Welcome to LazyTown

*For the theme song of the show, see Welcome to LazyTown (song).*

"Welcome to LazyTown"

Episode number
Season 1, Episode 1

Air date
16 August 2004 (Nick Jr.)5 September 2011 (Sprout)

Featured song
"Have You Never"

Episode guide

Previous episode
"The Lazy Dance"

Next episode
"Defeeted"

"**Welcome to LazyTown**" is the first aired episode of *LazyTown*. It premiered on Nickelodeon on 16 August 2004. This episode is an introduction to the town and main characters.

Characters* Stephanie (portrayed by Julianna Rose Mauriello)
* Sportacus (portrayed by Magnús Scheving)
* Robbie Rotten (portrayed by Stefán Karl Stefánsson)
* Ziggy (portrayed by Guðmundur Þór Kárason)
* Trixie (portrayed by Sarah Burgess)
* Pixel (portrayed by Kobie Powell)
* Stingy (portrayed by Jodi Eichelberger)
* Mayor Meanswell (portrayed by David Matthew Feldman)
* Bessie Busybody (portrayed by Julie Westwood)
* Jives (pictured on card)
* Officer Obtuse (pictured on card)
* Haninn (heard and mentioned crowing)
* Sportacus 9 (mentioned)

Transcript
Click here.

Premise
*"Stephanie arrives for the summer, staying with her Uncle Milford. She meets the kids of LazyTown and hears about their very own superhero, Sportacus. Meanwhile, Robbie Rotten attempts to put Sportacus out of commission in various ways, the last of which is a big hole, which Bessie falls into by mistake! It's up to Stephanie to rally her new friends, and it's up to Sportacus to save the day."*

Plot

Night turns to day outside a large, blue airship. The inhabitant of the airship reveals themselves to be a man dressed entirely in blue and white as he flips out of bed, steps on a pad to put away the bed and does a one-armed push-up, all the while keeping his face hidden from the camera. The mystery man flips again so that he is standing on another pad that draws out a food table. The man in blue picks up a carrot stick before flipping over the table, landing on his feet to reveal a crest with a number 10 emblem on it.
We open to Pixel's house where the children are playing video games and eating popcorn.
Meanwhile, Mayor Meanswell is cleaning his office in the town hall while Miss Busybody is gossiping on the telephone. After inquiring, she learns that the Mayor's niece, Stephanie will arrive today. She is worried about the child-rearing skills of the Mayor, but he is not too worried since children only play video games and eat candy all day. Not convinced, Miss Busybody offers to help out. We change to Robbie Rotten's lair where he is making a cake before taking a peek using his periscope. All is silent, just as he likes it.
As the Mayor is waiting for Stephanie, she walks into town quietly onto a worn basketball court, carrying two suitcases and a backpack. Nobody appears to be there. Using his periscope, Robbie notices Stephanie and the mayor greeting each other. When he sees Stephanie is strong enough to carry her own suitcases inside, Robbie becomes concerned that the laziness of his ideal town may be in danger. Stephanie is quite taken by her uncle's house, except for a strange smell, which turns out to be a burning cake that her uncle was baking for Miss Busybody. Stephanie is shown to her room, but when, contrary to her uncle's expectations, she wants to play, he hands her a deck of playing cards. Although Stephanie builds quite a proficient house of cards, she seems unhappy somehow. As her uncle comes to check on her, his cake appears to be done. Stephanie seems to like it. As she proposes to go outside to find some kids to play with, her uncle laughs at the silly notion and tells her nobody plays outside. "What if you got tired?"
After a while though, Stephanie finds out her uncle wasn't exaggerating, meeting Ziggy by the ice cream stand, who introduces himself as liking candy. After a handshake, Stephanie can only concur since their hands stick together. And Ziggy confirms kids don't play in LazyTown. As Robbie sees them with his periscope, he is shocked. Ziggy explains the kids just play video games and eat candy at Pixel's house. After realizing Ziggy is only interested in candy, Robbie feels relieved.

Ziggy takes Stephanie to see the other kids who are still in Pixel's house. At first, Pixel and the others aren't the least bit interested in what Ziggy has to say until he sees Stephanie, at which point he no longer minds losing in his video game. Stephanie proposes to play soccer and with her enthusiasm finally convinces the other kids to come outside where they sing the song "Have You Never", led by Stephanie.
When Trixie kicks the ball over a fence, Robbie Rotten approaches and manipulate the kids to leave Stephanie alone. Sad, Stephanie sings a reprise of the earlier song, "Have You Never". She makes her way back to her uncle's house and tells her diary about her experience.
"Dear Diary,
It's my first day in LazyTown. It's really weird here..."
Her uncle enters and asks her what's wrong. Stephanie explains the town is a little bit messy. He promises to clean it up, but then the real problem comes to light: the kids do not play outside. Her uncle remembers there being a hero from "an island in the North Sea", with "a big Number 9 on his chest". He explains that they used to send messages to his airship by means of a tube by the mailbox, and finds his old message capsule for her to use. Filled with fresh courage, Stephanie writes a letter to this unknown superhero. She takes it to the mailbox and sees that the tube in question has been blocked with a giant cork and is covered by overgrown weeds. As she attempts to uncover the tube, she catches the attention of Robbie Rotten passing by. To Robbie's horror, Stephanie finally manages to load her uncle's capsule into the tube and pulls the lever, and up flies the message towards the airship seen earlier.
The capsule enters the airship and its message is read by the mysterious man in blue.
"To whom it may concern...
I need help. There's no one to play with in LazyTown.
Sincerely,
Stephanie."
The man in blue looks up LazyTown in his book, "History of LazyTown: 1703-1903", in which it is written that LazyTown used to be "a great place to live". He quickly writes back that "help is on the way", delivering his reply by folding it into a paper plane and launching it using a bowling ball, after which he immediately starts engaging the various mechanisms in his airship and jumps into the cockpit to fly it to LazyTown. Meanwhile, Robbie thought that Sportacus is on a vacation or giving up being a superhero. When he arrives, shortly after his message, Stephanie asks the man in blue if he is "Number 9", to which he points to the number on his back and replies that he is "Number 10" and introduces himself as Sportacus. Robbie is shocked that there is "another one". Stephanie asks Sportacus if he really is a superhero as her uncle described, to which he modestly replies that he is a "slightly-above-average-hero".
Meanwhile, in the playground, Trixie has stranded Stingy on the high end of the seesaw and is about to let go and let him fall. Sportacus's crystal begins to glow, warning him that someone is in danger. He quickly flips over to the seesaw, uses it to launch Stingy into the air, catches him and safely places him back on his feet. Sportacus then returns to Stephanie, only for his crystal to immediately start flashing again. It appears that Trixie is now standing on Ziggy's shoulders, apparently trying to see over the wall and get a glimpse of the new guy, and she is about to fall. Sportacus flips over to them just in time to catch Trixie.
After witnessing all the commotion, Robbie pledges that these people will not "ruin" LazyTown f
and he'll see through that. So he digs a trapping pit intending to catch Sportacus but catches Bessie instead. Stephanie quickly comes to the rescue with a life-preserver and the Mayor with the cake he baked. Using the rope of the life-preserver and a branch as a pulley, Stephanie and the Mayor attempt to pull Miss Busybody out of the hole, but as they do, the rope begins to break. Sportacus jumps in just in time to save Miss Busybody and the Mayor who almost fell on his own cake. The Mayor offers an official thank you to "Number 10", who announces that he would prefer to be known as Sportacus. Stephanie declares that LazyTown is really starting to feel like home, to which Sportacus agrees and declares that he will stay, much to Robbie's dismay. Together they get to work on cleaning up the town while Stephanie sings "Bing Bang".
Robbie returns home but falls into his own trap as Sportacus gets back into his ship. Robbie, wrapped up in bandages, finally vows hishe will stop the "costumed Sporta-loony and [the] pink cheerleader", and he will stop at nothing to stop Sportacus is it's the last thing he'll do. But he is not in a position to do anything about it for now.

Notes* This marks the first *LazyTown* content to be shown in full on television.
* Although this was the first episode to be aired, it was not the first one produced. An unaired episode titled "The Lazy Dance" was filmed before it, but it ended up unfinished due to technical difficulties. There had also been an unaired pilot from several years prior.
* This episode contains very brief references to the LazyTown origin story.
* Jives and Officer Obtuse, two scrapped characters from the original *Latibær* plays, can be seen on the playing cards that Milford gives to Stephanie. Older versions of the current characters are pictured on them as well.
* In this episode, it is implied that Stephanie is only visiting for the summer. However, she attends school in later episodes and is in LazyTown for Christmas in "LazyTown's Surprise Santa". This means that she likely moved to LazyTown permanently afterwards.
* The LazyTown history book Sportacus owns has a date length of 1709-1909, hinting that the town was founded in 1709. The reason for the 1909 date is uncertain, although perhaps this particular book only covers the town history to that point.
* According to Milford, we find out that there was another superhero, like Sportacus, only he was only known as #9. He came from an island in the North Sea. This is a reference to the show being from Iceland.
* Sportacus has a book on the history of LazyTown.
* Stephanie sings the song "Have You Ever" She later performers a slower, unhappy reprise later in the episode
* Everyone’s name are revealed in the following order: Stingy, Stephanie, Robbie, Milford, Ziggy, Pixel, Sportacus, Trixie, and Bessie.
* Sportacus' name is based on the Roman gladiator, Spartacus, the most famous gladiator in History.

Quotes* Stephanie: I brought a life preserver.
* Milford: I brought a cake.
* Bessie: Nice cake.
* Milford: Thank you, I made it especially for you.
* Robbie: (seeing Sportacus 10 for the first time) Not another one!
* Bessie: (after Milford interrupts her phone call) You're the mayor of LazyTown, you're supposed to prevent problems, not create them.
* Robbie: Want this? (He holds out candy as an offer to the kids.)
* Ziggy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
* Robbie: If I give it to you, will you go away?
* Ziggy: I'm already gone.
* Robbie: (to Stephanie) You didn't stand a chance. Now why don't you sit quietly and do nothing like a good little girl.
* Robbie: Have you ever heard the sound of a rubber ball breaking a window?

Gallery
Click here.

Full Episode