Lincoln schemes to have the best seat in Vanzilla for a family road trip.
Synopsis[]
It's the night before the family road trip in the family van, also known as "Vanzilla." Lincoln explains that he's preparing to stake the night out on the "Sweet Spot," the only good seat in the car, as it protects him from the various inconveniences of the van, and the annoyances of his sisters. After he sneaks out and gets comfortable on the seat, he talks to Clyde over his walkie-talkie, and he asks who will be sitting next to him. After some thinking, Lincoln decides that Leni can sit next to him, since she is usually dazed out for the entire trip.
Lincoln devises a plan to get the best seat of the van.
After convincing Leni to sit next to him, Lincoln goes back into the van, only for Clyde to point out the oversight of who will sit behind him. Following some more thinking, Lincoln convinces Lisa to sit behind him, but only if she doesn't have to sit next to Luna. After speaking to Luna, she agrees to sit up front, so long as she isn't next to Lori. This leads to a chain of deals and agreements between Lincoln and his other sisters, as to who gets to sit next to who.
After finally finalizing the secret van seating chart under his mattress, Lincoln goes back to the Sweet Spot to get some sleep, and ignores Clyde's next question. However, by this time, the girls have gotten suspicious of Lincoln's intent, and after discovering his seating chart, they confront him about it. Lisa calculates that Lincoln has deduced which seat is the best seat in the van, and has angled his sisters in the positions most favorable to him, much to Lincoln's outrage. Now that they all know about the Sweet Spot, they demand that they get to sit in it. A melee ensues between them in the car, waking up the entire neighborhood in the process, including Rita, who demands them to go back to bed, and not to go in the van until 7:00 AM.
Everyone (except Lily) with the destroyed van.
The Loud kids go back to their rooms, waiting impatiently for the clock to strike 7:00. When the time comes, Lincoln and his sisters begin a mad dash to the van, and have an even more violent and destructive brawl. By the time their parents tell them to stop, the van has been completely destroyed. As Lynn Sr. sadly laments the loss of the van that once belonged to his father and grandfather, Rita angrily orders the kids to go back inside and tells them that she's cancelling the road trip, and she punishes them by making them spend the weekend together on the couch until they learn to get along, much to everyone's disappointment.
With Lincoln's Sweet Spot plan ending in a total bust, he states that in a big family like his, you can't control every little thing. That said, he knows of another "Sweet Spot" on the couch. He then races out of his bedroom to the living room for it (and probably his sisters as well).
‣Surfettes Debut - Kent Buchanon [Title card] ‣Spiral Of Death H - Gregor Narholz ["Vanzilla"] ‣Walkie-Talkie - Benson Taylor, Jeff Tymoschuk [Lincoln explains the car seats] ‣Gunfighters and Lawmen - John Cacavas [Lola, Lana, and Lincoln in the back seat] ‣Walkie-Talkie - Benson Taylor, Jeff Tymoschuk [Lincoln continues to explain the car seats] ‣Homecoming - Stephane Joly [Music playing in the one working speaker] ‣Walkie-Talkie - Benson Taylor, Jeff Tymoschuk [Lincoln continues to explain the car seats] ‣Spy Steppa - Steve Everitt [Lincoln gets ready to steakout the sweet spot] ‣Eccentric Ways - Thomas Greenberg [Lincoln sneaking into Leni's room] ‣ ? [Luna next to Lisa] ‣ ? [Lincoln tells Lisa he'll move things around] ‣Surfettes Debut - Kent Buchanon [Lincoln plans all the seats in the car] ‣Action Sting (I) - Gregor Narholz [Lincoln sees his sisters found his plans] ‣ ? [Luan opens the door] ‣Pop Punk - Doug Rockwell [Loud siblings fighting] ‣You Make Me Wanna Dance (b) - Richard Myhill [Lincoln doing exercises] ‣Emergency Force - Richard Birdsall [The race for the sweet spot] ‣Magic By Candlelight - Marian McPartland [Loud siblings upset about getting yelled at by their mom] ‣Walkie-Talkie - Benson Taylor, Jeff Tymoschuk [Lincoln explaining the sweet spot in the living room]
This episode, along with its sister episode, was released on Nick.com and other digital platforms on April 1, 2016, ahead of its television premiere.
During that time, the video file had the episodes switched. This would play after "A Tale of Two Tables."
While Lily does not appear in this episode, she is heard in a flashback. She is also the only sibling who doesn't fight for the Sweet Spot, thus this makes her the only one not to get grounded at the end.
Lynn Sr.'s eyes are shown in a rear-view mirror in a flashback, thus this is the first time that his eyes are shown.
The title card of this episode is the first one that does not have just a solid color for a background, and in which the title itself features a drop shadow.
The end fight scene is reused for the opening of "Fed Up".
This episode reveals that Lincoln dislikes sitting next to Lily (because she throws things at him), Luan (because of her pranks), or Lynn (because she plays rough games) in Vanzilla. Likewise, he dislikes sitting in front of Lana (because she has a peashooter) or Lori (because she gets carsick).
In addition to this, Lincoln likes sitting next to Leni because she gets dizzy during car rides and won't bother him.
Furthermore, Lincoln is okay with sitting in front of Lisa (despite her constant talking about the dangers of car travel) as long as he is in the Sweet Spot, because the Sweet Spot is next to the one working window. So he'll roll down the window in hopes the wind of the road will drown out Lisa's talking.
It's revealed that Lynn Sr. had Vanzilla handed down to him from his father, who got it from his father as well.
It's revealed that Luna's singing gives Lisa tinnitus.
Several things are revealed about Vanzilla:
The closer a kid sits to the parents, the likelier they are to be told off. Conversely, the farther a kid sits from the parents, the less likely they are to be told off.
The last seat in the middle row slants forward.
One of the seats in the middle row has a faulty spring.
One of the seats in the middle row was urinated on by Charles and is still wet.
Only one of the windows works.
One of the passenger door's lock is broken.
Lisa is revealed to prefer sitting in the back row in Vanzilla due to feeling it is the safest area.
Foreshadowing:
While Lincoln was camping out in Vanzilla, Clyde tries to ask Lincoln via walkie talkie a question which isn't heard as Lincoln abruptly dismissed and throws his walkie talkie out of Vanzilla's window. Lincoln is suddenly encountered by his sisters (except Lily) moments later and defeatedly remarks that he forgot about the broken lock moments before he is attacked by Luan and the rest of their sisters. This heavily implies Clyde was trying to warn Lincoln about his sisters finding out his plan to get the sweet spot as well as the broken lock of one of the passenger doors.
Moments earlier when Lincoln is finalizing his plan, Lisa unexpectedly shows up in his bedroom forcing him to quickly revert his mattress with Lisa still present. As mentioned above, Lincoln is suddenly approached by his sisters when he attempts to spend the night in Vanzilla in order to get the sweet spot. This implies Lisa got a glimpse of Lincoln's plan and alerted the rest of their siblings about it while Lincoln was outside.
Ironies:
Lincoln plans everything out to make sure he got the sweet spot, but no one gets the seat because Lincoln's sisters end up finding out his plan and Rita calls off the road trip due to the kids fighting.
Not too long after, Lincoln states his plans failed and that he can't control every little thing that happens in his family, he immediately comes up with another plan to get the best spot on the couch and races downstairs. Lincoln basically proves that he has not learned his lesson.
Innuendoes:
Whenever Clyde asks which sister will sit next to or behind Lincoln, the scene cuts to an outside shot of Vanzilla with Lincoln inside angrily yelling. Since Lincoln's voice was muffled, he might have been swearing.
Lori takes a picture of her vomit.
Cartoon physics: The Loud Kids manage to completely destroy Vanzilla while trying to obtain the sweet spot for themselves.
References[]
The Sweet Spot - The meaning of the title is the place on a racket or bat where a hit will have maximum effect.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - The title card's alternative rock opening riff sounds nearly identical to the alternative rock band's 1991 song "Suck My Kiss".
"We all live in a comic submarine, comic submarine, comic submarine!"
The Beatles - In Lincoln's flashback of his painful experience of Lynn playing Auto Attack with him, an ad on the back of the comic Lincoln is reading depicts a submarine colored yellow. This could reference this group's 1966 song "Yellow Submarine".
Several times in the flashbacks, Lincoln is shown reading comic books with his clothes on, but in a later episode, "Undie Pressure", it is revealed that he reads comic books in his underwear, because he claims reading them with clothes on is uncomfortable for him.
When the girls shove the bottom of Lincoln's mattress with the van seating chart in his face, the cards with Luan and Lucy's names on them seemed to have fallen off.
Those cards might have fallen off on their trek to Vanzilla.
When Lincoln is packing his things into his bag, it includes the robot action figure he keeps on his dresser, but in the next shot, it's back on his dresser.
In Lincoln's flashback of the "spring" seat, it's shown to be the second seat from the left, but in the flashback with Lola, he's sitting all the way to the left.
Lincoln's dislocated arms.
When Lana shoots a pea into Lincoln's mouth, he falls out of his seat, despite being restrained by his seat belt.
In the Dutch dub, when Lincoln says Lynn cannot sit next to the "Sweet Spot", he says his own name instead of hers.
However, the way it's said it could've just been "Lynn kan."
Oddly, the only ones who were beaten up badly after destroying Vanzilla were Lincoln, Luan, and Leni. The rest of them looked uninjured.
When Lana says "Get him!", part of Luan's braces is missing.
During the scene in Lincoln's bedroom when he was waiting for 7:00, the wall clock time didn't match with the digital clock time.
Lucy is not seen racing with the others when 7:00 hits, but when the van is destroyed, she mysteriously appears.
When Rita (in silhouette) is yelling at the kids about Vanzilla, it is believed her and Lynn Sr.'s room is upstairs, but the room they are in after Vanzilla is destroyed is Leni's and Lori's room, when their room is next to the living room.
At the end of the episode when Lincoln mentions a "sweet spot" in the living room, he says that it is close to the bathroom, despite the bathroom being upstairs and the living room is downstairs.
Videos[]
The Loud House - The Sweet Spot - Nickelodeon UK
1 HOUR of The Best Schemes from The Loud House & Casagrandes! 🤪💡 - The Loud House
Leni, Lincoln, Ronnie Anne, Lola & MORE Laughing for 45 Minutes Straight - The Loud House
