Too Many Crooks

**"Too Many Crooks"** is the first segment of the twenty-eighth episode of the first season of *Hamster & Gretel*, and the fifty-fourth episode overall. It is paired with "President Fred" and premiered on Disney Channel on November 11, 2023.

While the rest of her class is having a school trip at the zoo, Gretel has to deal with a villain who can multiply herself. Gretel has to do it on her own, since Kevin and Hamster are sick.

## Plot

During a school field trip to the zoo, Bailey is given the role of rule monitor, much to her delight. Gretel receives a notification that a villain is committing robberies around town. With Hamster and Kevin ill and Fred out of town, Gretel insists that she fight the villain alone. However, the villain, Mary Mitosis, is revealed to have given herself the power to multiply. Moreover, each time Gretel attempts to subdue Mary with her signature punches, the heat her punches generate causes her to multiply.

Mary realizes that she can use Gretel to create even more of her and take over the world so she tries to subdue Gretel and bring her back to her lab. Gretel tries to get away by flying but the Mary's climb on top of each other and manage to grab Gretel's leg and start pulling her down.

On the verge of giving up, Gretel realizes she must use her brain to come up with an "overly complicated plan" similar to Kevin's plans and asks Bailey to pull a lever that opens the roof of the polar bear enclosure, much to the chagrin of the zoo's tour guide. Gretel then drops the Mary duplicates into the polar bear enclosure, causing them to revert to one Mary, leading to her defeat.

## Cast and characters

* Meli Povenmire as Gretel Grant-Gomez
* Priah Ferguson as Bailey Carter
* Debra Wilson as Mary Mitosis
* Michael Cimino as Kevin Grant-Gomez
* Beck Bennett as Hamster
* Lauren Tom as Ms. Jamanpour
* Liza Koshy as Veronica Hill

### Additional voices

* Debra Wilson as Mary Clones
* Keith Ferguson as Inferior Scientist
* Liza Koshy as Therapist
* Raffael Ponce-Valencia as Zoo Worker
* Richie Moriarty as Tour Guide

## Running gags

### Image scene transitions

Gretel
(used to transition to the bank robbery)A trash bin, with the rule book inside
(used to transition back to Gretel being held by the fifty copies of Mary)

## Transcript

*Click here to read the full transcript of **"Too Many Crooks"**.*

## Background information

### Trivia

* This is Churro's final appearance in Season 1.

### Allusions

* The title may refer to the idiom "too many cooks spoil the broth", or "too many cooks spoil the soup"; which means that if too many people are involved in a specific task, then the end result will wind up in failure. The idiom is also referred shorthand to as "too many cooks", and many titles are named after this shorter version.
* **Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary** - The song Mary, Mary references this nursery rhyme in its lyrics.
* ***Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith*** - When Bailey is about to break the rules and pull the lever for the roof of the polar bear habitat and the zookeeper tries to prevent her from doing so, the conversation they have is paraphrased from the confrontation between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (with a couple phrases replaces for the narrative) near the climax of this 2005 movie.
	+ ***Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back*** - At the end of the episode, when the zookeeper yells that Bailey betrayed him, Bailey yells back that he isn't her father, possibly referencing the famous line of Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker near the climax of this 1980 movie ("No, I'm your father"), which has been referenced and parodied multiple times in pop culture.

### Errors

* In the second shot of Gretel being reeled in by Mary and her clones, Gretel's legs are mistakenly colored maroon.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.dgepress.com/disneybrandedtelevision/pressrelease/november-2023-programming-highlights/
2. ↑ https://twitter.com/disneytvanews/status/1710418834861998166