Can A Con Man Change His Ways? This Week's "Big City Greens" Attempts to Find Out

The latest episode of Big City Greens features our favorite family as they help out the city they call home with a pretty stinky problem before Nick is up to his old tricks back in Smalton…or is he a changed man now?

Scooped!

The Greens are on their way to the community center when Tilly notices a lot of dog poop on the streets. I’ll say this now - the show never calls it “poop" and instead goes through roundabout and sometimes clever ways of addressing this. Whenever we encounter the dog poop though, it is apparent visually through green stink lines and flies.

Now that we have that covered, the Greens get to the Community Center when Community Sue is looking for ideas to help make their city better. As such, she suggests that Cricket helps the city by “not helping" asking him to sit this one out. Tilly, thinking back to what they saw earlier, decides to start a cleanup initiative to rid the streets of all the dog poop. Gramma comedically excuses herself from any part of this, and Bill is hesitant at first. He’s fine cleaning up after his own animals, but is uncomfortable with cleaning up after others. And again, Cricket is sitting this one out.

Gramma Alice ends up getting recruited by Community Sue to help develop a parklet in the middle of a busy intersection, while Bill and Tilly go around the city cleaning up the apparently massive amounts of dog poop.

Thanks to a jaunty musical tune, Bill has been convinced to help out the city, and teams up with Tilly to hit the streets. As soon as they finish, they realize they aren’t done. Though they have cleaned up a lot of the dog poop, there is still plenty more. Why? Why aren’t the people taking the hint? It’s never said in the episode but I’ll tell you right now - it’s because now they know somebody else will do it. Alas, Tilly decides to take a more direct approach when she sees Brett and his dogs, as he doesn’t pick up after them. Tilly jumps in front of him and offers a small baggie to take care of the mess, intimidating him into picking up the poop. He obliges and promises to do better next time. While this may have worked this time, her next encounter does not go as smoothly.

When she approaches another man, he not only bluntly points out that he knows his dog pooped, but plain refuses to pick it up, even after Tilly offers him a bag. Tilly, trying to be direct and intimidating like she did with Brett ends up scaring the man and following him to his home, where he has barricaded himself inside. Furious (for Tilly), Tilly heads home and recruits Cricket into helping her get revenge.

They then show up at this man’s house once again, this time with many of the farm animals, encouraging the creatures to poop all over his lawn where they adamantly refuse to clean it up. Now the lawn, a giant pile of various animal poop, has attracted the attention of many other residents who are proving that Tilly and Cricket are in the wrong, especially creating a much larger mess and by following the man home.

Elsewhere, Alice and Community Sue have finished the parklet, and revealed that the new bench they have built together has a sign dedicating it to Alice Green. An honor Sue bestowed upon her since she helped her build the parklet. Oddly appropriate too, considering it’s in the middle of chaos, kind of like her house in the middle of Big City. Am I looking too much into this? Maybe.

After getting a bit of advice from Community Sue, Tilly runs into her father once again, who now enjoys cleaning up the messes. This time, he is walking their dog, Phoenix, and picking up after her before he realizes that he doesn’t have a bag and neither does Tilly. Now, they promise to keep this secret to themselves and run off, leaving the poop behind.

Justice is served though, as the same man from earlier who didn’t care about his dog’s poop (and credited as “Inconsiderate Man" for the record) steps directly into it, frustrating him.

Mulligan’d

For the second half of the episode we head back to the country town of Smalton, where Nancy is on the phone with a distributor who is going out of business. This is bad for the Green Family Farms as they have grown a substantial crop of corn for this distributor and now they don’t know what to do with it.

Nick, her con-artist father, suggests starting up a U-Pick operation at the farm, where folks can come into the farm, and pick their own corn, paying for what they harvest on their own. It is a good idea, but given Nick’s reputation, Nancy is awfully suspicious. After all, she grew up being a pawn in Nick’s schemes, thus giving us a reason for a flashback for viewers who might not have seen earlier episodes of the series, with a new moment of young conning.

Nick insists that this isn’t a scheme, that there isn’t a scam, and that everything is on the up and up with this plan, and Nancy launches the U-Pick operation because it is a good idea after all, but she is keeping an eye on her father.

As people begin to show up, it becomes clear that they want more than just to pick their own corn, and Nick is way ahead of them - offering a corn maze, photo spots, tractor rides, and petting zoo. Nancy is petrified that Nick is up to no good with any or all of these and goes around to all the patrons asking them how much they were charged.

Despite all her fears, the customers aren’t being scammed at all it would seem, and everything appears to be legitimate and done with the best intentions for the farm.

Maybe Nick has changed.

However, when Nick is in charge of the cash out process, that’s when the real scam is revealed - as the customers go to weigh their picked produce, Nick subtly pushes down on the scale, causing an increase in the total cost of the corn and produce. Nancy is furious, but knows how to scam a scammer so she can get their money back and refund the tricked customers.

She sends up Cricket to do the job, complete in a disguise and with a counterfeit $1000 bill. Okay, this might not be the scam to end all scams, but hopefully it works. No, it doesn’t. Instead, it alerts Nick that Nancy is aware of what’s going on and is trying to get the money back. So, he makes way with the cash box and runs into the corn fields as Nancy gives chase.

After getting past the corn and running further into the woods, Nick starts digging a hole to bury the cash box but first decides to open it to take one quick look at the cash before he says goodbye to it for a while. Instead, he finds a note from Nancy that says how proud she is of him, a sentiment echoing what he would say to her after helping him pull off a scam successfully.

We then learn that the awful Cricket disguise was quite intentional, providing enough of a distraction to allow Tilly to swap the cash boxes. Knowing that Nick would think he was one step ahead and try to hide the cash, Nancy gave chase solely to buy enough time so that the kids could refund the tricked guests.

After all is said and done, the cash is refunded and Nick is genuinely impressed by Nancy’s scam to outwit him. We also learn that Nancy might be a step better than Nick overall, as after they hug, they both have clearly picked each other’s pockets, with Nancy holding Nick’s wallet until she got back her own.

This episode of Big City Greens is now available on Disney Channel, the DisneyNOW website, and Disney+, where you can catch up with the entire series.