Leeko’s Appreciation Day!

**Leeko's Appreciation Day!** is the twenty-sixth Season 3 episode of Leeko: The Beginning trilogy, and the ninety-third episode overall.

## Summary

King Leonardo is jealous because he does not have his own appreciation day. When Leeko flubs up an attempt to give him a present of appreciation (a watermelon which he half-ate), he cancels all the other appreciation days and replaces them with “Dis Days” (days devoted to attacking the Puffy the Dis Day is devoted to) as a means of revenge, and attempts to play a cruel prank on Leeko involving explosive watermelons.

## Characters

### Primary

* Leeko
* Milly
* Manny
* King Leonardo
* Tommy

### Secondary

* Athena
* Beatrice
* Bubbles
* Chef Peppermint
* Chief Gordy
* Cindy
* Daisy
* Dr. Medico
* Felix
* Gamba
* Gene
* Madeline
* Marvin
* Mayor Bay Brittleton
* Miss Yuubin
* Parker
* Professor Antico
* Sir Pathogen
* Slammer
* Snowdrop
* Viruses (*no dialogue*)
* Whitehead
* Whoopie (*debut*)
* Various unnamed Puffy Town villagers

## Episode summary

The episode begins in Puffy Town, where all the Puffies have gathered to celebrate "Mayor Brittleton Appreciation Day". Milly presents a gift to Mayor Bay, which turns out to be a bright red bowtie for him to wear. However, the party is soon cut short when King Leonardo and his Viruses douse the gathering, thinking it yet again to be a planned uprising to overthrow him. Milly and the others scold Leonardo for his rash behavior, telling him that everyone in town gets an appreciation day. When King Leonardo asks when his is, the town glares at him, as they deem him unworthy of the honor. Swearing to get back at them, King Leonardo rushes off to plan a new scheme. Back at the castle, he tries to determine if even a single person appreciates him, but none of his supposed loyal subjects are willing to entertain a lie that they do. Tommy in turn rubs King Leonardo's universal dislike in his face when even he gets a present from his brother Albert. Later on, a Channel Lion Out Loud broadcast starts and King Leonardo announces the start of "D'Preciation Day", demanding his subjects to give him gifts and pay a visit to the castle. King Leonardo sets up festivities and awaits his subjects in his throne room, but nobody shows up and Tommy continues to mock him for his unpopularity. Seeing this, Milly, for the first time in her life, feels sorry for the king, and plans to get him something at least.

Milly talks it over with Manny and Leeko, and decides that Leonardo might be influenced to change for the better if Leeko gave him a gift. A short time later, Leeko walks down the red carpet with a present for the king, and receives applause from the Viruses. When King Leonardo opens the gift, he sees a watermelon inside, but upon closer examination, he sees it's just an empty shell, as Leeko had already eaten the contents. Milly bemoans Leeko's gluttony as Manny laughs at this unintended prank on the king. To get revenge for this further insult, King Leonardo announces to everyone that from now on, all appreciation days are now disdain days, and anyone who has the official Disdain Flag placed on their house has to endure twenty-four hours of disrespect. The next morning, Chef Peppermint's appreciation day is replaced with a disdain day, and the Puffies decide to go along with it in order to punish the chef for his years of bad cooking. They proceed to mock him by raising his hopes up for some customers, only to throw pies at his face. Milly berates the crowd for going along with this, but King Leonardo and Tommy brush her off as they plan on dissing Leeko next.

Soon, King Leonardo and Tommy get a hold of Leeko by luring him out with a watermelon. They set up a cart full of watermelon shells with time bombs inside to get revenge on the pink mouse, but accidentally get themselves stuck in the cart as well. When Leeko arrives, they try to get him to wait until they have freed themselves from the cart, but Milly and Manny show up to worsen matters. Leeko impatiently hops onto the cart, causing it to go careening down the cliff with King Leonardo and Tommy still inside. Despite this setback, King Leonardo and Tommy are still able to get Leeko to eat all of the watermelons, and he ends up rocketing away when they all detonate inside of him. Leeko survives this incident, but he is blackened from the explosion, causing Milly and Manny to plan on getting revenge on Leonardo. Meanwhile, King Leonardo returns to the castle gloating over his prank, and decides to contact Nebula Enterprises to get Leeko a gift to soften the incident. Before anything happens, however, a letter reaches the castle from Milly, which informs King Leonardo and Tommy that Leeko has died, and that she is inviting them to his funeral to pay their last respects. Realizing the connection to the incident from earlier, King Leonardo and Tommy rush off in the Royal Racecar and find Milly and the Puffies carrying a small pink coffin. They inform King Leonardo that Leeko passed away due to the explosion watermelons from earlier, and that they had only manage to recover some of him for the burial.

Feeling genuinely sorry for what they did, King Leonardo and Tommy weep at Leeko's grave, and leave him an unadulterated watermelon. Milly then gets Leonardo to promise to never pull pranks on his subjects again. However, Leeko hops out of the grave in order to eat the watermelon left for him, blowing the ruse. Tommy berates the crowd for tricking him and Leonardo again, but King Leonardo is relieved to see that Leeko is okay, admitting in his own twisted way that he cares about the pink mouse. At that moment, the gift from Nebula Enterprises arrives and Sir Pathogen delivers it. Leeko opens up the present to reveal the monster Whoopie. Whoopie proceeds to attack Leeko by pouncing on him with its box and then hitting him repeatedly with its head. Leeko tries to vacuum-mouth it, but Whoopie just hides back in its box, preventing this. Instead, Leeko swallows Beatrice's umbrella and gets the Parasol Copy Ability. With this ability, Leeko makes quick work of Whoopie by first spinning it around with the Circus Throw move, then hitting it with an upward Parasol Drill to defeat it. As the townsfolk celebrate Leeko's victory, one more card arrives for King Leonardo, making him hopeful that somebody appreciates him, but it just turns out to be the bill for the monster he ordered. The episode ends as King Leonardo sulks and Leeko is hoisted into the air.

## Trivia

* This episode disproves Moonlight Man’s theory of King Leonardo being jealous of Leeko, as he admits that he fights him to entertain himself to keep his “job” interesting.
	+ However, it is possible that Leonardo was indeed jealous of Leeko. Over time, he has developed a more neutral attitude towards him.
* This is the third and final episode of the *Leeko: The Beginning* trilogy to feature the Parasol Copy Ability.
* This is the first episode to air in 2008.