The Magic School Bus/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Magic School Bus

  • In the episode "Ups and Downs", the class struggles to make the bus-sub sink. They eventually make it sink by crumpling it. Then Wanda leaves, making it lighter so it floats. They compensate by letting water into the pontoons, making it sink again. Then they want to make it float again, so they fill the pontoons with air. This works, but it shouldn't. At this point we have the bus crumpled, the pontoons full of air and Wanda on-board... the same combination which previously caused it to sink.
    • It's a magic bus, remember? A Wizard Did It.
    • Yeah, but they had a lever to make the bus sink and it was broken. That's why they went to all the trouble of making it sink manually. If the bus could have sunk or floated on its own in any capacity, then the whole plot of the episode would be pointless.
    • When they filled the pontoons with air, Wanda and three other kids were outside the bus holding the hoses in place. The bus started to rise. The villain reached out with her sub's robot arms and removed the corks in the pontoons, allowing the air to escape. The kids then ultimately got the bus to float by uncrumpling it. Uncrumpled with all the kids on board were the conditions that prevented it from sinking earlier.
    • They boarded the bus before the corks were removed and that didn't stop it from rising.
    • While we're in the general vicinity of the subject ... where did the air they pumped into the pontoons come from?
      • Either magic, or use of electricity to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, then venting some of the excess volume out. The later case would have been too complex to explain to the kids.
    • They had to teach the kids about the concepts of floating and sinking in water somehow...
  • Speaking of the above episode, where does a small-town reporter on a Ratings challenged show get the resources to buy her very own helicopter, submarine and a giant inflatable plesiosaur to perpetuate a Scooby-Doo Hoax with? No wonder her show was failing if that's how she spends her money.
  • It always bugged me that Ms. Frizzle would stay calm no matter how dire the circumstances were. What exactly does she know about the future that no one else does? I never did trust her, even as a kid.
    • Either she's insane or Genre Savvy.
    • This troper always assumed that every episode was a Xanatos Gambit orchestrated by the Frizz to make the kids learn their lessons. No matter what happens they learn about the digestive system or the solar system etc; if all else fails she can fix it herself. She was calm because the kids were never in any danger.
    • This could also just be The Artifact from the book series, where there was less apparent danger, and Ms. Frizzle was instead just preternaturally calm about the incredibly bizarre events going on... because she caused them.
    • Alternatively, Ms. Frizzle could be in control of everything the whole time and can pull the plug if anyone is actually going to die.
    • Maybe she is so one-track minded that she considers the risk of losing a kid or getting whole bus (including her) wiped out an acceptable sacrifice in the name of teaching SCIENCE!
    • There's a more mundane explanation that, as a somewhat multidisciplinary teacher, she knows how stuff works in a Seen It a Million Times kind of way.
    • There were a few episodes where she did show fear. The one I remember was during the one where they learned about erosion. A boulder was barrelling towards the children. Ms. Frizzle seemed genuinely shocked and rushed to their aid.
  • Does anyone else think this series was misnamed? I mean, it's not really about the bus - the bus is just the vehicle which allows Ms. Frizzle to take her class on wacky field trips. There are even episodes such as "In The Haunted House" and "Under Construction" in which the bus hardly even appears at all.
    • And they barely trek anywhere in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's a reasonably catchy title and it actually does have to do with the subject of the show, which makes it pretty good as titles go.
    • It's also the only part that requires justification, so making it the show's premise ("how much more fun would science class be with magic?") does it pretty well.
    • The Bus is the Applied Phlebotinum Needed for most of the plots.
    • I think the "magic" is really just sufficiently advanced technology.
  • In all seriousness, this troper has just one thing to ask: Who thought it would be a good idea to show one of the kids taking off his spacesuit on Pluto and freezing to death? Literally turning into a big, human-shaped block of ice, his face frozen in perpetual terror? On a kids' show?
    • Thank you, kind sir, for reawakening the terrors of seeing that.
      • Damn. So I wasn't the only kid traumatized by that. It's even worse with the knowledge of a trope that was probably applicable...
      • Add me to the list. I'm pretty sure I turned off the TV in horror as soon as I saw Arnold's head freeze, and only turned it on a minute later to see if things worked out by a gargantuan effort of courage and will.
      • Oh golly, I don't feel alone anymore. I remember when I first saw it as a kid, I honestly felt like I was having a cardiac arrest. I still had adrenaline in my system at the end of the day. And on a side note, why on the pilot, of all episodes to show it in?
      • This Troper had that episode on tape, if she recalls correctly. Oddly, it didn't really click for me when I watched it, probably because I knew that space would usually do far worse than that. I was more horrified at his initially pulling off the helmet, then relaxed as I saw all it did was freeze him. Now I realize that would be pretty horrid on its own.
      • I didn't find that horrifing. I just thought "Arnold, you stupid dingbat! Why are you going to do that?" That moment was too confusing for me.
  • Speaking of which, what sense does it make that Arnold gets a cold from the Pluto incident? There are no germs in space and it's a scientific fact that you can't catch a cold from being cold. Did they just violate a scientific fact on a science show?
    • Maybe the damage made his system particularly vulnerable to the germs he encountered when he returned to Earth.
    • A space wizard did it.
    • It was obviously a weaker species of the Andromeda Strain.
    • Placebo affect.
    • The freezing and subsequent thawing of the tissues of his lungs and nasal passages resulted in severe irritation, thus imitating the sneezing, sore throat, and draining sinuses of a cold. Yeah.
    • It's also a scientific fact that you can't survive on Mercury and Venus without space-suits from the future designed to withstand high atmospheric pressure and temperature but Magic School Bus seems to give that scientific fact a Hand Wave too. You also can't go anywhere near Jupiter without getting crushed by the gravity, yet that fact seems to be ignored as well. And what about somehow being able to travel the entire solar system with all the planets perfectly aligned within a normal school day? Shouldn't you be complaining about those violations of scientific fact before nitpicking at a Science-And-Story-Segregation?
    • In the Producer segment for that episode, he says that if they were being realistic, Arnold should have suffered from health consequences far worse than a common cold.
      • Um, yeah. Arnold would be DEAD!!!
      • Not to mention, they'd probably get sucked into Jupiter and would get crushed before hitting the liquid gases.
    • As I recall, cold viruses are "hidden" viruses that await in your body until a large dose of stress (like cold temperature or lack of sleep) tells them to activate. I imagine being frozen solid would count.
  • If we have to nitpick, how come Ms. Frizzle isn't working for NASA? She can somehow supply her students with space-suits that can enable one to survive the conditions of Mercury and Venus, and travel the entire solar system in a day...yet she's working for an Elementary school?! Dude! You can help people way more instead of just inspiring a couple children to maybe study to become astronauts.
    • NASA tends to frown upon the use of "magic" in their projects (with the exception of that "gravity" thing they keep complaining about but can't explain). It looks bad on the press releases.
    • How do we know she isn't? She's a teacher, she must be doing something in the summers...
      • Like being on the rodeo circuit? Or doing play-by-plays for baseball games?
    • Well, she did lead an expedition to prevent an asteroid from crashing into Earth. That has to count for something.
    • Reed Richards Is Useless. Full stop.
  • Why are there only eight kids in the entire class?
    • Their school has a high budget and a great student/teacher ratio.
    • They're the only ones who survived/didn't go insane.
    • The original book series had more kids; they just picked out the ones with the most personality for the show.
      • And racial diversity.
      • At least half the cast in the old book series was rather bland.
    • Hey, this troper used to study in a small private school. His class had six people, of which only one was a girl. It happens!
      • This troper was actually in a class full of around 6-10 students. During the time when flu hit around, there was once only about three.
      • This Troper's Consumer Math class had four students, including himself. Granted, it was a rural town.
    • Well, all the kids in the class are bright, so I assumed maybe they were some special class for gifted kids or something.
    • Or they could live in a slightly rural or low-populated area. The elementary school this troper went to had around twenty kids in total, ten to a class. If a K-5 school had eight kids in each grade, that's 48 kids.
    • The school is shown to be pretty large (in the episode with the hot coco) so, maybe it's the Alternative school for children with "special needs"...?
    • This troper goes to a private school in New York City, and his classroom has seven kids in it (excluding himself). It may be a private school, a rural area, special ed (mind you, special ed isn't just for kids with disabilities), just a small classroom, etc
  • According to the holiday special, the bus is made from recycled materials, since it "unrecycled" itself. However, the design of the bus seems to suggest it was made in The Fifties, before recycling was invented.
    • It's a modern bus made of parts recycled from the fifties. <_<
    • Using a fifties design doesn't mean it was made in the fifties. But Ms. Frizzle has the power of Time Travel anyway.
    • What part of MAGIC School Bus don't you understand?!
    • A '50s bus (or any other vehicle) would be fairly easily recycled compared to a '70s/80s one. Mostly steel, cast-iron engine block, tempered glass side and rear windows all easily melted down; with the only composite materials being the tires, the laminated windshield and the fabric-backed vinyl upholstery.
    • It's a TARDIS.
    • Metal was being recycled well before the nineteen fifties, due to the fact that it's much cheaper to reforge scrap than to mine and smelt virgin ore (there's a reason scrapyards can afford to pay people). Since most of the nonmetal parts of a vehicle wear out in less than fifty years, it's reasonable enough to believe those parts were installed after recycling other materials became common.
      • Not to mention that recycling was a BIG deal in the WWII era. Metal was especially a big deal since it could be used to make weapons.
  • It bugs me that Frizzle and co. frequently use their field trips and the Bus' power to unscrupulous ends. In the episode about baking, they steal ingredients from an innocent man in his own bakery, and end up getting the cake for free. In the airplane episode, they turn the bus into an Airborne Aircraft Carrier (who can match that?!) and end up winning the trophy in a competition. In the episode about tricks of light, they clown around in a theater after it has been closed for the night, messing with the items and stealing a flashlight from the basement. In the muscle episode, they blatantly cheat by going inside Ms. Frizzle and giving her muscles an extra dose of oxygen during an endurance competition. I realize that, for the sake of science, a few random fish might have to get eaten by a Salmon-Bus, but how can they accept the trophies so gleefully?
    • They intended to buy the cake after they made it (they had to make a new one because they wanted chocolate), but the baker gave it to them for free because he thought a moth got in it. The bus didn't win the plane competition; the model plane they shrunk themselves down to ride in won it, without flying or steering by magic or anything -- sounds fair. And if I remember correctly, the night in the theater started when they got locked inside and Janet started playing pranks on them.
      • Regarding the muscle competition, this troper recalls that The Friz's opponent was being an asshole or something, so he deserves to get cheated out of winning.
      • Actually he was a bit competitive but otherwise an ok guy, it was Janet who was more the "antagonist" during that ep.
  • Has anyone else noticed the irony in Miss Frizzle teaching the children about science, but is doing so by using magic, which contradicts everything she teaches them?
    • This troper always assumed it was just a way into brainwashing kids into thinking "science is magical" so they'd be more interested in it.
    • Maybe it's set in an alternative universe where magitek was used to construct everything from the ground up. She's starting them off with stuff that acts like our science because that's the highest level of abstraction to the magitek. This is why atoms are little balls instead of quantum... cloud... things... Granted, the fact that this isn't common knowledge makes no sense unless you assume that she's, like, God or something, training successors.
      • Actually, that would make a lot of sense.
        • I figure it's Clarke's law. The bus is science, just VERY ADVANCED science.
          • So advanced that it supersedes the uncertainty principle and can create mass from nothing?
            • Yes.
            • Or the bus could have stole (lots and lots of) energy from somewhere, then turned it into mass.
    • Long story short, they're in a grade school. The workings of the Magic School Bus are university material at least.
      • Um... which ones? This troper recalls learning almost everything he saw on Magic School Bus before even entering High School!
      • No, not the lessons we learned on the show (recycling is good, this is how yeast works, ect) - How exactly the Magic School Bus itself works.
        • Oh... wait, does that mean I'm not able to breathe before I learn how breathing works? This doesn't make sense!
          • No, you can breathe, you just can't engineer a more efficient lung or pass a test on the inner workings of the respiratory system without knowing the mechanics of the lung or the oxygen molecule flows of blood. Likewise, until you understand Applied 12-level hypermath, you may be able to be shrunk, but you're not going to understand how you shrink in any terms besides "magic".
          • Actually, you know how to use something, but you don't know how it's done. For quite awhile, we didn't know how it worked.
      • Not necessarily university level... they probably got it from their sister school in Hogsmeade, Scotland.
      • You mean Hogwarts, right?
        • Hogwarts is nearby Hogsmeade.
  • When do the kids ever learn all the important stuff besides science?
    • Offscreen, in the classroom, in a non-entertaining manner. Probably by another (more conventional) teacher.
    • Math is implied to be taught by Ms. Frizzle. In the episdoe where they have to destroy an asteroid, Arnold asks whether the field trip will count towards their math grade.
    • I like to think they have a lit teacher who has a magic bookmark that takes them inside famous works of literature. Because Arnold in the Scarlet Pimpernel would be fantastic.
      • They must be one of the schools that separates spelling/grammar (and possibly but not necessarily vocab.) from Lit. History for the early grades as well as the later ones, then, since it would just make those things even harder to learn without books.
      • Who's the Social Studies teacher then? Carmen Sandiego?
        • Professor Waldo, who favors striped shirts and spends his summer and winter breaks Swiss Trekking.
      • Well, there is a book series (One is called "Humbug Holiday", and they're by Tony Abbott) where two kids get sucked into books by way of... Magic. Maybe the same thing works here?
  • So are Wanda and Tim supposed to be the Producers' kids, or self-insert characters?
    • I like to think that Tim is the Producer's kid, they look similar, but then again Tim has a father in-show?
  • What did Ms. Frizzle think when Pluto was demoted?
    • Perhaps she took the kids on a trip to see Eris and show them that we're ALWAYS learning new things about the solar system. Her catchphrase is "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" so she obviously doesn't mind the fact that scientific knowledge and classification isn't static. Basically, she probably thought it was fascinating that scientists are always finding out new things. She seems like someone who likes that aspect of science, the exploratory part where you might have to revise classifications and theories. Rather than Pluto's classification being changed, she would probably be more excited about all the new Kuiper belt objects and extrasolar planets being discovered (now that would be an interesting sequel where they go to another solar system!)
    • I can confirm that she would say this. In fact, she would say something similar for all science subjects, not just astronomy.
  • Okay, just what is with Keesha's outfit? As far as I can tell, she wears a sweatshirt, blue pantyhose, no other bottoms and ballet flats.
    • Looks like a mini dress rather than a sweatshirt.
      • I see a sweater and purple shorts.
  • I know it's not a show to be taken seriously, but who the hell is Ms. Frizzle, and where did she get that bus? Or is she the real spellcaster or alien or whatnot and the bus just her equivalent of a magic wand? And how about the setting around her--there was a picture book that revealed the kids' parents were in on the secret after being temporarily turned into bats, but does the world at large know about her? Has anyone in-universe tried to figure out how she's doing what she's doing? Are there any other characters like her in that setting? And what ethnicity is a name like "Frizzle" anyways?
    • She's a time lord. Her ethnicity is obviously Galifreyan.
    • Also, look at the fact that in Doctor Who the known time lords are named "The Master" and "The Doctor." What is the nickname Ms. Frizzle has? "The Frizz."
      • I wonder if we could call this Doctor Who for children without the aliens and a sonic screwdriver? After all, this was before New Who aired, right??
    • Great, now you've just given Sabrina Diamond one of her more wackier fanfic ideas: Magic School Bus Meets Who!.
    • This Troper holds two theories: Ms. Frizzle is either a witch, a time traveller, or possibly both. Assuming she's a witch, her pet lizard is actually her familiar, and the titular school bus is her greatest magical creation and she wanted to use it to help people.
  • How would Ms. Frizzle teach sex ed?
    • Disturbingly.
    • Why, she would encourage her students to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy, of course! ...Oh.
      • I need a shower.
        • Seconded >_>
          • You just ruined my childhood. I hope you're happy.
          • If you'll excuse me, I'm going to get too blitz to remember what you put, Mister Childhood Destroyer. <goes to get some Guinness>
    • She did teach sex ed. Remember the chicken/egg episode? That's pretty much a very tame children show sex ed lesson. If you really want an answer about a hypothetical human sex ed lesson, same way she taught about digestion, sickness, and the egg-laying process. Go inside!
    • *Ahem* It's a fourth grade class. She wouldn't need to teach them sex ed! Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to try and repair my newly destroyed childhood...
    • Fourth grade is precisely when my school district and most others I know started teaching sex ed.
  • I know this is mild compared to some of the entries here, but ... you know the episode about reptiles? Ms. Frizzle let a class of ten year olds believe that their pet lizard was in life threatening danger just to teach them about reptiles. And nobody even called her on it. That's gotta be somewhere on the Moral Event Horizon.
    • So all the times she puts her students in mortal danger don't cross the Moral Event Horizon, but a (admittedly mean) head game does?
    • Her explanation was, "I just love it when you find things out for yourselves."
      • Right before said explanation, she says she was about to tell them the truth, and you can actually tell where that point is at the beginning of the episode before being interrupted. And to be honest, Herp Haven was one of the safer field trip locations, so she played along with it (although she never alluded at any point that Liz was ever in danger).
    • This is what I thought:
      • The kids knew Frizzle cared about them and wouldn't let them die.
      • The kids can also talk and defend themselves. Liz is a lizard and as far as the kids know, is completely incapable of defending herself.
    • I always thought she didn't plan that one. When it came up she just let the kids draw their own conclusions. But then again, I haven't seen the episode a long time. BTW I think she didn't plan the bat thing either.
      • What was really happening with Liz? I missed out on that concept.
      • Liz was getting her "lizard-house" fixed, and being put in hibernation in the meantime. The kids thought the owner of Herp Haven intended have her be cooked and eaten.
  • The opening credits. I know it's just a kids show's theme, and I should relax, but... where the hell are we supposed to be going? How do you take a left at your intestine and the your second right at mars in the first place? Where was the first right? Out of sanity?


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