When You Wish Upon a Roker

"When You Wish Upon a Roker" is the seventh episode of the Disney+ animated series The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. It premiered on March 30, 2022 on Disney+ and aired on January 28, 2023 on Disney Channel.
==Synopsis==
Frustrated by Oscar's overbearing parenting, Penny wishes to be grown up. Al Roker grants her wish, turning Penny and her friends into college coeds.
==Plot==
Penny and Kareem are out on a date seeing a nightly production of the Broadway musical Benedict (an obvious parody of Hamilton). Disaster strikes when Oscar shows up with a huge barrel of popcorn (along with a Salisbury steak), butts in between the two kids and he forgets to turn off his cell phone, prompting Lamorne Morris, the lead actor of the show to break character and getting into a row with him. He also directs Oscar to the bathroom when he starts digesting the popcorn. While Penny tries to sneak a kiss with Kareem, Oscar manages to get onto the stage and Morris shoves him into a cannon, which catapults him through the roof.
Penny is so unhappy with the situation that she returns home to angrily express her feelings to Suga Mama and Trudy. Trudy asks Oscar, who has been "having a ball" as he calls it with Kareem, but when he ignores it, a deathly glare from the Proud matriarch sends them running. In her room, Penny furiously decries to her friends via video chat that she wishes she was grown up. She is even more aggravated when she finds out that Oscar put a parental block on her contacts. While scrolling through her phone, she sees an image advertising an Al Roker Special and decides to click on it. Roker appears on the screens to all of her devices and Penny explains her problems: she wants nothing more than to be away from her parents as far as possible and be her own person. To be precise, a sophomore in college. The same applies to her friends. After signing a digital contract, to which the effects will become permanent after a week, Roker uses his magic to age Penny by five years, complete with a glow up that makes her physical appearance looking similar, but not exactly, to Selena Quintanilla Perez.
The now aged Penny awakens on the grounds of Peoria University. Here, she meets up with her friends, who had also undergone both physical and social changes. Michael has become part of a fraternity, Dijonay has become an outspoken toughie, LaCienega has her own her car, Zoey has discarded her glasses and Maya has become a full blown activist with tons of followers. She also founds out that KG has built a plus-sized drone that is able to carry him and another passenger. He invites the girls to a block party. Dijonay shows Penny to her dorm and she is ecstatic to find out that Kareem, who has now taken his musical talents to greater depths, is now living next door to her.
Taking college as a "survival of the fittest," Penny forgoes a party to focus on her studies for literature class. Kareem eventually forces her into a dance. The next day, the girls have salad and Wiz Burgers, which urges Maya to start an uprising. As the protest continues into the afternoon, Penny and Dijonay go on a joyride in a new car. The day after that, Michael takes on a position in the basketball team with Penny and her friends cheering him on. Karaoke night with Zoey follows and the rest of the gang decide to resume their studies, which, along with a $210 bill, diminishes Penny's belief in college being fun. She sleeps through literature class, is denied a picnic date by Kareem and finds Dijonay moving out of their room. She reminds Penny that Roker gave them a week to change their minds. Everyone leaves in LaCienega's car and unfortunately for Penny, it is too late for her to go back to being a fourteen year old. But Penny is no mood to care: she is glad that her friends are gone.
As she sits in her room, she finds an eviction notice, which harshly informs her that, like her father, she fails as a human being. Penny ruminates over her decision and decides to speak with the school's dean. She is told by Myron, who also got aged, that the big guy is in charge of everything. Penny rushes in, asking for the money to pay the notice, only to discover that the dean is none other than Roker, who now goes by the name of "Dean Big Guy". He tells Penny that the only way to get back home is to pay her debt by selling a bagful of things as well as staying in class. If she fails, she will be under his thumb forever… 
After an unsuccessful series of trials: not selling anything, not keeping up with her studies and trying to find some peace and quiet, Penny is met by Big O, who is a younger version of Oscar. Penny, overwhelmed by emotions, pours her troubles over to her dad in tears. Oscar reveals Dijonay gave him a link to the contract so he can rescue Penny. He promises to take care of Roker, by repeating the 94 foot shot that cost his fame and fortune to Wizard Kelly. Big O is soon pitted against a quartet of Roker's pint-sized henchmen and two obstacles: a wall of flame and a wooden barrier. Following a series of haphazard bounces, Oscar wins and Roker allows the two to go free.
Penny apologizes to Oscar, who admits that even though he is an embarrassing father, he still does what he does out of love for himself and his daughter. Happy to be home, Penny and Oscar confess their love.
==Cast==
*Kyla Pratt as Penny Proud
**Logan Browning as College Penny Proud
*Tommy Davidson as Oscar Proud
*Karen Malina White as Dijonay Jones
**Bresha Webb as College Dijonay
*Soleil Moon Frye as Zoey Howzer
**Holly Winter as College Zoey
*Alisa Reyes as LaCienega Boulevardez
**Karrie Martin as College LaCienega
*EJ Johnson as Michael Collins
**Jeremy O. Harris as College Michael
*Asante Blackk as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Brown
**Ashton Sanders as College Kareem
*Keke Palmer as Maya Leibowitz-Jenkins
**Lena Waithe as College Maya Leibowitz-Jenkins
*Daniel "Desus Nice" Baker as College Francis "KG" Leibowitz-Jenkins
*Jaden Smith as College Myron Lewinski
*Al Roker as Himself/Little Rokers
*Lamorne Morris as Himself
*Kevin Michael Richardson as Professor/Barber
*Jo Marie Payton as Suga Mama
*Paula Jai Parker as Trudy Proud
*Carlos Alazraqui as Puff
==Songs==
*"I Sold Out, I'm Not a Sellout"
*"Zeta Beta Chant"
*"My Wish Came True" by Holly Winter
==Trivia==
*Morals:
**College is not all fun and games and young adulthood can be a cruel and nasty world. When you reach young adulthood, you have to be even more responsible and productive in order to succeed, and it is not easy. You also need to work hard and attend all of your classes if you want to succeed in college.
**You should never grow up too fast, and also when reading the contract you sign, you should see if there is a way out and when there is, take it.
*The episode title is a reference to the song, "When You Wish Upon a Star", from Pinocchio.
*Roker breaks the fourth wall when asking Penny if she's been in middle school for 20 years, referencing the fact that The Proud Family franchise is around 20 years old.
*One of the items that Penny has to sell is a DVD copy of Bebe's Kids, the first feature film that Proud Family creator Bruce W. Smith directed.
**Also, the barber is heard discussing the first Space Jam with his customer. Smith was an animation director on the original Space Jam.
*Roker implies that his powers are satanic in origin as he tells Penny that he has it good with the big man "downstairs".
*The English professor is a parody of Sherman Klump, Eddie Murphy's character in the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor.
*The show that Lamorne Morris stars in is a hip-hop musical telling of the life of known American Revolution traitor Benedict Arnold called Benedict. The sets, costumes, and music parody that of Hamilton, which is also referenced by Oscar.
*Footage is shown from The Proud Family episode "Twins to Tweens" and the events of "Tween Town" are also referenced.
*It is revealed Penny suffers from coulrophobia and has a birthmark on her left buttock.
*The gang and Myron as college students are voiced by adults despite the fact that their regular voice actors are already adults. Ironically, Oscar is the only character to have his regular voice actor even though he's made younger and his actor is much older since the original series.
*LaCienega mentions she's been looking forward to her quinceañera all her life, which eventually happens in "Raging Bully".
*Roker's character design is changed to reflect his real life gastric bypass surgery as well as his purple glasses.
==Gallery==
===Concept art===
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File:When You Wish Upon a Rocker - College Penny concept (4).jpg
===Screenshots===
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==External links==
*When You Wish Upon a Roker on The Proud Family Wiki
Category:The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder episodes