Main cast: Lisa Jai (Becky), Jason Burke (Rick), Johnny White (Teddy), Gene Mack (Dad), Michelyn Emelle (Mom), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Laura Shepherd

Teddy and Rick are out on a picnic with their parents and the toddler Becky. Boys being boys, they have fun doing wholesome things like using cakes to lure ants out and then shooting insecticide and throwing marbles over those critters. I find it hard to be appalled because their use of ice cream catapults to pulverize the ants are pretty ingenious, if tad wasteful of good ice cream! Plus, there are insects. They don’t live long and they breed like nobody’s business, so if they didn’t get killed by naughty boys, they’d be trampled or dead, but who cares, as for each insect dead every day, there would be dozens new ones spawned at the same time.

Still, Nature isn’t amused, so a mysterious cloud emerges and lightning zaps the boys, shrinking them down to the point that now they are the ants, and the ants are now the naughty boys. Uh oh.

This episode is a huge step up from the wretched thing that was the previous episode. It has a story, instead of just scenes of monsters thrown at the viewer’s face for incessant cheap “Boo!” moments, and it’s also unexpectedly heartwarming at places.

Sure, the story can be tad predictable to grown-ups that have seen so many things around the block before. Yes, the kids realize that the ants are nice creatures, they begin to develop a friendship and even empathy for them, and the climax is they at the receiving end of the treatment they thoughtless inflicted on other insects in the past, with lessons learned and leaves turned at the end of the day.

There’s nothing here that is surprising, but the episode is still a watchable thing that may even teach kids a thing or two about how ants are like everyone else too. Okay, that’s a stretch. Don’t feel guilty about stomping a cockroach to bits, kids. We human beings are at the top of the food chain for a reason.