#but they are complicated to draw and perry is just a rectangle

[mad-raptorzzz]

[ID: A drawing of Perry the platypus from Phineas and Ferb. He has a cocky grin and is standing with one hand out, curling his fingers as if inviting the viewer in for a fight. He is on a light purple background/ End]

A platypus?

Perry the platypus?

Perry the asexual platypus/

Yeah I am a day late and a nickel short for ace week. But low key, Perry being ace is great. Maybe it was a joke. But like. Actually. This guy has a great job he enjoys. A loving family. Good friends. And all around is shown as a happy and productive member of society. So that's pretty swell. Also never gets shipped with anyone. So that's great.

[shipcestuous]

Phineas/Candace Moments

We are starting the New Year off right! One of my followers has blessed us all by writing up a few of the best moments of one of my favorite ships: Phineas and Candace from Phineas and Ferb. And there’s also some great discussion of the relationship in general. I should mention that this is a shorter list than it was originally meant to be, so a lot of great moments don’t get a mention on this particularlist , but hopefully in the future!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my post about Phindace. Phindace, as I might have mentioned before, is the Phineas and Ferb sibling pairing of Phineas Flynn and Candace Flynn. x4ashes4ashes (/shipcestuous) explained the many virtues of the show and the pairing better than I ever could, so I am just going to link you to that post here. However, she didn’t include a list of significant moments in episodes – often an essential part of any given ship manifesto. And I’m not going to do that either, because – like she said – the list of significant moments is just far too long. But what I am going to do is make a list of a few of the most significant episodes featuring the two of them, which should be a little more manageable and give you an impression of their dynamic.

First, though, I want to get a few thoughts out of the way as to why I think Phindace works over its main rival: Canderemy (Not Phinbella. Phinbella is just… ugh. Can’t even take it seriously. Even if there were no other reasons to ship Phindace, just ‘preventing Phinbella’ would suffice.) And like always, a picture says more than thousand words.

Sometimes, I swear I’m the only normal one in this family.” Candace, ‘Perry Lays An Egg’.

The above picture – and words, I suppose – symbolize Candace’s dilemma. Throughout her life, in her busting attempts, her flirting with Jeremy, in everything she does she is effectively trying to break away from the craziness that surrounds her. And yet, without realizing it, she is much more caught up in that craziness than she’ll ever realize.

In the series, Candace often has a choice. A choice between on one hand the mature world, the world of Jeremy Johnson. Now we’re talking about a guy who personifies mundane. (Look at his last name. ‘Johnson’. Not very exotic, is it?) He’s not exactly a flat character, as he’s often been accused of during the early episodes, because he is snarky, dotes on his sister and often enjoys participating in Phineas and Ferb’s inventions. But he is in effect too normal, too average, to fully be part of that world. You can see him being at unease with Candace’s world from time to time, while Candace, though rejecting everything around her, is not at unease with it. She tries to oppose it, often going to the other end of the extreme, but she’s not uncomfortable. She fits in with the non-mature world. The world of crazy inventions, of – dare I say it – having fun, of being unusual and not facing the responsibilities of adulthood. The contrast is made clearest in ‘Phineas and Ferb Across the Second Dimension’, where Candace-2 had to grow up and Candace-1, who at the start is striving to be an adult – because it’s the stage of life where Jeremy is, as is expressly stated – comes to realize that maybe she should take a bit more time being young. It’s hardly an uncommon theme in movies and TV shows, but it definitely shows the contrast between the ordinary, adult life – the life of Jeremy Johnson – and the more carefree life of childlike wonder – the life of Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher. It’s this choice that Candace has to make, and although she is trying desperately to go for the former, her instincts and deepest feelings will always gravitate her to the latter, and even though she doesn’t always realize it, that’s where she’ll be the happiest too.

Now this may sound either like profound wisdom, total nonsense, or just vague stuff. If it’s the latter, I invite you to stay and read my write-up on Phindace episodes. They’re not all about the above dilemma, but a lot of them feature it and that should make my views a little clearer. One hopes as much, anyway.

10. Season 4, episode 34: Father’s Day.

In this list, we start at the bottom and count down to the most Phindacey episode of them all, beginning with what is incidentally also the most recent episode of the list: ‘Father’s Day’.

The story of ‘Father’s Day’ is rather typical of what you would expect for an episode with that title. It is Father’s Day (who would have guessed) and Phineas and Ferb have prepared a grand breakfast for their father, Lawrence. Of course technically, Lawrence is just Ferb’s father, but the matter never comes up in this episode which is both sweet and a little awkward when you see Phineas riding along in ‘the Fletcher biplane’ – he is a Flynn, after all – and looking quite different from the rest, Ferb’s father and grandfather, who all share the Fletcher rectangular head. It never really becomes an issue in the episode, though, and it is adorable to see that to neither Lawrence nor Phineas it even occurs to bring it up.

Rectangle, rectangle, rectangle and Phineas.

As I just spoiled, the Phineas-and-Ferb side of this episode is about them arranging for their father and grandfather to have a ride with an old biplane they (of course) built themselves. As usual in Phineas and Ferb episodes, they have a lot of fun together, and by the end everyone returns home, with Lawrence’s father taking the biplane home and thus inadvertently causing it to be gone by the time Linda, Phineas and Ferb’s mother, shows up.

Now you’ll all be wondering where Candace comes in, right?

Truth is, Candace doesn’t feature much in this episode at all. She only comes in at the end, and gives her father a present of her own for father’s day. And then the significant moment happens, because they hug, and Ferb and Linda all start hugging Lawrence as well, while Phineas…

Well, see for yourself.

Seriously. Everyone’s hugging Lawrence. And Phineas… look, I get that there was no room, but even so, he’s specifically hugging Candace. He could’ve just put a hand on Lawrence’s side like Ferb is doing, but he just picked Candace without much of a thought being put into it. That alone is significant… and then you notice where he’s hugging her.

x4ashes4ashes said ‘It's like he took the opportunity of the family group hug to grope his sister’. I don’t think I have anything to add to that except that there’s going to be a really awkward moment between Phineas and Candace when the hug ends and Candy realizes what he’s doing (the scene ends right after this moment) even if the awkwardness is probably going to be one-sided given Phineas’ general obliviousness to such matters.

But, as the rest of this argument will show, it’s not like there hasn’t been such awkwardness before.

9. Season 4, episode 3: Fly on the Wall.

Another season 4 episode.

‘Fly on the Wall’ starts with Candace worrying where Jeremy will take them on their date that night, and – as usual – she’s on the phone to Stacy complaining about it. Phineas and Ferb, meanwhile, are building a giant swing in the backyard, because nothing says summer like swinging. Buford, however, is being his clumsy self and accidentally shoots off a ray to Candace after removing one vital element of the machine which, as Phineas explains when he wonders aloud what would happen in this of course very hypothetical scenario, turns her into a fly. As Phineas says, ‘You'd be surprised how often removing a single component can make the difference between one thing and a highly complicated totally unrelated other thing.’

As with the previous episode, most of the episode Candace doesn’t interact with Phineas, instead flying around town trying to ‘buzzt’ Phineas and Ferb, escaping from Fireside Girls who want to fit her into a jar, and, incidentally, flying into Jeremy’s room and finding out that he intends to take her to the rodeo. After which he notices there’s a fly in the room and tries to hit her with a newspaper.

Pictured above: Candafly.

Subsequently, Candace heads over to Phineas and Ferb in the backyard. Baljeet notices he has never seen a fly with orange hair before, which piques Phineas’ interest. He allows Candace to land on his hand and confirms with a magnifying glass that this is, in fact, his sister.

After an angry ‘Buford’, when Phineas instantly realizes what that hypothetical question earlier was all about, the bully in question immediately gets back to work on fixing Candace back to normal. The dialogue after she’s back to her old self is interesting.

Candace: (gasps, happily) Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you! (exits then enters again, angrily) I mean, you are so busted! (exits again, then enters again, happily) But thank you!

Of course, the machine is gone before she can ever get to start on busting them – instead she focuses on dressing for the rodeo, which turns out to be a fancy restaurant called Rodeo (albeit pronounced differently) which Jeremy apparently messed up on. And there the episode ends.

First of all, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that, with neither of them knowing who she is, Jeremy’s and Phineas’ attitudes contrast. Jeremy notices an annoying fly and tries to kill it with a newspaper. Phineas instead allows it to land on his hand and sets off to help his sister. Okay, so it’s not a perfect example – Baljeet had called attention to the orange hair of the fly beforehand allowing Phineas to notice what’s up, and whether or not to kill a fly in general is not really a judgment on morality except for very devoted animal rights activists, but even so, this was a conscious choice by the writers. Candace-as-a-fly hangs out with both Jeremy and Phineas. Jeremy tries to kill her. Phineas helps her. That’s a point. It shouldn’t be exaggerated, but it is a point.

Secondly, it’s curious to notice that when Candace stops flying around randomly and panicking in general, she turns to Phineas to get her back to normal. She willingly lands on his hand when he holds it out, putting complete trust in him at that point. To a certain extent that’s obvious – Phineas and Ferb are the only ones she knows might be able to fix this, and the look in her eyes when she lands there don’t exactly radiate trust – she’s just really, really annoyed.

You’d better get me back to normal right away!

But even so, it is indicative of a pattern. Whenever Candace is in trouble, she always calls to Phineas for help. Of course, like I said, he is the one best equipped to help her, but even with that in mind it is remarkable that she never goes to her parents, or to her boyfriend. Candace relies on Phineas (much more so than on Ferb, as is indicated in ‘Der Kinderlumper’ where she’s only calling out to Phineas for help) to get her out of trouble. And he always comes through for her. It’s like the song says:

And you gotta believe in something! And today I believed in you! And you came true, you made it, I’ve never been so proud…

Okay, so that’s directed at both Phineas and Ferb. But most of the time, it is applied to just Phineas. He’s the one who will solve Candace’s problems, as later entries will make even clearer. And that’s an important quality for any romantic partner to have.

After Candace is back to normal, it’s interesting to see how her busting sense here conflicts with her obvious gratitude for what Phineas (and Ferb) did. On one hand, she is really happy, on the other hand, they are so busted. Just look at the happiness in her eyes here – and how happy Phineas is to acknowledge it. This single picture could embody the sweet moments of their relationship.

Aren’t they adorable together?

Of course she doesn’t succeed in busting him, not this time, not any time. But she needs to maintain appearances, to the outside world and just as much to herself. And that’s what this episodes and those few lines indicate: how much of Candace’s busting effort is still real at this point in time? And how much of it is a show, a ritual, a façade that she puts up among other reasons to prove that she is not part of their world, that she is different from her little brothers?

All I can say to that is that even Candace won’t be able to fool herself forever.

8. Season 2, episode 41: Suddenly Suzy.

‘Suddenly Suzy’ is one of those episodes that aren’t extremely Phindace-y on the surface, but that are very much so when you go deeper into the meaning behind them. We’ll later get an even clearer example of that in ‘Wizard of Odd’.

‘Suddenly Suzy’ centers around Candace having to babysit Jeremy’s little sister, Suzy Johnson. And if you’ve seen any of the episodes that feature her, you’ll know she’s one of the most evil characters of the show. Although she’s only a little girl she’s chillingly manipulative, and uses those skills to wrap Jeremy (who has no idea) around her finger, and make Candace’s life a living hell because she’s extremely possessive of him and can’t stand the thought of him being with another girl. That alone would make very good shipping material, were it not for Suzy being A – much younger than Jeremy, B – only about three years old or so, C – too horrible a character to ship with anyone, and D – not pretty enough to ship with anyone.

Just look at that creepy pig-like nose and those absurdly exaggerated curls. Just. Look. At. Them.

Having established this, it’s understandable that Candace is freaked out when she realizes that she hasn’t been paying attention on the phone to Jeremy and accidentally allowed him to bring Suzy over while he’s off to work. She’s terrified at what Suzy might try to do to her, but it soon turns out that Suzy is ‘off the clock’ as she calls it now that Jeremy’s not around, and actually wants to hang out with her. They discuss Jeremy, and when it turns out that Candace doesn’t control her brothers the way Suzy can manipulate Jeremy, she immediately sets out to rectify the situation.

This premise, although a little creepy, also has great potential, because a Candace using manipulation rather than her usual tactics of yelling and such to get Phineas (and Ferb) to do her bidding can very easily steer into seduction territory. There is a fine line between manipulation and seduction, and I do believe Candace could be desperate enough to cross it. (Despite the biggest irony of the whole episode – that Candace doesn’t really need any of that, because Phineas is nice enough in general and loves her so much that he’d be perfectly all right with doing whatever she asks to make her happy). But don’t take my word for it. As I’ll explain next, the episode has more than enough analogies to make my point clear.

To explain to Candace what to do, Suzy walks into the yard and asks “Whatcha doing?” Which, considering it’s Isabella’s catchphrase, gets an immediate reaction. “Um, hello?” Phineas ignores this – another sign of his general obliviousness to Isabella’s affections – and tells Suzy what they’re doing – ‘putting the finishing touches on our waterfall ride’. Suzy says watching the work is making her feel thirsty and asks Ferb to get her a glass of lemonade, and Phineas replies: ‘Lemonade? Whatever you like, Suzy!’ and Ferb gets her a glass of lemonade.

Now this isn’t incredibly impressive. Since Ferb was able to get her the lemonade right away, they obviously had it on stand-by, and there’s nothing unusual about giving a glass of lemonade to a (so they think) sweet girl who asks for it, especially from someone as nice as Phineas. That’s hardly manipulation. But Candace is clearly impressed – “I have so much to learn” she says wide-eyed – and she and Suzy get into this dialogue where Suzy riles her up like a drill sergeant to bust her brothers and then evilly whispers “Even better? Get them to bust themselves…” a notion which appeals to Candace so much that she starts yelling it as a battle cry. All of this, I remind you, in the garden, right behind Phineas, Ferb and the others.

So Candace walks up to Phineas – she says “Hey boys”, but the person she’s talking to (and who replies) is mostly just him – and asks him “Whatcha doing?” To which an exasperated Isabella remarks “Ugh – do I even need to be here?”

Pictured: girl who only helps Phineas and Ferb out so she can say “Whatcha doing” to Phineas once in a while.

No, Isabella. You don’t need to be here. Why don’t you just go home. Let Ferb guide you on the way out.

While that is obviously a moment intended primarily for humor, it does tell us a lot. First of all, about Isabella, who feels… well, almost threatened by Candace (and Suzy) hanging out with Phineas (we get this even stronger in ‘Wizard of Odd’) and taking her catchphrase. Maybe it just slipped out, but if there’s even a hint of truth in her just being there to say “Whatcha doing?” and hang out with Phineas to flirt with him… well, that doesn’t cast a very positive light on Isabella Garcia-Shapiro then. It reminds me of a remarkable line she had in Rollercoaster: The Musical, in the song which was all about her catchphrase.

(romantically) Don’t you know Phineas, you have no idea that every day I’m just dying to see you… (cheerfully) and say:

And then the refrain kicks in.

Just how important is that ‘Whatcha doing?’ to her? Not exactly ideal shipping material, is she?

Another remarkable aspect is that both Suzy and Candace just take over Isabella’s catchphrase when they’re approaching Phineas. Candace obviously knows Isabella has a crush on Phineas. Even if we could say Suzy doesn’t know and just picked the line because it sounded innocent, Candace knows she’s using the line of a girl half of Danville seems to regard as the one who will inevitably end up with Phineas one day. In approaching Phineas to get something from him, both Suzy and Candace make their position analogous to the girl whom Candace at least knows considers herself as Phineas’ significant other. The analogy is remarkable, and it gives a bit more credence to my earlier argument that Candace would flirt with Phineas if she had to.

Phineas’ response to Candace is different from the one he gave to Suzy.

Phineas: Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Wanna come? It’s gonna be sweet.

Where, in tone of voice and in words, he treats Suzy as a child – which of course she physically still is, and as far as he knows mentally as well – he takes a different attitude to Candace, inviting her along – as always – and again not even acknowledging that Isabella said anything. He’s taking her more seriously than Suzy. And, I’d argue, she’s also more of a threat to Isabella (and her crush on Phineas) than Suzy could ever be. But we’ll be on that subject a bit more in ‘Wizard of Odd’.

Candace’s reaction is to begin ordering Phineas and Ferb to pick up the phone – again only looking at Phineas – until Suzy stops her and reminds her to smile. Which Candace does, to an effect that could be described as both hilarious and disturbing.

Insurance against nightmares not included.

Part of the hilarity is that Candace’s efforts to keep up a ‘cute’ smile in front of Phineas are completely unnecessary since Phineas is perfectly willing to help her anyway. When he asks her (being clearly disturbed) whether she’s okay, she caves and cries out: ‘No! Can you just help me out and call Mom?’ And of course, it turns out Phineas is willing to do this.

He calls Linda, which results in a sort-of-funny scene when she replies: ‘Phineas? Is that you? You sound like Candace! I mean, you sound like you, but the things you’re saying…’ but eventually agrees to come along when Phineas insists that ‘Hurry up, you have to see it!’

Now, even if Phineas has never shown any objections to their mother seeing their projects before, he is positively excited here. He knows Candace wants their mother to see what they’ve built, and although he may not have any clue about her motives, he’s willing – no, eager – to help his sister out there.

In the next scenes (after the Doofenshmirtz-and-Perry interlude), Phineas and Ferb and their friends go over the Niagara Falls replica they’ve made in a barrel, with Phineas yelling ‘I can’t wait for Mom to see this!’ and Candace proudly exclaiming from below that ‘this is my day!’

Candace is so ecstatic that when she hears Mom’s car horn, she literally puts her hands on Phineas’ shoulders and pushes him out to the front of the house to get Mom.

The results should be obvious to anyone who’s seen even one episode of Phineas and Ferb. Although Phineas and Candace do get Mom to come over – she says she’d ‘love to’ come right along, which she probably wouldn’t have had it just been Candace since she’s heard this from Candace a million times before – by the time they get back into the backyard, the invention is gone due to Doofenshmirtz’s intervention. Phineas isn’t particularly unhappy – although he never really is, due to his cheerful nature – but Candace is, and it’s made worse when Jeremy shows up and Suzy shows her she’s back on the clock by getting a water hose spraying right into her face.

All in all, a very interesting episode.

Top 10 episodes:

10. Father’s Day 9. Fly on the Wall 8. Suddenly Suzy 7. Summer Belongs To You 6. Dude, We’re Getting The Band Back Together! 5. Phineas and Ferb Save Summer 4. Wizard of Odd 3. Traffic Cam Caper 2. Flop Starz/ Cliptastical Countdown 1. Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!

Honorable mentions:

Phineas and Ferb Across the Second Dimension