For Better or for Worse

**"For Better or for Worse"** is the third episode of the first season of *Sammy & Co*. It premiered on December 25, 2015 on Netflix.

## Synopsis

When Albert and his pilot fish, Alpha, won't stop fighting, Ricky and Ella find Alpha a new job with a barracuda, but the pair drives everyone crazy.

## Plot

The episode opens at the reef village where Ricky, Ella, Pipo, and Annabel are all playing a game of hide-and-seek with Pipo as the seeker. When Ricky, Ella, and Annabel all find a hiding place, they suddenly heard Albert and Alpha arguing nearby. The three kids curiously follow the sound and they watch Albert and Alpha having a fight. Wanting to help, the kids, along with Pipo since his friends are all out of their hiding place, all swim to find Sammy and they tell him what happened.

Later at the palaver tree, Sammy serves as a meditator to Albert and Alpha as the two each tell their respective problems to the green turtle. For Albert, he tells Sammy that he cares about his tooth but he assumes Alpha couldn't care less. And for Alpha, his problem is that Albert has stopped eating for fear he'll lose his final tooth which means Alpha can no longer get to eat either. Sammy tells the pair that "the key to a good relationship between a shark and a pilot fish is helping each other out [and] if [they] want to preserve that, [the two] have to make more of an effort" to it. After Albert and Alpha leave Sammy alone, they both misinterpret his advice and think one of them has to make more of an effort which leads to the two arguing again.

Much later, Sammy and the kids are all cleaning up the ocean floor when they all heard Albert moaning at his den and he's all alone. Sammy finds out Albert and Alpha still didn't resolve their problem that Alpha quits his job working for Albert and he leaves the reef. Ricky, wanting to help the shark, suggests to Sammy that he and his friends should help Albert until Alpha comes back and Albert likes the idea.

Meanwhile, outside the reef, Alpha is swimming around and searching for someone who would need him. He encounters Boris and asks if he could work for him, but it turns out Boris already has his own pilot fish who rudely tells him that the job was already taken. But while Alpha is seeking for a new job, Annabel is having trouble filling in his old job when she shows up late to brush Albert's tooth and Albert doesn't believe in her excuse when she told him the reason she's fifteen minutes late is that there was a huge school of sardines that she couldn't get past.

Back outside the reef, Alpha nearly gets himself eaten by a barracuda when he swims too close to it after he thought it could be his potential new boss. And as for Ricky, he was forced by Albert to sort out the seaweeds he gave to the shark after Albert complained that he could only eat seaweeds that are not old since they taste like rotten sardines.

At the same time, Alpha lands himself a job working for a blind barracuda when he notices he has a fishing bait stuck into his left eye which renders him unable to see very well. The barracuda accepts Alpha as his blind personal assistant to help him catch his prey, though, he did warn the pilot fish that if he messes up during his duty then Alpha would be on the barracuda's menu. While Alpha is working for the barracuda, Ricky and his friends all noticed that Albert is starting to miss Alpha, but the shark denies it since he's still mad at his pilot fish about what happened earlier. But while Albert misses having Alpha around, the blind barracuda does not enjoy the pilot fish's company at all. Alpha is very chatty to his employer, whom he decided to call him “Bernard” since he never tells him his name, and he would interrupt him when Bernard is trying to take his nap which irritates the barracuda very much.

Much later, while Sammy and the kids are about to get out of the reef to look for Alpha after they noticed that Albert really miss him, the pilot fish starts to regret working for Bernard after he accidentally annoys the barracuda so much and gets him hurt when the two run into a swarm of jellyfish which caused Bernard to get shocked by one of them. Bernard, who's about to reach his breaking point, warns Alpha that the latter has to hunt for him or else he'll eat the pilot fish if he is unable to help him without hurting him.

At the same time, Sammy and the kids are outside the reef and they're all searching for Alpha. But after asking their nearby fellow inhabitants if they have seen him, it's getting late and the sun is about to set. When Sammy is about to go back to the reef with the kids, Ricky notices Boris and his pilot fish above him so he swims up to talk to Boris' pilot fish. He asks him if he has seen Alpha by any chance and the blue pilot fish tells them that he did, but he also reveals that Alpha is actually working for a barracuda, much to the surprise of Sammy and the kids since they know being around with a barracuda is very dangerous and Alpha is in danger of being eaten by one.

Meanwhile, after Alpha is unable to help Bernard catch a large octopus and it leads to Bernard having ink stain all over his face, the barracuda's patience with Alpha has run out and he starts chasing after him. During the chase, Alpha tricked Bernard into running into a stingray, but his plan doesn't go as well as he thought when the electrocution from the stingray caused the fishing bait to fall off Bernard's eyes and makes him able to see again. And instead of thanking Alpha for healing his eyesight, Bernard continues to chase after him since he's still angry at him for irritating him.

Nearby, Sammy and the kids all noticed the commotion that Sammy stops Bernard from chasing Alpha by scolding him for attacking the pilot fish, which made Bernard decide to attack Sammy and the kids instead. Sammy isn't afraid of the barracuda's threat, however, as he immediately swats him away when he's about to attack him and Albert arrives just in time to punch him away and out of their sight. Albert and Alpha are happy to reunite again and everyone all swims back to the reef to get ready for the night.

When Alpha is about to brush Albert's tooth at his den, the shark apologizes to the pilot fish for their argument and he decides to change for the better. Sammy is glad to see the two made up and tells the kids that there's always a solution to an argument, but only for Albert and Alpha to both argue again after Albert complained to him that he's going to hurt his tooth if he brushes it too hard. However, Sammy doesn't mind them this time and tells the kids that for some, disputing is a part of friendship.

## Characters

### Major characters

* Ricky
* Ella
* Pipo
* Annabel
* Sammy
* Albert
* Alpha
* Bernard (antagonist)

### Minor characters

* Boris' pilot fish
* Boris (non-speaking)
* Margaret (non-speaking)
* Aroun (background)
* Billy (background)
* Alpha's mother (mentioned)
* Humans (mentioned)
* Barracudas
* Jellyfish
* Reef inhabitants

## Trivia

* In the French version, the episode is called "Pour le pire et le meilleur", meaning "For the worst and the best".
* Two of Alpha's duties as Albert's pilot fish is shown: sorting out seaweeds for Albert to eat and brushing his tooth on time.
* One of Sammy's duties for the reef is shown to be picking up trashes that's littered on the ocean floor by the humans. This is a reference to the first prequel film *A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures* when Sammy was younger and he experienced how the ocean has been polluted by humans multiple times during his journey around the world.
* When Alpha is searching for a replacement shark outside the reef, he encounters a great white shark and asks him if he could let him work for him before he found out that the great white shark already has his own pilot fish. The great white shark's name is later revealed to be Boris in "The Legend of Coraline and White Crab, the Knight".

### Errors

* According to the Netflix synopsis, Ricky and Ella both help Alpha find a new job with Bernard. However, this never happens within the episode and it is Alpha alone who decides to work for Bernard without any help.
* While it's unknown if it's an error, for some reason Ella calls Sammy by his real name instead of "Grandpa" like she normally would.

## References

1. ↑ https://instantwatcher.com/title/80042306
2. ↑ https://playtv.fr/programmes-tv/m6/03-09-2014/
3. ↑ https://playtv.fr/programmes-tv/tiji/01-03-2015/
4. ↑ https://www.netflix.com/title/80042177