Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!

Out! I’m gonna bust my brothers out! Phineas and Ferb build a flying car and Candace finally busts them. They get sent to reform school to have their spirits broken and imaginations removed.

Episode summary
Phineas and Ferb are looking for bolt 473 from their “Flying Car of the Future, Today” landing tower, which is already completed and under testing. As they do this, Candace hopes it doesn’t disappear.

Upon arriving home in Vivian Garcia-Shapiro’s car, Linda is ushered into the backyard by Candace in yet another attempt at getting Phineas and Ferb grounded. At first, Linda asks her daughter whether she ever gets tired of exactly the same routine everyday trying to get her brothers busted, to which Candace begins to reconsider the purpose of her life. However, when Linda’s attention is drawn to the tower, she stands there, stunned that Candace had been telling the truth. That is when Phineas and Ferb fly past Linda and Candace in the flying car, which was modified to what it was from Linda’s station wagon.

Linda’s shock transitions to anger upon seeing this, and when the boys land the car on the tower’s landing pad, she orders them to come down. Once the boys are on the ground, Linda scolds them for modifying her car to be able fly without her permission. Phineas testifies saying that he had asked her if he could do so during breakfast. This, however doesn’t diminish Linda’s anger as she’d thought he had been referring to their toy car. When she declares that she hasn’t seen anything more dangerous than what her boys are doing, Phineas tells her they would engage in such endeavors every day. After Candace responds that she had told her but she had never listened, the guilt that strikes Linda upon hearing this is overwhelming, knowing she’d countless times disregarded Candace when she tried to expose it to her. She makes a solemn apology to her daughter, who responds “Finally, you realize that!”

Lawrence comes out to see what is happening. When Linda asks him if he had known about this, he at first stutters nervously, before answering ‘no.’ Candace asks Linda how she’ll punish the boys, suggesting several methods of her own. Lawrence agrees that a punishment may be needed, but intends to lessen its severity for the fact that no harm had been done. However, when the absence of bolt 473 in the tower is confirmed by Phineas as he finds it in the grass, a massive flaw in structural integrity of the tower reveals itself. The tower topples over and collapses, landing on and crushing the Flynn-Fletcher house. Though the station wagon saves itself by means of an auto-parking feature, the damage caused to the house is the final blow to Linda and Lawrence.

Phineas and Ferb shortly thereafter find themselves on a bus due to depart for the Smile Away Reformatory School. Linda explains to the boys that she along with their father had felt it was best to send them there for their own safety. The school’s warden who is present for the departure reassures Linda that her boys would “be in good hands.” Meanwhile, on the bus, the boys see that Baljeet is present, having been sent there as well because his high grades got him kicked out of summer school.

When the bus leaves, Candace rejoices now that the burden of trying to bust Phineas and Ferb is finally off her shoulders. She runs off to enjoy the other aspects of her life with Stacy and Jeremy, but soon later starts to miss the bustling of construction equipment in the backyard.

Phineas and Ferb arrive at the school, which Phineas comments “does not look the way it did in the brochure.” After they’re checked in, their hair is shaved personally by the warden into crew cuts. They then are formed up with several other students as he explains that the goal of the school is to destroy the dangerous elements inside them, which he perceives are “unacceptable levels of creativity, imagination, and unbridled enthusiasm.” When he notices that Phineas and Ferb are far out of the formation and converting one of the bunk beds into a Ferris wheel much to his disdain, he punishes them by sending them off to the bathroom to clean the toilets.

Candace, still at home, expresses that she misses her brothers to Stacy, who in turn begins to sing about it. The song imparts a poignant feel upon Candace, who tears up as the memories of the best times she’d had with Phineas and Ferb return to her. She tells Stacy to stop with the song just as it’s ending, and Stacy reacts with irritation, telling Candace, “You’ve just got everything you’ve ever wanted.”, and leaves on the note of uttering, “call me when you get over it.” Candace, now left alone hopes that turning on the television would help get her mind off her brothers.

However, it does the exact opposite as she falls upon a story covered by Morty Williams regarding the Smile Away Reformatory School. It showcases the school’s brutal methods of teaching and reveals its goal. The realization of how her brothers are being treated hits Candace hard, and she makes the decision to break them out. Jeremy, who entered the house through the large hole left by the collapse of the landing pad, decides to come along and help her, much to her excitement.

Linda and Lawrence at the same time, conclude that that the severity that their punishment was worse than it should’ve been, and there make the decision to have the boys taken out of the reform school. They choose to get to the school by means of the flying car, but are impeded when they discover that it’s gone.

The car had been taken by Candace and Jeremy and is nearing the reform school. However, because of Candace’s lack of knowledge of its controls, it crashes into a tree tip and careens into the ground, coming to rest at the edge of a cliff into a ravine. Although Candace and Jeremy are only shaken, the car is damaged beyond working condition. They are forced to walk the rest of the way.

After several failed attempts to get into the school, the last one involving a group of giant wooden idols of the warden reminiscent to the Greek Trojan Horse, they find themselves in a dumpster full of mostly shaved hair. At first, the task of accessing the school seems hopeless, but when Candace finds Baljeet’s wig in the dumpster, she formulates a plan to enter the school posing as Morty Williams covering a story, along with Jeremy posing as a cameraman.

They manage to deceive the sergeant and he lets them in. However, when they get to Phineas and Ferb, their souls are already broken and the boys are unwilling to escape. Candace deceives the sergeant into getting himself locked in a janitor’s closet before snatching her brothers up and running to flee. At the same time, Linda and Lawrence had managed to get to the school when they see Candace and Jeremy fleeing with Phineas and Ferb. Linda and Lawrence as well are deceived by the disguises and are puzzled as to why they see Morty Williams running off with their children.

As soon as they reach the damaged flying car at the edge of the gorge, Candace ushers them to fix it as she pulls the toolbox from the trunk. Unfortunately, the toolbox had been keeping the car balanced and the vehicle falls into the ravine. After another fleeting but unsuccessful attempt at getting her brothers working again, Candace breaks down and confesses to how proud she’d been to have Phineas and Ferb as brothers, expressing her deep regret of having them turned into what they are now.

This snaps Phineas and Ferb out of their emotionless state and they begin to formulate a plan to flee. However, the warden manages to catch up to them with a pack of attack dogs and corner them at the cliff. When all hope of escape seems lost, a giant robotic spider emerges from the ground with Perry and Dr. Doofenshmirtz fighting over the controls. They briefly tangle before Perry pulls a lever on the control panel and drives the spider back into the ground, knocking the warden over the cliff in the process.

Linda and Lawrence appear to Candace’s relief, just before the events of the episode take a turn for the outrageous. She turns towards Phineas and Ferb to see them juggling corn dogs, then finds out that her parents are actually marionettes being controlled by a giant marionette Baljeet under the control of a talking zebra. When Jeremy makes a marriage proposal to her, she realizes that none of the events of the day were real and that she is in a dream. She forces herself to wake up and finds herself in bed.

At the breakfast table, she describes the dream to her family. When she announces that she saw Perry as a secret agent, Ferb points out that it could feasibly explain his disappearances. The family promptly takes a glimpse of the platypus before a paramilitary assault team storms into the house and seizes them into custody. As Perry watches them being carried out, Major Monogram appears and informs him that his cover has been blown and that he must be relocated to another host family.

Perry wakes up on Phineas’ bed and realizes in relief that what he had just seen was a dream. Phineas wakes up and notices distress in the platypus. He comforts Perry before going back to sleep. A few moments later, the platypus drifts back into sleep as well.

Cast

 * Vincent Martella as Phineas
 * Ashley Tisdale as Candace
 * Thomas Sangster as Ferb
 * Caroline Rhea as Mom
 * Mitchel Musso as Jeremy
 * Dan Povenmire as Dr. Doofenshmirtz
 * Jeff “Swampy” Marsh as Major Monogram
 * Richard O’Brien as Dad
 * Dee Bradley Baker as Perry, additional voices
 * Maulik Pancholy as Baljeet
 * Kelly Hu as Stacy
 * Geraldo Rivera as Morty Williams
 * Clancy Brown as Dream Sergeant
 * Jeff Bennett as a talking zebra (uncredited)
 * Additional voices: April Winchell