Don't Leave Home Without It

"Don't Leave Home Without It" is the tenth episode in Season 1 of The Proud Family. It first aired on November 16, 2001.
==Overview==
Penny is entrusted with her very own credit card, which she plans on using responsibly, but it seems to have a mind of its own. Oscar, meanwhile, nearly spends his family out of house and home in his attempt to catch a mouse.
==Synopsis==
Penny, Trudy, and Suga Mama return home from shopping, less than interested in Oscar's intentions to use CeCe as an ATM for her recent golf tricks. He soon finds out that Penny is upset over the new clothes that Trudy picked for her, which are exactly identical to her signature outfit and this extends to Suga Mama, who is just as embarrassed as Penny. A noisy argument ensues just as a little black mouse shows up and scares the family onto the couch.
Taking note of Penny's shopping dissatisfaction, Trudy and Oscar give Penny their own credit card, which Trudy instructs her to use in an emergency. After Penny charges straight to the mall, Trudy calls the exterminator to get rid of the mouse, but Oscar accuses him of swindling money out of innocent housewives, even though the exterminator is willing to charge $15 dollars ("He's just being cheap and hard-headed, it's a deadly combination," says Suga Mama). With the exterminator driven away, Oscar decides to take matters in his own hands to get rid of the mouse through humane means out of respect for Trudy.
At the mall, Penny, who is trying to spend responsibly, along with Dijonay, LaCienega, and Zoey, are looking for clothes in the bargain bin section of a store. LaCienega, however, would rather be window shopping. After Dijonay and Zoey follow her, Penny discovers that her credit card can talk when it gets some air. Even though she is trying to be responsible, Penny is coaxed by the card to "shop till you drop" and a montage set to "Independent Woman" by Destiny's Child ensues, showing Penny trying on different outfits and accessories. Back at home, Oscar has successfully caught the mouse in a small house, but he eventually grows jealous of the luxurious lifestyle the mouse is living in, which consists of a big screen TV, jacuzzi, CD player and a toy mouse for a girlfriend. He shakes the mouse out of the small home and tries to kill him with a frying pan but ends up hitting his own face instead. Suga Mama gets a quick laugh out of this.
Back at the mall, Dijonay and LaCienega want to get ice cream, even though they have spent all of their money. Zoey suggests going home, but Penny decides to pay for everyone…unfortunately her credit card is rejected and her friends' table is repossessed. Back home, Suga Mama and Puff have somehow fallen into one of Oscar's traps, sticky tape all over the basement, and Trudy frees them. Penny returns home with a tiny bag just as Felix comes over with his own intentions to get rid of the mouse. In her room, after putting the clothes away, the credit card tells Penny that the credit bill will not come until the end of the month and that she has to hide it before her parents can see it.
Oscar's mouse ridding antics, now having the "makings of a classic Road Runner cartoon" continue on, first, he and Felix, dressed in suits, try to suck the mouse out but he ends up inside Oscar's helmet. Then Oscar proceeds to inflate the house with gas, later revealed to be helium, which floats the house away with Suga Mama and Puff still inside. Oscar soon sees that the mouse is right next to him and chases him away before Trudy demands him and Felix to get the house back. Although the mouse is gone for good, Penny is upset when her plans to hide the bill are foiled when Oscar takes it. Trudy is also enraged to hear that Oscar charged Felix at half-price for turning their house into a "kite". As she engages Oscar into a fight, Penny goes upstairs with the intention of taking the clothes back and cutting up the credit card, telling him that she is not ready to be responsible.
One month later, Penny finds out from Trudy that she and Oscar (who has become the victim of his own sticky tape) received a thousand dollar credit from the credit card company. Penny admits that while it probably does not matter that she did the right thing, she praises Trudy for not grounding her. However, until she is responsible, Trudy will be buying all of her clothes and presents a shocked Penny with an exact replica of her signature outfit.
In a pre-credits scene, the credit card comes back together and meets up with Dijonay. Together, they go shopping.
==Memorable Quotes==
==Cast==
*Kyla Pratt as Penny Proud
*Tommy Davidson as Oscar Proud
*Paula Jai Parker as Trudy Proud
*Jo Marie Payton as Suga Mama
*Tara Strong as BeBe Proud, CeCe Proud and Puff
*Karen Malina White as Dijonay Jones
*Steve Harvey as The Credit Card
*Soleil Moon Frye as Zoey Howzer
*Phil LaMarr as Michael Collins
*Carlos Mencia as Felix Boulevardez
*Alisa Reyes as LaCienega Boulevardez
*Kevin Michael Richardson as Dr. Payne
==Trivia==
*Trudy doesn't really know the difference between old clothes and new clothes.
*The scene where Penny is walking down the steps is recycled from "EZ Jackster".
*The credit card resembles Steve Harvey because of its "mustache".
*The card itself was Penny's, but it was on her parents' account, meaning that she was just an authorized user.
*As of August 3, 2022, this episode has been made available on Disney+. For a while, it was not available for any streaming due to the music licensing rights. ("Independent Women Part I" by Destiny's Child is featured prominently in one scene.)
**This episode was one of the few videos on Disney+ without Closed Captions; before August 13th]], this episode did not have English captions.
**Despite this, this episode is still not available to buy anywhere except Amazon and iTunesThe Proud Family Vol. 1 on Amazon features the episode.The Proud Family Vol. 1 on iTunes features the episode.
***Unlike any other preview of Disney media on iTunes, this episode's preview lasts a minute and 26 seconds instead on the regular 30 seconds.
*Despite having dubs in a few other languages, this episode does not feature dubbing credits.
*This episode has translated subtitles in French, Hungarian, Dutch, and Polish.
**When the Jambalaya Studios and "in association with Disney Channel" logos appear, credits for the translated subtitles appear, below are the languages and the subtitle translator.
***The French subtitles translation subtitles were done by Malory Hutin-Balzani
***The Hungarian subtitles translation subtitles were done by Velez Márk
***The Dutch translation subtitles were done by Jolanda Ursem
***The Polish translation subtitles were done by Rafał Pogorzelski
==Goofs==
*When Suga Mama and Puff are in the basement, she pulls off the tape and Puff's hair rips off. But after the house came back down from being filled with helium, he has all of his hair back and that's only about a day later.
*When Penny is about to return the clothes, the card says "they all smell like rat poison anyway". If clothes smelled like rat poison, a store wouldn't take it back for being "damaged goods".
*The door knob on the front door is on the wrong side. Looking from inside the house, the doo knob should be on the right instead of on the left.
*When Penny gets ice cream for her friends, it's soft-served in flat-bottomed cones. But, when the ice cream is shown again, it is three scoops of hard ice cream in bowls with three cherries
*The credit card said the bill would come at the end of the month. He made it sound like it would be a few weeks but it was actually three days.
==Cultural references==
*The episode title "Don't Leave Home Without It" is a direct quote of the well-known tagline that American Express used in advertising for its traveler's cheques and credit cards from 1975 to the late 1990s. (The slogan was later revived in 2005.)
==References==
==External links==
*Don't Leave Home Without It on The Proud Family Wiki
Category:The Proud Family episodes
Category:Banned episodes
.