Stuck with a New Friend

**"Stuck with a New Friend"**is the sixteenth episode in Season 2 of ***Stuck in the Middle***and the thirty-third episode overall. It first aired on September 29, 2017, to 1.13 million viewers.

## Summary

Harley befriends the new girl in school, but the friendship becomes strained when Ethan befriends her too.

Meanwhile, Rachel receives a red-light camera ticket from Rhode Island in the mail from when she took Beast and Lewie to a mall. Knowing the ticket was originally addressed to Suzy, Rachel coerces the boys into helping her fool her to avoid paying the $500 fine and a stint in traffic school, but it backfires.

## Plot

Harley is showing off her self-cleaning toilet that she invented for the upcoming Marshport Extreme Science Games, when a new girl, Sophie Adams comes in and offers her a Sour Bear. Sophie accidentally drops a Sour Bear into Harley's toilet causing it to explode. Harley puts out the fire using Sophie's special sand for the science project. Harley and Sophie argue for ruining each other's projects. They part ways awkwardly. However, their attempts to avoid each other turn futile when they keep running into each other every five minutes because they happen to like the same things.

When Harley finds Sophie in her special hiding spot, they agree on a truce to stop running from each other. They introduce themselves officially to one another and instantly hit it off. Harley likes Sophie and is already confident that Sophie will be her best friend since Ellie Peters left. They agree to combine their brains to work on a science project together. Since Sophie's family is still moving in, she wants for them to work on the project from Harley's house, but Harley doesn't like the idea. Home is where she takes friends she wants to lose; not friends she wants to keep. Whenever she takes a friend home, the friend is either scared away by the little kids; gets obsessed with Rachel or gets sucked into Ethan's attractive beam of charm before breaking their hearts. Due to lack of choice, she makes plans to keep all her siblings away from Sophie. When Sophie comes over, Harley locks herself with Sophie in her bedroom to ensure there are no interruptions. Their project is an advanced catapult that they would use to catapult a watermelon.

Unfortunately, on her way out, Sophie runs into Ethan and develops a crush on him. Harley knows that Ethan ends up breaking his girlfriends' hearts because he doesn't put any effort into the relationship and always forgets dates. So, Harley decides that she won't let Ethan break Sophie's heart. She helps him with gifts and writing cards to Sophie. She even starts sending gifts to Sophie in Ethan's name. When Ethan forgets his movie date with Sophie, Harley decides to make it up to her by sending a rapping Einstein as an apology gift to Sophie. Unfortunately, the rapping Einstein embarrasses Sophie in front of the whole school.

After discovering that Harley was behind the embarrassing gift, Sophie breaks up with Harley just before the Science Games competition. To make things worse, the pineapple for their project gets eaten by other students by mistake. To save their science project and her friendship with Sophie, Harley catapults herself since they no longer have the watermelon. She falls on Melissa Carter's fertilizer project. Melissa Carter wins the golden beaker. Sophie and Harley make up after seeing how much Harley risked for the friendship. And even though they haven't won the Science Games, they will always have a great story about how they met.

Meanwhile, when Rachel gets a red-light camera ticket from Rhode Island from when she took Lewie and Beast to a mall while digging through the mail for her report card; the ticket carries a $500 fine and a stint in traffic school. Knowing the ticket was originally addressed to Suzy, she enlists the boys to help her trick her into thinking that the ticket is hers. To prepare Suzy, they start messing with her and claiming that she's forgetting things because of her "mom brain." They go to a great extent that makes Suzy think that she's losing it. Eventually, they place the speeding ticket along with Suzy's bills. Suzy doesn't remember going to Rhode Island; so, they plant a fake coffee cup with Suzy's name. At this point, Suzy realizes that they're messing with her. She then plays along to see how far they'll go.

When Rachel tries to convince her mom that she already gave her permission to go to a party, Suzy reveals that she knows they've been messing with her. She punishes Rachel and makes her pay the ticket and attend traffic school, and also grounds Lewie and Beast for helping her.

## Cast

### Main Cast

* Jenna Ortega as Harley Diaz
* Ronni Hawk as Rachel Diaz
* Isaak Presley as Ethan Diaz
* Nicolas Bechtel as Lewie Diaz
* Malachi Barton as Beast Diaz
* Cerina Vincent as Suzy Diaz

### Guest Cast

* Talitha Bateman as Sophie Adams
* Bryan Coffee as Einstein

### Mentioned Cast

* Ariana Greenblatt as Daphne Diaz
* Kayla Maisonet as Georgie Diaz
* Joe Nieves as Tom Diaz
* Lulu Lambros as Ellie Peters

## Continuity

* Harley talks about her best friend, Ellie Peters leaving in Stuck with a Bad Influence. Sophie is the first friend Harley has made since Ellie.
* It was first shown that Harley's friends often fall for Ethan in Stuck in Harley's Comet.
* Ethan tells Sophie about the time that he and Daphne made friends with a cat that turned out to be a skunk in Stuck in the Slushinator.
* Melissa Carter, who wins the golden beaker in this episode, is also Harley's main competition in Stuck with Horrible Helpers.
	+ A poster of Extreme Science Games from this episode can also be seen in *Stuck with Horrible Helpers*.

## Trivia

* Georgie, Daphne, Tom, and Ellie were all mentioned in the episode but did not appear.
* Rachel, Lewie and Beast tried to psych out their mom because they didn't want her to find out, that they went to Rhode Island.
* Harley made a new friend, Sophie.

## International Premieres

* November 11, 2017 (Hungary)
* December 13, 2017 (Israel)

## References

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ [2]