The episode begins with the Glover children cleaning the kitchen. While doing so, the boys are annoyed by April singing a pop song really loudly, which Bobby was timing with his brand new detecto-deluxe gizmo watch. However, April doesn’t care and continues to sing. Bobby and Little Bill then mock their sister’s singing by howling like dogs. Unfortunately, it causes April to sing louder, resulting in a cacophony that attracts the attention of Big Bill. When the children explain their situation to their father, he suggests that they quietly finish the kitchen.
Once the siblings resume their chore, Little Bill suggests that he, his brother and sister have a no-talking contest. Bobby and April are both skeptical about this at first, since Little Bill is always the first one to talk, but he manages to convince them by insisting he will win. Bobby starts the contest by starting the timer on his watch. A few seconds pass and Bobby gets the idea to trick Little Bill into breaking the silence by placing his watch in the sink while he wasn’t looking, and shouts “Oh!” to get his brother’s attention. He succeeds and Little Bill is declared the loser once again. Little Bill protests by saying that Bobby yelled “oh”, causing April to believe him and declare Bobby the loser instead. Bobby decides to start the contest over and states that sounds count as talking. After the next round begins, Little Bill makes faces into the dish he is washing. April notices this and giggles, causing her to lose the contest since laughing is a sound from one’s mouth. April then declares a new round and adds some new rules:
No words, sounds, laughing, or (to Bobby’s dismay) tricks.
Whoever talks will be the “biggest loser ever”.
If the silence isn’t broken before the kitchen is clean, the contest will still continue.
The kids have to stay in the same room until somebody talks.
Little Bill then sings to himself that he will not talk this time, giving his older siblings the idea to get all the words and sounds out of their systems. While the children are dancing around, unbeknownst to any of them, Bobby’s watch gets knocked into the trash can.
After a countdown, the contest begins and the children continue with the kitchen. Little Bill then imagines that everything in the kitchen is expressing their faith in Little Bill winning the contest. The ringing of the phone snaps him out of his imagination, and it is revealed that Brenda is on the other end. After having Big Bill, who realizes what is happening, reply to Brenda, they finish the kitchen after some time passes. Bobby notices his watch is missing, and begins to look for it until Big Bill calls for his kids. He begins to tell them a story about when he caught a prize-winning walleye trout, which is cut short when he hears the garbage truck outside.
Little Bill decides to watch his father take out the trash, but almost instantly notices his brother’s watch in the can. It’s not until the garbage man gets ready to dump the bag in the truck that he yells for his father to stop what he’s doing. April tells Little Bill that he’s the loser of the contest, but not long after, he has his siblings follow him outside to retrieve his brother’s watch. After Bobby gets his watch back, Big Bill tells his initially disappointed son that he did the right thing by putting the contest aside to save Bobby’s watch. Because of this, April and Bobby declare Little Bill the winner of the No-talking contest despite being the first one to break the silence, much to Little Bill’s excitement.
Trivia[]
This is the only episode where Little Bill doesn’t repeat the title of the episode after it’s been said. Due to the plot of this episode, Big Bill repeats the title of the episode instead.
The song April sings in the beginning of this episode will later be sung by Isabel in the episode, “The New Babysitter.”
The third no-talking contest (what we saw of it) lasted for 4 minutes and 6 seconds exactly.
Goof: April should’ve lost the first round, since she made the “shh” sound before Bobby exclaimed “oh!”, and Little Bill replied to him.
