The Storm

## Summary

When a huge hurricane arrives unexpectantly at Smileton, Fred and Bobby and the rest of the town prepare for disaster.

## Plot

Fred, Ted and Bobby are all eating soup for lunch with the television on in the background. Fred struggles to eat his soup, and as Ted shows him how to properly do it, the television suddenly blares the Smile Tv fanfare.

An emergency broadcast takes place, and the weatherman explains that a huge hurricane is coming, and that there will be lots of disaster.

Ted worries, and Bobby, reading his comic, explains what he think will happen from the story in his book. Ted dimisses a certain point about atmospheric magnetism, but Fred believes everything and he and Bobby run around in absolute fear.

Ted tells them to stop, and tries to explain that the storm will only be a 'temporary minor disturbance', but he runs out of positive points before he can finish.

The television signal suddenly goes, and Fred laments the supposed death of his favourite object. Bobby declares that the television signal going means that the storm is near, and that they must gather supplies urgently.

On Fred's bicycle, they travel through the orchard and into the city. They arrive in completely desolate streets, and enter a similarly empty Smile Store. Bobby takes everything and stuffs it all in a shopping basket, and Fred finds that there is no-one at the counter. Bobby is already eager to leave, so Fred just leaves a couple of coins and leaves too.

As they go out, they find that the bicycle has been stolen. Realising that they only have half an hour until the storm, Bobby panics and decides to drive a deserted tram back to the house.

Meanwhile, at the city square, Wilbur Wackett and his consecutives are standing on a podium beside a reserved air-raid shelter, explaining about everybody's safety during the storm of 1968. He is corrected by a consecutive, but he replies angrily that he should not be contradicted. Fred and Bobby driver past in the tram and say hello, and Wilbur gives a painfully fake smile and wave and goes back to explaining about safety.

Back at the house, the tram has crashed into a lamppost and Fred and Bobby are hiding under their bed in their bedroom along with their load of rations, since it is 'the safest place', according to the comic. They wait fearfully for the storm to begin, and as the weather report accurately predicted, the hurricane hits exactly at 1:00pm.

The streets in the city are immediately flooded with puddles, and the main electricity station short-circuits, causing a power outage all across Smileton. Trees are blown over, lighting strikes, Ted reads a book and other disastrous things take place.

Back under the bed, Fred and Bobby are listening to the storm outside. Bobby says that they should find something to take their mind off the storm, and Fred picks up a book from a pile of their rations. The title reads 'THE BIG STORM THAT WASHED AWAY BLOBTON' and Fred immediately drops it in fear. The storm quietens suddenly, and Bobby assumes the storm has finished.

They both get out from under the bed, and Bobby struggles to open the window. Fred explains that this could just be the eye of the storm (the centre of a hurricane that brings sudden quietness to the storm, only to resume its former catastrophic state afterwards), but Bobby dismisses the fact, opening the window and noting that it is fine weather. The eye soon passes however, and the sudden winds and rain take Bobby by surprise and blow him away.

Fred and Ted stand in thick coats and boots outside the house, scanning the skies for any sign of Bobby. Fred spots him floating above a street and Ted sees him closeup through the binoculars. Fred picks up a megaphone and tells Bobby to find something to climb down on. Bobby attempts to do so by climbing down a tree, however the tree gets blown over and Bobby lands precariously on a floating postbox in a severely flooded cul-de-sac. The postbox floats towards an electrical substation, meaning certain death for Bobby, so he tries to run away by jumping off onto the roof of a car and other assortments of things, but then he gets caught on an umbrella and is blown away into the sky. Fred says that he can see something, Ted turns around in the wrong direction, Bobby flies over them and down the chimney of the house and Fred just says that it is gone now.

Inside the living room, the fireplace rumbles and Bobby crashes down into it, covered in soot and ash and coughing. Fred and Ted find him in there, and they all notice that the storm has now stopped. As they go outside, the sky clears and goes back to it's former lightly cloudy self. Fred states that that was a complete calamity, and goes back inside to do something else. Bobby recalls Ted's speech on the storm being a 'minor disturbance', and remarks on it's irony since the housing estate and the rest of Smileton is half destroyed with fallen trees, crashed trains, upturned cars and other assortments of things, leaving the conclusion that it wasn't such a 'minor disturbance' after all.

## Trivia

* More of the urban areas of Smileton are shown
* The inside of a small Smile Store is seen
* The map on the weather report shows that Smileton is on the coast of the South East of England.
* This episode confirms that the series takes place in 2014, not present day or (contrary to Wilbur Wackett) 1968
* Smile Tv News and Smile Tv Weather are confirmed
* Fred is shown again with his bicycle, only to lose it again
* The area of Pringleton Housing Estate that the brothers live in is shown more
* Charlie The Spider appears again, but he does not speak
* This is the first episode to use the new theme song and end credits
* The storm caused much damage. Out of what has been seen, this includes:
	+ Flooding
	+ A train crash
	+ Electrical failure
	+ Trees collapsing
	+ Lost items
	+ A car being upturned