. Technically averted in that they aren't really lasers, but "plasma". At least two of the experiments have this power as well.
 * Slightly lampshaded in the original movie, where Stitch catches the ball of plasma that Jumba fires at him, does a "hot potato" reaction for about two seconds, and throws it back. Even still, this hot potato reaction was from the gun it was fired from overloading.
 * Gender Blender Name - Pleakley's first name is Wendy. Not an Embarrassing First Name for him, since it means "powerful warrior" on his planet.
 * Good Angel, Bad Angel - Mr. Stenchy (slight variation in that Stitch has two bad angels).
 * Gotta Catch Them All
 * Harmful Healing
 * Hartman Hips - Nani, Myrtle's mom and aunt, and most of the women.
 * Hypno Fool - Gantu, Lilo, Stitch, and some other random islanders in one episode; caused by Swirly (#383).
 * I Choose to Stay:
 * Idiosyncratic Episode Naming - Every episode title is the name of the featured experiment, except for "The Asteroid", "Bad Stitch", and "Rufus".
 * Idiot Ball - And how. Nearly every character gets a hold of it within the pilot movie alone.
 * Informed Ability - 625 "Reuben" is said to be as strong as Stitch, but is too lazy to use this strength effectively. Lampshaded repeatedly, mostly by himself. Finally gets to show off his strength in the Grand Finale, if only for a little bit, after Lilo names him.
 * Ironic Echo - A ridiculously funny example in Shoe.
 * I Want You to Meet An Old Friend of Mine - Pleakley is voiced by Kevin MacDonald from The Kids in The Hall; when his family came to visit, his former castmates provided their voices. Scott Thompson was his mom, Bruce McCullough was his sister and Mark Mc Kinney was his brother. And Dave Foley was the priest.
 * The Imp - Experiment 625
 * Ink Suit Actor - "Weird Al" Yankovic as a minstrel at a medieval festival.
 * Regis Philbin and Glenn Shadix in other episodes.
 * The Klutz - Woops. If he can't wreck something directly, he'll set off a chain reaction that ends with the target being wrecked.
 * Lethal Chef - Pleakley - who thinks dog food is incredibly convenient because "it makes its own gravy" - and to a lesser extent Nani.
 * Also Frenchfry, whose food is quite good, but is a man-eating killer himself.
 * Love Potion - In the form of a hummingbird-like experiment pecking people - Hunkahunka (#323).
 * Make a Wish
 * Meaningful Name -- Many of the experiments.
 * All of them except Stitch and Leroy, actually.
 * If looked at the right way, Stitch's name could refer to the fact that he indirectly patched up Lilo's family.
 * Meganekko - Myrtle, her mom and aunt, and Dr. Oprah.
 * Subverted in Myrtle's case : she wears glasses, but she's not the nicest person ever, to say the least.
 * Me's a Crowd - Dupe (#314), with the classic "divide your abilities amongst the clones" side effect.
 * The Men in Black - Cobra Bubbles
 * Might as Well Not Be in Prison At All - Dr. Hamsterviel, who effectively converted his cell into an off-site headquarters.
 * Missing Episode: Disney Channel never aired the episode Lax, which featured the gang from Recess, most likely due to kids who watch that channel having no friggin clue who they were.
 * Monster of the Week - With the Disney twist
 * Monster of the Aesop - Ridiculously so; an episode about healthy eating has a chef experiment that cooks unhealthy food, an episode about cooperation has two radically different experiments that work together, etc.
 * Monster Roommate
 * Mons - The experiments can be thought of like this.
 * My Name Is Not Durwood - Dr. Hamster Wheel Hamsterviel. Doesn't help that he actually looks like a hamster.
 * Actually he looks more like a gerbil (hamsters don't have tails that big).
 * Never My Fault - After Mertle activates Holio despite Lilo's warnings she blames Lilo for the whole thing.
 * No-Holds-Barred Beatdown - There's a montage of Stitch getting his ass kicked by Experiment 627 in one episode, including being electrocuted, used as a trampoline, and used as a literal punching bag.
 * No Name Given -- Experiment 625, until the Grand Finale, where he is christened "Reuben" after the sandwich.
 * Experiment 627.
 * Inverted in Leroy from the Grand Finale - he is given a name but no number.
 * Noodle Incident- in one episode, Pleakley remembers 'the incident with the giant chicken'.
 * Off-Model - Gantu's height can range from just over twice Jumba's size to taller than two stories, and everything in between.
 * It was stated by the producers that Gantu's sudden shrinkage between the movie and the series was so that Gantu could appear in frame without ridiculously dwarfing anything he stood over. (That doesn't explain the variance in the series itself, however...)
 * Plot Tailored to the Party
 * Poke the Poodle- Some of Jumba's experiments are like this (an experiment that steals people's desserts, another that annoys people by talking too much, etc.)
 * Promotion to Parent -- Nani
 * Reunion Show: Fibber, which, as mention above, features the Kids in The Hall cast as Pleakly family.
 * Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness David started talking like this after a wish-granting experiment had made him "the smartest person in the world". He was also practically incapable of speaking regularly.
 * Shout-Out: Hamsterviel is not a space gerbil, he's clearly an alien version of the frenchman from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
 * In one episode, Lilo and a couple of Stitches (Duplication experiment, nuff said) try to do a levitation spell from The Craft. Even reciting the incantation "Light as a feather, stiff as a board."
 * One episode has Nani ending up in Jessica Rabbit's red dress.
 * Spanner in the Works: Snafu and Woops have this as their entire function.
 * Suck E. Cheese's
 * Super Strength - Stitch, although he has been stated to not be able to lift one ounce over 3000 times his own weight (this weakness has been exploited by both of the main villains).
 * The Ace - Even named Ace (#262), He has the appearence of a superhero and dosen't have the slightest bit of evil in him.
 * Take That - Phantasmo (#375) acts suspiciously like Bart Simpson... This is a Take That because in The Simpsons, Bart never gets any comeuppance for his behavior, so Phantasmo, who acts like him, also does not get any comeuppance until the end. This sets up the Aesop: Don't blame others because you will be found out.
 * Adding to that is that Nancy Cartwright provided the noises of Phantasmo.
 * Theme Music Power-Up: "Aloha E Komo Mai" would play without vocals in an upbeat form whenever Stitch or someone else was doing a lot of fightng.
 * The Nicknamer - Jumba
 * And Lilo herself, of course.
 * The Unintelligible - Stitch's speech is very hard to understand, and most other experiments make animal or robotic noises.
 * Trans-Pacific Equivalent - There is a Japanese version where Stitch lives on an equally tropical island in Okinawa. They keep the animation style, for the most part.
 * True Companions: Ohana means family, and family means that no one gets left behind...or forgotten.
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight - Many Hawaiians mistake Stitch and other experiments for normal Earth animals. They also mistake Gantu for a human foreigner even when he's not wearing a Paper-Thin Disguise. Only two American tourists noticed Gantu and the experiments were aliens and when they complained to the mayor, even giving photographic evidence, he just shrugs it off as a hoax.
 * In the Frenchfry episode, Kumu doesn't seem to find it odd that the now fat Lilo is shaped so unrealistically or how she gained so much weight in so little time.
 * The American Dragon: Jake Long crossover stated they were in Hawaii to investigate reports of undisguised magical creatures, so apparently a few people noticed.
 * Verbal Tic - Mertle has a habit of putting emphasis on words like me and my, showing how conceited she is. It's pretty subtle, but it's made more apparent when Lilo does it when she's hypnotised into acting like Mertle.
 * Villain Team-Up: In "Rufus", Hamsterviel teams up with Dr. Drakken and Shego.
 * Sadly, fans were denied the opportunity to see Shego & Gantu work together, as the latter didn't appear in that episode.
 * Weaksauce Weakness - Stitch has two. He cannot float or even swim in water, and he can lift only exactly 3000 times his own weight. To the point where if so much as a feather lands on his load, he drops the whole thing.
 * What the Hell, Hero? - Nosy calls Lilo out in "Snafu" for letting several Experiments go.
 * Wholesome Crossdresser - Pleakley