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"Ruby's Piano Practice" is the 1st episode of Max & Ruby from Season 1 and the 1st episode overall.
Plot
Ruby needs to practice "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for the big music recital, but Max keeps interrupting her while looking for his lost toy firetruck. Will Max and Ruby find out that the truck has been inside the piano all this time?
Synopsis
The episode starts with Max sitting on his couch and soon turns to lie down. Ruby arrives with her music sheet and says to Max that the school concert is tomorrow. Max wants his firetruck, but Ruby doesn’t know where it is. She sings “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Practice always makes perfect. Max wants to play with his firetruck but he lost it. She then tells Max to play with something else. Ruby then practices singing again. At the dining room. Max uses a motorcycle to knock his toys over. Then he finds a spider in the pile. He plays with it but it gets flung to the ceiling and gets stuck up there.
Meanwhile, Ruby is ready to play. First off, she has to clean the chair, then she turns on the metronome. As Ruby plays the song, Max interrupts her. He is looking for his firetruck, but Ruby doesn’t know where it is. She wants Max to play with his wind-up lobster instead. Ruby winds up the lobster. The lobster then walks around and escapes the house. Ruby then decides to practice the piano. As she is busy practicing, Max interrupts her. He really wants his firetruck. Ruby then gets an idea. They decide to give him lunch. She then lets Max make it himself. At the kitchen, Ruby gives Max peanut butter, a lettuce, and bread. Ruby has to practice while Max makes his own sandwich. As he is busy making it, he hears a spider falling to the floor. He decides to put it on the bread to make it look funny. Satisfied with his work, Max leaves. As Ruby plays the song again, Max interrupts. Ruby gets fed up that Max wants his firetruck. Ruby thinks Max has finished his lunch and lets him play outside all on his own.
Outside, Ruby sprays the dirt to turn it into mud. She says that Max can play in the mud with his toy submarine. She winds it up and puts it into the mud. They watch the submarine dive into it. They have no idea where it is going to. Max decides to dig into the mud to get it back. Then Ruby decides to go in and continue practicing on the piano. She plays “twinkle twinkle little star” on her piano but when she presses one of the keys, it makes a siren sound instead. Ruby then moves the stool to the side of the piano to look inside it, and finds that Max's firetruck was somehow inside the piano the whole time.
Max comes back and is excited that Ruby found his firetruck. She cannot believe that Max is covered with mud. She gives the firetruck to Max. Max turns it on, and it goes around making noise. The episode ends with Max being thrilled that he got his firetruck back.
Characters
Max Says
- "Ruby's Piano Practice" (at title card)
- Counting the first five seasons of the TV series, for the episodes that have "Max" in its title, Max --for the title card-- does speak and he says the episode's name (but heard offscreen). This occurs in Season 1 (all episodes with Max's name in it) and the first few episodes of Season 2 (with Max's name in it) plus Ghost Bunny.
- Firetruck
Trivia
- This is the first official Max & Ruby episode, excluding the 1988 short and 1991 short.
- This episode is currently available to watch on "Paramount+".
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is the same tune as "The Alphabet Song" and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".
- In this episode, Ruby wears her purple dress, but in most of Season 1 and Season 2 episodes and the intro for Season 1-5, she wears her yellow dress with purple sleeves and orange and green flowers.
- This episode, along with "Max's Bath" and "Max's Bedtime", has two versions of the US version, as Ruby is sometimes voiced by her regular seasons 1 and 2 actress, Katie Griffin.
- On Treehouse Direct prints, the title card was narrated by Ruby, but on Nick Jr., DVD Prints, and Paramount+, the title card was narrated by Max.
- This is the only episode that Ruby wears her purple dress naturally. She would wear it again in The Big Picture.
- From September 15, 2003 to October 4, 2018, when Nick Jr. aired split-screen credits, the closing logos from this episode were used after every episode when the credits end, regardless of what episode was on, it played all the way up to the Silver Lining Productions, 1997 Treehouse TV and 1995 Nelvana logos (or the Chorion, 9 Story Entertainment and 2008 Treehouse TV logos since January 2011 when it used Nickelodeon's split-screen credits design (or on-screen credits since May 5, 2014); followed by the 2004 or 2016 Nelvana and 2013 Treehouse TV logos starting in seasons 6-7.
- The end of the episode features Ruby saying “Max, you're all muddy!”. Some prints of the episode may remove this dialogue.
Goofs
- Billy Rosemberg's voice slightly cracks as Max says "firetruck" when he interrupts Ruby for the third time.
Other Languages
| Language | Name |
|---|---|
| Brazilian Portuguese | O Ensaio de Piano da Ruby |
| Dutch | Ruby's pianoles |
| French | Ruby Joue du Piano |
| German | Rubys Klavierstunde |
| Korean | 피아노 연습 |
| Latin American Spanish | La Práctica de Piano de Ruby |
| Polish | Ruby gra na pianinie |